Email Marketing Blog - Wizemail

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2010-04-06T13:03:00.001+01:00

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Layout

2010-04-01T10:32:00.001+01:00

Valuable though it is, time spent on the design and layout of your email marketing gives excellent return on investment. It is, after all, the interface between you and the customers. No matter how good the product, no matter how low the price, if the email fails to engage then you fail to sell.

There are few hard and fast rules in graphic design. The biggest criticism of any advertisement is that it is staid. The templates that come with good quality email marketing software are broad and allow a great deal of flexibility. However there are a number of basics that you should ignore only with good reason. Here are five:

Don’t make them look for the big picture
A number of your recipients will read the email without the picture being displayed. Some email clients will display a blank square at the original size of the image. If your rather dramatic picture went across the whole page then your reader will be presented with space. Alt tags can be useful but they do not grab the attention of the reader.

Get in quick
The email is not a story. It is not meant to entertain so do not go for the slow build up with the surprise dénouement at the end. Whilst you might save the cherry on the cake until the last mouthful this is not a good idea with direct marketing emails. Readers scan, looking for information. Or, more likely, looking for reasons to delete. You need to get over in the first few words that you have something that will excite them.

Don’t waffle
Whilst the limitations of the A4 format are for other forms of marketing, the fact that you can go on and on is no reason to. The email needs to make the person click through. If you go into lots of detail then you risk boring the reader or having them interrupted by someone else or indeed their own thoughts. They will then delete the email.

Plan everything
The images and text should be integrated, one leading on to the other in order to keep the customer interested. We do not want him thinking of all the work he has to do. With mundane items, such as vacuum cleaners, explain and then show. If it is Ayers Rock then a moody sunset might do better coming first.

Prioritise
You should know your customers so work out what will interest them and emphasise it. Put it first, in text and image. A brochure is not the easiest item to encourage someone to download but an article on the new marina in one of the Greek islands might tempt. First tell them about it, show them a picture or two and then tell them that further information is available in the brochure. All they have to do is click through.

There are no limits in direct email marketing but there is good advice.

What is the alternative?

2010-03-25T14:47:00.001Z

Alt and Title Tags

Moore’s Law states that the speed of processors will double every two years or so. It seems odd therefore that when designing in direct email marketing you have to consider systems which cannot, for various reasons, display images when reading emails. It can give the feeling of a retrograde step.

If you use professional email marketing software you will generally be given the ability to attach alt and/or title tags to your images and it is easy to become confused as to which does what. Tags are is essence instructions in hyper-text mark-up language (html) to a browser or email service provider. These are defined within the signs <>.

In the case of images it will give a location where the image can be found, hence the term image tag. But it can do other things as well. For those engaged in direct email marketing, it should.

There is an ever expanding choice of ways to access emails. Most of the more recent types will not display images in emails. Any presented might be shown as a blank space in the original image size or else a small X or similar.

If your email depends on understanding of the picture then all is not lost.

Alt and title tags provide a way of overcoming the problem. Firstly to explain the difference between the alt and title tags for email purposes: if either one is used it will be shown. If both are used the title tag will be displayed.

Instead of the blank or X the tag text will be shown. The only question for you is what you want to be displayed.

Captions for images are not that good an idea. Images should be self explanatory in emails as readers scan. Do not expect them to read captions. Your image will have some relevance so this is what your tag should show.

If you were advertising travel insurance with a picture of theft of a wallet, then might seem to be best. Do not describe the image, concentrate on its function.

Judgement

2010-03-22T15:59:00.001Z

One of the best ideas is to pinch other people’s. Copyright law means that some work still remains to be done but in general the difficult bit is already completed. All you have to do is pick the right email to copy.

What makes a good email is all but impossible to define as there are so many variables. Good quality email marketing software will provide guidance and probably wizards to help you through the design stage but these will only be able to go so far. In any case, you do not want to be just be part of a crowd.

Subscribe to a few direct email marketing lists, preferably those in which you have some interest, and study them while trying to put yourself in the place of its target audience. Ask yourself if they fulfilled their function.

The first thing an email needs to do is to keep the recipient reading. If you became bored and disinterested then the design team failed. Do not merely reject that one as most recipients would. In order to get something from the exercise you need to work out why it did not engage you.

A tutor at my art college dissected an advertisement of mine in front of the class. He praised its overall appearance, its design and especially the graphics. The imagery was modified art deco and had taken me weeks to perfect. The tutor mentioned that the product was designed for those who would have been 20-30 in the early 50s, people to whom it would have been old fashioned.

As he pointed out, I had missed my target audience by a generation.

If the email bored you then the probable reason would have been that it was poorly targeted. A picture of a town centre busy with night life and clubbers strolling past is probably not high on the list of the picture editor for holidays for the retired.

When designing the email consider to whom you are sending it. As my tutor said, it is not the time to be self indulgent no matter how pretty the result.

Imagery Part Two

2010-03-19T12:19:00.001Z

Most email marketing software solutions will provide wizards for the design of emails. They will suggest arrangements of text and images which will be perfectly adequate. But you should want more. Wizards are there for guidance and should not be seen as prescriptive.

You will be given options for the location of a picture but the choice of image will be down to you. Remember that it is not there merely to add a bit of colour to the page. That could be done in other ways. Nor is it there just to look pretty. It has a role, a function that it must perform.

The overriding purpose of the email is to get the recipient to do something, perhaps click through to a landing page, subscribe to your newsletter or maybe just to be aware of your presence. Everything else, if indeed there is anything else, should be subservient to this prime function. So you should judge your image on this factor only. Everything else is fluff.

The main danger to all emails, once opened, is the ease at which it can be deleted. Most people know the keyboard shortcut so keeping them reading has to be the major consideration. Pictures can be paramount in this.

Readers of emails do not, despite the description, read them. They scan. They will do this in the preview pane and the email proper. Glorious prose with careful scene setting and a gradual build up toward the dénouement is of no use. It must be a blitz, straight between the eyes.

Your logo is an important reassurance to the reader that he knows the source of the email. But it will be subliminal, hardly worthy of the word glance. The subject line of the email would have prepared the reader for the heading. The next bit is all important.

The fact that they opened the email suggests that they have some interest, or even just a hope, regarding what the email is all about. Their eyes would have gone over the logo and heading with the briefest of pauses before falling on the picture.

There are limitations on your choice of image. It must be:

Relevant,
Simple enough to grab the attention instantly,
Exciting for the reader.

Relevant: if your clientele is sophisticated then a picture of the Taj Mahal supporting a holiday in Mumbai might inspire them to read something else. Any non sequitur will grate.

Simple: a reader will glance at it before moving on so it needs to be capable of being understood in an instant. Too much detail means that it will be ignored.

Anticipation: the picture should not be an end in itself. It must hint at something so that the reader will want to know what comes next. It should lead onto the text.

The choice of image is a critical one. Don’t just go for one that looks attractive to you. Consider its function. It needs to engage the reader and in an instant.

Imagery

2010-03-11T12:06:00.001Z

It has become fashionable to blame spammers for all difficulties experienced by those engaged in legitimate email marketing and for very good reason. Here comes another.

Images are a very effective method of gaining the attention and exciting the anticipation of those reading direct marketing emails. However, spammers have used the evidence of images downloaded from servers when an email is opened as proof of a live address.

It is the norm for email clients to automatically block images for the majority of messages. As it is unlikely that your subscribers will place your email address on their safe senders list, even with easy unblocking methods it can be seen that emails must be designed to take into account the fact that images might not been seen.

It can be easy to become carried away with the ease of creating vivid and exciting emails with modern email marketing software but care needs to be exercised. It is best to avoid building your text from blocks of images as if they are not downloaded readers will get little but the endorsements at the bottom.

One way of overcoming, at least to an extent, the problem of blocked images is to embed them. They are sent in a similar manner to attachments and are therefore not blocked by the email client. But this is not without its own problems.

