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Colby Cavanaugh - Winning the Inbox: 3 Things Savvy Email Marketers Must Know
- 2. 15,000 4.2 1.3M 6B EMMA CUSTOMERS AVERAGE YEARS WITH EMMA DOLLARS DONATED TO CHARITY CAMPAIGNS SENT IN 2016
- 3. #WinTheInbox
- 5. #WinTheInbox
- 7. Deliver an exceptional inbox experience. #WinTheInbox
- 8. You have to focus on the right things. #WinTheInbox
- 9. Design matters. Automate when possible. You’re never done. #WinTheInbox
- 10. Design matters. Automate when possible. You’re never done. #WinTheInbox
- 11. Design matters. Automate when possible. You’re never done. #WinTheInbox
- 13. #WinTheInbox
- 14. #WinTheInbox
- 17. #WinTheInbox
- 19. #WinTheInbox
- 21. #WinTheInbox
- 24. #WinTheInbox
- 25. #WinTheInbox
- 28. #WinTheInbox
- 35. #WinTheInbox
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Editor's Notes
- Here’s everything you should be doing with your email program to make it the best email program of all time. We think about email marketing all day. You probably don’t. You also have different priorities as a marketer And that’s probably why…
- 62% of marketer’s, when polled by Ensighten, say they often feel “overwhelmed” by the sheer volume of information that’s coming at them, from all directions. You want to be thoughtful, but you can’t. Oftentimes – what we see with email is that we see marketers is that they default to the same old same old. They send out that monthly “newsletter” they’ve always sent with 3 columns. They use a stagnant template that’s one-size-fits. They aren’t segmenting. They aren’t stopping to analyze, pivot and as a result they aren’t fully in control of getting better results. This isn’t happening because marketers don’t want to do better email, we’re just busy and email often falls lower on the priority list for a lot of teams.BUT what happens when you’re overwhelmed? You aren’t efficient. You just need to get it done, right? And that’s probably why Which is unfortunate because…
- …there are consistent, powerful results that marketers see with email. The DMA puts these ROI of email stats out every year and this is the latest… That percentage looks pretty impressive, but really that translates roughly to about a $40 return for every $1 spent on email marketing. Awesome, right? More awesome is that that’s more than double that of every other digital channel. More than social, more than paid search…and this has been true for as long as we’ve been working with clients. Another way to look at it – this isn’t new. Not all marketers are struggling to succeed with their email programs...
- Of course you do! So what are they doing? How do you get the highest returns possible from your email program? 58% of American Consumers list email as their preferred way to hear from brands
- Deliver an exceptional inbox experience. The ROI – of any channel, not just email – will always follow an exceptional experience. In study, Adobe, they found that while consumers prefer email – they don’t need to hear from you every single day. Not all email from your brand is created equal. Consumers are saying that they want fewer emails from brands and – even more importantly they want those emails to seem “less repetitive”. How can you as a marketer interpret that other than “sending less”? And, the savviest email marketers know, that the best way to combat content that feeling of repetition and intrution in the inbox is to send email that actually connects. What does an exceptional experience look and feel like to your subscribers?
- Well - We believe that email is the most powerful asset a marketer has to connect with their audiences – but it’s not magic. As with anything, you have to focus on the right areas of your email program that can get you where you know you can be. And this starts before you ever send an email. There’s a great quote by Abraham Lincoln that our friend Michael Aagaard – brilliant Conversion Rate Optimization specialist – over at Unbounce reminded me of the other day and it’s this: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Marketers are overwhelmed and yet are not adopting the tools or strategies that would help them not only scale their efforts, but more importantly – deliver the type of experiences to consumer’s inboxes that help them achieve myriad goals. And I love that because that’s what we mean by thinking outside the inbox. With a little planning, you can make a huge impact pretty quickly with email. In this presentation, I’m going to focus on three areas that we know, if you can nail, will yield real results. So what are they?
- First – we’ll look at some design tweaks that successful email marketers are already doing that you can steal. One of the best assets a brand can have at their disposal is a well-designed email marketing program and that starts at the inbox level with great-looking, high-performing email messages. So – while we’re going to talk about data – we’re going to start with some tips to make sure that all that people actually open, look at and interact with your mailings.
