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March 30, 2007
Using Tactics to Drive the Read
A trend that I have been seeing lately used by some companies and consumer brands is the Q/A idea. What is this? Well glad you asked. It is to create the question at the top of an email and drive them down through the copy to find out where it is answered. Typically I have seen it at the bottom, go figure. This drives the full read of the email, or at least that is the intention of the idea.
I think it is a good one that I am going to watch for. It might work better in a BtoC email campaign, but why could you not try it in a BtoB one? Think about this:
Do you know what is the major driver in sales/lead conversions in an email campaign? Find the answer below....
I wager that it works and works well.
Now I am going to be watching you campaigns, and IF you use this one, drop me and email to let me know how well it worked for you.
The Email Creative Question:
The Email Creative Answer:
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:54 AM | Permalink
March 29, 2007
Spring Cleaning Your Lists With a Contest
So you have a list. Is it physical addresses or email addresses? Why do I ask you this? Well because you can use this technique either way. We do this all the time for our clients using PIN Coded DM (use a campaign URL for DM to track response by media) to convert offline lists to opt in email lists and it works swimmingly.
The example here was driven by email, at least to me as they have my information and I like them both as a brand and as an email marketer. They send a simple offer: Update your information and get entered in our daily contest. No brain-er right? Well have you tried it? It is actually simple, but you need to be aware of what you really need to know from the audience. Is it for reporting on campaigns, or is it going to be used to drive email segmentation and relevant content? Maybe both I hope.
If you are not using this technique, time to start.
The Email Creative:
The Landing Page:
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 4:39 AM | Permalink
March 28, 2007
Why Would You Not Aim for the Brass Ring?
Well my friend Tamara Gielen from b2bemailmarketing.com had a post this last week that I want to take the bad cop stance on.
She writes:
Stop Looking to the Big Boys for Creative Ideas
In this blog post, Janine Popick urges all of us NOT to look at the email campaigns of the "big boys" of retailing as a source of creative ideas because they don't necessarily have it down when it comes to email marketing best practices.
I think it should be the other way. Now not that the whole large offline agency/large brands do it right and really don't get how The Email Wars impact creative in the inbox, but more along the lines of "Do It Better than You Are Doing It Now". I get so tired of seeing campaigns on both sides of the line. Small brands that are sending out crap (sorry to be so honest) and large brands or agencies that are over producing emails that don't understand why emails should not just be images (one image in some cases) as they are not going to render. Can't we aim to deliver compelling and outstanding creative WHILE as the same time doing it right and delivering a professional campaign?
I think we can. I think that the little guys have a better shot of aiming UP instead of the Big Boys aiming down. Take the creative cue from the BIG Boys and run like a small company with the flexibility and knowledge to just do it right.
Janine has it right on her blog with the examples of what happens when you don't think like an email marketer and just a "marketer".
Hope I don't come off like an email snob, but just someone that wants to see everyone succeed. Now time to climb down off my soapbox. Hence the image of the terrorist throwing the flowers. (love the graffiti artist Banksy if you don't know him)
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 12:02 PM | Permalink
Is Address Harvesting Ethical?
Well you know that my first answe to this question is NO. Never is it okay, ethical nor legal to harvest emails out there. This company Jigsaw has been on my radar for a long time as they provide a contact info trading service for sales people. And this new email has a new download that actually allows you to grab emails from web sites and add them to your contact list. Meets the goals of Jigsaw from a business plan perspective, but man such a poor goal.
Why not just take advantage of the emails we get each day offering 100K emails for $5. Right?
Keep reading after the JUMP
This brings me to a conversation of the Email Insiders this past week that focused on an email sent by a Portland company that was a prospecting email. Now IMHO this is okay when you actually type the whole thing yourself and send it from your email client (NOT ESP) to people that have asked for information. Not those in which you grabbed a contact list and cold call/prospect using an email platform.
The double edged sword of this was that many on the list were saying how unethical it was to actually email people that you don't know.. guys this is sales. Sales is about finding new opportunities, starting a conversation and moving them to lead to prospect to sale. Done the right way of course. But I could not believe to the degree that they were taking this. I can tell you that everyone of the companies complaining about this topic have a sales team that is emailing new prospects everyday. I know that they are doing it the right way (at least I assume that) but there is no way that sales people just sit back and wait for the leads to pour in and they react. Business does not work like that.