Embedded images will increase the size of the message and many firewalls, and ISPs, will block emails which are large or have more than one attachment. Some web-mail companies, such as Hotmail, might not display embedded images. So which way should you jump?

Email marketing software will include some form of database management, a way of collating and assessing the returned data when sending emails. This will provide direction as to which way to go.

Much will depend on the type and size of your client list. To an extent, albeit a very variable one, most of your clients will have features in common. If your product is very specific then they might be difficult to tell apart. This can be taken too far as, for example, stair lifts would, on the surface, appear to be applicable to two distinct groups: the aged and the disabled. However, the question you should ask yourself if who buys them.

But if they are likely to be similar then a test sample might be the way to go. Pick a percentage at random and try embedded and non-embedded images. The open rate will tell you of the better option for your customer demographics.

If your client list is more catholic then it might be the better option to send out an email to all with embedded images and ascertain the open rates. Those customers who did not open the email could then be sent the one without them.

It is worth the effort though. An image can engage the reader and so encourage further reading. All you need to do is pick the right one and send it out in the right way.

Why go pro

2010-03-08T09:30:00.000Z

You might wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, what can be so difficult about sending emails. Most of us do it every day. So what is the point of opting for a company providing email marketing software?

There are a number of significant differences between direct mail and email marketing. Although the reduction in costs per person contacted is what most advertising highlights, and quite rightly, there are more compelling reasons for going digital.

It is the same with all aspects of business: Effective management is essential and good quality email marketing software will provide support in the technical and creative areas of email marketing. It should include:

Campaign management
Legal compliance
Email creation
List management
Statistics acquisition and collation

Those new to these procedures might well find the obligations, advantages and technical requirements easy to miss. Any quality professional company supplying email marketing software will have systems to ensure that all such details are covered and in a manner that requires little technical knowledge.

Take statistics acquisition and collation. Not the most exciting of titles you probably think. You might be wondering why you need to know so much.

Your marketing email should not be released into the ether and forgotten. It responds to following and checking. Over and above knowing how many emails have been sent, you will be told how many have been opened. If this figure is disappointing then you know you must improve the way it is presented to the recipient. If it is reassuringly high then you know you can concentrate on other aspects.

The same goes for the number of clickthroughs, those forwarded etc. This should be broken down so that you know what each recipient did and did not do. You will know how many ‘hard’ bounces your had, i.e. how many addresses are invalid, and how many opted to unsubscribe from your list.

Such detail allows you to concentrate your efforts on those aspects that are performing poorly. It also allows you modify your product so that it reflects the taste of your customers.

Where’s it From?

2010-03-01T12:08:00.001Z

There is nothing obscure about the way people deal with bulk emails. All you have to work out is what you do yourself.

The average time spent on dealing with emails is a bit less than 90 minutes. Whatever your figure, the one thing which we can be sure of, is that they are dealt with as quickly as possible.

Whilst those involved in email marketing might think otherwise, for most the preview pane is a real boon. It allows people to assess, albeit rather crudely, the correct way to deal with each email.

A recipient has four main options:

• Delete it

• Forward it

• Defer it

• Open it

Many will choose which option based solely on the From Field. Whilst this might seem harsh it does highlight what those involved in email marketing should concentrate on to make them read the Subject line.

If the address is recognised it will normally generate a standard response. Some emails will be deleted because of a change in the recipient’s responsibilities or position, their previous experience of the sender, workload or even just mood. If the nature of the source of the email is specific to a department or person then it will be forward without much thought.

If the email is personal then the Subject Line might be read to see if it is urgent either in the sender’s or recipient’s view. We need to know what will make a recipient move on from the From address to the Subject line. The answer is simple enough to work out. Ask yourself what does it for you.

Spam, the curse of those who send as well as receive emails, is a fact of life and we all have our own methods of dealing with those that slip through the filters. Therefore the first essential is to demonstrate they know the sender.

If the list is rented then it will normally show the name of the list owner so the options are limited. However, for in house lists there is considerable flexibility. And, more importantly, opportunity to engage.

The recipient must have opted in to your email marketing so they will, to an extent, be expecting you. It is generally regarded as best practice to include your company name in the From Field. This makes it clear and will, hopefully, trigger the memory of the opt in.

One exception to this would be an email to, for instance, the CEO or the head of a department. Their self image might necessitate a name of someone in a similar position to them in your company.

Some preview panes display the sender’s email address and most show it at the top of the email. This too needs to be reassuring and recognisable although the account must be monitored to catch those who just hit the reply button.

For a specific campaign it can be useful to change the From Field, whilst still remaining recognisable, just to show that this is something special.

Data controller

2010-02-26T17:02:00.001Z

The role of Data Controller is to ensure compliance with the requirements of The Data Protection Act 1998 (The DPA).

The DPA defines data controller as a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed. (S1.910).

‘Person’ in this context means a ‘legal person’ and comprises individuals as well as organisations.

The DPA provides that it is the duty of a data controller to comply with the Data Protection Principles relation to all personal data with respect to which he is the data controller. (s.4(4)).

If a person, either individually or together with another, decides the purpose for which the personal data is to be processed then they are the Data Controller regardless of what is written on their office door.

It can be appreciated that the Data Controller takes on considerable responsibility and those who perform the role should exercise a degree of control over all the procedures with regards to processing personal data. They should ensure:

The data is kept secure,
It is only used for the specific purposes allowed,
That the rights of the individual are serviced.

‘Secure’ does not only mean to stop those outside the company from gaining access to it but also those within it who have no right to.

‘Purposes’ can depend to a great extent on what the individual person to whom the data relates has agreed to.

If an individual so requests the Data Controller must tell them if their personal data is being processed by or on behalf of the company. They must be given a description of any personal data, the purpose for which they are being processed, and those to whom they are or may be disclosed.

The individual is also entitled to be informed of all the information which forms any such personal data.

Data Controller has a vital function in any company involved in email marketing. Performed correctly it will foster trust between company and customers.

The email

2010-02-24T15:22:00.000Z

Producing the email is a creative exercise, a combination of graphics and text both limited to varying degrees by technical requirements. Whilst most creative writing tries to engage, in email marketing this has to be done all but instantly. You have seconds to grab their attention.

Whatever your view of the content, the text style of red-top tabloids is extremely effective. The attention-grabbing headline is followed by a brief introductory paragraph and then is expanded upon, but not boringly, in what space remains.

The basics are rather obvious: people go rather than proceed, buy rather than purchase, be and not exist. The joy of the English language is that there is always a short word available to replace an extended one. The car did not accelerate swiftly, it sped. If the verb needs an adverb, it is the wrong verb.

But good copy does not come from knowing what to avoid. It comes from structure.

Headlines are writing at its most sublime. They must intrigue, interest and excite all within as few words as possible. You need to know what you want to convey and to whom.

Your latest bit of software might overcome the problem of slow upload speeds by a new compression format. You need to bring this to the attention of those who are IT comfortable and might be interested in something radical.

New Upload Program Slashes Time

You have their attention. New is exciting, upload program tells them it techy, slashes adds a bit of drama and all with the promise of extra time. It demands that the reader carries on.

There is some argument as to whether a sub-heading should come next. This disagreement means that there is no convincing argument either way so feel free to chose on the grounds of what you like. If you prefer running with one then it should follow on from the main heading.

Radical software includes system for checking content

Can confuse as it is a bit of a non sequitur, while the specifics of:

Revolutionary compression increases upload speed by 17%

Will, hopefully, tantalise as well as inform.

Paragraphs have a different function in email marketing compared to normal text. Emails are scanned rather than read so you should limit their length in order not to bore the reader. A fourth sentence can be risky.

They benefit from variations in length. The first should be brief, just a fuller explanation of the main function of the software. The second should go on to explain other benefits and the third, if you feel you need a third, should reinforce the savings possible.

Start with a bold statement: This software will revolutionise the transferring of large files between computers or onto the internet. The rest justifies that conclusion.

The email is not the place for full technical details or the complete itinerary. For those who need that extra bit of information before deciding, have a click-through to a microsite.

