May 2, 2008

Happy Birthday Spam, Now Die

Really it is 30 years today that the first documented spam email was sent. And look where we are today, still fighting the battle that Gary Thuerk started. Interesting history on Wikipedia, but would be even more interesting if we could mark this the year that we killed it off.

Mashable has a good article around it as well.

What can we do this year as email marketers to make it die a painful death?

1. Stop sending to people that don't want your email. Sure they opted in in 2002, but they have not read it for the past 3 years and you keep them on your active email list. Time to purge them. They are of no value to you and you are of no value to them no matter what you think.

2. Start segmenting your lists and send relevant campaigns based on their profile, what they tell you, and past behaviors.

3. ESPs need to be more vigilante on the lists that their clients load into their systems. Although sometimes tricky when you are bringing a client onto your email platform that you have no history with, you need to set some guidelines, educate them, and keep your eyes on the feedback loops and bounce reports from an account by account level.

Help us all help each other. No one no matter who they are want spam emails. Really.

Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2008

Moving from Transaction to Interaction

As a creative interactive agency, we buy images from online sources for web design and email campaign projects. But we don't always opt in for the email newsletter from the check out. I am sure that this is also the case for you and even for your own customers. So you can message them around transactional emails, product updates of products they bought and even ones like this that ASK them if they want to get on the newsletter list. If you do it right you can have a good lift into your house list. But automatically placing them on an email newsletter list is not the right thing to do and you will end up losing them or at the worse end of the spectrum, offending them.

So here is a good example of what Corbis did to reach out to me. Does not hurt that it is pretty to boot.

View image

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:00 AM | Permalink

April 23, 2008

eROI email Survey: The Cradle & The Grave

Over 500 marketers were surveyed about the subscribe/unsubscribe process. While these processes are improving, they have yet to reach what we would call exceptional.

You can get the whole PDF in our resources section (Quarterly Studies tab)/ but the call outs below are not in the PDF.

High Level Thoughts:
- Email marketers are not matching up other marketing efforts like they should. Email, search, DM, Print, Call Centers, and sales teams need to get on the same page.

- Email marketers are not monitoring feedback loops and complaint rates. Are they counting on the ESP to do it? Many ESPs like eROI do this, but some do not. Does yours? Or does your program if you run it in house?

- The thank you page, prime visitor real estate is being wasted. There are so many opportunities to be testing the thank you page with Progressive Profiling and offers. As well as setting expectations.

- Not surveying subscribers at opt out. Remember high school when someone wanted to break up? Didn't you ask WHY are you leaving? This still holds true. Exit surveys are key to finding out why you have churn.

- Not allowing frequency changes. Subscribers should have access to change preferences of frequency just like they can manage a profile with your programs. Do they want to hear from you monthly, weekly, daily, as things that are important to them change? Listen before you speak.

Here is a teaser. You can get the whole PDF in our resources section (Quarterly Studies tab) . If you already have been there, all you need to do it log back in. No more forms, questions, or steps. Nice touch huh. What other email marketing agencies have you seen do this? None, they all want your information EVERY time. There are better ways to do this, Take a look for yourself.

Opting-in- the cradle
When obtaining permission to send out emails, only about 30% of email marketers use a confirmed opt-in method, where a confirmation e-mail including an activation web link (or requiring a reply email) is sent to verify the subscriber. This number has grown quite a bit over the years, but is still well below where the industryshould be. confirmed opt-in helps ensure quality of the email list by requiring an action by the user to begin receiving emails. about 75% of email marketers provide only a small number of ways for subscribers to opt-in (one to three), whereas about 4% have more than 10 ways for subscribers to opt-in.

This story got picked up by ClickZ last friday which we appreciate.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

April 21, 2008

Search to Acquire - Email to Retain

According to a new report released by trade group Shop.org, conducted by Forrester Research, online sales excluding travel are expected to hit $204 billion in 2008, an increase of 17% over last year. The top three categories will be apparel at $26.6 billion, computers at $23.9 billion and autos at $19.3 billion, according to The State of Retailing 2008 Marketing Report.

Online commerce is expected to account for 7% of all retail sales in 2008, and will top $300 billion in five years, the report said. In addition, 53% of online retailers' marketing budgets are spent on customer acquisition compared to 21% spent on retention.

The top customer acquisition tactic for online retailers is paid search, which accounts for 35% of new customers on average, according to the study.

The second highest source, attracting 18% of the new customers, is Organic Web traffic. Affiliate programs and e-mail were tied for third place, accounting for 7% each, according to the study.

Though paid search is the top acquisition tool, e-mail to house files is the top online marketing tactic as 92% of online retailers said they use it. 79% say Paid search will be an increased priority this year.

Nearly half of online retailers said they send print catalogs and 46% said they plan to make them an increased priority in 2008, the study said.

Online retailers report popular promotional tactics in this order of preference:
85% say they use free shipping with conditions, with it, the study said
82% use percent-off promotions with saying they use it
69% prefer dollar-off promotions
68% like gift with purchase
67% support online-only sales

For more information, please visit direct magazine here.
http://directmag.com/news/online-sales040808/

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink

April 7, 2008

Validating Short Form and Progressive Profiling

Often a topic when we are building a new campaign or site is just how much data should we be capturing or requiring to let a new customer, prospect, user or lead into a site. Forms are always something that are debated over and over again. Should we ask for 3 fields, 5, 7, 10? Are we creating roadblocks to completion or reasons for someone NOT to complete a registration or sign up for a newsletter or account? Many times clients are trying to ask too much. And how do we know this?

1. Basic rule: Would you complete this form in order to move forward?
2. Do you need this? Are you going to use this information in order to validate or allow them to get/use something?
3. What will you do with the data? Many times they just feel they need to get everything at once without a clear understanding of what they are going to do with it

And just what will they do. 9 out of 10 times they cannot tell us. So why ask? If you are blocking your goal with too many fields that will stop forward progress, get rid of them. Keep it simple and then look at the idea of progressive profiling.

Just what is progressive profiling you ask? It is the practice of asking more data as you need it, as people progress through a customer lifecycle, or you need to get more to give more. And guess what? It works. Really, we know.

Gradual engagement or progressive profiling allows you to shape the relationship and walk people through an expected (clearly define why and what you need) level of task completion.

Best Practices

When planning a customer's initial experience for your web service, think about how you can avoid sign-up forms in favor of gradual engagement.

If you do opt for a gradual engagement solution, ensure that it gives potential customers an understanding of how they can use your service and why they should care.

If you choose to auto-generate accounts for potential customers, ensure there is a clear way for them to access their account. Chances are that people will either ignore or not see account creation emails, and may be uncertain if they have an account or not.

Avoid gradual engagement solutions that simply distribute the various input fields in a sign-up form across multiple pages. It's a good possibility that this will reduce efficiency and not delight anyone.

Here is a great article and examples on the topic that might help you see how you can use progressive profiling to your advantage and create a better user experience.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink