Your email marketing journey:
Assessing your email marketing capability
Email marketing
maturity stage
A. Goal setting &
evaluation
B. Contact
strategy and
policy
C. Segmentation,
targeting &
personalisation
D. Email
marketing
integration &
governance
E. Test & learn
Stage 1. Initial
‘Pray and Spray’
None None; Enewsletter
/ Solus emails
0 Segments Limited
integration of
broadcasts and
data
Limited
Stage 2. Managed
Improving
relevance
List growth
Segmented
response
Basic contact
strategy and rules
2-6 Segments
Basic contact
strategy
Campaign
integration (DM or
phone)
Subject line
Offer testing
Stage 3. Defined
Segmented
relevance
Marketing
outcomes
“Beyond the
click”
Basic lifecycle
communications
Simple event-
triggered
Welcome
reactivate
ESP, web analytics
& social media
integration
Template layouts
Stage 4.
Quantitative
Contextual
relevance
Subscriber
engagement
Individualised
contact strategy
Recency,
Frequency, Value
Auto-triggers
based on web
behaviour
Individual /
segment testing
Stage 5.
Optimising
Optimised
relevance
Integrated web
and multichannel
Integrated online
& offline contacts
Multi-layered
Dynamic content
insertion
Right-channeling
based on value &
preference
Real-time and
multivariate
3 more advanced ways of
measuring email engagement
How do you measure engagement with email?
Open/clicks/CTOR is NOT good enough, instead…
Opens/clicks/CTOR/revenue:
1. At position in lifecycle
2. By segment
3. By offer / email type
4. Aggregated over a longer time period
20
Measuring list activity – email
engagement/disengagement
These “hurdle rates” are for whole list. Repeat:
By segment
By product categories purchased
21
TIP: Measure the overall
health of your list through
activity / inactivity levels
over time
Measure Period Number of Subscribers % of list total
Never Open All time 48,000 16.0%
Last 6 Months 168,000 56.0%
Never Click All time 96,000 32.0%
Last 6 Months 144,000 48.0%
Never Bought All time 48,000 16.0%
Last 6 Months 192,000 64.0%
Never Bought Online All time 96,000 32.0%
Last 6 Months 216,000 72.0%
Start with the customer!
Getting the sell-inform-entertain balance right
http://www.ruderfinn.com/rfrelate/intent/intent-index.html
Creating a content “hub”
1. Be relevant. Understand the content
that will appeal to different
audiences.
2. Create an editorial calendar. Your
social media marketing will be more
effective if you produce content on
a regular, consistent schedule.
3. Offer distribution choices, but keep a
focus. Offer choice to alert
subscribers to content using different
types of channels since they will
have different preferences.
5 rules SMO – Rohit Bharaava
http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/
Creating a content “hub”
4. Syndicate through partners.
Identify partner sites and
networks who may publish your
content, either in it’s original form
or tailored for their audiences.
5. Make communications two-way.
Don’t just treat the channels as
an alert or update service.
Engage!
5 rules SMO – Rohit Bharaava
http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/
Tactic 2: mobile marketing
Key questions:
Q. How important is mobile email use for your audience?
Q. Is user mobile email experience satisfactory?
Q. Is mobile driving commercial outcomes?
The rise and rise of mobile marketing
Source: Campaign Monitor, 3 billion emails, 2011
The desktop in decline…?
Share of device page traffic for News category (weekday)
Source: comScore Custom Analytics, U.S., August 2011
British Airways
We helped BA launch a new suite of
mobile applications in late July/early
August. The campaign was prompted by
an increasing penetration of smartphones,
and an analysis of the devices most
commonly used by members to access
standard Executive Club emails.
Innovation in Email Marketing
Winner: e-Dialog and British Airways
About the winning entry: To promote the launch and maximise downloads of the
Executive Club mobile application, BA and e-Dialog developed a unique strategy,
using historical customer data to target smartphone users in a highly targeted
email-to-mobile campaign.
Judge’s comments: A smart and progressive email marketing campaign that – as
well as being innovative in its scope – generated some great results.
Still variable by country…
Mobile share of non-computer traffic for select market
Source: comScore Device Essentials, August 2011
Targeting customer by Device
After launching in 2010, the Skype App on Android & iPhone grew
fast, becoming number 6 in Apple’s most popular app list in 2010.
e-Dialog recognised that an analysis of the devices used to view
emails would allow Skype to target owners of specific devices
Email campaign CTA drove straight to iTunes for app download
Skype’s Mobile App Downloads
Targeting customer by Device
Results
Click through Target = 5%, Achieved 9%
Open rates were as high as the mid 40s (%)
The average across all markets was up from 31% to 38%, for the volumes sent this is
a significant increase
Skype’s Mobile App Downloads
Mobile Email Design Best Practices
A narrow email width
Single column layout
Super subject line
Large headlines & CTAs
Bullet proof buttons
Graceful Degradation
iPad Optimised Video in Email
e-Dialog planned, designed and
executed a campaign that
specifically targets iPad owners to
drive digital subscriptions to the
Times websites and iPad editions.