Effective copy is precise, directed and purposeful. Make every word count.

Getting personal

2010-02-22T11:03:00.000Z

It is a contradiction of course: personalised mass email marketing. How can an email be personal when it is being sent out to hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands? But there are ways to make the email specific to a group and also an individual.

The benefits of targeting are overwhelming. There are limits to how many pointless marketing emails a customer is willing to receive before ticking the opt-out box. Each one should have some relevance to the person, something to make it worth reading, as they might be concerned that they might miss the next offer.

So what are the options?

The “To” line

Although rather basic and made easy to format with modern databases, it still shows to the customer that they are treated as a person.

The offer

This is the most important way to personalise the email. Your database will show what this person is likely to be interested in. Amazon ‘recommends’ certain items according to various criteria, such as previous purchases and what others in the same general group have ordered.

The strength of such classification is that they can be refined as time goes by as the customer makes more purchases. A well run database will not only show buying behaviour but can predict what that customer might choose in the future.

The website

When a potential customer clicks through to a website or landing page it should be geared to whichever segment that person falls in. Those excited by the prospect of a cruise though the Norwegian fiords are likely to be put off by the graphics of a stag party haven.

Newsletters

Newsletters are at their most powerful when used in conjunction with email marketing. So they should be as personal as the emails themselves. The content should be relevant to that specific customer group.

An article of general interest included in all newsletters should be followed by an item specific to a group’s interest.

A strength of email marketing is that it allows the collection of specifics about a customer and so enables classification into groups. You will make your customers believe you know them.

The Data Protection Act - an introduction

2010-02-18T09:21:00.001Z

DPA: three initials to strike fear into the heart on anyone with a business which includes processing personal information, including email marketing. But in practice it is little more than a set of rules which would be sensible to comply with anyway. It strikes what many feel is a reasonable balance between the interests of individuals and those who wish, for valid and lawful reasons, to store and use personal information. The wording is clear and, whilst complete precision is too much to hope for, there are few ambiguities.

Personal data is defined as data on living, identified or identifiable individuals and includes facts and opinions. If your business processes such information then you should notify The Information Commissioner’s Office. Registration costs from £35 pa for smaller businesses.

Exemptions are few and can include information for accounting or auditing, and pensions and insurance administration.

The DPA requires the data to be:

fairly and lawfully processed,

processed for limited purposes,

adequate, relevant and not excessive,

accurate and up to date,

not kept longer than necessary,

processed in accordance with the individual’s rights,

secure,

not transferred to a country outside the EEC unless it has adequate protection for the individual.

For the information to be fairly processed one of the following conditions must apply:

there has been explicit consent from the individual to the processing

it is required by law to process the information for employment purposes or some other legal requirement

processing is required to protect the vital interests of the individual

processing is required to carry out public functions

processing is required in order to pursue the legitimate interests of the data controller or third parties although this does not apply if it could unjustifiably prejudice the interests of the individual

It is good advice to seek advice from a lawyer of those trained in The DPA and this document should be treated as an introduction only and not relied on as definitive. However, there is limited small print and such advice is often definitive.

Email Marketing - Effective use of data

2010-02-16T11:18:00.000Z

Despite what IT experts might wish, the collection of data for email marketing is not an end in itself. It has a function and must be used in order to get something from it. Whilst the investment in processing the data can be, and should be, fairly low, any cost is too expensive if you do not get a decent return on investment. ROI is the guiding light.

The fundamental parameters are:

How often they purchase,
How much they have paid,
How recent was their last purchase, and
What they have bought

Each individual heading can be productive when used in isolation but it is in combination that you get real returns.

One way to extract essential information is to divide each of the first three (we’ll address the product later) into, for example, four parts although in practice you might, depending on product, go for more. Taking ‘how often’, the intent should be to more or less divide the customers into three equal parts, say one purchase a week, one a month and one a quarter. The final division is no data. You then do the same for value and repetition.

You score each individual part from 3 to 0, the last being for no data. Each customer will have a score of from 0 to 9.

This is a somewhat crude exercise and you might feel a scale with five, six or considerably more headings would suit your particular type and size of business, but this provides an understandable introduction to the system.

The actual product or products the customer has bought from you is the final classification. This requires a great deal of care in how the customers are differentiated.

A company selling leisure items which parents might use as well as children could find it useful to differentiate between target ages. It could be that Christmas is more important in sales for those aimed at children and for adults a snowboard might be expected to have a shorter annual sales period than cameras.

The hierarchy of customers provides a reliable method of assessing their value for email marketing. It also gives an early warning of possible problems and in the same way highlights those whom a little investment might give an excellent ROI. The only question is what you should do with this information.

Looked at in its crudest way, it is apparent that those scoring 9 might be the ones who will give excellent ROI. They should be cultivated, encouraged and rewarded. Research has shown that those buying expensive items and frequently have a high loyalty.

This cultivation could take the form of being sent special offers, lower than the norm. Pestering with untargeted email marketing should be avoided. It is all too easy to click the opt-out if they feel they are being taken for granted.

Further, and as importantly, any fall from their lofty position needs to be identified and addressed. And with a degree of urgency.

Classification

2010-02-10T10:34:00.000Z

A database consisting of just email addresses is of limited use in planned email marketing. Information alone is not enough. What you need is relevant information. But that leads to the question: what is relevant?

You will, of course, have your customers’ purchasing history and that must be included on the database. But a tick in the relevant box tells you very little beyond the fact that they have bought something.

The email itself, or at least their response to it, will provide considerable detail. For instance the percentage of times they open the email, and then click through. These statistics will provide a rather course way of judging the customer it is true so what you need to do is narrow the range.

For a more precise assessment of your customers you will want a certain systemised system to record key points about their habits. The most fundamental are:

• How often they purchase,
• How much they have paid,
• What they have bought, and
• How recent was their last purchase

The point of collecting and referencing this data is to predict a customer’s likely behaviour. Whilst it is accepted that this is less than precise, it is far from crude and, more to the point, it can be an effective marketing tool.

Frequency

The record will show not only how often they have completed a purchase with you but other rates, such as how often their purchases have corresponded with an email campaign. Depending on your product, frequency of visits to a website can be included.

Value

This will not be just a case of total value of their orders. An average might be more appropriate depending on your product, and it is also useful to have it averaged out over a period of time, the length depending again on what you sell.

Type of purchase

You need to know not only what items they have purchased but what relevance these had to any recent purchases. If they bought a product such as a printer from you, their purchase of ink cartridges will tell you much about them.

How recent

The timing of their last purchase can of considerable use on its own. But again, it is not only purchases that we need to record but also the last time they opened a marketing email, clicked through to the microsite or logged on to the website.

Further, with an integrated marketing strategy where other forms of media are used to support your email marketing, you will need to include the date of, for instance, any direct mail sent, or phone calls made, to the customer.

The point of a database is that it should consist of relevant and quantifiable information so that it can lead in classifying the customer. Whilst it has to be accepted that it can be a broad brush, what it is not is arbitrary. It is discrimination in its best sense. It predicts what a customer’s preferences are, what might put them off and, most importantly, it predicts their likely response to an email.

Email marketing professionalism

2010-02-01T13:27:00.001Z

The most important tool in retaining email marketing subscribers is your database. Both law and sensible list management requires it to be accurate, up to date and devoid of irrelevant and confusing detail.

On the matter of which details should be kept, those involved in email marketing are by no means unanimous. There are those who support the bare minimum, suggesting that otherwise it might limit or confuse their marketing plans, to the proponents of as much as possible, the theory being that anything may, at some time or another, become essential.

Both extremes have logic behind them and it is by no means accepted wisdom, or even just wise, that the truth lies somewhere in between. All one can do is to allow each email marketing company to make their own judgement. Whilst that might seem, and probably is, passing the buck somewhat, what can be agreed is that whichever point along the scale you choose, there are essentials.

