5 steps to effective email marketing in distributed organizations

5 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING IN DISTRIBUTED ORGANIZATIONS

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Creating Effective Integrated Email Campaigns at the National and Local Level

5STEPS TO EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING IN DISTRIBUTED ORGANIZATIONS


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INTRODUCTION

Email has become a standard part of the marketing arsenal used by corporate and local marketers alike. Email is affordable, easy to implement, and effective when done correctly. However, when done poorly through incessant or inconsistent messaging, email can quickly become irritating, confusing, and counterproductive for customers and prospects. Corporate marketers who manage distributed marketing networks are particularly challenged to keep email marketing performing well. With a coordinated email marketing program, corporate and local marketing messages engage customers as a unified voice with consistent brand messaging, offer management, and distribution frequency. Yet without an integrated platform, all bets are off. Well-intentioned local marketers can create email campaigns that look different from corporate campaigns, have different offers, and arrive at nearly the same time as an email sent by corporate marketers. This leaves the client or prospect confused by the messaging or irritated by a perceived overwhelming volume of emails.

A unified platform is also critical to integrating email with other marketing channels, optimizing response through dynamic content, email frequency management and quality content.

This guidebook reviews the unique challenges managers of distributed marketing networks face when engaging in email marketing and offers practical suggestions about how to create an optimal email program that benefits corporate and local marketers as well as the clients and prospects they jointly serve.


31Email marketing is one of the easiest forms of marketing for local marketers to implement. As a result, it is one of the most difficult forms of local marketing for the corporate marketer to influence and control.

Certainly local marketers have the ability to get it right. Some may deliver messages that outperform those sent by the corporate marketer, but that’s not what is at stake. A brand’s customers and prospects don’t see messaging as corporate or local, but as one unified entity. This proves the importance of communicating in a cohesive fashion.

Like with all mediums, involving both corporate and local marketers in the email marketing process is essential. While it’s relatively easy – and tempting – for corporate marketers to localize and personalize a mass email blast, corporate marketers should think twice before taking the local marketer out of the content creation and distribution process. Local Marketers Provide Three Key Inputs First, local marketers intimately understand the timing needs for marketing in their trade area. For example, a corporate marketer wouldn’t know about a community event or festival that will draw clients and prospects near the local marketer’s storefront. With that knowledge, a local marketer can schedule an email distribution to send a special offer that will drive traffic from that specific audience.

Second, local marketers know their inventory and its relevance. A corporate marketer wouldn’t know the local marketer had snow shovels or ice melt in inventory when an area storm had made those products locally hard to find. In such a case, a well-timed, local marketer-generated email could result in more store traffic.

Third, local marketers, particularly those with store fronts, often put the “living” face on the brand. That brand experience at the point of engagement is every bit as relevant as the brand messaging in the advertising content. A database can’t tell you that Larry, who works in the lawn and garden department and is extremely helpful and loved by all the local customers, should be featured in the email. Enabling the local marketers to participate in email marketing unleashes local intuition that will drive more traffic and sales.

Corporate Marketing’s Key Role

Corporate marketers however also play a key role by holding insights local marketers don’t have access to or the knowledge to understand. Corporate marketers have access to analytics-provided insight that can drive what content is featured in the email – either at the local market level or the individual customer level. Offer optimization is another example of a contribution that is beyond the capability of the local marketer and should come from the corporate side.

WHAT DO I WANT TO ACCOMPLISH?


41In addition, corporate marketers most often need to play the role of managing email frequency. Local marketers are typically opportunistic and reactive, forcing them to center marketing activities on promotional opportunities or in response to diminished business. Corporate marketers can provide the steady, systematic counter balance. They can measure email marketing responses to determine and implement an optimal frequency of communications with clients and prospects.

Finally, corporate marketers are best suited to organize and implement seasonal campaigns and manage loyalty marketing programs. Clearly, the key to success is not in corporate insight or in local intuition alone, but rather in an effective blend of the two. For email marketing, this means getting your lists, content, frequency and timing aligned.