- First – we’ll look at some design tweaks that successful email marketers are already doing that you can steal Then, we’ll walk through the power of automating whenever you possibly can. You’re busy, your audience is busy AND your audience doesn’t have the same goals as you. You’re on their timeline now and one of the most powerful ways to connect with a subscriber is to get in front of them in all the right ways when they’re most-likely to be responsive. 1 thing is that automation – that term we hear all the time – is still underutilized among marketers. And of those that are doing it, they’re not necessarily using the right tools. Only 13% of email marketers are using marketing automation software according to a study from Autopilot. And, of those that are fully embracing automation, they’re over 133% MORE LIKELY to send emails that actually do match a customer’s lifecycle according to Lenskold and Pedowitz Group.
- First – we’ll look at some design tweaks that successful email marketers are already doing that you can steal Then, we’ll walk through the power of automating whenever you possibly can. You’re busy, your audience is busy AND your audience doesn’t have the same goals as you. You’re on their timeline now and one of the most powerful ways to connect with a subscriber is to get in front of them in all the right ways when they’re most-likely to be responsive. And we’ll round things out by looking at ways that you can analyze your results, iterate and keep getting better with every send.
- When you think about your brand, think of how much goes into it. People spend a ton of money on every other facet of their brand, so why should your email program be any different? Email tends to get overlooked, but as a marketer it’s your responsibility to create cohesion in every aspect of your brand. Design is also more than just your “template”…let’s look at what we mean
- Good email design starts here. This is an email capture popup with a compelling CTA. Simple as that. It’s easy to see the offer of 15% off. So, I’m getting something and then I have two options. The white button, which is ‘yes’ and obviously stands out more is “selected” already. The no button is less-enticing and says “No, I’d rather pay more”…which is a bit sassy, but they can get away with it. However – one of the biggest things happening here is the type of form they’re using and also the page that this form is on: This is a banner-style pop-up that appears when you land on the page. It’s unobtrusive. I’m still able to navigate the website in the background and the banner stays stationery until I tell it go away. And, according to our friends at Privy who provide a plethora of custom form types you can add to your site and connect to your ESP, these banner-type sign up forms are outperforming static form and pop-ups. Also – this popup appears when I go to this particular page on Frank + Oak’s site. They were announcing women’s clothing for the first time ever, also. So, by clicking this banner on this particular page, a new subscriber is also telling them something about their preferences potentially. Which is awesome. Because, as you’ll see – the more data you have – the better you can target. But let’s keep talking about strategic design, shall we?
- Mobile + Focused CTAs matter This next example is from one of my favorite brands, Patagonia. They knock it out of the park, always. This one mailing looks great in all forms…desktop, mobile and in a preview pane, which is what we’re looking at here. 80% of people are only scanning, so giving them something “above the fold” that anchors their attention is vital to hooking them in past that initial open. Also – your brain processes images 60,000x faster than text. That’s not consumers. That’s human beings. Period. So, you’re more-likely to capture my attention because of that too. Also – over half of all email is opened first on a mobile device and that number is only trending up. This email looks just as great on a desktop as it does a mobile device. It’s a nice, sleek one-colum design. There’s a really great balance of images of text. Also, it’s really scrollable. Don’t be afraid to “embrace the scroll” – as our friends at litmus would say. And that image at the top? Well, it actually is representing a video, isn’t it? And video + email is a magical combo.
- But before I rattle off why buttons are powerful. Let’s tackle a very common problem with a lot of emails. And that’s a LACK OF FOCUS. Let’s look at this one from Toyota. It’s “personalized” supposedly because they use a first name and the type of car the person drives. The rest of the email? Well, it’s frankly a huge mess. There are too many things going on. You want me to buy an SUV, check out the new Camry, I’m losing my keys apparently all the time and basically – not only is this email useless to me, it’s a exemplary specimen to talk about something called “Choice Paradox”. Basic gist of this cognitive phenomenon that we can apply to email: IF you give people too many choices, they WILL end up choosing nothing as a result. Done. They’ll click away. Too many choices enduces actual feelings of anxiety. So not only are you not getting me to do something, you actually just ruined my day briefly. Thanks a lot. Which is probably why…
- EMAILS WITH A SINGLE CALL TO ACTION CAN INCREASE SALES BY 1617% You want high ROI? You want to give me a good experience? Start by not freaking me out with 18 different confusing calls to action, why don’t you? Including too many CTAs in your email is a mistake far too many marketers continue to make – and we get it! It’s tempting. You’re busy. You’re overwhelmed and you want one email to do everything, but unfortunately – that rarely works. Even our Marketing United email – technically we were asking for a few different things, but every CTA in that message landed the recipient in the same general place on our site and every one of those pages had a strong call to action for them to buy a ticket. The buttons all had the same theme and so that works. But – back to Toyota - I’m happy to report…
- That…not only did they get it together by sending me two separate emails that represent two very different goals for them – they are using buttons very very well. And why are buttons so important? Well, remember when I said that most people are encountering your message first on their mobile devices? Well, guess what – they’re a helluva lot easier to interact with on a phone. It’s not a tiny blue text link. To that end, buttons will outperform text links in your mailings almost every single time. Some other button tips? Make sure the language on those buttons is specific. Use first person pronouns. Use action verbs. Tell me what to do. Your job as a marketer is to make this EASY. You can also further reduce friction by surrounding those buttons with some white space. Use bright, contrasting colors. The buttons in the first email are great – plenty of room around them and they’re BRIGHT RED.
- Ok. So, I will surely babble about buttons some more. You get the picture, but now I want to switch back to another design tactic that garners some serious results. Dynamic content. Specifically, dynamic images above the fold – again, our brain’s process images 60x faster than text. So by showing me an image I might identify with immediately, you stand to win my attention immediately. They are sending an invitation to an in-store event to engaged customers, but in order to hopefully resonate with the receiver of the message they’re using dynamic images at the top... By using data in their eCommerce platform, specifically past purchase fields - they’re able to serve people that have purchased men’s boots more men’s boots. People that have purchased women’s boots get women’s boots. No data? You get both. It’s simple, but has proven effective for them. Most importantly – this tactic is saying you’re man or a woman” it’s simply just saying “We actually pay attention to how you spend your money with us and we want to get you the information that matters to you.”
- …and we’ll round out this section with a B2B example. There are a lot of things I love about this email from Wistia. First of all – this email actually contradicts a lot of things I’ve said in this section. And ...that’s on purpose. “Great design” isn’t about having some elaborate template. It’s not about always throwing a button – and you know I love buttons – into the mix. It’s about relevancy and sometimes it’s about making a message feel familiar or similar to other messages I’m already receiving. We like say – you’re not competing with your competitor, you’re competing with every other person – from my boss to my wife to the Patagonias of the world – to stand out in crowded inboxes. This email came directly from someone we work directly with named Ali. This email is saying “thank you” for a specific thing that we did (rank them highly on a customer satisfaction survey). Then, they’re providing a really funny and engaging video as a reward. Then, they actually make another ask. It’s a secondary CTA – but they’re asking us to leave a review for them. And we did. We’re satisfied customers, this email felt personal to us – even though we knew it was automated – and all of these factors worked together. So – we’ve imparted some design wisdom on you – let’s talk about WHEN to send these well-designed messages out.
- ….and that means automation. When you take all that great design and apply it at key touchpoints that matter on the customer’s watch – you get closer to crafting that exceptional experience and....