Take the high road in the end and do the following:
1. Learn who the prospect is
2. Call them
3. Engage in a conversation
4. Ask them if you can follow up by email to send them the information or recap the conversation.
5. Allow them to opt in for other ESP driven materials on their own.
6. Follow up with personal calls and emails
7. Book Em Danno.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:27 AM | Permalink
March 27, 2007
Video Recaps from OMMA
I know only 3-4K people showed up at OMMA, so some of you missed it. Again this is THE event to go to each year. Next one is this fall in NYC. See you there.
But the reason for this is to share with you the link to all of the great content. They posted in up last week and used BrightCove ( I like this media player alot) so that you can catch up on what you missed.
Cheers and enjoy.
Watch the video clips from OMMA
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 8:35 AM | Permalink
Can Email Drive Sales Awareness?
I believe in email. I believe that it drives awareness and sales revenues. I know that it works, but in our consumer driven economy can we always expect everyone to want to hurry to buy from us? It is timing and segmentation. Not everyone is ready to buy anytime you have a sale no matter how fantastic or amazing the deals and creative may be. Reality check time guys.
When you are planning a campaign driven by a sale you must take the following actions:
1. Segment your list so that you target buyers that based on past data will be targets to your offers. Don't drop the offer to everyone if you don't have the data to back up if they will buy.
2. Think micro campaigns in leading up to the sale. Sales are driven by not one, but a series of emails building awareness, segmenting by those that have already acted on your offer, sending additional (note your frequency) reminders of the offer and time remaining to participate, and closing the loop with a stake in the ground when it is over and done.
3. Know the audience intimately. If you are selling woman's clothing, don't send the men on your list the offer (JCrew listen up). If you are selling to a business, don't send your customers the offer because you are too lazy or unable to segment. The last thing you want to do it create buyers remorse on an offer that someone has already acted on.
4. Have the inventory to support a sale. So many times I have clicked through in 5 seconds from getting an email and the products are already gone that would be of interest to me. Builds a future thought in my mind to not pay attention to future ones.
In the end you can drive the business if you are clear about your goals and expectations while truly building a campaign that works.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:52 AM | Permalink
March 26, 2007
How to Learn About Your Audience
How does one learn more about their readers or subscribers.... well they ask. So I am going to start posting some surveys every so often that can help me get in touch with you and what you would like to hear more about. They are going to be simple surveys as the ones that I get that are 10-20 questions really seem long. They will be based on topics that I can look for examples online, data, and of course rants and opinions.
I also encourage you to submit more comments on posts as I post them daily and you can use the comments as well to provide me with feedback as to what I can cover for you. This is a community after all, not a one way street.
The daily audience is growing at a rapid clip and we are getting close to a redesign in the coming months. Right after the relaunch of our own corporate site (7 months in the making so far and it is going to be GRAND. If you are unfamiliar with us, take a look at www.eroi.com.
I think in little bites they are easier to digest. Take a moment to give me your feedback when you see them as it will help me to work to make this a blog that you will look to for insight, email marketing news, and opinions.
Thank you and thank you for your readership.
Comments (2) | Posted by dylan at 9:34 AM | Permalink
The Reason for the View This as Webpage Link
I have long been a fan of the Scott's Lawn care emails. The are timely, relevant and well done. But I was a little surprised when I got the most recent one and many of the blocks of copy and images failed to load. This was not due to any image suppression on my end of my email client, but just a misfire somewhere along the way. The email wars continue even when you are doing your best.... I even gave it a chance and opened it fully, went back to the inbox and loaded it again. No go.
Well at the top, as you should always do, was a link to view it as a web page. If you are not adding this as a standard in HTML as well as TEXT you need to cover the basics in your email marketing programs. And voila, all was well in the universe again.
Here are some shots of it and note it was in the new MSN Live Mail web client.
With the View as Web Page link:
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:42 AM | Permalink
March 22, 2007
The Postcard Is Not Dead
So many of you have decided that the post card email is really a retail tool. I rarely ever see businesses using the postcard style layout when reaching out to customers and prospects to get them to take action. Well why is this? Why is it that businesses try to use every possible word in an email and every pixel to tell you more and more WHEN they actually just want you to take an action?
Now I know you think that you need to really drive understanding, value propositioning and give them every possible action to take when they get your email at work.... but you don't. Really. Sorry to burst the copywriters bubble or the CFOs sensibilities, but get to the point. Tell them what the offer is and give them one action to take. Now this assumes that you have queried your lists and are targeting emails to the right person that is going to benefit from taking this next step with you.
Remember, and some of you might argue this, that we are all consumers. We all are driven to buy a PC or application in the same manner that we might buy a new shirt or pair of shoes. If you have an offer that is relevant, timely and compelling, you have a formula for a postcard email campaign that will work.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:22 AM | Permalink
March 21, 2007
New Email Metrics Resource
Interesting new site from Got and the EEC. Aggregates studies, research and best practices in email marketing, delivery, rendering, time of day, creative etc..
Take a look when you have a chance.
http://www.emailstatcenter.com/
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:46 PM | Permalink
Why We Like Lists
If you have a TV or read magazines, you know then why we like lists. We like to see a ranking or maybe it is just the way lists organize data and information that make them so easy to browser and drive deeper. I was forward this email from a friend at Travelocity Business (She rocks by the way and I am going to look to her for my Best of Travel Email Installment) from SMU that does a great job of using simple lists and content organization to drive the clicks.
The key to lists are:
1. Keep them simple
2 .Make them relevant
3. Don't give too much away
4. Make them hungry for more
5. Like how I am using a list to list these?
Do you have any good examples of list driven emails that are well laid out? Send them to create AT eroi.com and we will take a look and share them.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:15 AM | Permalink
March 20, 2007
SXSW Recaps
We sent three of our team to SXSW in Austin Texas last week. What an event. George on our team, who leads new media wrote up some of his take aways on one of our other blogs EmailDays.com. If you are interested in things like Twitter, take a look.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 2:37 PM | Permalink
May The Force Be With You
So before you even enter my office, you will now know that like most boys in the US, I am a fan of Star Wars. Not a light saber wielding freak that camps out for weeks leading up to the next release, but one that is just enamoured with the creativity and the energy that this media property brings. Now that being said we have clients like Konami and Sega using our email platform, but I still like the simplicity that Lucas Arts brings to the inbox with these well written and well designed emails. They have a clean balance of imagery and text... yes text does score high with me even with some of the other emails I have shown you over the past few years.
Take a moment to look how they use compelling graphic headers to build a clear separation between the game properties and help me to know where to go next. It works well sometimes just keeping it simple and sticking to the basics.
Now I have to go as a droid (account Exec) is knocking at my door again.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:01 AM | Permalink
March 19, 2007
Lurker or Active Reader?
This post has two real thoughts in mind. One of course ties directly to email marketing and the other to this blog.
Email: When is a lurker a lurker in email? And what is a lurker in email? A lurker is someone that is on your list, and active reader but does not ever engage in clicking through or converting. I know you all have lurkers on your list. What do you think about them and what do you do with them?
Well we just spent 3 months in cleaning up our own email list for our newsletters. We took the data points from October to December 2006, segmented them by active and inactive subscribers (read lurkers) and then sent the last 3 months of emails to these new lists. Each edition was different. Not all the copy was different, but the subject lines and the intro copy was written specifically based on the behavior of the segmented lists. We used humor, as we often do, as we are tired of boring business to business based emails. Aren't you? We used subject lines like: "Its not you, its us" and " Are You Breaking Up With Us" as well as a standard safe one that we would typically use. The funny thing that happened was some of the feedback we got from these inactive subscribers letting us know that they were interested, but just not really actively engaging with the email.
In the second month we saw a lift in reads and clicks with 25% of these people when the 3 months prior they were lurkers. The third month was the same type of response and action.
We then took these "newly engaged" subscribers and moved them back into the active list. The others that failed to engage in reading or clicking through (now these were just newsletters and not campaigns targeted to sell or convert) are now moving to a new campaign letting them know that maybe it is better for both of us to part ways? Almost like telling them that we are opting them out.
Are you comfortable with losing a percentage of your subscriber base? If you knew that they were not really the kinds of people you want on your list and are bringing your email marketing performance down, should you just let them know and help them move on? I know we wrestled with this as they were not bouncing email addresses, but just ones that really were not engaging with us.
Email is a two way street and it is okay to break up with people, get comfortable with this idea. This action brought our rates of engagement up over 57% on average for each campaign and we like healthy results. Now we are not going to actually suppress these email addresses, but we are going to move them into a quarterly engagement and see if they begin to miss us. My version of the "shiny red ball" technique. I am a firm believer of showing and telling people just what they are going to get, showing them the value of association and then taking that "red ball" away from them and see if they want to ask for it back.
I cannot imagine many email marketers doing this as we have, as most of them are so tied to the idea of list size and, dare I say the dreaded word, "e-blasts".
Try to cut some of our lists based on the metrics you deem right and start cutting the chaff away and watch the results grow.
Now as it comes to this blog, I get many new comments each week, and I love all of them. Based on the number of readers I see by RSS and just visiting by browser, I would challenge each of you to engage more often. Tell me what you think about these posts. Tell me what you would like to see more of. Engage and help me to talk to you more like you would like to be spoken to, because with RSS and the internet, it is just so hard to break up....
Comments (4) | Posted by dylan at 10:21 AM | Permalink
March 18, 2007
See You at OMMA West!
If you are missing me at the beginning of the week, it is because I have hit the road again on Sunday for Hollywood for my twice annual pilgrimage to OMMA, the best Mediapost show out there. This is the event I look forward to each and every year.
The EEC (Email Experience Council) will be leading the email marketing sessions at the event again and you are sure to get some good information that you can use. Join us if you can. I will be making another appearance at the Liars Club panel with the likes of David Baker from Ave A/Razorfish and Jeanniey Mullen from Ogilvy.
I will try to post during the event if I can, or have Ryan post them on Emaildays.com. Cheers.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:17 AM | Permalink
March 17, 2007
I Love Creative Emails
Now being a creative myself and not just an email marketer, I love it when I get beautifuly designed emails. I know that there are flaws with over designed emails but our Portland Advertising Federation has a collection of very talented designers that get the word out about the events we put on each month in a way that says... wow.
Each month we see great unique event driven emails that are unique each and every time. Never a boring email in my opinion. So many other organizations send out the same template each month and really do not make an immediate impact. Maybe this is proof of designing for your audience.
If you are in a local, regional or national organization I put this out to you. Start a monthly challenge that allows a different agency to design the email each month. We all know that agencies and designers are hyper competitive and even more so when the audience is as judgemental as your own peer group.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:47 AM | Permalink
March 16, 2007
Marketing Sherpa.. Take Me Away
Now Anne Holland and the Marketing Sherpa team deliver a GREAT email and I love what they do. But their new owner/partner needs some TLC from the Sherpa crew. I regularly get hard to read, narrow text emails from Marketing Experiments and love the content, but damn if these things are not hard to read to know what to do.
This one lost me at HELLO. And I want to engage but my eyes and brain are screaming to stop now. So sorry if I have to expose you to this, but it is for your own good. If your emails read like this, cut them down, sizably. Make them concise, actionable and easy to read and digest.
Anne and Stefan (from the old Calgon ad) take me away....
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:02 AM | Permalink
Tell Me Where We Met Again?
I found a link in an email that accompanied the copy of "Tell me when we met". I thought what a good idea. Show me where I opted in from, when it was and what you know about me. Now this was not to update my profile, but simply to build faith and trust in my relationship. I mean how many of you opt in for things, get emails and never really remember when you said I do? I know I can say that I have a hard time remembering and simply remember that I opted in.
This is a nice thing to do if you can. Tell them so that they can feel that you know, can prove it and build one more layer of trust into your email marketing relationship.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:12 AM | Permalink
March 15, 2007
One More Reason for Rendering Testing
Now I am a big fan of this newsletter. The content is always valuable and worth my time to read. But what happend in this edition? The headlines rendered in my email client so bad it was hard to even read. Might have been a slight coding mistake, but doesn't this warrant a test or even better using the Return Path email rendering system to see if there are any issues with how it arrives in the inbox?
Don't pretend that this has not happend to you and now with Outlook 2007 we are seeing more and more reasons to test email presentation in every campaign. If you are and emailROI client, reach out to your account exec and have them test your creatives from the past and see if there is anything we can do to make them better.
We personally test EACH email template and campaign we produce for clients to make sure that issues like this never see the light of day.If you aren't one of our clients (may this is the time to make that jump) set up test accounts around the ISP and email client horn (baseball is almost here and on my mind) so that you do not face this issue in the inbox.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:55 AM | Permalink
Day Three: Sherpa Email Summit: Mobile and Email
Why Mobile?
It is more frequently on.
It is more likely to be carried "offline"
Larger numbers of consumers are upgrading to mobile devices, not just phones.
Who is using:
25-45 has the highest penetration of mobile
13-17 fairly low still (but I would challenge that they are the ones driving mobile adoption.
Challenges:
Most intimate, most personal.