You should not only consider what you need in order to sell effectively. You must also work out what details you need, including cross-referencing, in order to maintain your customers, to keep them happy and to avoid upsetting them.

Put yourself in the position of an email customer who was so impressed with the way in which your software improved their personnel management that not only did they opt in for email marketing but, when the offer came through for 25% off your servers, they went for it. This company has the makings of a real diamond.

The purchasing supremo ticked the opt in box again hoping for more such offers to make him look on the ball.

If your database is not sufficiently sophisticated to cope with someone who has opted in twice you might well have to hope that it is good enough to work out that when someone has ticked the opt out box just once it means they are out of bounds regardless of how many times they opted in.

Receiving identical emails can be an irritation, the easiest way balm being to tick the opt out box. Further, their listing with the original purchase might well generate a follow up offer on the servers, one which might even be a higher percentage reduction. Imagine what that will do to their customer satisfaction.

In the same way as it is the salmon that is rejected which elevates that which has not, if this customer does not respond to offers of your parallel line of, let us say, motoring holidays in the Czech Republic, if these are frequent then it might well generate the unsubscribe.

That is not to suggest, of course, that you should not try the occasional foray into the unknown on the off-chance but it should be done with care and with reference to your database.

So if you are in the camp of the bare minimum of information being sufficient you might consider that you need enough to ensure you do not upset your customers.

Systemised customer support

2010-01-25T10:38:00.000Z

Email marketing allows simple and cheap response to specified events which can have the benefit of helping to retain customers and increase sales. There is as much potential in small businesses as larger ones for the majority to be fully automated. Every bit of automation saves time and money.

The first decision is what events should trigger a response. For the purposes of customer retention the ideal would be those stages in the lifecycle of a customer which provide the best return on investment. What these are will depend on many variables, such as the product, but for most, the first purchase is an obvious start.

Whether an order is from a first-time customer or not your normal response, that of an automated order confirmation, including a brief thank-you for their custom, should be generated. This reassures them that their order has been received and is being dealt with.

If the customer’s name is not already on your list then this should trigger another response, the form it takes depending to an extent on your product. But consider:

A week after they receive the item or service you could send them an email asking them if they are satisfied with their purchase and the service they received. Your customer is reassured of their importance. A link to an online survey would appear to be the favourite format.

Be aware that it will require some form of servicing. If they tick a box suggesting dissatisfaction with an aspect of the procedure it must be followed up in some way. The customer will expect a response and an automated ‘Thank you for your communication, it is important to us’ that seems, to the customer, to end the process might cause more problems than it solves.

A free text box can be extremely useful for market research but, as your response cannot be automated, it could take considerable resourcing. You need to weigh the benefits your questionnaire will provide before including the facility.

If a response shows some degree of dissatisfaction the precise form of their complaint might well specify your response. If, for instance, there was no scart lead included with the product, and its absence was clearly indicated in the advert, then you could, for a first time customer, respond by offering a free lead with them paying the postage and handling charge. Or, perhaps, include it initially and make a feature of it.

A failure of your carrier to hit the delivery window could generate an offer of free ‘next day’ delivery for their next purchase, not to mention a query to your carrier. A returned form that has nothing but the ‘completely satisfied’ boxes ticked should be serviced in a similar way as those which are critical. The same offer would be a nice ‘thank-you’ for their time in completing the form, especially if they have the potential to be a valuable customer.

It is a two-pronged approach: building the relationship and encouraging sales.

Email marketing lists

2010-01-19T11:18:00.001Z

Keeping customers to ensure a high return on investment

Any article on how to enjoy success with email marketing could start with the statement that the most important aspect is targeting. Out of all subjects, customer retention is the one where this is most appropriate.

The first essential of any email marketing campaign is to retain your customers. This is the overriding essential. There is ample research to show that a minor increase in retention rate will increase profitability out of all proportion. Whilst it is generally true that you should treat statistics with caution, this is one which you can depend on completely.

For high return on investment, concentrate on keeping your customers.

What we need to know is not so much what makes people tick the unsubscribe box but what makes them return to ordering time and again. If you ask yourself why you return to your favourite shops, online or local, you will probably come up with a number of different motivators depending on what you are buying. Any list, therefore, has got to be very general initially.

You might therefore expect the results of research into what keeps customers returning to buy online to be a bit vague, that the bullet points would encompass a rather wide spectrum. And you would be right. However, they bear pointing out if only to provide pointers.

The motivators can be classified under five primes:

Customer support
Delivery
Advertising
Pricing
Procedures

Obviously, the importance of each criterion will vary depending on your product or service and the expectations of customers will vary as well. However, that doesn’t stop an overview of each prime being useful.

Customer support

This will vary according to product, customer, presentation and comparative price amongst other subjects.

Let us take as a simple example someone buying a laptop. It is an unfortunate fact of remote purchasing that customers will not be stunned to discover some damage to an item on delivery. The speed with which this is replaced and the convenience of the method of complaint can be a significant factor in customer satisfaction. You have to accept that any obstructions placed in the way of a genuine complainant will be an irritant.

Further, there is an expectation that an item will work straight from the box and failure to do so, however justifiable, can cause massive irritation. This can be mitigated to a great extent by a one call per fix policy.

Delivery

Whilst everyone wants their product the moment the ordering procedure is over, an honest and precise date and time of delivery has to be accepted. Many of you will know the frustration that failure to deliver on time can cause even when there is a genuine reason such as an occurrence outside the control of the delivery company.

And it is not only the delivery of the product. If a servicing call is necessary, this too must be on time.

Advertising

What your email campaign promised must be what they get. It is no use depending on that get out ‘picture for illustrative purposes only,’ (what else is a picture of a product for? ‘actual product may vary’. You must fulfil the expectations that your email advertising generated. The days of imaginative product descriptions has gone. It must, as one promises, do exactly what it says on the tin.

But there’s more to online advertising than just descriptions. Customers demand high quality graphics. You do not want them deciding solely on price.

Pricing

This has a bit of a hangover with the previous heading: Advertising. If you say that an item costs £x then that is what the customer will expect to pay. If it states that it costs £x plus postage and packing, then the customer will expect to pay a reasonable, to them, charge for P&P and one which was clear from early on in the ordering procedure. It goes further though.

If you are selling on value and overall costs then a premium rate phone line for contact generated by your failures will generate email unsubscribes. The extra income such lines generate has to be balanced against the cost of customer loss.

Procedures

The customer is trusting you with their email address. They do not so much expect you to take care of it as demand that you do. They require reassurance as to how seriously you take your responsibilities.

Your privacy policy is an obvious route to generating trust. But you must adhere to it. Quite apart from any legal concerns, a failure to do so will breed distrust.

Another way of generating that little spark of doubt is to demonstrate a failure in your internal procedures. A repeat customer is that which you should cherish. This is, after all, the target. But if they are suddenly sent two identical emails in your next campaign they might feel undervalued and they might also consider that you have not taken sufficient care.

This is, quite obviously, merely a brief overview of the primes. What each includes will vary depending on a significant number of factors, the most important probably being your product and the customer.

As we delve deeper into the specifics of each prime the one thing that will be apparent is that you must consider not so much what is reasonable in the circumstance but what the customer expects. If you feel you can’t supply it then you must ask yourself if the reason their expectation is so high is that your competitors are performing at that level.

The lifecycle of an email customer

2010-01-14T14:57:00.000Z

To increase the chances of retaining customers for email campaigns you must get to know as much as possible about them. One thing they will have in common is that they will go through a set of stages during their stay with you. Some parts will be missed, taken out of order or even ignored altogether.

Any series of headings will be just a guide, so here is a simple way of describing them which is as valid as any.

They visit the website
They return
They register
They buy
They stop buying

The first approach will be via a browser in more ways than one. The visitor comes to your website for the first time. You can look on this procedure as similar to a potential customer coming to a shop, either for a casual look around or in an attempt to find a specific product. The website should function in the same way as the display. They will want to pick up items, examine them and perhaps ask your staff for further information.

