eMarketer Webinar: Best Practices for Email Marketing

David Hallerman Principal Analyst J U L Y 1 4, 2 0 1 1 Best Practices for Email Marketing Sponsored by:

What we’ll look at today…
Email is not dead: key factors that support continued growth
Getting and keeping customers: essentials of acquisition and retention
Build and maintain effective lists: more data than ever increases complexity
Creating relevant emails: best techniques for segmentation and targeting
Automation’s benefits: pros/cons of ESPs vs. in-house
Test and measure: ways to improve this ongoing and essential process
Beyond the email silo: integrating email marketing with social and mobile
Twitter – #eMwebinar

Email’s Not Dead (far from it)

Email volume and revenue both showed greater increases over the course of last year

Email is the big-time favorite channel for hearing about sales or other promotions

More people join email lists than become social network fans

However, most people are overwhelmed by the piles of email they get daily

Many marketers want a piece of “your” customer’s time and attention

What do people want ? Two things…
Value
Money
Meaning
Relevance
Control
Opt-in or opt-out
Frequency, content…
Channel

Your customer is rarely your friend—they want from you just as certainly as you want from them

Getting and Keeping Customers (acquisition and retention)

Customer retention and acquisition are leading marketing priorities

Customer acquisition Proven ways to get new subscribers
Ask, ask, ask: make it easy to opt-in, reduce barriers
Don't ask too much: get customer data over time
Offer control from day one: such as frequency, content, format
Target prospects: through other channels, like search or store
Tailor landing pages: different depending on source, other info
Launch new, targeted products: an acquisition strategy
Promotions: free trials, discounts, events, content, bundles
Keep pitch focused: handful of benefits and one call-to-action
Incentives after first touch: make part of welcome message
View acquisition as a process: it’s not a single event

Welcome is the customer “behavior” most used by marketers—and it can color much that follows

Customers rarely fall in love with the company (anyway, one kiss ain’t enough)

Customer retention Proven ways to keep people around
Customize email content: personalization builds relationship
Customize landing pages: one size does not fit all
Leverage customer data: to modify and target offerings
Ask, ask, ask: request more info, with clear reason why
Dialogue: make it easy to reach a real person
Opinions: ask people what they think, surveys w/incentives
Unhappy: respond quickly to any customer dissatisfaction
Be personal: unique and uniform tone—people not corporations
Incentives: some kind of value-add, not just for newbies
Triggered incentives: such as coupons after $XX spent
Question: ask why established customer leaves, incentives too

Email marketing’s central theme: improving long-term customer relationships

Customer relationships are more than a cliché—nurture them over time

Trust and loyalty go together in all relationships, even commercial ones—and especially with email

Marketing that people trust : Email always on top (and bottom)

Build and Maintain Effective Lists (more data, more complex)

Tips to grow and sustain a strong email marketing list
Submission does not equal subscription: confirm it with double opt-in and secure code
Check back in periodically: with your inactive subscribers
Make it easy: include link to subscription administration center that’s more than just unsubscribe
Be consistent: always send from the same address
Provide a real email address: for feedback or general uses
Provide a real-world address: to encourage confidence
Quality over quantity: to increase deliverability
Respect data: that shows your emails are not of interest
Two-way street: Acknowledge all subscription changes

Top metrics marketers use to gauge their interactive performance 55% in study cited building opt-in email lists as a top interactive marketing goal in 2011

Email list data quality reaches peak with full-scale opt-in (a committed audience) Single Opt-In Affiliate Network or Forward to Friend Purchased List or List Rentals Double or Confirmed Opt-In

Email marketing tactics that best build opt-in lists

Pre-populating sign-up check boxes undercuts opt-in’s vitality

Pre-checking opt-in boxes may sacrifice quality for quantity

Slow and steady—don’t ask for too much info at once. Get it over time instead

Multistep registration helps attract new subscribers

Maintaining good lists typically requires regular check-ups with customers

Main reasons internet users delete emails without ever opening them

Well-maintained email lists drive greater deliverability

Create Relevant Emails (segmentation and targeting)

How do you get people’s attention when so many are sick and tired of marketing messages?

Some key ways to segment and target email audiences
Customers vs. prospects: helps determine offer needed
Purchases: provides details based on demonstrated interests
Engagement: requires robust data to analyze earlier email click-throughs to gauge interest or customer intentions
Time on list: indicates what to offer, especially when combined with three methods above
Location: create messages relevant to communities or regions
Dynamic content: variable sections within email templates, instead of distinct mailings for segments
Customer value: furthers relationships by frequency and spending
Sophisticated segmentation: to avoid targeting based on purchases for others (like a clothing gift to my wife)

Personalized email is still at a rudimentary stage for many—and so that’s a way to get a leg up on the competition

Effective targeting means less is more

Effective segmenting means more is more

Accurately segmented lists tend to increase relevance , which also encourages recipients to open the emails

However, targeting individuals with relevant content is the single most significant challenge to effective email marketing

Irrelevant messages are a main reason why people unsubscribe to permission email

Benefits of Automation (ESPs or in-house systems)

Automating email is required to make many moving parts fit together

Key automation concepts
Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time…
Right message: Inserting dynamic content into emails is an aspect of targeting. Using data on consumer actions, you can insert specific content into individual emails on a mass scale.
Right person: For relevant communication, you need accurate and somewhat extensive information about each individual. By integrating customer and marketing databases, you can segment more effectively.
Right time: Triggered emails get sent automatically following a customer’s action. That could be an immediate message to thank a new customer, or a series of emails spaced over many months designed to keep the brand top-of-mind for a prospect.

But it’s not just press and send to implement robust automation

Marketers use ESPs for gauging email’s effects and increasing relevance–as well as for automation

Benefits of ESPs
Deliverability: good ones automatically check outgoing emails for spam problems
Relationships: with ISPs, to help you stay on good terms
Compliant: techniques like staggering large mailings into short bursts
Flexibility: tends to put control back into the marketer’s hands
Easier: tools that allow marketers with little coding knowledge to create HTML emails
Extras: such as pre-formatted email surveys, embedded web forms, built-in analytics
Changes: more marketing-automation services means greater database integration (making ESPs more competitive with large in-house email systems)

Benefits of in-house software
More cost-effective: no extra spend associated with any sends
Simpler bottom line: no worry about the ROI for each individual send
Better integration: with multiple in-house databases
More internal customization: such as getting CRM tools to work with email software and other data
Effective segmentation: easier to segment email when the data that defines the groups are all in one place
Security: your own system behind your own firewall gives greater defense against potential problems
Tight control: if you have the in-house resources to handle extensive details of email campaign

With an ESP or without, technology is crucial for sending relevant (lifecycle) emails

Marketers who fully understand their needs will be more likely to engage an ESP that has product features they need

Test and Measure (rinse and repeat)

Infinite loop : Test and measure and test and measure and test and measure

Testing practices: A few ways to improve your email marketing
Name: add brand name to subject line
Size: alter length of subject line
Targeted: try first or last name personalization on subject line
Others: show the number of existing subscribers on sign-up pages
Links: change email link from text to button, or vice versa
Images: add small, relevant image near the call-to-action
Ease: add second unsubscribe link at email’s top (like Groupon)
Money: try offer as percent-off or dollars-off
One: test one variable by segment (males/females or geography)
Test everything: frequency, call-to-action, design, when sent, which segments sent to, repeating offer, landing pages, from line, etc.

Test types of welcomes , then layer offer/no-offer variables on top of that

The main reasons marketers do not test emails are solvable
Don’t know how
Campaign timeline is too short

Measuring test results is also an excellent way to segment customer lists

Metrics tracked varies, based on email marketer’s level of experience

Beyond the Email Silo (integrating social and mobile)

The best don’t do email marketing, but rather they include email as part of overall marketing campaigns

Making email more social than ever before—and more effective, too
Acquisition resource: try email-only promotions to encourage consumers to opt-in
Retention resource: use email to encourage subscribers to follow you on social media (and get further benefits)
Socialize email: personalize email offers with product review content and comments from current subscribers
Special offers: consider extras to give to people who are both subscribers and fans
Track it: not only configure content for passalongs and other sharing, make sure that’s part of your reporting too
Recognize difference: followers and subscribers are not alike
Listen: find out what your target audience is talking about, to help create more targeted, relevant email campaigns

Brand relationships: A mix of email opt in and social network fandom

However, more people get opt-in email than follow brands on Facebook

The passalong —email’s original social element—still sways purchase decisions

Positive word of mouth is often email’s goal, amplified by social venues

Marketers who listen increase the odds that people will talk about them

Brand advocates and regular internet users talk about products primarily through three platforms

Email-generated word-of-mouth often occurs outside of the digital space

Email is a core channel that people use to discuss products and services

What is prime content for sharing —at least in the commercial space?

More pieces to mobile email marketing than just correct formatting

Reaching people everywhere with a smart mobile strategy
Design it: develop mobile versions of emails to accommodate your audience and their needs
Play well together: mobile web landing pages need to match any call-to-action in mobile email
Make it quick: if subscribers can’t readily respond from mobile, they’ll move on to something else
Email isn’t SMS: ask again if list subscribers want to opt-in to text messages; don’t conflate the two
Always ask: Use email preference center to ask subscribers what device they use for email
Limited channel: because mobile devices limit range of communication, email best vehicle for transactional messages
Personal space: tailor brief messages for the feel of mobile

Mobile’s personal side leads to closer relationships and increased retention

Mobile email more likely to drive purchases than any other mobile channel, but social contributes strongly too

Mobile users by far prefer email for hearing from their favorite companies (text messages far less so)

Mobile and email together—a doubly personal environment for marketing

Conditions under which college students would accept smartphone ads

Conclusions

The right message to the right person at the right time.
Email marketing best practices in one sentence: Get accurate and detailed data from people who want to hear from you, and then automate the steps for sending them relevant messages.
Effective email marketing takes more asking and listening than many companies are comfortable with.
Even with email’s central place for both marketers and their customers, an email is merely one link in a chain of events that stretches from initial contact to purchase.
Trust nurtures email’s long-term relationships.
Conclusions: Email Best Practices

LYRIS OVERVIEW July 2011

Case Study: Joy the Store

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Best Practices for Email Marketing Questions & Answers Registrants will receive an email tomorrow that includes a link to view the deck and webinar recording. For more discussion, please join us after the webinar on LinkedIn. Search for the eMarketer Group and click on Discussions. To learn about eMarketer Total Access please visit www.emarketer.com/products or contact us: (800) 405-0844 or [email_address] Twitter Hashtag: #eMwebinar Sponsored by : Presented by: David Hallerman Principal Analyst, eMarketer, Inc.

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eMarketer Webinar: Best Practices for Email Marketing

by eMarketer on Jul 15, 2011

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