Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

Email is the most popular (and by many counts, the most successful) of all online marketing channels, but it’s role and best practices are changing dramatically and rapidly.

The excellent David Daniels, analyst for JupiterMedia (recently purchased by Forrester) wrote a report in July on “The Social and Portable Inbox” that underscores how the game has changed. Increasingly, consumers are using text messaging, online messaging via social networks, and instant messaging for communication.

In fact, according to Jupiter, the average number of emails received per day is 24, down from 41 in 2006. Nobody I know gets 24 emails a day or fewer, but that’s what the research says. Personally, if I could get as few as 24 emails per day, it would leave me time for that Emu farm I’ve been pondering.

And even though people are getting less email, they’re checking it more frequently. According to a new report by AOL, 51% of users (and this is AOL, not the most tech-savvy audience) check their email 4 or more times per day. There are very few other things I do 4+ times per day.

Because people are using other tools to communicate, Email is becoming the new direct mail. A series of come-ons, one time onlys, you could be a winner, and so forth. Granted, according to Jupiter 44% of email recipients (which is nearly every non-incarcerated human) made at least one online purchase in the past year as a result of promotional email. (interesting side note: 41% made at least one OFFLINE purchase due to an email promo). However, those buying rates are down a bit from 2007, and I fear they will continue to slide. Why? Because companies (and especially their agencies) don’t understand the changing nature of email communication.

4 Rules to Make Your Email Campaign Work

Here are 4 rules to follow to make sure your email isn’t immediately deleted.

1. One size doesn’t fit all. The worst emails (and in my experience, the least successful) are those that assume all customers have the same needs and circumstances. If you’re sending the same email to your entire list, your email program is severely challenged. Segment your list in as many ways as possible (gender, when they joined the list, how they joined the list, purchase history, propensity to click through) and then develop specific, highly relevant messages for each audience. Is it more work? Absolutely. But, it will almost assuredly pay off for an e-commerce or promotional email campaign.

2. Get right to the point. Most email is scanned in the preview pane, and not “read” in the classic sense at all. Far too many emails - especially those built by professional designers - have substantial amounts of photos, icons, intro copy etc. with the actual offer and call to action toward the middle or bottom of the email. Big mistake. State your offer immediately, and then restate it at the middle and end of your email.

3. It’s not a Web site. If somebody cares enough about you to be on your email list, they’ve already been to your Web site. You don’t need to include multiple links back to your site in the header of your email. It just gets in the way of the content. Plus, when read on a mobile device (16% of the population does so according to AOL, and the numbers are soaring), when an HTML email renders, it stacks all navigation labels first, and then shows the body of the email. This pushes your offer WAY far down on the Blackberry, and nobody is going to scroll page after page on a Blackberry to see your offer. Making sure you have a solid, tested text-only email version is critical as well.

4. Ditch the pictures. Increasingly, email software turns images off as a default, including these popular programs: AOL 9, Gmail, Hotmail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Outlook Express 6, Windows Live Mail. Consequently, many recipients of your email may not see your snappy custom graphics at all, they’ll just see a blank box.

Agencies are especially guilty of creating emails in Photoshop or Illustrator and coding them as a single image. This is absolutely the kiss of death for modern email. Don’t do this. Instead, create an email without images first. This makes you emphasize convincing copy. Then, add selected images and code them as individual graphics. All text should be HTML, not graphics. Make sure you have descriptive alt text for each image that will display when images are turned off.

Lastly, a fantastic idea for both images off and mobile device scenarios is to describe your email and your offer in small HTML text above your logo. We tested this approach for a client at Mighty Interactive, and increased sales by 65% from only this one tweak.

The email below from Levenger is rock solid.
- It uses the above the logo call to action.
- It states the offer at the top (twice). It also states the offer at the very bottom of the email (not shown)
- It doesn’t use needless Web site navigation.
- Images are coded separately, and have alt tags.

The biggest fallacy in email marketing is that emails have to be “beautiful” to be effective. That thinking creates emails that look and act like a poster, and given the trends, that’s the exact opposite of what agencies should be doing for their clients.

