Welcome Email Best Practices Silverpop

Using Welcome Emails to Drive Increased Engagement and ROI

Contents
Why Welcome Emails?
Elements of a Welcome Email Program
Sample (Good & Bad) Welcome Emails & Best Practices
Welcome Series
REI 12-Part Welcome Series

Why Welcome Emails?

List Churn and Inactives – The Good, Bad and So-So
The bad news…
A typical list will lose 1/3 of its members each year
Bounces + spam complaints + unsubscribes = 2-4% / month
25% to 80% of your list is inactive
Subscriber has not opened or clicked in specific time frame (e.g., 6, 12 months+)
The good news…
Churn can be reduced
You control most of your destiny
Some inactives can be reengaged
The so-so news…
Most are lost

The Honeymoon is over! Research by marketing publisher MarketingSherpa shows email subscriber interest begins to disintegrate as soon as two weeks after the opt-in, as measured by the open rate. Within two months, the open rate typically falls 20% to 25%.

Why Recipients Unsubscribe
Too Frequent
Irrelevant Content/Offers

Welcome Email – eec Retail Research Study
72% of major online retailers send out welcome emails.
98% of retailers’ welcome email now contain a link to their shopping site
32% of welcome emails include a discount, reward or incentive
62% of welcome emails asked the subscriber to whitelist them
79% of retailers sent out HTML welcome emails
Most of the HTML welcome emails were HTML “lite,” making extensive use of HTML text
53% of welcome emails included links to the retailer’s privacy policy
58% of welcome emails were CAN-SPAM compliant in terms of including both a mailing address and unsubscribe method
*Email Experience Council’s second annual Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study (2007)

Elements of a Welcome Email Program

Subscriber Email Touch Progression Opt-in form DOI Confirmation Email Welcome Email or Series Regular Email Program

Engage and Delight…Every Step of the Way
Dating
Build trust with transparency
Preferences on opt-in
Engagement
Welcome programs
Bring the flowers
Marriage
Deliver on expectations
Preference updates
Move to lifecycle, trigger and behavioral-based programs
Divorce
Provide alternatives to unsubscribing

Goals and Purpose
Goals:
Speed up conversion
Minimize list churn
Strengthen brand perception
Reduce inactivity
Purpose
Educate subscriber
Reward/Incent
Instill/reinforce trust
Enable immediate “email experience”
Provide administrative information

Timing
The Good News
61% of retailers deliver their welcome emails within 10 minutes of sign up, with most of those delivering within 3 minutes.*
The Bad News
19% take more than 24 hours to deliver their welcome emails, with nearly a third of those taking more than a week to deliver.*
*Email Experience Council’s second annual Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study (2007)

From Name/Address
From Names:
Use the same from name as regular emails
Simple, logical and trusted brand
From Name/Address
Again, use same as regular emails
Avoid ugly, number-oriented if possible
Good Examples:
Olive Garden [newsletter@olivegarden.com]
MBNA America [MBNA@cardsatisfaction.com]
Magazines.com [offers@magazines.com]
Questionable Example:
Penny at MarketingProfs [support@marketingprofs.com]
[email_address]

Subject Lines
Good/OK
Welcome to Fetchdog! Take 10% Off Your Next Order
Branded
Immediate value proposition
Welcome to Art.com - Take 20% Off Today
Branded
Immediate value proposition
Welcome to Sear.com Email Savings!
Email program is branded
Implied value proposition
Not So Good
Welcome
No branding
No mention of email program
No value proposition
Thank you for signing up!
Signing up for what?
No branding

Email address added
Add to address book
Privacy assurance and link
Link/instructions on how to change preferences
How to get started
When the first email will arrive
Resources, key links
“ Your gift” incentive
Unsubscribe link
Reinforce value proposition
Upsell
Call to action/”offer”
Welcome Content Checklist

Sample (Good & Bad) Welcome Emails & Best Practices

Confirmation Emails – Are Not “Welcome Emails”
Primary Purpose is to confirm subscription
They aren’t a subscriber yet
Pre-selling and reminding of value proposition is good, but should not take the place of welcome email; or distract from confirmation action

Net a Porter: 3-Step Sign-Up/Confirmation Process
Opt-in form with minimal (but key) information requested
Double opt-in confirmation email
Further information collected on confirmation page for additional targeting

Net-a-Porter: Double Opt-in Confirmation Email

Net a Porter: DOI Confirmation Page – Collect Additional Data

Value proposition Resources Welcome – 4-parts will follow Login immediately Tips and community FAQ Support contact Overview

MarketingProfs: Manages Expectations/Transparent

Value Proposition Key text navigation links Administrative text links Shopping link

Sears: Works Pretty Well Even With Block Images However, most critical shopping link is image only – should also be text link

Toys-R-Us: Disaster With Images Blocked

Top of email

Middle of email

Bottom of email

Best Practices Followed:
Re-iterates benefits of signing up
Set expectations on when first email would be received (though vague)
Asked to be added to Address Book
Link to privacy policy
HTML to convey brand image
Sent within 24 hours of registering
Primary message is view-able in an images off environment

Welcome Email – Betty Crocker
Confirmation/Welcome email received when registering for their website
Cross promotes their newsletters in case you didn’t sign up when you registered for the website
Great use of imagery
Coupons
Star Ratings
Recipe Box
Best Practices Followed:
Primary message is view-able in an images off environment
Email comes from Betty Crocker (From Address).
Includes personalization (first name)

Good:
Driving immediate engagement with Infiniti by providing key calls to action on the red buttons
Needs to Improve:
The entire main body of the email is an image
Need a mix of text and HTML to optimize visibility in email clients and deliverability

Welcome Series Think Series, Not Just a Single Welcome Email

Welcome 1 - Overview

Welcome 2 – Getting Started

Preferences reminder Reinforce Benefits 1

REI 12-Part Welcome Series (Courtesy Smith-Harmon www.smith-harmon.com)

Takeaways
Take baby steps
Test subject lines
Redesign for preview pane and blocked images
Test layout, use of images, HTML
Incorporate additional welcome content
Monitor open, clicks and conversions for recipients of Welcome messages – impact on overall response rates
Expand from a single welcome email to welcome program
Continuously test

Q & A
Follow Me
Twitter
@LorenMcDonald
Columnist
Media Post - Email Insider
MarketingProfs GetToThePoint
Many others…
Blogs
Silverpop – “Tales”
http://marketing-suite.silverpop.com/loren-mcdonald.html
Contact:
Loren McDonald
[email_address]
www.silverpop.com

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Welcome Email Best Practices Silverpop

by Silverpop on Jan 19, 2009

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Welcome Email Best Practices Silverpop — Presentation Transcript