With a website, the browsing history from cookies will give certain specific information and the statistics from your website hosting will provide more general ones.

A returnee shows you are doing something right. Given the ease with which comparisons in prices or products can be made on the internet, a first time visitor buying will in all probability not be the norm. Therefore a return visitor has got to be good news and viewed with some excitement. The website should encourage the transition to purchaser by making it as easy as possible

Whilst for most online sales the majority of customers would register when they buy, some, those with a bit of savvy or experience perhaps, might hold back to wait for the offers. These need special treatment to move them on to the next stage. You should have systems established to stroke these, to encourage them to make that all important step.

The first purchase is just that: the first. A customer who actually buys something should not be seen as a success story but as a potential regular, that most precious of items. Processes should be planned into your systems to reward them for that first purchase.

Sooner or later the vast majority of customers will become inactive or dormant. But this is not so much a disaster as a signal for a change in the way you are dealing with them to get them back into the fold.

The mindset of the customer will differ at each stage of their progress through the lifecycle. It is vital that they are not allowed to follow their own route. You should establish systems to encourage them to become or return to being a regular customer. Email marketing has the resources to do just that.

Email Campaign Management

2010-01-13T09:14:00.001Z

After all the work in creating the email campaign you might feel that you are entitled to a bit of rest and recuperation and the local is your well earned destination. But you would be wrong.

In any argument with regard to the benefits of email marketing compared to the use of post, once the subject of measurement arises, the dispute is over. Measurements in themselves are of little value unless they are interpreted, the conclusions used to modify the current email campaign and considered when planning subsequent ones, whether these are for collecting email addresses or of selling goods or services.

Before interpretation of the figures can be considered, the life of an email when used in a direct email marketing campaign needs to be understood. There are set stages once it is sent.

In reaches the recipient’s inbox
It is opened
The offer is viewed
It is acted upon

The calculation of percentages of each stage as compared to previous email campaigns and the baseline - how many emails were sent for this campaign.

Delivery rate

It has to be accepted that a number of emails will not be received. The percentage of returned emails, sometimes called bounces, is the attrition rate. It is a simple calculation: number of bounces as a percentage of the number sent.

There are two kinds of bounces: hard and soft.

Soft bounces are due to problems with the recipient’s email server and are of no real concern. Most email clients will continue to resend the email until it is successfully received or until it becomes a hard bounce.

Hard bounces are more of a problem as they indicate that the address does not exist.

Email addresses have a life expectancy. Retail customers tend to keep one email address for an extended period but research has shown that in the case of B2B the time is considerably shorter. Promotion, reorganisation, rationalisation and such make the change of email address quite common. Research is inconclusive as to annual rates but 20% seems a reasonable estimate.

Hard bounces can be a temporary phenomenon, especially with B2B. A reorganisation might well have coincided with your time of posting and the email client could well be low on their list of priorities. So it is well worthwhile sending the email a couple of further times although after three hard bounces it is best, perhaps, to face the inevitable.

If you have a postal address for the person then, if your product merits the investment in time, a letter or postcard might well prove productive.

Hard bounces might be caused by incorrect addressing. Again, how much time you are willing to invest in this is a consideration but an incorrectly placed full-stop is easy enough to see and easy enough to correct. Remember that once you have deleted that email address it is gone forever. Such problems indicate that your data entry system needs assessing.

What is an acceptable rate of attrition depends to a certain extent on how you came by the email addresses. If it was a bought-in list then the bounce rate should be compared to that which was mentioned at the time of purchase.

Open rate

With html emails it can be ascertained whether a certain graphic has been downloaded. The calculation as to the open rate is simple enough: emails opened as a percentage of the emails sent minus permanent bounces.

In this country most recipients have preview panes and it is felt that this increases the open rate as the customer can, to a certain extent, asses the content before deleting. It should be remembered, however, that many preview panes do not show images as default. Further, many email clients block images in order not to notify tracking software that the email address is ‘live’.

There is no acceptable rate of opening, no universal percentage whereby you can go down the pub satisfied with your efforts. So you can experience difficulty in calculating whether the creative aspect your email was a classic of the art of merely a classic of its kind.

Various authorities quote opening rates of between 10-30 per cent as acceptable but it has to be accepted that a factor of three tends to indicate that there will never be an evidenced figure. Bought-in lists, for instance, have a lower opening rate than many other sources of email addresses and although many suppliers can arrange more targeting, this will be reflected in the price.

You might spend hours dissecting the email only to realise later that for B2B 4pm on a Friday is not the best time to send them.

Click-through rate

This is the vital statistic. It indicates the effectiveness of the email design.

The recipient has shown enough interest to read the email. This can be considered to be the same as a passer-by looking in through a shop window, examining the display and then coming into the shop to find out more. The biggest hurdle has been overcome.

Whilst a reluctance to click-through can indicate a lack of targeting of the email itself, it is much more likely that the problem lies with the creative side. The recipient has, metaphorically, strolled around your shelves, picked up and item or two to examine, then replaced them and left your shop.

Calculating the click-through rate can be complicated if there is more than one offer, or dedicated hotlink, on the email.

Conversion rate

The landing page, or pages, will have some function built into it. This might be, for instance, a subscribe mechanism for your newsletter, the request for a catalogue or a purchase. It could also include an alternative offer, such as a request for further information. Most will contain a form, an application, which includes the request for an email address, the ultimate goal. So it can be appreciated that the conversion rate is the ultimate figure. Here we have the measure of the campaign: the collection of addresses for direct email marketing.

It is, unfortunately, not quite that simple. There is not just one conversion rate. If you were trying to sell your company’s methods you would, of course, quote the percentage of conversions to click-through, this being the highest figure. But there are others.

The percentage of conversion to the emails sent, minus the hard bounces, might be seen as the more applicable if you are funding the campaign.

You might have included on your landing page a system to collect postal addresses for, perhaps, catalogue delivery, or even a free sample of the scent you are trying to sell. This can be seen as a failure of the campaign but is at least a lead and open to development.

Statistics in themselves are of little use. They must be used. But therein lies a problem. They need interpreting and then must be acted upon.

Database Management

2010-01-11T10:02:00.001Z

There are overwhelming practical reasons for organising a system of effective management of your email lists.

The eight principles of good practice as published by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) deal essentially with the methods of gathering, maintaining and the security of email lists. The ones which we will deal with here require them to be:

adequate, relevant and not excessive,
accurate and up to date,
not kept longer than necessary,
secure

We can dispense with the security immediately. Your email list is an asset. It would be of immense use to your rivals. Ensure it is safe when being digitally transported at all times. The requirements of the law should not be your main motivating force in this matter. Security is a practical essential.

Adequate, relevant and not excessive

Adequate might seem an odd word to use as it lacks precision. This can be seen as a good thing as it allows flexibility in interpretation, but taken on it own it can be confusing. What this provision seems to mean is that you must collect and retain enough details of your customers for you to fulfil the requirements of the law. For instance, the details you maintain should be sufficient for you to be able to service a request made under the Data Protection Act (DPA) for their details. If they initially provided the relevant details for you to do so then it is no good suggesting that your are unable to identify them because you failed to keep all the information. Your systems should ensure that these details are collected and retained.

Relevant and not excessive can be taken together. In any list of things required in a database for precision in a direct email marketing campaign, relevant and not excessive would come high up on the list. It is an essential. Inputting and retaining information that is of no use is a waste of effort of data imputers. Further, irrelevant information can confuse a search of a database for customers with specific preferences.

Further, asking for a great deal of information may well put off a subscriber, either initially or later. Remember the threat of the unsubscribe button.

Legally, though, relevant and not excessive is something that you may have to prove. It need not necessarily mean ‘at this time’. You might have plans which you hope to come to fruition within the next few months and, whilst the information you hold might well be irrelevant at the moment, the details of your planned direct email marketing campaign would be sufficient justification.