- …get big results. Triggered campaigns drive an INSANELY HIGH conversion rate. And they’re wiping the floor with traditional “batch and blast” campaigns. From that same study - These campaigns also see a 381 percent higher click rate, and an 180 percent higher post-click conversion rate. Which is all well and good. Triggered campaigns obviously work but – which ones? Well – one of the most powerful ways to get started is at that first impression…
- And, in email world, that means crafting a great extended hello or “Welcome Series” We get these emails all the time, but we don’t think one is enough. If you think about it, a welcome series is one of the most exponentially powerful automated triggers a marketer can have. If you leave with nothing else, leave with the idea that if you’re only send one email or not sending one at all – that’s your homework. And, luckily, we have a really nice and general formula that I’ll go over at a really high level with you now. Now, this is simply a suggestion and there are lots of ways to do a welcome series – but at minimum, here’s a good starting point. Welcome emails can increase a subscriber’s long term engagement with your brand, over time, by as much as 33% according to some studies. They also ALWAYS average higher open and click rates than other types of mailing in your arsenal. People expect these. You’re behind if you’re not doing this. Period. So this one is from a great nonprofit client of ours called Thistle Farms. Here’s what they’re doing: • Email 1: They’re saying thank you, they’re giving away the free shipping they promised at signup and they’re giving you a taste of their brand. - Make good on any promises at signup but don’t overload the message or muddle the sentiment • Email 2: Next, they’re showing a story of how their work impacts a specific person and telling her story. - Show the new subscriber why they should care. People trust other people, so employ social proof to establish that layer of trust with new subscribers • Email 3: Then – and this is my favorite – they’re inviting you to an event, but they’re also giving you lots of things to click on. - You’re guiding someone that has only given you an email address to interact with the mailing – and we’ve established that these mailings garner higher engagement rates. Provide multiple pathways or choices for the subscriber and then look at clickthroughs on the backend to put people into new categories or at least gather new data points • Email 4: and THEN they’re asking for something - Get a little bolder, ask for their business or a demo or a donation – whatever it may be, at this touchpoint, it’s safer to assume that you’re alienating a new subscriber Another first step to automating smartly, beyond the welcome, is to start integrating…
- ecobee’s thermostats keep your home comfortable and save energy – helping both the environment and your wallet. In this email, they tell each subscriber exactly how much energy they’ve saved with ecobee products using dynamic content blocks. It’s relevant, personalized email at its finest. STAT: Relevant emails drive 18X more revenue than broadcast emails. (Juniper Research) STAT: 61% of consumers feel better about companies that send custom content (Custom Content Council) This is a great B2B example of doing just that. Uberflip, like Wistia, is sending a really great email that is tracking a subscriber’s behavior with their content. They’re able to do this by tracking clicks on their own content hub, which is then tracked in their CRM and then deploying automated messages after enough “activity” has occurred that would indicate a subscriber is really engaged in their content. And, again, we talk about design. This is an email from Tara. This email doesn’t need to be flashy and have 80 elements, but they do still have three content recommendations at the bottom that, honestly, look like big ole buttons. I love this, also, because this is often a tactic of B2C brands. Amazon does this all the time, “We see you bought x? What if you also bought this related thing.” It’s actually how they make about 30-40% of their revenue. Just…automating recommendations. And just like Amazon – it works regardless of what you’re selling – this content is like the other content I like and they’re just calling that out. No smoke & mirrors. We know this game. I love their transparent approach to automating. You aren’t fooling anyone, so just make it easy and convenient for me to engage with your brand without all the trickery.
- Click-based triggers/branched automation: And automating doesn’t always happen outside the inbox with your site or key dates, you can – of course – branch incredibly relevant automated mailings off of OTHER mailings. This is called branch automation and it means that I get dynamic messages tailored to my interest in a particular element or CTA in a previous email. This content is based on my activity in an email and, in this example, what I clicked. Here you see multiple vacation destinations. I clicked on this badass photo of Hotel Havana in San Antonio and – wadda ya know – a few days later? I get the email on the right. And there’s that compelling, gorgeous blue room that got my attention the first time. Had I interacted with the Hudson Hotel? Obviously, I would have gotten something different and so on. But you know what?
- Dollar shave club takes it a step further They are getting out in front of me with product suggestions ahead of my renewal period A lot of retailers and non-profits - any kind of subscription-based brand – crun a great risk of people churning if they aren’t continually reminding them about the value of their subscription/donation/etc. DSC is actually not only showing you the value, but also easily making it simply to buy more stuff right from the email itself. On a mobile device, you’re already logged in and you literally can buy with just one or two taps. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. The probability of selling to an existing customer is as high as 60-70%.
- Sometimes you don’t get it right. You can hook up every single tool. You can profile me in that welcome series. You can track my browser behavior. You can cookie the shit out of me – and sometimes, the best way to get what you need to deliver the right experience is simply to just ASK. This email is doing this really really well. Straight up leading with “Have we got it right?” Having images above the fold that correspond to their CTAs And then - 3 buttons. Simple click-based CTAs. They’ll automate/segment/etc. off of these interactions – the recipient just has to click. That’s it. Easy. And, this is a great re-engagement email - People that receive these emails are more-likely to engage later, even if they don’t engage at this touchpoint. The simple act of doing something like this, as a brand, works and will get people reading subsequent messages. Promise. But…guess what...
