BlueHornet Consumer Views of Email Marketing 2013

Susan—very quick.

Susan—We surveyed US consumers between the ages of 25-40, living in urban/suburban regions of the country, mix of m/f.

Susan—Signing up from a website is the most common method, but consumers are comfortable signing up for email programs using many different methods, including ones that they can use while they’re on the go, like from within mobile apps and via text to join, using SMS.

Susan—We asked consumers why they sign up for email programs, and “to receive discounts” is by far the most important reason. 11% more cited discounts as the main reason why this year, than in 2012.

Susan—But don’t assume that consumers only care about discounts. In addition to conducting our survey, we also hit the streets to get futher insight into some of the survey response data. Here we asked consumers what they love about email, and they do love the discounts. But let’s listen to the other things that consumers love, in their own words.

Susan: Consumers are willing to sign up for your email program but they expect real value in return. Discounting may be part of that value, but there’s an opportunity to offer other types of value, as well. Kristi: “Surprise and delight.” Educating customers.

(TALK TRACK FROM PACSUN PRESENTATION:) Just how big is mobile for pacsun? BIG! 30% of our visitors brow on their mobile devices. That goes upwards of double on black friday. 50% of email opens are coming from mobile Mobile open rates are 2x higher than desktop. Our customers live and breathe on their smart phones. It’s the first thing that they check when they wake up. They research and do homework on their laptops, however their phones are where the real conversions happen. If we tell them at 9:00 PM via email that an exclusive presale starts at 1:00 AM, we see sales spike at 1:00 AM. They will start tweeting if the sale isn’t live right on time. They’re opening, reading, listening and acting in real time.

Chris: BlueHornet clients are definitely looking at expanding the types of sign up methods they offer. PacSun iPhone/Pad CEC ttj Kristi: GHA in-room brochure. I agree that email is still a personal form of communication, moreso than direct mail, less so than social networks or SMS and members want to have control over their inbox and who they are contacted by Chris: make the acquisition process strategic and make sure it sets the relationship off on the right foot and coordinates with your brand image. Kristi: take as little info up front as process.

Susan—Let’s move into the survey data around how consumers engage with email via mobile devices. We’ve got some pretty revealing consumer sentiment around mobile email.

Susan to speak to graph quickly Kristi to speak to GHA increased from around 43% to 50% Chris to relate info for other clients: PacSun= over 50%, Slacker Radio over 25%, others over 65%

Susan—About 75% may redeem a mobile coupon on their mobile device at POS. This ties right back into our first video, where we saw that this type of convenience factor is something that consumers really like about email and something that can help ensure email’s relevance with today’s omnichannel consumer.

Susan—Now here’s one of the most surprising data points from our survey. For two years running, we’ve observed consumer dissatisfaction with emails that don’t look good on their mobile device. But in 2013, fewer consumers will read the email anyway or look at it on their computer later, plus there’s a significant increase in the number of folks who will not only delete the email, but take the additional step of unsubscribing from the email program altogether.

Susan—This is definitely a point that we wanted to dig in deeper on with the folks that we spoke to in our face-to-face interviews. Let’s hear more about why they have such a strong negative reaction to emails that don’t look good on mobile.

Susan—So as consumers say in their own words, a poorly rendered mobile email gives them a bad impression of a brand and they really expect companies to be adopting the technologies required to make sure messages can be quickly and easily viewed and engaged with. Looking at consumer sentiment on mobile email across the board, the takeaway here is clear: You must optimize your email for today’s mobile consumer. The stakes are too high not to.

Susan tosses to Kristi and Chris to discuss responsive design. Kristi: Before using responsive design, we had both a desktop and a mobile version for each email we sent. At that time, 43% of our members were opening on a mobile device, but only 5% were clicking the mobile version link. That meant that 95% of the mobile openers were looking at the desktop version. Our opt-out rate at that time was 2.2% of opens. We started using Responsive Design last fall (no longer needing a separate mobile version) and adjusted our overall layout to be more vertical with scrolling (less columns), and opt-outs are now 1.1% of opens. GHA NL from March 2102 as before example and Nov 2012 as after v.1 and this year for v2 of responsive design. Chris: Kristi, what is your experience re: Responsive design considering your global brand and international marketing presence?

Chris: Slacker before/after plus stats

Susan—Let’s look next at how consumers engage with your emails.

Susan: We’ll start with this guy.

Susan: OK, so he may not be the typical subscriber, but today we do see that consumers are reading personal email all day long. Chris: mention the shift from brands obsessing about time of day

Susan: Now let’s look at why consumers, who are looking at marketing emails all day long, may choose to open your email and not one from another brand. By a longshot, they tell us that they’re more likely to open emails from companies that they have a purchase relationship with. The data shows that whether the purchase relationship takes place primarily online or in store matters little. Chris/Kristi—Comments on content emails? I would like to emphasize that there’s a place for content emails and that some brands may want to consider adding them to their mix of promo msgs as a way to add value.

