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While trying to whittle down the number of email newsletters that pour into my email inbox, I noticed that I had signed up for Barnes & Noble's newsletter with two different email addresses. Unsubscribing one of these addresses was a no-brainer.  As I went to click on the unsubscribe link, I hoped they wouldn't require me to log into my account to complete the action. 

As the resulting BN.com page popped up in my browser, I was immediately impressed by their particular email marketing execution. Instead of a straight unsubscribe page, they served up an email preference management page that gave me tons of options for tailoring the type and frequency of email received from the brand. 

Without logging into my account, I could easily unsubscribe from all B&N email if I so desired, but more importantly (as a fellow marketer), it first presented options for signing up for seven different types of communications – all with links to samples so I could evaluate whether that particular action would be worthwhile.

Next, in case the type of content wasn't the issue, it allowed me to limit the frequency of emails to either one a week, and even one a month. Saved for the last was the one click unsub from all BN.com email.

The fact that I was impressed by this unsubscribe process shows how infrequently I have similar experiences with other brands and their email marketing. More often than not, the brand either makes it difficult to unsubscribe (whether by requiring login, retyping my email address or verifying some additional information) or they serve up a one line web-page confirming the unsubscribe, which misses an opportunity to try and save the relationship through preference management.

The one thing Barnes & Noble didn't do was include an optional field for subscribers to identify the reason for their unsubscribe, which can provide critical information for optimizing future communications. All-in-all, my hat goes off to Barnes & Noble for designing an effective email preference page that balances the ease of unsubscribing for the consumer with opportunities for the marketer to save and even expand a customer relationship.

The moral of the story: great email marketing solutions means great customer interactions.

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Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.

Last week, I wrote an article for ClickZ about how to leverage the various forms of customer data collected across your organization to power more relevant marketing campaigns.  You can check out the article below or read it on ClickZ. Let me know if you have any feedback in the comments
 
In 2001, when I was early in my career as an email marketer, I had a meaningful dialogue with a database marketing expert.  This gentleman, let’s call him Ted, shared that there are three basic ways we learn about our customers.  We look, ask or buy.  And they follow that order in terms of importance and value when it comes to the targeted email we send them.
 
Data from Looking
Looking at a customer's behavior across you brand's various touchpoints is the one of the most valuable sources of data you have to estimate future buying interests and patterns and craft targeted email campaigns accordingly. There are numerous ways you can gather this data. For example, you can observe a customer’s browsing behaviors through web site analytics to gauge their interests, or you can monitor responses to your email campaigns using real-time response data gathered from your email marketing technology. You can (and should) also analyze purchase data and recognize any seasonal trends or spikes (birthdays, holidays, etc.).  Behavioral data obtained by 'looking' is very powerful, because you get data on what your customers actually do versus what they say they do, which leads us to the next way: Asking.
 
Data from Asking
Supplementing your behavioral data with preference data obtained by asking your customers about their interests is a smart idea.  That's because for all the strengths of 'looking,' this method also has some weaknesses.  For example, you may see that a customer recently bought some baby clothes, so on the surface, it would seem that following through by sending a targeted email with a series of offers on new baby merchandise would be the right move.  However, it's also quite likely that this was purchased as a gift for someone else. If you had recently asked them about what products they were interested in, and baby/kids were nowhere on the list, you could pair that data with frequency of purchases from that category to make an assessment on what offers to send in the future.  There are a number of ways to 'ask' customers to provide this information, such as registration pages, preference centers or surveys. Of course, you need to gauge how much you ask by the method of collection.  Bombarding a customer with 20 questions at registration might be a little overboard for your target customer, but asking a few key questions and then following through with a survey a few weeks later (after they've bonded with your brand), might be a better approach.
 
Data from Buying
The third option is to purchase customer data. It's fairly easy to buy demographic and psychographic data on your customers from data aggregators like Infogroup or Acxiom. However, there are risks when it comes to sending targeted emails that you craft because of this method. You need to make sure that you fully understand how the data was collected and how recent it is. The last thing you want to do is to introduce bad data into your customer records.  You also need to understand the level of data you can acquire (and use) without freaking out your customers. If they've never told you March 1st is their anniversary, and you send them an offer – it might make them confused or suspicious about your brand. Buying data is the most risky method, so make sure  you fully understand the potential hazards before you proceed.
 