- You’re. Never. Done. Sorry. But, that’s ok. Because if you can dial in your design and get your data in check, you can start to do some really great work with your email program overall and – the best part – the tools are there and there are scores of people that successfully do it with a little help… So, let’s take a look at a customer of ours that illustrates a lot of the points we’ve looked at today and bring it on home…
- Visit Philly - Visitor’s bureau for the city of Philadelphia - And they were excited to come on board - Sending this email about to thousands of people Great brand. Not-so-great email. Here’s what we mean…
- It’s not “bad” – we’ve all seen worse, but it could be SO MUCH BETTER. So, let’s look at some of the issues… - But they had a “classic” newsletter layout - There are way way way too many CTAs - This email is really long, too, but not in the the good “embrace the scroll” way - Worst of all – this email was not friendly. It was not templatized through our system and it was a laborious, clunky, and doomed-to-fail beast - They were averaging around 10% open rates (industry averages for good mail are about 20-30% for business as usual emails) So – they came to us. We consulted. We looked at what they were doing and thought – you have great imagery. You have a great brand. They have a wonderful website. They’ve got the classic problem we discussed earlier (play up that they’re just shoving it all into these newsletters out of frustration)… But we had some great material to work with. We sat down and with just a few small tweaks, we landed here...
- You’ll see echoes of the design elements we discussed earlier. Again - People have much stronger responses to visual stimuli than they do to text, so instead of describing all the cool things going on in Philadelphia, they show them off in an image-heavy, scrollable tile format. Each colorful, engaging image is supplemented by a short headline, occasionally a quick description, and a bright, tappable CTA button. It looks amazing on mobile and helps their audience quickly identify the topics and events that interest them most, so they can click through and learn more on the Visit Philadelphia website.
- And all of this? Immediately from Email 1 to Email 2 – they saw a 20% increase in clicks. Those numbers are crawling up. Let’s look at another place they’re winning…
- And we mentioned banners earlier being powerful. Now-classic pop-ups aren’t obsolete, but having them attack people the moment they land on your page might be. This form is an exit itent form, so simply by adjusting and thoughtfully thinking about when this deploys – they’re greatly increasing their chances of attracting the right subscribers – aka ones that actually will be engaged. Also – City of Brotherly Love, har har….it’s cute and eye-catching. Again, they’re infusing their greatest weapon – beautiful photographer of the city. A single, focused CTA – not asking for too much...so how’d that work out for them?
- Pretty good I’d say. They’re growing by about a 1,000 new subscribers a week. And what about automation?
- Their welcome note, done in the same style, garners a 40% open rate and almost a 40% CTR – which is REALLY good. The average CTR for welcome notes is somewhere in the 20s and 30s, typically. And you can see from the click map, they’re loving that button and it’s simply a click-based message taking them to the most-current digest of things to do. That’s why they signed up – and now they’re in the right segment, receiving the emails they way – and, from there, the world is their oyster I consistently click on articles about food? Do something with that. Send me information about new restaurants. I consistently click on Philadelphia Eagles articles? You can probably assume I’m into information about sports…and so on... So, not only do they gain more interactions with their new design and layout – they have tons of ways they can beging automating really relevant content to their subscribers simply by paying attention to what they do and that’s really powerful stuff. But...the name of this section isn’t “Why Visit Philly rules...” No...it’s called
- You’re never done. They’re not done. They are constantly testing – and excited about it. CTRs increased immensely from mailing to mailing, but they’d still like to get those opens a bit higher. A great way to do that is to not forget your very first CTA – and that’s your subject line. Before I click a button, I have to open your email. On our suggestion – which we do not propose to everyone – they tried Emoji. Guess what? It worked. Subject lines with emoji far outperformed those without almost every time in initial tests. This won’t always be the case, of course, but for now? They’re sticking with what works, but tweaking other elements. Here they’re testing leading with a number, use of the word “free”, playing on nostalgia/status with words like “iconic” and “traditions”…what’s going to win? Who knows! All that to say – be willing to take what you’re noticing an make a chance. Need a little extra help? We’d love to chat.
- …you can even hook up with me directly and I’ll gladly get you to the right person, too. We’re in this together, folks! Thanks.