Susan toss to Kristi: At GHA you have some learnings about helping consumers make the connection between your brand and their purchase. Kristi: Need to connect the email with the past purchase behavior – we saw this in the beginning – we have a global loyalty programme that’s shared across many separate brands and the member enrolled in Kempinski’s loyalty program, but they were confused when they received an email from GHA Discovery (the name of the global program), which listed Kempinski in the email but only in small print at the bottom; we received a higher amount of opt-outs and complaints, so we now always co-brand with the program’s name and the enrolling brand name/logo on emails (there is always a dynamic member bar that is the color of their tier, and it populates with name, member #, and the enrolling brand logo), and in print too – the front of the envelope has the enrolling brand logo, and the back has our program logo so that they see their ‘purchase’ brand first. Also, we see this a lot with the Omni member base. Omni calls the loyalty program Select Guest and they offer more benefits than many of our other brands; they say that members are joining Select Guest which is extended globally through GHA Discovery. However, the latter part of that message is usually left off at the hotel or in conversation, so the member is taken by surprise a little when GHA Discovery starts emailing them. So we intentionally adjust the Subject Line for Omni-enrolled members to say Omni Select Guest, so that they make the connection and so that we are more credible to them. So all other members receive ‘Your [month] Account Summary’ but Omni-enrolled members receive ‘Omni Select Guest Global Program News’ – this has reduced opt-outs and complaints significantly over the past couple years

Susan discusses this subject line data quickly, then tosses to Kristi to share GHA’s differing results. Kristi: Subject line – we’ve had the most success with non-promotional subject lines; our members don’t like the aggressive/promotional ones; our best is simply ‘Your [month] account summary’ instead of ‘Up to 40% off’… (even if the account summary has up to 40% off discounts) We tested this with our US audience a couple times, once approx 2 years ago and again a few months ago, and the non-promotional subject line received approx 4 points higher open rate, in contrast, the click-thru was higher on the promotional one (the more specific the subject line, the better the click-thrus) – it depends if you care more about opens (to have the email read by more) or click-thrus (conversion is the main goal) – for these emails we wanted brand exposure and news to be seen, so open rate was the primary objective, though click-thru/conversion is always the end goal so that was still nice

Susan: As a B2C digital marketer in 2013, you have an opportunity to be in front of your customers everyday. But you can’t fully leverage that value if you don’t have a strong relationship to know your subscriber well and know what works for them—what types of subject lines they respond to, what they find most valuable, etc. For marketers, this means making sure you are using purchase and behavior data to effectively give subscribers the information that they value. It also means continuous testing of your email programs.

Chris—Discuss the importance of ongoing testing rather than one-off efforts.

Susan: The last section of the report that we’ll be looking at today is an important one.

For two years running, we’ve asked consumers this question and this year we saw something interesting. The number one reason changed in 2013. Last year, the top reason for unsubscribing was relevance. Respondents didn’t feel like most of the email they got was relevant to them. And in 2012, relevance only slightly nosed out in front of frequency. But if you look at this year’s results in yellow, you’ll see that the number one reason for unsubscribing is frequency, and it beats out relevance by over 10%.

Susan: And while consumer disdain for email frequency may paint a bleak picture, keep this in mind. When we asked consumers if they’d consider opting down when given the option, 47% said that they would—either always or sometimes. That means that marketers have the potential to save nearly half of their attriting subscribers by giving them the option to change the frequency of the messages they receive or have some control over the types of content they get.

Susan: So looked at collectively, there’s a clear call to action here for B2C marketers: Give consumers more control.

Chris: Speak to different types of preference centers Kristi: Speak to GHA

Susan—Before we open things up for your questions, we have a final video clip to show you.

We asked the consumers we interviewed if they had any parting words for email marketers. And they did. So now, a word from your consumers.

Susan--While you submit questions for Chris and Kristi, let me just wrap up what we’ve seen today and what we feel is the outlook for B2C email marketing in 2013. Looking at the survey data we’ve presented here today, along with the number of data points in the report that we didn’t cover off on in this presentation, the outlook for email marketing seems very positive, in general. I think as you’ve seen from the consumer video clips, consumers are taking your email with them everywhere. And they’re pretty happy to do so, assuming that you’re delivering value to them in return. And while marketers seem to have closed the relevancy gap some over the past year or so, there’s an issue with message frequency that needs to be addressed. Some easy steps can be taken right away to improve on this point, like providing opt down or preference management, others, like building a relationship that’s strong enough to ensure that your messages rise above the noise require time and consistency. Chris/Kristi comment. Kristi: point on segmentation with frequency.

Host: Reads questions

Susan and Chris will be the guest experts and we’ll be discussing the Consumer Survey in greater detail.