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What does the Internet have to do with your print, TV, radio, direct mail and other traditional tactics? Plenty.

Along with the oft-cited belief that half of all marketing dollars are wasted lies a corollary, which is that the traditional components of most marketing plans are evaluated using less than scientific means. In many cases, the perceived success or failure of a traditional marketing tactic such as a magazine ad is based on the random, coffee-breathed feedback offered by Lance, the knit-tie wearing sales associate that stops by your cubicle each morning to give you a blow by blow of each customer interaction. The one big sale Lance was able to make last month was to a woman who mentioned seeing your magazine ad. Thus, Lance advocates an eight-page full-color insert in the next issue since it’s obviously the best possible advertising vehicle.

In addition to Lance’s unimpeachable research, you may ask your customers via some sort of survey where they first heard about you. Numerous studies have shown these queries to be unreliable, as people either check the first box on the list, or whichever media they tend to consume most frequently.

So, what we advocate is the use of Web analytics to determine effectiveness of traditional marketing tactics.

With Internet access surpassing cable television in terms of consumer penetration rates, increasingly prospective customers consume traditional marketing messages first, and then evaluate your company via your Web site before determining whether to progress along the purchase cycle.

Consequently, as long as your traditional marketing consistently references your Web site, your online presence is a reliable surrogate and aggregator for your complete marketing program.

Here’s how to use it to figure out what works.

Public Relations

PR results have always been tough to measure. Historically, column inches of press coverage are multiplied by advertising costs for the same amount of space to derive a value. But that has no bearing on actual effectiveness of PR in driving awareness or sales. We log all media placements our PR division makes for clients by the date the articles ran and by publication. We also create a list of search terms that relate to each article.

Then, we look at the client’s Web site analytics to see traffic patterns after the articles ran, and measure visits from corresponding search terms.

For a recent client for whom we placed an article in the Wall Street Journal, we saw a 1000%+ increase in Web traffic, including many visits directly from wsj.com, and a spike in visitors using search terms mentioned in the article.

Marketing Mix

Similarly, to determine the relative impact of different pieces of the marketing plan, we create spreadsheets that plot when all traditional marketing activities occur such as TV and radio buys, billboards, direct mail drops, newspaper and magazine ads, etc. Then, we add a line graph that show Web site traffic, leads, and sales (if applicable) along the same timeline.

Anytime we see a spike in Web site results, we see what marketing tactics were ongoing at that time, and use that data to help determine which activities are most successful at driving results.

Message Impact

I’m not anti-focus group, but relying solely on research that asks people what they would do in theory puts a lot of artificial conditions on their buying behavior. After you’ve had a couple beers and if the light is just right, even the Pontiac Aztek looks pretty good.

We prefer when possible to mix focus group type theoretical research with measuring what people actually do in a low cost environment that gets results fast. We create a series of online banner ads that contain a distinct potential marketing message for the product or service, and then launch a quick online media buy that puts those ads in front of likely customers. Within just a few days patterns emerge that tell us which messages are salient. The trick to this approach is making sure that the ad creative is extremely similar except for the message itself. You don’t want to interpret a message as powerful, when it’s actually the photograph of the cigar smoking beagle in the one ad that is getting the attention.

While online marketing’s share of the overall marketing mix will continue to expand for the foreseeable future, it’s important to think of the Internet as more than an advertising vehicle. Those online ad dollars can be used to inform and improve the results of your traditional programs as well.Similar Posts That You Might Enjoy

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Once upon a time you could send and receive email without incident. Like leaving your doors unlocked or eating medium-rare hamburgers, the glory days of email were blissfully free of hassle and worry.

Email has literally transformed the way we communicate. 31 billion emails are sent every day in North America, according to research firm IDC. But despite its speed and a Paris Hilton-esque ubiquity, email is under siege.

