Email to Assist Social Media Marketing Efforts in 2012
By Jason Klein, Director of Marketing Communications

An advanced look at soon-to-be-published survey research from StrongMail reveals that the number one focus of increased email marketing budgets in 2012 will be on growing traffic to social media channels. At 48%, promoting engagement and traffic to a brand's Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages edged out such email marketing staples as batch promotional (44%) and newsletter (39%), as well as one-to-one lifecycle marketing programs (35%).

Full details of the survey, including areas of increased and decreased budget across all marketing programs, will be published next week. However, this early insight into the findings highlights the complementary relationship between email marketing and social media.  As businesses build out their social media marketing strategies and begin to lure customers and prospects with engaging content, they are relying on email to increase membership and participation in these channels. And rightfully so. Email remains an extremely effective channel for driving awareness with a highly targeted audience and prompting them to action.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites already rely on email to keep their members informed of recent activity within their social networks, with the end goal of getting them to click through and drive more traffic to their sites. Brands can use email in a similar way to increase traffic by informing customers of relevant new content on their social media channels. By targeting valued social media content to customers based on preference and purchase data, brands can build trusted relationships that are the core of any successful social media effort.

Of course email can also play a critical role in alerting members to a brand's social media sites in the first place. Integrating banner ads promoting corporate social media pages into existing email programs is an easy first step. For a more targeted effort, services provided by Fliptop or Rapleaf can identify which members of an email list are active on which social networks, thereby enabling marketers to send standalone campaigns to get them to like, follow or otherwise interact with the brand on those pages.

The email-social media relationship is bi-directional. Brands can use their social media sites to promote signing up for regular email marketing communications. Additionally, as discussed in last month's Industry Watch article, consumer social media activity also presents email marketers with a wealth of data for improving targeting. Whether leveraging data from customers who "like" you on Facebook or analyzing brand sentiment on Twitter, brands can increase their knowledge of customers' preferences to fine-tune future communications.

2012 will be a big year for social media marketing, and email will be one of the core tools that marketers use to make those efforts successful.  Full survey results will be posted to www.StrongMail.com next week and covered more extensively in the December Advisor.

Back to top

.................................................................................................

MediaPost Email Insider Summit
VIP Breakfast Session:
Say Hello to the New Marketing Democracy

Location: St. Regis Deer Valley
Date: December 5
Time: 8:15am

With the rise of social media, new digital channels enable consumers to "vote in" the winners and losers in the battle for their hearts, minds and wallets. Thanks in large part to Google, consumers now often remain "unaware" until they decide to inform themselves.

This session will provide in-depth insight on this new phenomenon, as well as the integrated strategies and tactics that marketers can employ to actually make this new marketing democracy work to their favor.  Plus, hear detailed case studies from leading brands who are building brand advocacy and generated referrals through highly integrated and informed campaigns. 

Speaker:
- Chris Marriott, VP of Agency Services, StrongMail

Event Info >>

Back to top

.................................................................................................

5 Questions for Evaluating Your 2011 Holiday Email Programs
By Tal Nathan, VP of Client Services, StrongMail

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, soon to be followed by 12 days of Christmas, followed by last chance for shipping, followed by gift cards, followed by redemptions. Before you can blink, it will be January 15.  Planning for Holiday 2011 is done; it’s now time to execute on the plan.

When all is said and done, and you've had time to catch your breath, it's important to carefully evaluate how it went – including how your tactics affected your results, whether positively or negatively. 

To that end, here are five questions you’ll want to reflect on as you look back…and most importantly look forward.

1.  Did I follow through with the best practices that I applied throughout the year? 
Were you staffed enough to make sure that all of your email campaigns were thoroughly QA’d? Did you test subject lines and offers to maximize open rates and conversions? Did you remarket to the un-opened population?  Did you turn off your lifecycle campaigns to avoid them being seen as a distraction?

2.  Did I set the right expectation for email volume with my customers?
The majority of e-commerce mailers ratchet up their mail frequency during the holidays, with some mailing daily (or multiple times a day).  Did you set the expectation for the email you will be sending and give people an opportunity to downgrade the volume - or even up some messaging on hiatus until the holidays pass? If your customers are going to start receiving a lot of email from you, it's best to let them know up front

3. Did my message stand out from the clutter? 
Did you invest enough in the planning season (Feb-Oct) to be able to send dynamic and personalized communications?  Did you institutionalize learning from all the subject line and content tests during the planning season? Did you use rendering and inbox tools to find out where your messages landed in the inbox, and what they looked like when they got there? We're you on top of promptly removing unsubscribes and bad addresses from your email file to improve deliverability and safeguard your sender reputation?

4.  Was my email service provider a good fit for my business? 
Were you able to get your messages out to your customers at the time you wanted them delivered?  Were your ESP's services folks available during your time of need?  Did you have access to real-time reporting to properly evaluate and optimize messages? Did your ESP's email marketing platform have the necessary functionality to keep your messages relevant?

5.  Did I balance revenue goals with respect for the customer experience?
Did you meet your organization's short-term revenue goals without compromising your long-term promise of an exceptional customer experience?  Yes, it’s more important to make your revenue numbers.  But it's also important to treat your customers with respect so that they will refer your brand and buy again during the next holiday season.

Hopefully, you asked yourself all of these questions last year and were able to apply your learnings to this year's batch of holiday campaigns. While this can be an extremely stressful time of year for marketers, the immense scale of your efforts also represents the best opportunity to learn what tactics best resonate with your customers. Make sure to take the time to find out what worked and what didn't, and you will continue to see your programs improve.

Back to top

.................................................................................................

The Ultimate Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide:
Cart Abandonment Programs

75% of online shoppers abandon their cart, but spend 55% more when they return as a result of an effective cart abandonment program. In this detailed whitepaper you will learn proven strategies for implementing, testing and optimizing an effective cart abandonment program.

Download Today >>

7 Tips for Cleaning Up Your Email Lists for 2012
By Spencer Kollas, Director of Delivery Services

As we head into 2012, you should take a close look at your email list hygiene practices to make sure that you are maintaining a good sender reputation and maximizing deliverability. Good list hygiene combined engaging emails and sender authentication will help you build a solid email reputation with your top ISPs. 

List hygiene may not be the most exciting aspect of email marketing, but it is essential for good deliverability. Simply follow the seven tips below to get your lists in order for the New Year.

1. Scrub Your Lists Regularly. Keep your email lists clean by regularly running them against a register of known bad domains and removing duplicate addresses and role accounts. You can automate the latter by adding “info@*,” “sales@*,” and other common addresses to your suppression list. Your email system may also enable you to automatically suppress bad domains and role-based distribution lists.

2. Remove Bad Domains. Bad domains should be removed immediately. Closely review your failure reports, identify bad addresses and evaluate whether they are the result of a data capture problem or a non-existent domain.

3. Review Data Capture Processes– List hygiene starts with collecting good data. Make sure your sign-up forms prompt users to fix incorrect email address or syntax errors before they are submitted.

4. Actively Manage Hard and Soft Bounces – In addition to having established policies for automatically removing hard-bounced addresses due to bad addresses and unknown users, you should have similar policies for removing soft bounces after a pre-determined number of consecutive failures.

5. Promptly Remove Unsubscribes – Don’t wait the 10 days allowed by CAN-SPAM to process unsubscribes. Remove unsubscribed addresses immediately to avoid users hitting the “this is spam” button and damaging your sender reputation.

6. Mark Inactive Addresses for Reengagement – Transfer inactive addresses to another list that is designed to reengage them.  A good rule of thumb for identifying inactives is no more than 12 months – but 6 months can be preferable depending on factors related to the seasonality of your business.

7. Sign Up for Feedback Loops and Whitelists – Sign up for available feedback loops at your top ISPs to monitor the number of spam complaints generated from your mailings. Similarly, maximize your inbox delivery by signing up for whitelists offered by ISPs and other providers.

You can also keep up with these developments and more by bookmarking or subscribing to StrongMail’s blog, Maximizing Deliverability.