Accurate and up to date

The importance of accuracy, which includes being up to date, goes without saying, but I will. The essence of emails lists is precision. It is more important than numbers. It is essential therefore to establish systems which ensure that when additional information is obtained about a customer it makes its way to the data imputers. People change email addresses fairly regularly, some research suggests figures as high at 20% per annum. Your procedures must take this into account. Your systems must include regular checks of emails addresses and ways of ensuring that such changes reach the data processors.

Not kept longer than is necessary

Necessary is subjective but the ultimate decision as to how long this particular piece of string is depends on the courts. All you can do is to act reasonably, i.e. have reasons for everything you do.

Such matters may come into dispute where your reasons for retaining an address come into conflict with the reasonable expectations of the addressee. It is unlikely that a court would find it reasonable for you to retain an email address merely to prove that you had included a caveat in your correspondence with the customer. You must take steps to be able to prove this in some other way or devise a system not only ensures your message gets through but that you can prove it did.

However, it will probably be seen as reasonable to keep the address for some time after the customer has asked to be removed from the direct email marketing list so as to ensure no confusion in your systems. As to the question: ‘How long may it be kept in these circumstances?’ the only answer is: as long as you think a court will find reasonable.

Other considerations

Opt-outs

Opt-outs are an irrefutable comment on the effectiveness of your direct email marketing campaigns. If the rate remains steady or starts to drop then they are at least no worse than normal and possibly a little better. The reverse is true if the rate goes up. Therefore it must be monitored closely. But just as importantly, the opt-outs must be dealt with efficiently and effectively.

By the side of most opt-out boxes will be a caution that the subscriber should allow a certain period of time for the request to be dealt with. There is not legal justification for this. You must do it promptly. Unsubscribe procedures are a major source of criticism. Customers might well take their frustrations out on you via a complaint to the ICO.

It bears remembering that an opt-out is not forever. A customer’s circumstances might change to the extent that they wish to unsubscribe for a short period. In the method of opting out is prolonged then the urge to re-sign might well be overcome.

Bounces

Those mail administrator system errors have various causes but one that must be dealt with is the hard bounce. This is when a reply is received that the mail server could not deliver the message because the user does not exist on that domain. You should establish a procedure to deal with them which takes into account your particular requirements. If you deal in thousands of email addresses you might consider it most economical to resend the email after a period of, say, a day or two, or continue to send it every day for a week. If you eventually have to accept that it is undeliverable then the address should be deleted from your lists. However, if you deal in hundreds of addresses then the value of each might make it worth your while, after the resend, to check the original opt-in to confirm the address is correct. The original address may have an obvious misspelling.

Also check if the address has been used successfully before. Whilst with B2B addressees do change positions and accounts often, with B2C this is less common. It could be that there is a problem with the recipient’s mail server. If it does seem probable that the email account has been suspended then delete the address. Bounces take up your time. Your should consider the likely returns before you invest too much time on it.

The management of all types of bounces needs to be a factor in all email marketing campaign planning.

There are few hard and fast rules that can be applied to the management of email lists over and above the rather crude, but rather important, one of return on investment. The ICO’s principles of good practice are, surprisingly, effective practical guidelines for good business management of email lists. This has the added benefit of ensuring you comply with the law in such matters.

Email Marketing checklist

2010-01-08T10:33:00.003Z

Checklists can be extremely useful in suggesting that you are actually getting somewhere without having to put too much ffort into it. For instance, if you were running a campaign to obtain email addresses for an email marketing campaign then you could tick the box against Aims just by deciding that you want email addresses. Job done.

But for a checklist to actually mean something, for it to be a useful management tool, it needs to be detailed. The one below might look good on a submission but is of little help in planning.

Overall aim of the campaign
Methods
Targets
Budget
The offer
Offline support
Customer profile
Email design
Online support
Timing
Domestic arrangements

These are just overall headings. It is the detail in each that provides assistance to those who are planning the email campaign. For it to be developed into an effective and efficient plan, one that will be of use to those monitoring it, then each has to be expanded.

Overall aim

The obvious item under this heading is email addresses for use in a direct email marketing campaign. But to limit planning to just one aim is wasteful.

Some of those who receive the email, or become aware of the campaign via other methods, might well be impressed by your company or tempted by what it produces but not be prepared to share their email address with you at this stage. There should be other methods for them to contact you in all aspects of the email campaign and the value of these leads means that some form of follow-up should be built into the campaign.

You are making an offer. Would your current customers appreciate being able to access it? You might consider, perhaps, directing a modified email to those on your current email list who have been dormant for a certain period.

So to refine the heading:

Overall aims:

Email address acquisition
Lead acquisition
Customer retention

Method

Using emails as the sole procedure in a campaign is a perfectly reasonable method. It allows close control, limits the responses and cuts costs. But this must be an informed decision. There is no reason why there should not be advertising, both online and in printed matter, mail shots and the use of such opportunities as trade exhibitions and seminars.

A broadly-based campaign will allow for fine tuning during the run time. If the figures are not reaching the target or, just as problematical, exceeding them by a margin which makes it difficult for your systems to cope, then you can vary the influence of other subordinate campaigns.

A viral email campaign can give unpredictable results but its potential return on investment if it hits customers’ imagination can make it well worth running. But you need methods of coping with a sudden upturn in responses. This is not a Plan B. It is built in to the original plan.

If you are considering using newsletters then you have the choice of your own or those of a third party. If opting for the former then it can take a formidable period of time to build up a worthwhile circulation.

Your own website can and should be part of the email campaign. Use if for those who are reluctant to supply their email address but who, their interest aroused, want to know more about you. Choose between your established website as the main contact point or set up a dedicated one. However, it should be remembered that registering a website with a search engine takes time and, indeed, might well be one of the first actions to consider in your campaign.

Methods

Email campaign via bought-in list
Advertising (In Newsletters, Printed Periodicals and Mail Shots)
Website (Established and Dedicated - Search Engine Registration)

Target

Targets are not a pass or fail exercises. They are there to allow you to manage the email campaign as it progresses. As you become experienced in such campaigns then the variation in responses should become less wide but there is always the chance that you might spark the public’s imagination or accidently time your start to circumstances which change the desirability of your product.

Your targets should be the anticipated number of leads or responses that you planned for in total and over set periods. They are used as indicators that your plan is, or is not of course, running to schedule. If there is significant diversion or worrying trends are noticed then modification is advisable.

Targets

Number of addresses or leads per set period,
Plan to control responses.

Budget

Many campaign plans start with a maximum spend and so it tends to be the limiting factor. Despite this immovable object, the budget still requires considerable application. The general rule is that the value of an email address for use in a direct email marketing campaign comfortably exceeds the cost of acquiring it and this can lead to a cavalier attitude to the budget. There can be euphoria when the returns begin to overwhelm the infrastructure that has been established to deal with them. There is pressure to merely increase staffing to cope but that way can lie disaster.

The budget is there to define your reactions and indicate whether you need to modify the situation. Running under-budget might seem a good item to add to your CV but if it is costing email data then it undermines the campaign.

So your budget is not just the one figure designed to limit or a line drawn in the sand. It should be a series of figures which will allow you to fine tune your campaign as it unfolds. It should be something that negates you having to approach your boss with the phrase: "First, the good news ... "

Budget

Total spend,
Daily/weekly/monthly budget. One, two or all depending on usefulness.

Offer

What you offer to tempt those you are after will, in most circumstances, cost. If you price it at a figure that could be beaten by a quick Google then why should the recipients part with their personal details? Whilst you will probably be selling the item or service at a price over cost, to be tempting it will be below what the customers normally expect to pay. If you were selling the item or service at a higher price before the email campaign then by reducing the price you are, in effect, losing money. Further, if you are offering at item at 20% below normal price then it should be realised that, once the price goes up at the end of the campaign, sales might well be hit.

These on-costs must be included when considering the total cost of the campaign.

Offer

Costs (In hand budget and Total costs)

Offline support

Most campaigns include other supporting methods, such as mail shots, press releases, advertising, or even just literature at counters with encouragement for your staff to distribute. These can be extremely useful in budget and target management.

