Better Email Marketing
"Just send out the emails"
Often email marketing is viewed as such a cheap direct marketing medium, that it would be a shame not to use it frequently as part of a company’s communications strategy. Let me try to balance this view.
How do we measure the hidden costs of ill thought out email marketing campaign?
A wiser man than myself, a very experienced direct marketing specialist, running a large DM agency in 2000 said that email marketing was the scariest of all direct marketing media. Why? Because upon receipt of a poorly thought out mailing, with such ease half of your database can withdraw the ‘permission to communicate’ they once afforded your organisation. Six years later, I have never heard of a mass exodus story (that may have more to do with agencies and clients keeping major faux-pas under wraps) but arguably as the volume of spam (unsolicited) emails cluttering up inboxes grows, it becomes an ever more difficult media in which to perform successful marketing campaigns.
Back to basics
The ease with which we send mails through online e-blast systems or through specialist agencies, has perhaps helped take many marketers’ eyes off the basic fact that, short of mobile marketing, email remains the most intrusive medium to have ever existed in the history of media.
The role of email has changed in our lives. Work email inboxes have become documentation tools for business communication used for staff and supplier accountability tracking. Marketing into this environment now presents very different challenges from a few years ago. All technological novelty has gone forever from the graphical or flash animated email that aims to distract you with a witty branded message or update on the latest ‘what’s new from us?’ feature.
Many consumers now maintain a Google, Yahoo or Hotmail account specifically for email sign up and registration procedures at point of purchase. That way, their primary inbox is empty of most marketing materials. Few people also know how to make complaints about unsolicited mail and recent studies have shown that many people have little faith in many organisations’ unsubscribe process.
The browser based mail providers (Yahoo, Hotmail etc) woo new customers based on the sophistication of their spam filters over their competitiors.
So what’s to be done?
1/ Target and segment
High interest products are the one area of email marketing that is still riding high with excellent open and response rates. If you happen to be updating the world on the availability for the cure for cancer or have cracked the formula for alchemy then stop reading now, otherwise, let’s get clever about what your online consumers want and not all of them, but what stream A, B, C, D, E are looking for.
If you can make the sign up process as easy as possible but ask a couple of additional questions so that your database can receive targeted messages based on their preferences. If you have already completed data capture then consider incentivising completion of a questionnaire by your current subscribers to give you this knowledge.
2/ Keep it short and to the point
Think like a Junior PR Girl – The Junior PR person knows that they have to make their writing stand out over the mountain of press releases that hit news editors fax machines / in boxes every day. Make the subject line of the email catchy but clear an consise – Don’t use CAPS – it looks like spam and sounds like you are shouting (and no-one responds well to shouting)
Make sure the content respects the time and interests of your valuable recipients.
3/ Make unsubscribe easy
Don’t hide the unsubscribe in a tiny font at the bottom of the email. If you do you risk a high level of “This is spam” clicks from users with Hotmail, G-Mail and Yahoo account and this can lead to your campaign being black-listed by a mail provider. There have been a number of blue-chip cases of this in AOL and Hotmail recently.
4/ Give something away
If you are asking anyone to take action of any kind bribery always works well. Entrance to a prize draw or a free mini-consultation can have a dramatic effect on your response rates.
5/ Use a gentle tone of voice
Remember where the Internet comes from. If the remote control was the biggest threat to TV advertising in the last 20 years, then remember that speedy movement from page to page is at the heart of how most people use the Internet. If you do not respond to this consumer behaviour you will most likely fail in your objectives.
6/ Manage consumer expectation of how often mails will be sent.
At the point of sign up make a commitment to how often mails will be sent. Sounds simple but it is rarely done but engages a level of trust with your recipient. Better still, capture a response for data segmentation from a new recipient at sign up that tells you how often they would like to hear from you.
7/ Reward responses to research or requests for feedback
Incentives for action and rewards for action taken are cut from the same piece of wood. Rather than focusing on how cheaply email marketing can be performed, establish a budget for your email activity that is a fraction of the cost of other media but enables you to reward recipients in considered ways that your competitors are not doing.
8/ Test you mails / learn / test again
Response rates are the lifeblood of offline direct marketing. They are also the cornerstones of email marketing. Consider that recipients within your database have a lifespan -Changing interests, boredom, changing email addresses will naturally erode your database. Therefore it is vital to use your data to learn what worked well, what worked less well and build your knowledge and organic growth of the email list. By consistent analysis of open rates, click rates, path analysis and cost per objective met, your campaign will get better every month through ongoing learnings inherent in your results.
