Econsultancy Adv Email Marketing Roundtable June 2009

Email Marketing roundtable 13:00 - 15:00 4th June 2009 Facilitators: Dave Chaffey, Marketing Insights Ltd Peter Abrahams, Econsultancy

The biggest challenge in Email marketing?

Today’s topic: improving engagement and value

How refined is your email marketing capability? Presented by Grant Baillie of Argos at 2008 Email marketing conference, with permission

Agenda - Discussion topics

Benchmarking Best Practice – What is your current capability?

A. Goal setting for email marketing – what are your KPIs for recipient engagement and value?

B. Customer Insight and email analytics – sophistication of customer analysis

C. Segmentation, targeting and personalisation – layers of segmentation?

D. Marketing integration – integration with direct mail

E. Test and Learn – use of structured testing and evaluation

Discussion, sharing experiences of current advanced Email marketing techniques including

Segmentation

Behavioural Targeting through event-triggered emails

Dynamic content insertion

Testing and Optimisation of creative including new approaches such as social email, video email and pre-headers.

Your top "Advanced Email Marketing Tips"

Other email marketing challenges / opportunities?

Deliverability – still a headache? What developments here? Ever more sophistication needed (throttling by ISP, SenderScore, multiple IP ranges etc.)

Email challenges with range of email clients e.g. issues with Office 2007?

Multi-channel marketing e.g. e-mail / DM – any progress / developments here?

List building – developments in best practice? How to grow list of quality customers most effectively?

What’s working well for you?

Please give your top

"Advanced Email Marketing Tips“

Obvious or less obvious. Examples:

- Triggered email following on-site search

- Reviewing conversion rates of different features

- Broadcasting according to last opened/clicked

Email capability model review

Q. Which targeting factors give best response?

Example of dynamic content insertion Presented by Grant Baillie of Argos at 2008 Email marketing conference,, with permisssion Tip. Change order of offers or features according to segment to increase relevance

The Argos approach: Identifying “unfulfilled intent” Tip. Identify Next best “hero” product for each category

Personalised British Airways Trip Guide Personalized with customer name Direct link to “My booking” area of BA.com Search fields pre-populated with customer travel dates and destination Customized destination information including sightseeing and airport info Source:

Targeting customers according to value Customer potential Customer quality high low low high One time shoppers with low potential Average customers Good customers Very good customers 15 % 15 % 60 % 10 % Indicators for customer quality Indicators for customer potential

Order value per received catalogue

Order value per season

Gross margin in % of net sales

Returns in % of order value

Last date of purchase

Number of active seasons

Channel usage score

Number of different product categories

Source: Chris Poad, Otto, E-consultancy Masterclass 2006

The eBay approach: segmentation layers

Behavioural Email development Entry level 5 - 8 triggers Medium level 17 – 30 triggers Upper level 20 – 50 triggers Nirvana 50 – 500 triggers Nursery program Site Activity program Full marketing email program Customer service emails Source: Customers Welcome email Behavioural Cross sell Regular marketing emails Site segmented Activity flagging RFM Predictive Lapsed / Churn By product Site down apology Birthday / Xmas Emails Repeat abandoner Future Release alert Back in stock alert Lapsed Activity Non cross sell Not returned in 14 days Not re-purchased in 14 days Process abandonment X-sell programme By product Newsletter Not transacted By content group visited Content triggers

“ Learn more through time…”

Incentivising multichannel purchase

The Argos approach: Identifying “unfulfilled intent” Tip. Identify Next best “hero” product for each category

Q. How can I build in testing – Sixteen testing ideas

Testing copy in e-mail headers – different subject lines and from addresses.

Making “Pre-headers” more persuasive

Different offers – does 10% discount or £50 off work best – it is usually the latter. Are secondary offers useful in elevating the overall response?

Different template layout designs

Timing of broadcast on different days of the week, times of day

Text vs HTML , Embedded versus linked images

Tone of voice in copy / personality of e-mail.

Long vs short copy

Calls-to-action (number and location of links)

Personalisation for targeting and dynamic messaging

Use of video and animation

Incorporating social media and customer involvement

Integration with other media (e.g. e-mail teaser before DM or response mechanism after DM).

Which newsletter or solus e-mail template is most effective?

Which frequency interval for a newsletter maximises revenue (while avoiding perceptions of SPAM)

Touch strategy for event triggered e-mail – which sequence of offers and intervals between them work best?

Test video

http://www.rei.com/email/gearmail/gm022709_vid.html http://www.retailemailblog.com/2009/03/am-inbox-reis-embedded-animation-video.html

Make your emails social!

Web 2.0 = Participation + Interactivity + dialogue :

Creation of user generated content – users can comment on blogs or upload videos and are updated by feeds.

Rating of content and online services – social bookmarking services such as deli-cious and Traceback comments on some blogs.

Mashups – Different types of content are merged, for example YouTube videos or Google Maps can be integrated into a web site. Widgets or gadgets can be integrated into users home pages on social networks or personalised home pages like Netvides or iGoogle ( www.google.co.uk/ig ).

Optimise your “pre-headers”!

Make your Emails mobile