Behavioral Data is King
While all customer data has value and allows the email marketer to be relevant when communicating via targeted email, the most telling data is the behavior data.
 
Let me show you what I mean.  If you’re a wine merchant, you might ask me if I prefer red or white wine – and my quick response would be RED!  However, if you monitored my buying behavior you would notice that I buy WHITE wine two out of three times.  This is just one reason why looking is better than asking. Another reason is that your fill rate by asking may be very low.  An average preference center has a 2% fill rate on any iteratively profiled fields.
 
Knowing that website, targeted email and buying  behavior are the most important attributes on a consumer, it’s no surprise that shopping cart abandonment, purchase confirmation, win-back campaigns and newsletters personalized to the consumers behaviors are clear outperformers.
 
Ted was right in both 2001 and 2011.  Happy Holidays!

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.

Faithful readers of this column will remember that last month I wrote about a new consumer phenomenon called the "New Marketing Democracy."  I focused on 4 “do’s and don'ts” email marketing gurus should follow when addressing the Marketing Democracy.  I promised more tips in my next column, so here you are!    
Just as a reminder, there are 4 basic truths regarding the Marketing Democracy

* Consumers trust each other more than they trust marketers
* Online conversations...
          - Persist…forever
          - And are immediately global and potentially hyper-local
* Today’s media glut has more and more consumers tuning out marketing messages
* People don’t share ads; they read and share things that interest them

Each channel has its own hurdles in regards to engaging the Marketing Democracy, and email is no different.  In theory, an opted-in customer should represent someone who has turned on the faucet.  In practice, we face that moment of truth every time they open their inbox and see one of our emails.  At this point, they can turn on the faucet (open the email), or keep it turned off (ignore or delete your email).  As we explored in my last column, they may return later to turn on the faucet, but there’s no guarantee they will.
 
The 4 More Do's and Don'ts
In order to do everything in your power to cater to the mindset of the Marketing Democracy, here are 4 more email marketing do’s and don’ts.  If you follow these suggestions, you’re more likely to start winning some elections in the Marketing Democracy!
 
1. Don’t assume customers are not engaging with your emails because they don’t open them.  For too long, marketers have made the general assumption that an email unopened is an email ignored.  As I’ve explored in previous columns, this may not be the case.  They may be taking action in different channels, and on some level they expect you to know that.  Purging their email address means you lose that connection with them.  And they are unlikely to opt-in again after the fact.

2. Do make every effort to recognize your email customers in other channels in which they engage with you.  The Marketing Democracy doesn’t give a second's thought to how you may be internally organized.  If you are going to encourage them to engage with you in social networks, and to share things with their own networks, then use one of the methods available to link their social profile to their email address and utilize email marketing best practices accordingly.  If they are making critical comments about you on your Facebook page, don’t you think that’s a good bit of insight to have as you prepare your next email marketing campaign directed at them?  Or if they are complimenting you, maybe that deserves something special in your next email?  In fact, the two emails I described above could actually be triggered by that Facebook comment.  Trust me, the Marketing Democracy will take note of the value you place on their opinions in situations like this.

3. Don’t ever send customers an email offer about a limited-time sale when their opportunity to take advantage of the sale is over or almost over because of your ability to get that email out and into their inbox.  And if you think this doesn’t happen, you weren’t paying close attention to the emails you received touting Cyber Monday sales.  Believe it or not, I received one Cyber Monday email at 11:55 PM that night.  Even worse, I received another one at 11:00 am…on Tuesday morning!    And both were from brand names everyone would recognize.  You spend a lot of time trying to get your email marketing customers to forward your emails to a friend—well this is a sure fire method to achieve that goal!  Unfortunately the commentary is likely to be along the lines of “can you believe this?!”.

4. Do learn to recognize when the Marketing Democracy is sending out “I’m ready to buy” signals.  Because they will, whether it is through cart abandonment, a sudden increase in clicks on certain links, an actual purchase on your website, etc.  Again, this is when a triggered email comes in handy.  It sends the signal you are paying attention to them (but not in a creepy way), and in the case of using transactional emails to cross sell, you are already thinking about what else they might need right now.  I have yet to hear someone say, “Boy, that was really wrong of Retailer X to recommend I purchase an HDMI cable to go with the game system I just purchased."  In fact, they are much more likely to think “thank goodness I ordered the cable when I did or my new game system would have looked much less sharp on my HDTV!”   It’s not that the Marketing Democracy doesn’t ever want you to sell them something; it’s just that always saying “buy now” in your email marketing campaigns shows them you have little understanding of the way they think.
 
So now you have 8 techniques you can employ in the email channel to help you engage and thrive in the new Marketing Democracy.  I’ll be returning to this subject with frequency over the next few months.   And while it may be too late to employ any of these suggestions for this holiday season, there’s always next year!  As this is the last column of 2011, I want to take a moment to thank you all for your readership.  I never take for granted the time you spend with these columns.

Until January, have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukah, and a safe New Years.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.   

Last month, I wrote an informative feature article for iMedia about how to write "kick-ass" subject lines.  You can check out the article below or read it on iMedia. Let me know if you have any feedback in the comments.

 Can I have your attention please?  Yes, you!  As marketers, we shout out to customers through our email campaigns in an attempt to grab the reader’s attention and get them to engage with, buy from and talk about our brand.  Cutting through the clutter is not an easy task and there are several components that have to be in place for your email message to work successfully.  Getting your message delivered into the inbox is part of the equation. But the ability to get your message across all really starts with one simple thing – your subject line.

Subject lines are typically the determining factor of whether the recipient opens your message or not, so you better make it good.  As basic as the concept is, this age-old conversation has continually confounded marketers when it comes to their email campaigns, particularly as mobile, social and other trends have shifted the way people attack their inboxes. And while subject lines are among the most widely tested component of an email message, what works for one company doesn’t necessarily work for the next. Even more explicitly, what works today for you – may not work tomorrow. Subject lines are very, well…subjective – for a particular individual, at a specific moment in time.

So how do you write a subject line that is so kick-ass that your audience simply can’t pass it up? Consistently coming up with good subject lines can be an art in and of itself, so here are a few tips to get you started.

KISS

Research suggests you have about 6 words to get your point across in the subject line. Therefore, Keep It Short and Simple.  Clearly indicate the purpose of the email. Remember, you are competing with dozens of other email campaigns in the inbox and the reader is scanning to see what is intriguing or relevant to him at any given time.  As demonstrated in our first example below, some of the most effective subject lines are straightforward and (dare I say) boring.     

Organization: Southwest Airlines
Subject: All California destinations on sale
Why it kicks ass: If someone recently searched for a trip to California on www.southwest.com or indicated California as one of his preferred destinations, this email campaign could motivate the reader to book immediately through Southwest.

As a general rule of thumb, typically shorter subject lines – 40 characters or less (including spaces) – perform better.  Of course what works for one group may not work for another.  To that end, the reality is that most of the time, success has more to do with what you are saying as opposed to how many characters in which you say it.

BACK THAT BACK UP … or FRONT LOAD IMPORTANT CONTENT

Subject line truncation is an important consideration in the email space as smartphone adoption steadily grows in the U.S. and abroad. eMarketer projects that the number of U.S. smartphone users will increase from 90.1 million in 2011 to 148.6 million in 2015, representing 46% of the total U.S. population.

We know that widespread mobile adoption is inevitable, so here are a few technological considerations we can use as a guide.  Most email clients display only the first 50 characters in a snapshot view of the inbox. Many mobile devices clients show only 25 characters and Blackberry subject lines show only the first 15 characters.

With that said, get in the habit of front-loading your important content.  Putting what’s important at the beginning of your email campaign's subject line ensures that crucial information doesn’t get cut off in the inbox.

PLAY PEEK-A-BOO

Crafting a kick-ass subject line means speaking the language of your audience. Pay attention to the searches run on your website and the organic searches from search engines – and consider using words from the most popular searches in your subject lines. Also, mind the subject lines of your closest competitors' email campaigns to get ideas for words and phrasings.

Organization: HubSpot
Subject: [New eBook] Top 5 Mobile Marketing Case Studies
Why it kicks ass: Mobile marketing is a hot topic right now all over the digital marketing press. While I can’t say for sure what search terms drive individuals to HubSpot, I can guess that “mobile marketing case studies” is a hotly searched phrase.

GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

There’s nothing more effective in getting your customer’s attention than delivering a personalized message at just the right moment in time. The subject line of your email campaign is a perfect opportunity to flex your personalization prowess and instigate a spark in the recipient’s eye.  How, you might ask?

You’ve got to do your homework.  The “easy” part is populating the subject line with specific data elements, such as first name. But the practice has proven to become less effective over time. You need to take it a bit further. Show the customer how much you “understand” them by crafting subject lines for particular audience segments: younger athletes, mothers on the East Coast, students interested in video games, you name it!  Find the common thread within a certain group – geography, interests, age – and jump on it.

Many times this comes down to business history.  Referencing a specific brand/product with which the customer has an affinity ($40 Crocs) as opposed to sending out an email campaign to everyone about the “$40 shoe sale” will increase your chances of getting the open that you want.

Organization: Mountain Dew
Subject: Rachel > Get Your Game Code for Double XP from DEW!
Why it kicks ass:  It’s fun!  People can purchase specially marked cans of Mountain Dew and Doritos that will boost Double XP codes for multiplayer time spent in the video game, Call of Duty. This email campaign is targeted to those who expressed interest in video gaming (presumably,  as this information is collected in the preference center). The subject line incorporates:

* first name personalization
* enticing call to action – get your game code
* what value you get from it – Call of Duty double experience points and other sweepstakes prizes
* current event – Dew sweepstakes and promotion that leverages Call of Duty game launch this fall

KEEP IT REAL, MAN

When considering subject lines, talking about real life, current events, hot topics and the like can be a real attention-grabber. I have seen many marketers attempt to display key words from each newsletter article or brand item on sale within the subject line – but that is not always a good approach, especially given the fact that most email campaign subject lines over 40 characters will be truncated.  Instead, sum up the message content with the email’s most compelling feature, top story or primary promotion to entice the reader to open it.

Organization: Conservative News Alerts
Subject: Video: Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks Out On Obama's Birth Certificate
Why it kicks ass: Tapping into a major news topic and the endless speculation on where Obama was born grabs attention for those who are subscribed to this newsletter, getting them to open and potentially read more articles.

In fact, in the spirit of personalization, try referencing a different “top story” for different audience segments depending on their past readership habits!

GET CREATIVE

A kick-ass subject line does not always have to be daring, but indeed there are times when a little creativity helps.  Go outside the box and experiment with actionable and informative subject lines to determine the best one for each email campaign that you send. 

Organization: J&R
Subject: Free Shipping DAY? People Puhleeze, We Have Free Shipping All Holiday Season!?
Why it kicks ass: J&R pokes a little fun at other retailers while announcing their holiday shipping promotion. It’s playful and communicates the entire message right there in the subject line.

Organization: Eddie Bauer
Subject: 90 Years in Seattle - We Know Rain!
Why it kicks ass: Eddie Bauer humorously promotes wet weather gear during the rainy season and uses their heritage to demonstrate expertise of the product line.

Just a word of caution – you may want to do a little pre-campaign testing on highly creative subject lines to ensure your entire audience does not get a message that bombs.

GIVE ‘EM THE GOODS

Sometimes you have to spell it out. Describe the benefits of what you’re offering and include value statements that your audience associates with your brand.  Highlight a particular topic of interest, belief or attitude – and don’t assume that your entire audience feels the same way.  Be sure to change the subject line depending on differing values of your unique email campaign audience segments.

Organization: The Nature Conservancy
Subject: Eat Local and Support the Planet
Why it kicks ass: Earth Day action item to eat food grown close to your home and the importance of eating local and seasonal ingredients. Focuses on TNC constituents’ interest in the environment and uses motivating words that demonstrate how someone can participate right where they are

This subject line could be even stronger if the local region was referenced in the subject line (e.g., Eat Illinois-grown food and Support the planet)!

A LITTLE FLATTERY NEVER HURTS

Go on and do it – you know you should!  Make your email campaign recipients feel like you value them and want to offer nice rewards or elite status because they are such a valued customer. 

Organization: Goldstar
Subject: You're Now Eligible for Red Velvet Member Status
Why it kicks ass: Goldstar's new invitation-only service for “our members who go out the most.” Makes the customer feel like she is part of a new, exclusive, vibrant and fun group. Where do I sign up?

TEST YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS

You knew it was coming.  Testing is a crucial part of email marketing success and most marketers embrace subject line testing as an easy, effective strategy for optimizing campaign performance. In fact, Marketing Sherpa reports that 72% of marketers test subject lines and 35% find it to be a very effective strategy.

Subject line testing is typically an easy feat, which is a good thing.  But keep in mind that deriving a long-term methodology out of a single subject line test is a dangerous course of action. Are you forever going to include your company name at the front of your subject lines?  It may work for the time being, but the effectiveness may diminish over time.  Rather than taking your learnings and automatically applying them to all of your email campaign subject lines, the most effective strategy is to test in real-time to determine what the right subject line is for one specific message at any given moment.

Take Travelocity for example.  They had a relatively mature email list with a significant percentage of users who had not had any email or website engagement in the past 12 months. They could have just launched a winback email but instead decided to do a little bit of testing in order to optimize it first.

Subject Line A:
“Save an additional 10% for a limited time only.”

Subject Line B:  Winner
“As our valued customer, get an extra 10% off for a limited time only.”

Customers responded to the “you’re a valued customer” message over the generic one by about 10%. Not only did the pre-campaign testing help improve results for the rest of the email campaigns that went out, Travelocity also learned the point discussed above that a little flattery can go a long way.

So what can we learn from all of this?  Writing subject lines is a skilled craft and there are a number of ways to attack it.  Using relevant, personalized information is the start, but testing is the key to figuring out what resonates with your audience at any given time.  A good subject line stands out in the crowd but a kick-ass subject line is like a diamond in the rough – getting you that open and one step closer to an active, engaged reader.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

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 marketing and social media together 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 marketing and 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 a recent post on Monetizing Social Media, 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.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

One of the biggest names in consumer credit cards recently sent me a notice about updating my marketing preferences.  As a fellow marketer, I think it's a smart move to allow consumers to manage their preferences, and I am typically pleased to be given the opportunity to do so…until I read the letter more carefully.

The letter first stated that I didn't currently receive any mailings from the company. But instead of following with some compelling arguments on why I should consider opting in to receiving their campaigns – they flipped it around.  Unless I replied with my preferences, they were going to automatically opt me in to receive all of their mailings. This is a bold and dangerous move.

I actually had to re-read the letter a few times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding what they were asking.  But there it was, in black and white, "If you do not respond, you may begin to receive offers in the mail about these products and services."

Of course, some might argue that at least they gave me the option to opt-out of receiving their campaigns. However, I would counter that the smarter approach would be to send a carefully crafted message about the benefits of opting in.  They could give me the same options for the types of communications I wanted to receive – as well as the channels by which I wanted to receive them.  Maybe I wouldn't want to get new credit card offers in the mail – which I personally find an incredible waste of paper – but I might be okay with receiving them via a more carbon neutral channel like email. 

The bank will certainly grow its direct mail list much faster with this tactic, but they are also more likely to annoy a bunch of loyal customers in the process. I understand the allure of the opt-out approach when you're trying to build your list, but you need to carefully evaluate the negative impact it can have on your brand.

Remember that there is another human being at the other end of your communication.  If you treat them with respect, you can begin building a relationship that will eventually lead them to actively opt into your email campaign communications.  The end result will be a higher quality list, better conversions, and happier customers.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

Last week, I wrote an article for ClickZ that provided tips for evaluating the performance of your holiday email marketing programs.  You can check out the article below or read it on ClickZ. Let me know if you have any feedback in the comments

We are officially entering the holiday season. Black Friday will be followed by Cyber Monday, 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 email marketing 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.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your 2011 Holiday Email Programs

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 marketing campaigns were thoroughly QA'd? Did you test subject lines and offers to maximize open rates and conversions? Did you remarket to the unopened 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 your email marketing during the planning season (February to October) 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? Were 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 (ESP) 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 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 what you learned to this year's batch of holiday email marketing 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.

Did I leave any questions out? Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spoken and written much about something I have labeled "the Marketing Democracy."  Empowered as never before by digital channels and devices, consumers now “vote” for the winners and losers in the battle for their hearts, minds and wallets — and THEY decide when and where these “elections” are held.  There are 4 basic truths regarding this new Marketing Democracy:
 
· Consumers trust each other more than they trust marketers
· Online conversations…
       - Persist…forever
       - And are immediately global and potentially hyper-local
· Today’s media glut has more and more consumers tuning out marketing messages
· People don’t share ads… they read and share things that interest them

It helps to understand the Marketing Democracy’s attitudes towards email marketing and marketing in general by imagining your target consumer with his or her hand on the faucet.  When they are willing to listen to you, they turn it on.  When they don’t want to hear from you, they simply turn it off, shutting off any marketing messages you may be sending their way.
 
Each channel has its own hurdles in regards to engaging the Marketing Democracy, and email marketing is no different.  In theory, an opted-in customer should represent someone who has turned on the faucet.  In practice, we face that moment of truth every time they open their email and see one of your emails in their inbox.  At this point, they can turn on the faucet (open the email), or. keep it turned off (ignore or delete your email).  As we explored in my last column, they may return later to turn on the faucet, but there’s no guarantee of that.
 
In order to do everything in your power to cater to the mindset of the Marketing Democracy, here are 4 do’s and don’ts.  If you follow these suggestions, you’re more likely to start winning some elections in the Marketing Democracy!
 
4 Email Marketing Do's and Don'ts in the Marketing Democracy

1. Don’t pre-check the box that allows you to send them additional promotional emails after they’ve registered for a subscription—or worse—when they have simply purchased something from your ecommerce site and are checking out.  It’s a mistake to think the Marketing Democracy appreciates your thoughtful assistance, thereby saving them the arduous task of checking the box themselves. They are more likely to think you are hoping they don’t notice it’s checked, which is a bad first impression to make. And if you think they are delighted when you emails start popping up in their inbox uninvited because your campaigns are so awesome, you’d be wrong again.  At best, they’ll ignore you.  Worse still, they might mark you as spam, which can impact your deliverability for those who do want to hear from you.

2. Do show them products and services that your research has shown they are likely to be interested in purchasing from you.  Your research can be based on past purchase behavior, life stage segmentation, or even web browsing behavior.  Too many retailers still see email marketing as a cheap channel for unloading distressed merchandise to their email subscriber base.  Do you really think you’re making a good impression with the Marketing Democracy when you spend your time showing offers based on what you want to sell rather than what they might want to buy?  If you practice the former, that faucet is going to remain firmly shut after the first few emails.

3. Don’t ignore things your customers have already told you, whether via a preference center, polls or even call center.  The only reason the Marketing Democracy ever tell you anything about themselves is when they believe there will be a quid pro quo translating into increased relevancy, special offers or better service (or all 3).  Here’s an example:  a few years ago, an airline's preference center asked individuals to check a box indicated which language they spoke.  The list was quite comprehensive.  The Marketing Democracy would immediately assume this was being asked so that their individual email subscriptions would be sent in whatever language they checked.  Well, that wasn’t actually the plan.  No matter what box you checked, you got your emails in English.  After a few email marketing campaigns, the call center started getting quite a few calls complaining about it.  I have no idea why the airline requested that information in the first place, but whatever value was gained in getting it was far outweighed by a disgruntled electorate.  (Hint: this airline also breaks guitars.)

4. Speaking of call centers, Do find a way to empower yours to make things right, particularly with you best customers (and trust me, your best customers are likely to be one of the more influential wings of the Marketing Democracy!).  “I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is” is not a satisfactory answer to a concern about your email marketing or any other practices.  Let’s face it; if they are calling you for anything other than an order, it’s going to be a complaint or concern.  And your frontline phone staff is rarely given any authority to make things right.  

Let me give you another airline (different) example: Recently, I was thrilled to receive an email from an airline that I’ve flown over 100,000 miles a year with for the last 4 years. I open everything they send me.  In this case it was a “thank you” for my patronage email that offered me a free round trip ticket from New York to a number of select cities.  One of those cities happened to be where my oldest son attends college.  So I thought “great, I can save money this Christmas break!”  When I went to book it, I was dismayed to discover that the round trip had to start in New York.  The booking engine actually gave no other options.  Thinking to myself, “a round trip is a round trip," I called the airline—the exclusive number for folks flying more than 100,000 miles.  I got a bit of sympathy, and little else.  I wanted this person to go to battle for me.  Didn’t happen.  And you know what?  This airline would have been better to have never sent me the offer, because now I’m angry with their rigidity on such a little issue.  And that faucet might not open as frequently in the future.

So there are four ways to get you started campaigning to the new Marketing Democracy.   In their world, the customer always decides.  Next month, we’ll talk more about these consumers, and how to avoid email marketing mistakes in this new world of marketing.  In the meantime, I wish you all a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

I'm thrilled to report that the winners of the MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2012 have been announced, and StrongMail and Travelocity have been honored for a recent win-back campaign, which was judged to be "Best Promotional Email or Campaign." You can download the free Special Report from MarketingSherpa and read more details on the winning email campaign below.

According to lead judge Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MECLABS Primary Research, "Email marketers are constantly challenged to extract more value from their lists. Many turn to inactive or non-purchasing subscribers to boost conversions – but this can feel like squeezing blood from a stone. This team used a touch of creativity and a solid strategy to not only engage, but increase sales from these tough subscribers, and it increased ROI more than 100% from previous efforts." And the StrongMail Agency Services Team couldn’t be happier. When Travelocity approached us with the challenge of disengaging purchasers, we recognized it as a common problem many travel and hospitality organizations face.

Individual and business travelers have many well-known online brands to choose from when making travel arrangements and it is not uncommon for these travelers to be signed up for several email programs to monitor the best deals. Maintaining ongoing relationships with an email subscriber base and competing in this arena can be difficult, especially when it comes to the ongoing motivation of engagement and conversion. Creating a compelling email campaign to win back business deserves a well thought out strategy and approach. We recognized that it has to be relevant, timely and unique enough to grab attention to keep the dialog going and stand out from all the clutter.

The following case study showcases how Travelocity leveraged StrongMail's Agency Services to do just that.

The Situation

Travelocity identified a segment of existing email subscribers who booked in 2009 but had not booked in 2010 – and wanted to win back their business. Travelocity challenged StrongMail's Agency Services team to come up with a compelling email campaign strategy to generate engagement and ultimately drive conversions.

The Approach

Knowing we were likely competing in the inbox with other top travel companies and that recent Travelocity offers had not enticed these members to engage or purchase in the last 12 months, we knew it had to be more than just advertising a good deal. If you look at the inbox, most of the travel company emails are all about deals.

We considered typical reactivation email campaign approaches that utilize catch phrases such as “we want you back;” however, since this group was comprised of former purchasers, we chose to capitalize on past loyalty to the Travelocity brand (speaking to the audience as if they were members of our exclusive club already) and to draw on that continuity.

The approach was to test the audience to see if they would respond to a loyalty message, as well as discover if escalating degrees of discounts could have an impact. To test the offer threshold, Travelocity chose a single use coupon for a 10% or 15% discount above and beyond any purchase these customers could select from Travelocity’s current online offers. To maximize open rates or increase opportunities for conversions, we performed an A/B subject line test; one with a generic offer and sense of urgency and the other with a “valued customer” introduction to the email campaign. What was important about the subject line test was that all things were equal with the exception of swapping out the introduction. Best practices in any test should contain only one simple element change.

The Creative

Travel is an emotional experience driven by rational decision-making (timing, cost, etc.). The creative approach of this email campaign was to use the emotional side of travel as a driver for the rational side. To reach an audience who had not connected with the brand recently, our aim was to deliver a message that reminded them of Travelocity’s core value and brand drivers, while acknowledging them as an individual. Utilizing imagery to tell most of the story, we leveraged light, tight copy to drive the message home.

To ensure compatibility and deliverability best practices, we selected key imagery that could be blended with simple HTML table cells. For example, the beach imagery shown in the email campaign creative below blends to a solid blue table cell, which allowed us to use straight HTML for the text areas. Though this approach required careful selection of images, we narrowed down the program to touch on a number of key travel drivers: Urban Getaways, Beach Getaways and Winter Sports Escapes.

To support the notion of a valued customer, we created a digital version of a “platinum” card — a personalized offer that had the appearance of a physical offer. Through careful programming, we were able to add on personalized names and offer codes within the creative of the card itself.

The Result

Customers responded to our strategy with higher than anticipated engagement. In terms of revenue and conversions, the email generated 2 to 3 times greater ROI than similar campaigns, outperforming some of Travelocity’s targeted upper-funnel email campaigns. In terms of campaign performance, our approach resonated well with our audience, and testing efforts helped to increase Travelocity’s bottom line by 12.3%.

As anticipated, “valued customer” subject line outperformed the generic one.

• Subject Line A: “Save an additional 10% for a limited time only.”
• Subject Line B: “As our valued customer, get an extra 10% off for a limited time only.”

Once the 10/10 subject line test was performed, subject line B was a clear winner by 10%. To no surprise, it contained the valued customer message, yet it was longer. When the 10% offer versus the 15% offer was presented in the subject line, it didn’t yield an increase in open rates. However, after the entire email campaign push, we learned that the 15% offer outperformed the 10% offer in click-to-open ratio (CTO) by 2.3%. The combination of a valued customer message along with a better offer caused a 12.3% increase in clicks due to our testing methodology and approach, which also led to an increase in conversions and revenue.

Interested in reading more about email marketing best practices? Try giving one of our other blogs a look.  

With ISPs now factoring engagement into their inbox filtering algorithms, smart email marketers are doing all they can to increase the number of opens and clicks for their campaigns.  However, one area that is often overlooked is enabling and encouraging replies to the "From" address. It turns out the ISPs also look at replies alongside traditional email marketing metrics.  Therefore, encouraging your email subscribers to reply to your email with questions or feedback can actually help improve your inbox delivery. 

As marketers, we often pride ourselves as being facilitators of conversation with our customers, yet a "do-not-reply" email address makes those conversations very one-directional. 

The most common argument against allowing or encouraging replies to an email campaign is the work it takes to monitor that inbox. In many organizations, someone has to physically read the responses and triage them accordingly. However, the same argument applies to responding to "tweets," yet most brands find resources to make that a reality. Allowing replies to your email campaigns will not just increase engagement, it will also provide access to some of the most honest, helpful and insightful advice from your customers.

If you are thinking about encouraging replies to your marketing email, here are three key considerations to help ensure success:

Start Small; Think Big. While we may think our customers just love our brands and will feel compelled to hit “reply” when our messages pop up in their inbox, they likely won’t. But test that theory before you roll it out to your entire customer base. Target a statistically viable, representative sample of your subscribers with language for replying to the email and see what percent actually do. Based on the response over a 30-day period, you should have a pretty good idea of how many hours it will take to manage the effort. You may be surprised.  In some instances, I have seen it require as little as two hours a week – yet the feedback received had a positive impact on the bottom line.

Set Expectations Accordingly. From a copywriting standpoint, you can achieve the reply in one of two ways (as always, I encourage you to test this to validate the effort). The first is to simply remove the “Do Not Reply” verbiage from your email communications and leverage a friendly reply-to address. You can then set up a nicely positioned auto-responder that thanks customers for their message and sets expectations for response time, whether that be a few hours or two days.  The other methods is to actually encourage the reply with a message like: “We look forward to hearing from our customers. If you have any feedback you would like to send our way, simply reply to this message.”

Validate and Monetize the Responses. It’s true that when you are putting yourself and your brand out in to the public forum, you have to take the good with the bad. By allowing and encouraging response, you are basically creating an “opinion box” for your subscribers -- and you aren’t always going to like what you hear. But you do need to filter through the responses, respond and route accordingly, and then determine if the feedback you are getting is impacting the customer experience. One good way to do this is to start with a control group and determine the lifetime value (LTV) of the customers included. Identify and flag responders in your database and do some analysis to determine if the LTV has increased based on their propensity to engage. Responding to your email is merely another channel for your customers to get their opinions heard, which is ultimately what your customers want.

Test it out and see if there is a benefit associated with the feedback. A client I once worked with lived and died by the reply inbox, and she summed up the opportunity at hand in the following way: “We really connect with our customers here. They tell us things about them that endear us to them as a brand and them to us as a customer. It humanizes the experience, and I wish more marketers embraced it."  You just may find yourself having a similar experience, but you won't know until you try it out for yourself.