2009 Tourism Summit: Permission Email - Joy Cropper

PERMISSION EMAIL:
EMAIL MARKETING THAT GETS RESULTS
Indiana Tourism Summit
September 16, 2009

What is permission email?

Permission email: Email sent to recipients who have opted-in
Permission marketing: About building an ongoing relationship of increasing depth with customers. In the words of Seth Godin, "turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers."
Personalized, relevant, expected
PERMISSION EMAIL

Better response rates
Increased trust and brand affinity
Better deliverability
WHY PERMISSION EMAIL?

WHAT ARE SUMMIT ATTENDEES DOING?

Developing or improving your own permission email program

Analyze what you're doing
Key performance metrics
Subscriber feedback / surveys
Content &design
Draft an improvement plan
List building and maintenance
Creative
Segmentation and personalization
Testing
Analytics: Reporting & analysis
GETTING STARTED

Switch to double opt in; never pre-check the sign-up boxes
Deliver on promises you make in the sign-up process
Guarantee you will not share address with other companies (#1)
Other hooks: tout special pricing, offer first look at new stuff
Allow recipients to specify preferences for email content
Start opt-in process with a field
Optimize forms
Minimize fields to increase volume, add fields to increase lead quality / personalization (test)
List growth tactics:
Incentives, opt-in check boxes, trade shows, offline advertising/direct mail, online marketing/search, call center
BEST PRACTICES: LIST BUILDING

BEST PRACTICES: CREATIVE
Subject line
50 characters or less (or even 35 or less)
Use action words (Get your free..., please confirm…, etc.)
Resend with different subject line to unopens
More links = More clicks
Emails with more links get higher open and click-thru rates than emails with fewer links
Link = text links, navigation, buttons, images
No more than 2 calls to action in an email
1 action = 55% CTR, 2 actions = 38% CTR, 3 actions = 5%, 4 actions = 1%

Make it about the reader, not the sales agenda
Provide sense of urgency and clear call to action (think verbs!)
Include site navigation in email
Cater to skimmers
Prime real estate: beginning of paragraphs, first bullet point or two, and first words of titles and subheads
Bulleted, bolded, underlined and hyperlinked text all work to spike attention
Photograph of a specific person resonates with readers
Change images frequently (esp. in newsletters)
People don’t mind scrolling, but keep key benefit or offer above the fold

Design for the red 'X’ (43% view emails with images blocked/off)
No single-image emails, use ALT tags
Design for the preview pane (53% use preview feature)
First 2 inches of email are key: Text headline, navigation links, key benefit / offer
Avoid large image headers, especially on top or top-left

BEST PRACTICES: SEGMENTATION
Segment subscribers into modest number of groups for which you are able to deliver relevant, personalized messages
BIG impact
Consider:
Campaigns by user details (past purchases, web pages viewed, geography, interests)
Campaigns by sales cycle (customers vs. prospects)
Dynamic content

BEST PRACTICES: TESTING
Test, Test, Test
Subject lines
Mailing times &days
Offers
Layout
Photos
Email clients
Blocked images

Look beyond open rates and click-thrus & determine priority metrics
For ex: click-thru % on specific topics/links, subsequent conversions to requests
• Open rate literature
• Click-thru rate
• Click to open rate (# of unique clicks/# of unique opens)
• Bounce rate
• Delivery rate (emails sent - bounces)
• Unsubscribe rate
• Referral rate (“send-to-a-friend”)
• Number of or percent spam complaints
• Net subscribers (# subscribers + new subscribers) - (bounces + unsubscribes)
• Subscriber retention (# subscribers - bounces - unsubscribes/# subscribers)
• Web site actions (number of visits to a specific Web page or pages)
• Percent unique clicks on a specific recurring link(s)
• Number of orders, transactions, downloads or actions
• Percent orders, transactions, downloads or actions of emails sent or delivered
• Total revenue
• Average order size
• Conversion rate (number of actions/unique click-thrus)
• Average dollars per email sent or delivered
BEST PRACTICES: ANALYTICS

Integrate email with Web analytics (google analytics)
Regularly review performance data (58.8% of youtrack data)
After each send, then 1 week later
Look for problems, consider resends
Compare over time
Create a spreadsheet for past 12 months
Look at:
Consistency
Highs and lows
Message metrics variances
BEST PRACTICES: ANALYTICS

INDUSTRY AVERAGES
Open Rates Click-thru Rates

Who Do You Use?:
Constant Contact (8)
Outlook/Entourage (4)
Exact Target(3)
Emma (2)
Vertical Response (2)
Blue Sky (1)
In-house (1)
Delivra (1)
CoCoTools (1)
mail-bots.com (1)
eGov(1)
For a comprehensive list, check out: http://www.marketingprofs.com/bg/
EMAIL PROVIDERS

IOTD Email Case Study: "Putting the blast in the past"

Situation:
One version sent to 122,048 subscribers once per month
Avg. open rate: 12.9%
Avg. click-thru rate: 4.8%
Goals:
Increase open and click-thru rates
Scrub list
Find out what subscribers want
IOTD EMAIL EVOLUTION

Email survey to determine:
Subscriber demographics, travel habits, favorite activities
Desired email topics, frequency, format
ASK SUBSCRIBERS
% open rate
Upcoming Festivals and Events
Fall Travel
Trip Ideas by Region
Nature and Outdoor Activities
Museums and Historic Sites
Shopping
Performing Arts and Cultural attractions
Nightlife / Dining
Family and Kid Activities
Sporting Events
Girlfriend Getaways
Riverboat Gaming

Three new monthly emails:
Travel Discounts
Festivals & Events
Trip Ideas
New design templates:
Created by agency, updated internally
Branding consistency
Updates to VisitIndiana.com
Personalized, relevant, expected
IOTD NEW EMAIL PROGRAM

Results:

Costs:
$15,000: Subscriber survey, email plan, software upgrade, list management, email writing (trip ideas), template design, analytics integration

4 Test Cases

4 TEST CASES
On 7/15, I signed up for four emails:
Hendricks County
Hamilton County
Richmond/Wayne County
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

HENDRICKS COUNTY
7/15: received email confirming sign up (double opt-in) – great!
8/26: received first email

HENDRICKS COUNTY

HAMILTON COUNTY
7/15: signed up
8/12: received first email
9/15: second email

Richmond/WAYNE COUNTY
7/15: signed up (nice)
7/15: PR email 3 times
7/16: PR email
8/1: early August events
8/19: late August events
9/1: geocaching 4times
9/10: mid-late September events

Richmond/WAYNE COUNTY

7/15: Signed up
Today: Haven't received anything yet
THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM

Analyze what you're doing
Key performance metrics
Subscriber survey
Content & design
Draft an improvement plan
List growth
Creative
Segmentation and personalization
Testing
Analytics
GET STARTED NOW

THANK YOU!
Joy Cropper
Director of Internet Strategy,
Williams Randall Marketing
Joy.cropper@willran.com

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2009 Tourism Summit: Permission Email - Joy Cropper

by Indiana Office of Tourism Development on Sep 18, 2009

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2009 Tourism Summit: Permission Email - Joy Cropper — Presentation Transcript