It can be tempting to use every method you have available to run concurrently with the email campaign but care needs to be exercised. You do not want to erode the budget on a procedure that will give lower return on investment unless it provides some other function that increases its value.

Offline support

Own or third party newsletter,
Mail shot,
Trade exhibition,
Counter, etc.

Customer profiling

It is, no doubt, fair to say that you would accept any email address offered to you. If they are unreceptive to email marketing then they can be weeded out at a later date for very little cost or effort. However, you need to know who you are aiming for in order to target the campaign.

How do you plan to segment your consumer data? The more particular you are, the better the email campaign results. For B2B a business profile is needed, as is the level of management you are aiming for. Your target audience defines the style of your campaign.

Profiling can also help with regards in such things as planning and managing the level of offline support. Investment in a trade exhibition needs to be carefully considered if your primary target is consumers.

Customer profiling

Consumers (Demographics)
B2B (Position held and Authority)

Email design

The first decision is whether to design the email in house or to opt for an agency. Regardless of which you choose, the creative team should be aware of your brand values. Logos and other forms of identity, including your rationale, must be conveyed. Further, you need to specify the tone of voice, the image you wish to portray and, if it is a large list, the variations in the addressees profile.

There must be integration with other marketing methods and this unified image should be established early in the planning stage.

Email design

Agency or in-house,
Brand values, tone of voice, corporate image.

Online support

The landing page, or microsite, can be part of the corporate website or a specific site established for the campaign. Like the email, they must support the values of your company while, at the same time encourage those who have clicked-through to continue. If going for a new site then remember that search engine optimisation takes time.

One of the most daunting features can be the form. Its design is vital to any campaign. Things to consider are the number and complexity of the fields, those which are mandatory, whether to ask for address and/or postcodes as well as technical matters. The balance between being intrusive and lack of sufficient detail needs careful consideration and it should be remembered that that just the minimum necessary detail is better than a wasted potential customer.

Before asking for all details, consider that you could obtain further information later as well as making valid assumptions on the basis of their orders. All that is essential, at least initially, is enough to enable you to target them accurately for a direct email marketing campaign.

The back-up pages, such as those for successful completion or in the event of an error, should not be viewed merely as procedural. Don’t just leave the potential customer hanging in the ether: give them the option of the home page of your corporate site. If a person refuses to sign up then perhaps a secondary offer might well capture their imagination.

Online support

Landing page
Support pages (Secondary offer and Success/error pages)
Form design (Number of fields and Obligatory fields)

Timing

This does not require a clock. Whilst the timing of the actual sending of the email is vital, and almost an art form, it is not the only consideration. You need to decide how long the campaign will continue. Will you maintain offline support until, for instance, you have used all the forms? Or do you want all types of marketing to stop at the same time? When will you disband admin support? Will this be a date or will you wait until demand falls to a point which makes it inefficient? Or does the campaign end-date rely on an external event, such as the football World Cup?

Timing

Start date
Completion date
Support campaigns (Start and completion date of each)
Disband admin support

Domestic arrangements

A simple one this time. You will need to include a link to your terms and conditions as well as a privacy statement. Whilst these are not the most frequented of pages on any website, some do visit them so don’t just have them filled with legal jargon and the conditional paragraphs your insurance company demanded. Use them for a bit of image polishing by telling them that you value your customers and treat each individual as an individual. Reassure them of your honesty and trustworthiness. If they have made their way to your terms and conditions they might well be nervous of them.

Ensure the legal requirements are fulfilled, including contact numbers and your address.

Domestic

Terms and conditions
Privacy statement
Legal requirements

Whilst the number of items on the things to do list might seem daunting, for all that they are essential, most can be resulted within a few minutes. However, the advantages of such detail is that it makes delegation easier and, more to the point, enables you to check that all the required work has been completed, whether by you or your staff.

Planning costs but its return on investment makes it essential.

Email Campaign planning

2010-01-07T10:04:00.000Z

Collecting addresses for email marketing

It can be frustrating staring at a blank sheet of paper or squinting from the glare of an empty Word document, whilst waiting for inspiration to help you plan your email campaign to obtain email lists for direct email marketing. Rather than continually visiting the coffee machine, a better option is, as with most complex tasks, to break the plan into smaller units.

Many find it best to start with a target, a mission statement, a creative brief, a direction, call it what you will, but we will call it a target and define it as a summary of what you want to get out of the email campaign. Everything else can be built on that foundation.

A target has lots of things going for it. It can show those involved what the point of the email campaign is. It can be very useful if your campaign involves other departments or agencies. A simple, straightforward, clear and comprehensive target should mean that everyone is working for the same result.

So how do you choose a number of email addresses to aim for? The fact that you can make more money from an email address than it takes to collect it might well lead you to consider going for every one out there. What could possibly put a limit on your aspirations?

You are probably well ahead of me here and your first thought might well have been budget. A target will be limited by your budget.

You should have a target, a figure that will mean you can cope with fluctuations in completions, and perhaps demand for your product or services on offer, without requiring massive additional investment in staff or resources, or, just as importantly, that your are efficient in their use and deployment.

Many costs are fixed. These would include:

The rental for the bought-in list
Advertising
The creation of the emails
Any supporting campaigns
The costs of creating and maintaining the microsite, including the supporting pages, such as notification of successful completion, or the error page.

These are ‘fixed’ in the sense that they are not dependant on the number of subscribers who opt in. There are variable costs, including:

The offer, to include fulfilling any orders and the cost of any back-up offer
The cost of documentation, including systems and staff to record the information
Follow-up enquiries

The target figure will enable you to calculate the amount you can invest in fixed costs. The email campaign must support the brand identity in terms of quality and style. Whilst the lad on work experience might be somewhat cheaper than a graduate graphic artist, you might consider the harm a poor quality email template presentation might do to your brand image.

An integrated email campaign, one that uses multiple disciplines for obtaining email address, will require similar standards of image in all aspects. Training can be a considerable drain on the budget but not as much as ignorance.

The investment in a microsite can be spread over a number of email campaigns. It is easy enough to modify the appearance and specific content while the regular items remain the same. Each email will require such things as links to a privacy statement, terms and conditions together with contact address and telephone number.

Once the fixed costs have been considered the target figure can be used to calculate the variable costs.

The offer

For the offer to be tempting the price must be lower, or more benefits must be included, than the email recipients can obtain in normal circumstances. Whilst an item that costs you £10 will return a profit if offered at £12, if it was selling well in normal circumstances at £15 this is a cost of the campaign.

Adherence to targets stops you raising expectations only for them to be dashed. If the 4* holiday in the Algarve proves more attractive than you initially believed it would be then subscribers might be reluctant to give their email address if they suddenly are told that it is now a 3* in Brittany even if they might have opted for that if it had been on offer originally.

Some people are reluctant to subscribe via email, wanting to discuss matters with the company involved. You can, of course, abandon these but even so they will still put pressure on your call centre staff. There will be some element of training but the main implication of the extra work is extra staff or, perhaps, removing staff from some other function temporarily. Either way it will cost, and how much depends on how many calls are expected to be received and over what period.

Further, there will be follow-up enquiries from the offer from other contacts who did not receive the email campaign, whilst these will be spread out over a longer period, they should also be accounted for.

So a target figure, or indeed figures, can help you plan your budget and also limit the variable costs.

If you use a bought-in list you might be concerned that you have underestimated or overestimated the likely completion rate. You do not want your staff overwhelmed by the demand nor do you want them organising a card game to overcome the boredom. You could, perhaps, try dipping your toe in the water by using a percentage of the list to test responses. If the completion rate is higher than your planed target then you have a decision to make. Do you increase staff or spread the sending of the emails over a longer period.

In an integrated campaign you have the additional possibility of fine tuning the response by increasing or decreasing their input.

If you have used, for instance, a third party newsletter, or other medium you have limited control over, as a part of your email campaign then you must ensure that you have built into your campaign a degree of flexibility to cope.

If conversion rates are disappointing then it might make more financial sense to modify the offer to make it more attractive rather than have the costs of staff draining your budget without return. The only way of deciding whether this ideal or not is to have an accurate target.

Of course, this does not help much in deciding what figure to pick. How can you decide where to stick the pin? It might be better to ask what the figure is for. What purpose does it provide?

You want the email lists for a direct email marketing campaign. So you should have a figure in mind, an optimum, and this should be the basis of your target.

Let us assume you have your budget, you have your target, you have your rented list and you have other email collection exercises going on. You press the button for your campaign to start and you await the first returns.

With the first clump of reporting data assessed you are able to work out if the demands on your support resources are within the bounds you had anticipated. If not then the campaign needs to be tweaked to increase or decrease the conversion rate or, perhaps, you might want to delay or bring forward the start date of the email shot.

Wipe from your mind any conception of the target for collecting addresses for direct email marketing being a success or fail figure. It is purely one of campaign management. Despite the word being used in singular form throughout this article, there is nothing against, and a lot for, having a number of targets.

For instance you might have an initial target figure for conversions which will signify the breakeven point. The one for a sufficient return on investment. But these are just figures for reassurance. Much more useful would be a daily conversion figure for the minimum number of completions for efficient use of resources and a maximum figure which would stretch them. In the case of the latter being reached you would then have to decide if you should recruit more staff, accept a delay in documentation or slow the email campaign.

Having such targets is especially useful when using email collection methods over which you have little control, such as a viral email marketing. One that catches the public’s imagination might seem to be the Holy Grail of virals but if you do not monitor the figures and compare them to targets there is every chance of such a great response being wasted or actually affecting your campaign negatively.

The fact that targets are there for management purposes and are not to be used to beat staff about the head should be communicated to your team. And, of course, to those above you. A successful email campaign is one where the budget has not been exceeded, your staff have been fully employed without being under so much pressure that they made errors, and that you have an adequate return on investment.

Or, to put it another way, when you have hit or exceeded your target.

More on getting email addressed added to your list

2010-01-04T11:08:00.001Z

The rented email list has been left to last as it can generate strong reactions, both from the user and the recipient. The message is sent to persons on an email list from an email list provider. The worry of many is that although they will have been told that those on the list have opted in this might not be the case. If they haven’t then a direct marketing email sent to them will be spam. It should be remembered that the sender is liable regardless of assurances.

Further, the actual date they opted in might well have been some time previously so the perception, if not the fact, in the mind of the recipient is that it is spam. A further complication is that the source, you, will be different from the one they signed up with.

It is up to you to establish the value of the list. You will want to know:

how many times the list has been accessed by other customers,
how long the emails have been on the list,
the location of the addresses,
the source of the list, and
what targeting options are available.

You will hope for:

rarely,
a short time,
in your target area,
something in some way associated with your product, and
you would expect age, gender and postcode but would hope for more

Remember that with rented lists you normally only get the one shot at the addresses. However, you should not be expected to pay for those that bounce. However, individual benefits will vary with the suppliers.

Due to the fact that you will be a stranger to them, at least as the source of emails, it is best to explain how you came by their address. Do not tell them of any sordid rental business but introduce your company and say that they have received the email because of the information they supplied to the list owner. You can reassure them by introducing one new name, yours, and mentioning a familiar one in the same sentence.

The benefits of a rented list include the fact that it is all but instant and you can control the numbers precisely. There is little or no preparatory work involved, and the spread is probably greater than you will be able to source.

The downsides include lack of control as to the source of the addresses, the high costs, typically more than a direct email acquisition campaign might be, and the low responsiveness. It is for you to decide whether the cost, which will be higher if all your boxes are ticked, is worth the expected return.

This list of online methods of acquiring a house direct email marketing list is obviously not exclusive. You should think of which one to choose to support your campaign rather than work out which ones would give sufficient return on investment. Another aspect to consider is the perception of your campaign in the eyes of your potential recruits. A cold approach might well cause resentment rather than enthusiasm.

Viral marketing via email

2009-12-22T13:08:00.000Z

Whilst this form of marketing is in dire need of a new title, its strength is that it harnesses the power of the internet. For examples of the genre, http://viral.3dge.net is an unending source. Virals require care though. They can have a life of their own and should not be used as the mainstay of an email campaign.

It is impossible to define the life of a typical viral email marketing campaign. Whilst the norm is that it will peak very early some go on for years and it is difficult to predict the timing of responses. If you remove the landing page or the offer the viral might build resentment rather than an increase in email addresses.

If your email campaign goes live at a time when those in the industry it is targeting are in a slack period, your recipients will have little else to do other than idle their time away. Your clever and expensive viral video creation might well hit all possible targets at the same time and stretch your resources requiring unplanned expense.

The patently obvious must be remembered: the viral is not an end in itself, no matter how clever. It should be designed to capture email addresses. This can be done passively by way of banner ads, product placement or more aggressively by incentivising the supply of another person’s email address.

A prize draw is a common form of viral support for an email acquisition campaign. A participant will get an additional chance for every other email address he supplies. The one requirement is for the reader to land on the microsite where there will be a persuasive argument for them to opt into direct email marketing.

The essence of a viral email is making the sender look good or feel good. It could be by way of the funny video, the hilarious joke, the stunning prize or the bargain offer. Creating such email virals requires good taste as well as good sense. What might be thought of by your company as a risqué but right-side-of-the-border joke might well be seen as an embarrassment when it drifts outside the confines of B2B. Becoming upset at some imagined slight is becoming something of a lifestyle choice by many, as can be the pursuit of compensation for hurt feelings. A video has a great deal of potential for offence and picking between the bland and the actionable needs care.

The potential for catastrophe for budget limits on rewards-based incentive virals is immense. When planning a campaign with one included, the prize must be limited. Rather than rewarding the person for every email address they generate, a better option might be seen to run with a prize for the most successful. With the bargain offer, it should be remembered that a store running a loss-leader will have limited stock. If you suddenly run out of goods because it was costing too much then you are more likely to generate resentment than opt-ins. But there is mileage to be gained with the ‘This is what I want for a Christmas present’ email that can be forwarded by a hopeful recipient to those with the money.

Due to its waywardness the viral sector of an email campaign to acquire email addresses needs careful consideration and one should not be overwhelmed by its benefits of costs and coverage.

The lack of control should not blind one to the fact that it can be an automated procedure so investment, once the procedure is established, is low. When a website visitor indicates interest in a particular aspect of the product list by asking for further information, or a quote, or asks for notification of an event then this can trigger a follow-up email seeking registration on a direct email marketing list.

Using email marketing to acquire email addresses

2009-12-21T10:37:00.000Z

In any campaign to acquire email addresses for direct email marketing, all resources should be integrated. There are a number of ways in which emails themselves can be part of the campaign.

Working with another company

A recipient who has opted in to receive emails from one company may well have been asked if they would be willing to receive emails from third parties. The originating company might limit those they allow access to their email list. Indeed, anything less might seem a risk too far with such a valuable asset.

For instance, a company selling high-powered computers could feel that to be joined by providers of gaming software on their direct email marketing campaign would benefit their brand and so receive an approach warmly. Whilst such emails can be considered a form of cold-calling all research suggest it has a much higher response rate than using bought-in email lists. A typical ploy is a competition to encourage the recipient to click through to the company website where the intent will be to get them to opt in to the email list.

In a similar way one can piggy-back onto another company’s newsletter. The vehicle needs choosing with care, but the biggest asset is the fact that it is targeted. The recipients will be in the mindset to read the content and your advert, or if you go down the sponsorship route, your message will have a more receptive audience.

Remember you are not restricted to traditional banner ads or those in a column at the side of the email. A text advert in the style of the newsletter is more likely to be read. Further, there is the ‘advertorial’: an article written by the editorial staff of the newsletter about your company and its products.

There will probably be certain editorial restrictions which will limit your freedom of action and design but, if it is created with care, such an insert benefits all parties.