Rendering on the handheld (how do you send in multipart and deliver the TEXT version to a mobile device that has been sent as HTML OR Text?) Many times we have seen the HTML show up as TEXT Html mix
Know that mobile is already being used. So what are you going to do about it?
NOTE: IF you are slicing your images for your email, KNOW that the email will break apart in images blocks for every slice. Think about chopping your emails into 2-3 parts. Keep the text together.
Musts:
Always insert "View this as a Web Page" and then put a full image on the server
Do not use your nav at the top of your emails, place it at the bottom
Use big bold images that are not sliced
Design in columns
Keep the message near the top (just like you should in all emails) think above the fold, but smaller)
Think about placing your phone number near the top of the email as you are emailing to a phone and they can act on a number faster than they can navigate with a mobile browser in many cases.
The Mobile Landing Page:
Mobile browsers are not forgiving
XHTML has rigid accessibility standards that make is good for mobile
Use Style Sheets (CSS)
Organize logically and consistently across each page and section
Include text links in the main navigation if possible
Use Jump tags in your CSS so as to make it easy to jump to that area of the site from the nav
LESS room above the fold, remember that you are working with less room (Until the iPhone comes out in June... still Jonesing for one)
Submit your site to major mobile search engines
Top Mobile Browsers: Opera (can show what your email looks like on a mobile device), Google or Squeeezer.
Offer a Send Me this Page link - that can send a web page to an email address for later review after mobile browsing
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink
March 14, 2007
Missed Opportunity for Transactional Email
Transactional email has been a hot topic in email marketing circles for the past few events I have attended so far in 2007. It is an area that marketers have not truly wrapped their heads around. Many case studies I have heard presented as of late have spoke to the opportunity of lift in the body of the transactional email. Now there are some loose guidelines around it so far. The rule of thumbs tends to preach 25% of the message can be marketing in a transactional email as long as it is not the driver or main focus of the message.
Some studies cite higher conversion from the transactional than any other type of campaign. I would assume that to be the case if it is targeted, a soft sell and a relevant offer from what they just did or bought.
Imagine this scenario (after the jump):
Someone just downloaded your white paper or signed up for a guide. You thank them on the landing page, you offer something of immediate value that they can only take advantage of for a limited time. Then you trigger the transactional email confirming the order/download and present one more thing of relevance, say to sign up for your newsletter. Odds have it they are engaged and will move on it.
Apple, in this scenario missed the boat, BUT they have a feedback opportunity to build content through reviews in this transactional example. I would think that there is an opportunity to offer something to add a sale to iTunes, but nope.
Are you making use of the landing/thanks page and the email touch afterwards? You should.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:45 AM | Permalink
Day Two: Sherpa Email Summit: Inegration
One of the hot buttons this year is the growing data integration efforts between email, web, ecom, and marketing campaign analytics. We drink the Kool Aid and are excited to hear this presentation.
Responsys has a VERY deep behavioral analytics system that can set up dynamic individual campaign flows in email.
Can behavior increase conversion and revenue, yes.
Can it be accomplished? Yes, but it wholly depends on what you are using. We have an open XML API for our clients (which a new version was released this past weekend) that you can map email flows into other systems.
You need to select a web analytics platform (like Webtrends) that can allow you to map this data both ways.
The benefit is true analytics driven one to one email marketing campaigns. What is important is finding out WHAT you can drive to email with that data. Cart abandoned? Purchases? Downloads, and other events can be used to create on the fly campaigns.
It is not at this point something I have seen too man small to medium size companies use. Many of those that are doing this are large Fortune 500 companies as it does take some capital and time. It is not an overnight set up and delivery. So what can you do?
What you need to have: email address, campaign identifier, and unique visitor ID tags for return behavior.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:16 AM | Permalink
March 13, 2007
Using the Old Beer and Running Trick
Now I have been watching this Nike campaign a bit and am falling madly in love with it. Not because it is so clever and uses the idea of PINTS OF BEER in the St Pat's timed creative (for the annual St Pats Run here in Portland, which I actually took place in from the window of a pub Sunday afternoon, hey someone needed to do the beer part), but for the fact that they are staying on one real campaign and growing it more than they have ever before. I have been on Nike lists for years and have never seen the use of this format, the story grow, the content be targeted AND it not be just ONE image telling me to buy some shoes. Kudos .