Tactic 3: Channel integration
Key questions:
Q. How does email work with other channels to drive results?
Q. Have we reviewed attribution?
Q. Are we using email to drive offline outcomes?
Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI
Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research
Touchpoints
Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI
Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research
http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-business-case/
Email & search
Case study
Understanding multichannel behaviour – implications?
http://www.smartinsights.com/analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/multichannel-customer-journeys-ropo/
Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO) Mobile Buyer
Mobile Buyer
Mobile Buyer
Tactic 4: Contact strategies
Key questions:
Q. Is our layered segmentation effective?
Q. Have we optimised our triggered emails?
Q. How do we grow value?
Common Email targeting options
Targeting approaches Method
1. Classic profile-based
demographic segmentation
Target customer groupings according to their
characteristics & motivations
2. Customer value Assess customers by current and future value
potential
3. Web design personas Target 2-10 typical customer journeys
4. Customer lifecycle Target messages according to length of time
using online services
5. Purchase and response
behaviour
Use “sense and respond” behavioual targeting
based on RFM
6. Channel preference Communicate with customer in their preferred
media (and according to value)
7. Tone and style preference Communicate with customers according to
their tastes inferred from demographics or
behaviour.
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Tip – create a layered segmentation
An example from eBay
Static
Recent
BehaviouralDerivedDemographic
Gender, Geography
Consumer/Business
Transactional Value Segmentation
Propensity Models
Kids
Last
purchase
Tech Fashion Cars & Parts
Last
category
Keyword
Keyword
personas
Category clusters
Recent Activity
Do you send out emails based on
the following triggers?
Retargeting– do Amazon get it right?
Purchase
Dispatched +7d
+14d
+21d
Recognition of
previous purchase
Integrating SMS into email campaigns
Confused.com is the UK’s
comparison site of choice for
car, home, travel, life, and more.
Keeps its customers up-to-date
with guides, tips and information
and renewal advice
To extend email’s impact they
followed it with an SMS using our
platform to send both email and
SMS messages.
Contains two custom published
fields: first name and the lowest
price offer for insurance.
Confused.com Renewal Reminder
Summary: targeting options
Purchase behaviour:
Buyer vs non-buyer
One-time vs multiple
Email activity
Active vs inactive clicker
Number of clicks on email
Web activity
Visited, never visited
Browsed, not bought
Channel activity
Web vs Store vs Catalogue
RFM
Proportional
Hard-coded
Category purchased
Appending lifestyle data
Value
Tactic 5: social-email
Key questions:
Q. Are social sharing links and social content effective?
Q. Do you cross-promote social channel OVPs?
Q. Do you have a plan for social sign-on / email integration?
SYWN prominent above fold
In this May 1, 2011 email, Macy’s places the
share call-to-action in the same content
block as the “Friends & Family” promotion.
This positioning is much more prominent and
compelling than the usual placement in the
header or footer.
In this Feb. 2, 2011 email, Kohl’s asks their
customers to nominate a kid in the
community to receive a scholarship.
There’s a prominent secondary call-to-
action to “Share this on Facebook” to try
to broaden the reach of the campaign.
Offer optimisation
Summary
A simple, generic (branded-only)
retargeting email achieved a 10
percent uplift in online conversions
A bespoke retargeting email that
offered a 5% discount via a time-limited
promotional code of 72 hours, more
than doubled this conversion rate
A bespoke retargeting email with the
same discount, but this time with a
time-limited code of 48 hours
quadrupled the original conversion rate
http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-remarketing-an-example-of-how-to-test/
Creative optimisation
Test version A
Send Volume: 10,000
Sample criteria: Random
Click through rate: 6.1%
Test version B
Send Volume: 10,000
Sample criteria: Random
Click through rate: 4.5%
Main Broadcast
Send Volume: 180,000
Click through rate: 5.8%
Timing optimisation
May sound simplistic, but finding the right day to send to our
customers has significantly improved our revenue and
engagement rates
To find the right time, we undertook significant day of the week
testing, with some interesting results
Subject line optimisation
Subject line testing has been one of our most powerful ways of
increasing channel engagement
Every eBay DM is tested against at least three different subject lines with
test cells sent 4-8 hours before main cells are sent
Subject line optimisation can increase response rates by up to 20-40%