IDC says spam now accounts for 38 percent of all email, up from 24 percent in 2002, and the smorgasbord of increasingly crafty email viruses and frauds is causing a great deal of agitation among the populace.

“People are getting fed up with all this spam nonsense, and when you’re scared to click on something for fear of getting scammed, that’s not good,” says Kevin Maxwell, Product Manager for Scottsdale-based anti-spam service SpamElimination.com.

Millions of Americans now use some sort of spam blocker, whether personally purchased or installed on their behalf by their ISP or the company IT guys in the basement. These spam blockers can be very effective by “reading” email content and other technical attributes and then filtering presumed spam to a special folder or refusing to deliver it altogether.

The trouble is, spam blockers don’t have a lot of nuance to them. Like civil war medicine, it’s very much an “if in doubt, cut it off” mentality. This results in up to 20 percent of legitimate, permission-based email being undelivered, according to Michelle Eichner, who heads the Scottsdale office of Pivotal Veracity, an email deliverability management company.

Between the spam filters and the fact that people aren’t as intrigued by email as they used to be (I want to “check this box for information and special offers from us and our partners” about as much as I want a case of monkey pox), true email marketing success can be as unlikely as an Emmy for “The Swan.”

So what’s a marketer to do? First, pay attention to the deliverability of your email program. If you don’t know what your open rate and click through rates are, find out. It’s possible that your well-crafted email is falling on deaf inboxes, because your URL has been blocklisted (bad) or blacklisted (really bad), or that the text or graphics in your emails are getting them filtered out, especially by big ISPs like AOL.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, send emails about which people give a damn. The days of “batch and blast” are ending. All the spam filters and Pivotal Veracity research in the world won’t save you if nobody cares whether they get your email or not.

Today’s best email marketers are taking the time to learn about their customers’ habits and desires, and sending targeted, personalized email that matches those attributes. Most companies are still sending the same email newsletter to their entire list, and whether the recipient is a 55 year-old woman who smokes a pipe and plays foosball, or a 23 year-old male needlepoint whiz, the contents of the email are exactly the same. It’s a shotgun approach that necessitates generic messages and offers, and generates results that can be good, but rarely great.

The best emails, the ones you actually look forward to receiving, are those that are designed especially for you. My wife raves about the monthly email from babycenter.com that talks about what your 36 month-old should be doing developmentally (eating dirt, evidently), and I’m especially fond of my “your fantasy football team is losing again” messages from cbssportsline.com.

We’re using new technology from Exact Target, to help clients easily create simple profiles of their customers by importing attributes like name, gender, zip code, and other data, and then broadening the profile by inserting survey questions into each email newsletter. Each month, we know more and more about who has subscribed to this email and what they want from it, and can then tailor the content of the email accordingly.

Like paint-by-numbers for Internet geeks, Exact Target enables us to create multiple versions of copy and photos and automatically inserts the right one when the email gets sent. So, at the same time, one subscriber gets the coupon for pipe tobacco, and another gets a free trial offer for Cat Fancy magazine. Remember how impressed you were when you got your first Amazon email with that famous “people who bought this also enjoy that”? This is the evolution of that idea..

Called “dynamic content” this personalized approach to email marketing is likely to be the norm before long, especially for online retailers and other ROI-driven emailers. But it has applications far beyond e-commerce. We’re working on a pilot program for the Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau where people interested in visiting Phoenix check boxes that match their interests (dining, horseback riding, pro sports, art galleries, etc.) and within seconds receive a dynamic content email brochure that includes information and special offers matching their interests.

This targeted approach requires some effort, but is the email equivalent of a one-to-one conversation, rather than the yelling through a megaphone at a crowd method previously utilized. And if it forces companies to send increasingly relevant and personal email, maybe there’s a silver lining to the spam craze (beyond the wide availability of body part enhancing patches, of course).Similar Posts That You Might Enjoy

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Email marketing rocks.

Originally maligned as invasive and offensive, email is now the leading interactive marketing technique. Why has it become so popular? Why will billions of promotional email messages be sent out this month? Three reasons:

- The precipitous drop-off in effectiveness of banner ads forced interactive marketers to try more email campaigns.