This is a great departure for the big Swoosh and I think one that is engaging and connecting. I would love to see some stats from them one the effectiveness of this campaign (think I should just climb the burm surrounding the complex and find the genius behind it this week on the way to work).
It is thinking different and a great campaign. Do something unexpected, drive content, use creative copy... and beer does not hurt. Cheers .
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 7:33 AM | Permalink
Day Two: Sherpa Email Summit: AM Session Two
Newest Email Test Results: Stop Guessing, Let the customer decide for you.
Christian Busch, Doubleday Entertainment
Barbara Sanchez, Doubleday Entertainment
350 Campaigns a month across the properties
35 Active book Clubs, 7+ million members
Book Club Categories: General Interests, Lifestyle, Male, Specialty Clubs, Professional Clubs
Channels: DM. EM, Internet, Phone
What are the KPIs for email campaigns?
Do you have a good email vendor, strong tracking capabilities and clean lists (they DO NOT buy lists)
Are you familiar with statistical relevancy, tolerance levels and testing-how-to?
IS your test objective SMART-I (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, trackable.... and implementable?
IF you test, make sure to quarantine those subscribers from anyone else in the company. IF you are testing, control who might be able to touch.
REPEAT your tests several times across different brands (if you have more than one)
Make sure that you have good creative samples and quantitative data for all tests
Tests MAY be interpreted in several ways. Finance might want to see them in other ways than you are watching or testing for, or another group that is involved.
Some stake holders can suffer from short term memory loss.. always back your notes and conversations so that you are able to reproduce the notes and results along the way to keep all on task.
TESTS:
Click Here VS Get.. and the winner is... Click Here got a higher click rate, BUT GET won the test with 47% more in conversions
Subject line:
Open now...
Save
A mysterious new offer" - won 11% higher than one now and 19% higher than Save
Name in Subject line:
Normal subject line vs Subject line with name
Normal had a higher conversion rate but open rate was higher for Name in Subject line
Free Shipping:
Over $25 - overall sales impact was best
Over $40 - Average order size was higher, duh
Free shipping with no barriers, was flat. Placing a dollar amount around the offer converted better.
Postcard vs Newsletter:
31% higher conversion rate
56% higher clickthru rate
Offer ONLY vs Offer with Images
There was not enough significant data to really drive a winner,
Stop guessing, start testing. Let the consumer/subscriber decide for you. Lock down your time to judge, 48-72 hours for tests. Look at the impact.
---------------------------------------
SPRINT/NEXTEL Presentation
Kristen Barletta
Newest Email Test Results for Sprint/Nextel: Transactional Email
They had sent out TEXT only, no cross sell or upsell messaging
Where to start: Shipping confirmation emails
Early life communications and 1000s sent a day (REAL live test)
Removed ANY non-relevant information
Added branding
Follow the 75/25 rule for how much is transactional and how much is promotional
What did they learn? Transactional emails sell
Higher sales, click rate, open rate 8X over standard campaigns
What's NEXT?
Webcat: Emailed written transcript of conversations between consumer and customer service. Took the IM session and reformatted in brand and send out right after conversation. Include relevant product offers around recap.
VistaPrint.com
Retention Email Goals:
Improvement Net Contribution/Impression
TESTS:
Multi-product Sales
Drive Re-orders
Dollar, Trial and New product Sales
New Product Introductions
Life-cycle Transactional Email Campaigns
Reducing In-actives increased revenues by 10-40%.
Non Buyers: 0-3 months kept, over 3 months no action remove into another list.
What should you do? Remove? Never mail again?
No move them to a new control list. test then quarterly, or every 6 months.
Try the win back email to re-engage them.
This is your LAST Chance, confirm you want this now OR we will remove you forever. Those that re-activate are still good, and those that were removed (suppressed) saved money and improved campaign results
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink
March 12, 2007
Bracketology + Killer Prizes = List Growth
College Basketball is in the air and that means it is bracket time. We are working with our InFocus to bring the 2nd annual InFocus Hoops contest. This year winners take home PlayStation 3, Bose systems, and lots of other goodies. This site shows you the power of encompassing a campaign around a large social event.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 7:49 PM | Permalink
Day Two: Sherpa Email Summit: Keynote
I will be posting some recaps from the Sherpa Summit. Flow might be a little off, but tried to hammer down as many notes as my fat fingers could bang out...
Tad Clarke does the intro, Editorial Director of Marketing Sherpa
Anne Holland and Stefan Tonrquist ( I love this presenting combo):
The Good News: The impact of email across both b2b and b2c is on the rise. It is the main driver of impact across marketing. 3600 people were surveyed on these results from a recent Sherpa Study.