For more information about better use of email marketing contact
scott.howard@digitalaim.co.uk
Often email marketing is viewed as such a cheap direct marketing medium, that it would be a shame not to use it frequently as part of a company’s communications strategy. Let me try to balance this view.
How do we measure the hidden costs of ill thought out email marketing campaign?
A wiser man than myself, a very experienced direct marketing specialist, running a large DM agency in 2000 said that email marketing was the scariest of all direct marketing media. Why? Because upon receipt of a poorly thought out mailing, with such ease half of your database can withdraw the ‘permission to communicate’ they once afforded your organisation. Six years later, I have never heard of a mass exodus story (that may have more to do with agencies and clients keeping major faux-pas under wraps) but arguably as the volume of spam (unsolicited) emails cluttering up inboxes grows, it becomes an ever more difficult media in which to perform successful marketing campaigns.
Back to basics
The ease with which we send mails through online e-blast systems or through specialist agencies, has perhaps helped take many marketers’ eyes off the basic fact that, short of mobile marketing, email remains the most intrusive medium to have ever existed in the history of media.
The role of email has changed in our lives. Work email inboxes have become documentation tools for business communication used for staff and supplier accountability tracking. Marketing into this environment now presents very different challenges from a few years ago. All technological novelty has gone forever from the graphical or flash animated email that aims to distract you with a witty branded message or update on the latest ‘what’s new from us?’ feature.
Many consumers now maintain a Google, Yahoo or Hotmail account specifically for email sign up and registration procedures at point of purchase. That way, their primary inbox is empty of most marketing materials. Few people also know how to make complaints about unsolicited mail and recent studies have shown that many people have little faith in many organisations’ unsubscribe process.
The browser based mail providers (Yahoo, Hotmail etc) woo new customers based on the sophistication of their spam filters over their competitiors.
So what’s to be done?
1/ Target and segment
High interest products are the one area of email marketing that is still riding high with excellent open and response rates. If you happen to be updating the world on the availability for the cure for cancer or have cracked the formula for alchemy then stop reading now, otherwise, let’s get clever about what your online consumers want and not all of them, but what stream A, B, C, D, E are looking for.
If you can make the sign up process as easy as possible but ask a couple of additional questions so that your database can receive targeted messages based on their preferences. If you have already completed data capture then consider incentivising completion of a questionnaire by your current subscribers to give you this knowledge.
2/ Keep it short and to the point
Think like a Junior PR Girl – The Junior PR person knows that they have to make their writing stand out over the mountain of press releases that hit news editors fax machines / in boxes every day. Make the subject line of the email catchy but clear an consise – Don’t use CAPS – it looks like spam and sounds like you are shouting (and no-one responds well to shouting)
Make sure the content respects the time and interests of your valuable recipients.
3/ Make unsubscribe easy
Don’t hide the unsubscribe in a tiny font at the bottom of the email. If you do you risk a high level of “This is spam” clicks from users with Hotmail, G-Mail and Yahoo account and this can lead to your campaign being black-listed by a mail provider. There have been a number of blue-chip cases of this in AOL and Hotmail recently.
4/ Give something away
If you are asking anyone to take action of any kind bribery always works well. Entrance to a prize draw or a free mini-consultation can have a dramatic effect on your response rates.
5/ Use a gentle tone of voice
Remember where the Internet comes from. If the remote control was the biggest threat to TV advertising in the last 20 years, then remember that speedy movement from page to page is at the heart of how most people use the Internet. If you do not respond to this consumer behaviour you will most likely fail in your objectives.
6/ Manage consumer expectation of how often mails will be sent.
At the point of sign up make a commitment to how often mails will be sent. Sounds simple but it is rarely done but engages a level of trust with your recipient. Better still, capture a response for data segmentation from a new recipient at sign up that tells you how often they would like to hear from you.
7/ Reward responses to research or requests for feedback
Incentives for action and rewards for action taken are cut from the same piece of wood. Rather than focusing on how cheaply email marketing can be performed, establish a budget for your email activity that is a fraction of the cost of other media but enables you to reward recipients in considered ways that your competitors are not doing.
8/ Test you mails / learn / test again
Response rates are the lifeblood of offline direct marketing. They are also the cornerstones of email marketing. Consider that recipients within your database have a lifespan -Changing interests, boredom, changing email addresses will naturally erode your database. Therefore it is vital to use your data to learn what worked well, what worked less well and build your knowledge and organic growth of the email list. By consistent analysis of open rates, click rates, path analysis and cost per objective met, your campaign will get better every month through ongoing learnings inherent in your results.
For more information about better use of email marketing contact
scott.howard@digitalaim.co.uk