- Managed correctly, email marketing works. The business press (and to some degree the mainstream media) have reported email successes, driving awareness and popularity of the tactic among marketers.

- Consumers now accept email marketing as part of their online experience. They may not like it, and may often receive ridiculous, unsolicited “spam” offers for Bulgarian pornography or some such thing, but enough email offers provide real value that most consumers have abandoned the “all email marketing is evil” philosophy.

Unfortunately, however, these may be the halcyon days of email marketing. A pinnacle we may never reach again because as the number of companies doing email marketing increases, so does the number of companies doing BAD email marketing. And bad email marketing will fan the smoldering embers of consumer email discontent, creating a brush fire that will threaten to destroy the whole industry for marketers smart and not-so-smart alike.

So, this article is as much for my benefit as it is yours. Professional interactive marketing firms don’t want companies blithely hitting “send” and firing out thousands upon thousands of poorly executed email messages. It’s bad for business. Yours and mine.

Seriously, email marketing is a powerful tool. If you’re not ready to do it right, you probably should hold off. A misbegotten email blast can infuriate your customers and prospects in seconds.

Here then, are the five rules for safely using the awesome power of email marketing. Please wear approved safety goggles at all times….

1. Think Retention, Not Just Acquisition

On average, email promotions are three to five times more effective when they are sent to your existing customers, rather than prospects? Why? Your current customers already know you and your products. They have already committed to you psychologically and financially. In most cases, the best use of email marketing is to increase loyalty and repeat purchases from your current customers.

2. Be Realistic

Regardless of what you’ve read or heard, email marketing is not likely to transform your business. Be realistic about your expectations for your email efforts. If you are sending an email of value (coupon, special offer, etc.) to a loyal group of current customers, 5-10% of the recipients might click through the email to your Web site. If you are sending a promotional message to a purchased list of theoretically receptive consumers (based on demograhics, etc.), you should expect results in the 1-3% range.
Email marketing is good. Sometimes very good. But it’s not magic beans.

3. Think Frequency

One of the keys to successful email marketing is developing a relationship with a customer or prospective customer over the course of several messages. Before you send out an email offer to thousands of people, create a multiple message campaign strategy that uses this first email as a beginning – not an end. Consider what you’ll send to people who respond to your first message. What, if anything, will you send to people who don’t respond? What will comprise your next promotion?

4. Test Whatever You Can

The speed and digital nature of email makes it extremely easy to test and optimize for success. If you’re not testing your email approach before blasting it out to a large list, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Here are just some of the aspects of a campaign that can be tested.

- Recipient Demographics
- Offer
- Subject Line
- From Line
- Body Copy
- Day of Week Delivered
- Hour of Day Delivered

Make sure to track results of each test cell independently (using separate URLs, usually). If you determine via your test that a particular Subject line works better than others, it’s a snap to change it. Try that with your next direct mail piece or TV ad.

5. Measure Conversion, not just Clicks

Most companies measure their email efforts (and other interactive marketing) based on response rates. These numbers are often called click through rates because they represent the percentage of recipients who “clicked through” the email promotion to get to the company’s Web site. The trouble is, using click through as the sole measure of success is like determining the viability of your store based on how many people look at your window display. Click through measures your ability to lead a horse to water, but making it drink is where you make money. In addition to click through, always measure conversion (the number or percentage of people who actually bought something, entered your contest, etc.). You may be surprised that your lists or test parameters that generate high click through don’t necessarily provide equally high conversion – and vice versa.

History repeats itself. Email should continue to be an effective tactic for at least another 18-24 months. After that, the amount of email promotions – whether good or bad – will probably become too numerous, triggering a consumer backlash. At that point, response rates will fall dramatically (just like with banner ads), and we’ll be right back here writing a column on the five rules for effective cell phone advertising or instant messenger promotions or telepathic marketing. After all, something’s always the next big thing.Similar Posts That You Might Enjoy

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