List Growth: B to B 3.9%, B to C 6.0% ad Large Lists (Over 300K) 5.3%
At the same time they are losing: 2.1%, 2.9%, 3.2%
Annual growth rate: 22%, 37%, 25%
The losing rates are more of the hard bounces than they are unsubscribes.
Winning opt in campaign example from Blockbuster Video shown.
Interesting that 39% of Sherpa opt ins sign up for the co-reg on the Thank you page of their own site.
Marketing Sherpa did a test of opting in to all the 435 websites of attendees. AUDIT
15% of show attendees offered sign up on home page
18% offered it on a form on the secondary page
42% used a link on a page to drive to subscribe
25% - NO mention on the home page
They feel that not having it on the home page, even a small form, is going to hurt list growth.
55% of sites sent a Welcome message within 72 hours.
45% of the sites that allows opt in DID not send a help or welcome at all
36% of those Welcome messages get opened SO make sure to send it as that is one that subscribers expect.....
Welcome Messages tested:
Brusnwick welcome message with a coupon on the intro was a winner
Monster.com welcome message, simple and clear, broken out in clear boxed areas worked well
Transactional Email:
Do you put marketing in there and how does it work?
How do people respond to all opt in email vs service based emails?
21% read the shipping notice/ transactional emails
But on that note from 2005 to 2007 the consumer perceptions and reactions to this type of email with marketing messages moved the individual acceptance rate to a neutral to strong acceptance reaction rate.
As long as the content was relevant it was positive.
Reputation based acceptance:
AOL 100%
Earthlink: 77%
Gmail: 100%
Hotmail: 40%
Yahoo: 80%
What this means is that ISPs are not looking at content. subject, html, images etc as much. More likely to look at who is a good mailer, uses authentication systems, spam /junk complaints low... what is this mailers reputation...
Reputation Fixes:
1. Slash your lists: Clean them up, who is "active" how can you remove/suppress or put them in a secondary list
2. Third parties and Can Spam: 72% of affiliate emails have issues with them. Your reputation is tied to all partners, third party offers, channel, etc
3. Rendering: Incorrectly rendered spam is perceived as dangerous. So this has a mental impact on your delivery and rates.
OUR Programs: From Test
Prior to the arrival of all the Summit Attendees, Marketing Sherpa subsrcibed to all of the attendees sites.. or tried in some cases.
90% No secondary touch of why you left... No attempt to re-engage at point of unsubscribe or after in notification/confirmation email.
It would be okay to ask them a few questions as WHY they are leaving. Can be on the site and not in the inbox... Think exit survey.
24% had NO unsubscribe link in the footer of newsletters
4% had the process broken - meaning that the unsub page showed Pedro instead of Michelle in the link and unsub page.
Eye tracking:
The example of the newsletter shows that the content is too much. If you can shorten the copy and they keep it simple, use images to navigate and flow the copy. The most important part I see is the USE of a button as an action item. (Why do so many people always use a text link? SHOW me where to go and what to do.
Image blocking:
Groups divided by age:
36% 18-34
48% 35-4
37% 55 and over
Copy DRIVES emails with image suppression. And IMHO drives actions period when done WRITE (sic).
Preview Pane capable:
96% in B t B - 69% use is in business - 72% of people that use it
38% in b 2 c - 27% use it in consumer - 70% of all people that can use it
The Majority of consumers are only seeing: From and subject line before they open. 73%.
Top Creative Results:
Landing Page Copy yields the highest impact 44%
AB Email Offers: 41%
Subject line Tests: 34%
Landing Page Creative: 34%
AB Emails Creative: 33%
New formula presented by Marketing Experiments Director:
Good "The Index" formula presented:
ECE=3Iq+2or+2bc+2it+ef+dr
ECE: Email Campaign Effectiveness
lq: List Quality
or: Offer Relevance
bc: Body copy
it: Intrinsic timing (send times and urgency)
ef: Envelope fields: Subject/From Lines
dr: Deliverability Rate
ORGANIZE your email campaign notes around these 7 things. If you can improve each one, you can drive higher results.
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 8:32 AM | Permalink
It's The Copy Stupid
I had the chance to have lunch today in Miami with Greg from Eyetools. If you are not familair with EyeTools, you should take a look. They provide eye tracking studies on websites and emails. We have known Greg for a while but over some good cuban food this afternoon, he gave us some lessons he has learned from the 100s of studies they have done on email.
Of course there were the basics of design and placement of calls to action, but what was the mmost interesting thing to hear (that we believe in) is the power of the copy. Now you might think that most people don't read emails. I would say this to be 100% true, but only when it does not speak to them. When the email is personal, targeted, focused on the person getting it and shows value to what they need, you have a combination that he tells us is the magic. The copy that provides benefit, value and most importantly speaks to them... wins.
Now the flip side of this, he brought up, is that the eye tracking studies show that as soon as you mention your company name, your brand, your goal... the reading stops.
So how do you balance message vs brand? It is a carefully walked path. We know that copy is king. Content is King. But content that is relevant and talks to me is what works.
Think about this next time you are trying to get a campaign out. Would you read it?
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:10 AM | Permalink
March 11, 2007
One Email for DST?
I found it a little odd that I only received one email about the whole early daylight savings time change this past week. It was an opportunity that was on the tops of minds of so many people and only Mercedes Benz was kind enough to drop me a note.
Not that this was a time for a sale or a transactional email, but in relationship building, it is nice to just reach out and be a friend sometimes. Kudos MB USA for creating a customer service opportunity.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:03 PM | Permalink
March 5, 2007
Live Entries from Email Summit 07
We have been covering in real-time this AM's sessions. I will be posting more later on this blog from Sunday through Tuesday's event, so stay tuned. Until then read www.emaildays.com for this AMs Marketing Sherpa Email Summit 07 conversations and presentations.
We have 3 blogs for those of you that just read this one if you have not visited them, check out EmailDays.com and ReturnOnSubscriber.com.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:26 AM | Permalink
March 4, 2007
Day One: Marketing Sherpa Email Summit
The Summit is in full force. We arrived today to a great reception from Marketing Sherpa here in Miami. They had set up a Boot Camp seminar this afternoon as well as a great cocktail reception in the Vendor Hall that was PACKED. Seems that this event is coming into its own in the second year.
The EEC had a Membership Welcome this afternoon as well and it was well attended. What was great to see was the amount of people from Europe in attendance at the EEC event. People from Belguim, Italy, and the UK were there representing companies in the email marketing space.
The conversations going on today were good to hear and some of the ideas and questions coming out of those from Europe provided good information about the global marketplace.
What was shocking from all of this were those that actually said that they read this blog. Thanks to all of you as it helps me to realize why I actually pen this blog.
Cheers and I will be sure to write more from sessions these next two days.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:23 PM | Permalink
March 3, 2007
Off to Miami for Marketing Sherpa Email Summit
Packing up today and heading out on the Red Eye to Miami for the Marketing Sherpa Summit Sunday to Tues and then back. I will hopefully be blogging the event live as I hear great ideas and news. So look for updates next week.
And if you are going to be there, come say hello or join us a the EEC event Sunday afternoon for Mojitos.
Thanks to the companies and individuals that submitted great campaigns the past 2 weeks. And for those of you that did not, your chance is coming.... We will be holding a monthly contest by vertical for best creative emails. Look for the announcements here.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:52 AM | Permalink
March 2, 2007
I'm No Longer The "Target" Demo
It just hit me this week after reading an article by Cory Treffiletti on Online Spin from Mediapost that I crossed the threshold this week. That's right the sexy 18-34 demo that the advertisers all sweat over is no longer me. 35 this past week and I did not feel old until this. Thanks Cory.
So does this mean that I will stop getting the same emails I have got for so long from brands that I have opted in for? Will the spam emails for Cialis and Vigra just grow in instensity now? Will I start getting more retirement mail.....
No fortunately I am hoping that demo ONLY plays one part of the campaigns I am getting. I would think that relevance and behavoir are actually the drivers of the campaigns I get.
But who knows, maybe I am no longer the target for Apple, American Apparel or Abercrombie... and I am all about Walmart and Ginko Biloba.
Cheers and looking forward to another year with you.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:26 AM | Permalink
March 1, 2007
Email Wars Makes the Best Email Blog List
Well not like this is the Oscars or anything, but we are always excited to see our daily hard work being read and recognized by the email marketing community. Not only will you find The Email Wars on this and ReturnOnSubscriber.com, but also 19 other blogs and sites that are ones you should book mark as go to resources for the world of email marketing. I can tell you that many of these are daily reads for us.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:02 AM | Permalink
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