Shared List Management is the Essential Starting Point

Sharing the management of email lists is a key starting point for blending corporate and local email marketing. In an ideal state, a single email marketing list is maintained with different views and access rights assigned to the list. For example, corporate may have access to all names, a regional manager to the list for the region, and the local marketers for their trade areas. This approach can work for organizations where customer ownership is shared and where trade areas are well defined.

Other organizations must take the compiled list approach to meet the needs of their distributed marketing network. A manufacturer, for example, whose distributed marketers also sell competing products, will be unlikely to have direct access to the local marketer’s email list. Similarly, technology marketers with VAR networks must work to compile lists for email distribution without list sharing.

An advanced distributed marketing management platform can be very helpful in creating and maintaining shared list management. These systems can enable the corporate marketer to create a shared list

environment as outlined in the ideal state. In this case, any local names in the list uploaded by a local marketer (which are already on the corporate email distribution list) are removed. At the conclusion of the campaign, the names on the uploaded list are not retained in the corporate marketing list.

Any uploaded lists are checked against opt-out and list deliverability databases to ensure CAN-SPAM compliance for the email campaign. As a special consideration for compiled lists, a distributed marketing management platform will often split opt-out options for current emails into a sequence of choices that allow consumers to opt-out of emails from the corporate brand, the local brand, or both.



51Coordinated Email Content

Email content is the second area a corporate manager of a distributed marketing management platform should address. A consistent message coming from corporate and local marketers to the customers and prospects is crucial. As outlined earlier, the goal should be to communicate synergistically so the consumer is oblivious to the fact that some content is generated by corporate and some by the local store. In tandem, email content creation should occur in a way that ensures brand consistency including logo, image treatment, and messaging.

There are three primary ways to help ensure strong, brand-compliant content. First, corporate can manage all email content created. Second, they can require pre-approval of all content prior to distribution. And finally, corporate marketing can provide an email content creation process within a distributed marketing management platform that enables creation of compliant content. This third option will be examined in subsequent chapters, including a discussion about building content creation processes that force cross-channel integration.

Collective Management of Email Frequency

Email frequency should be managed by corporate marketing. Due to the nature and use of email, setting up a structure for managing coordinated email frequency between corporate and local is sometimes more of an art than a science. As mentioned earlier, local email marketing is often opportunistic and impulsive. As a result, the content tends to be highly relevant but highly unpredictable.

The best approach to managing email frequency may be governing the distribution versus scheduling it. In this scenario, an individual on the email list may only be eligible to receive a message once every 72 hours. If corporate has sent an email within that window, local simply does not have access to the list or the individual names until the sequestered window expires.

There are a variety of ways to approach email frequency. Because corporate marketing is more methodical, it should take the lead to ensure brand message is consistent at both local and corporate levels. In cases where the customer list is owned solely by the local marketer, corporate marketing will have limited (if any) control over the scheduling of local email marketing. In this instance, the local marketer should provide guidance regarding any conflicting email schedules.

As illustrated, corporate and local synergy is highly important for organizations with a distributed marketing model. Attaining that synergy may not always be easy, but is achievable through shared list management, a focus on complimentary content, and co-managed email frequency. Consumers are increasingly looking to email as a launching point for communication with the brand or organization. The next chapter looks at simple steps corporate marketers can take to help local marketers connect email to other marketing engagement points.



62Because it’s no longer a single channel world, consumers are expecting to be communicated to across a wide variety of channels. They don’t think about your brand in terms of email, TV ads, direct mail, or social media like Facebook. Today’s savvy consumers see your brand from the perspective of your engagement with them. They think of it in terms of how they perceive it and when and where they can interact with it.

Marketers – particularly corporate marketers – think channel. For decades, channels have been part of marketing’s DNA. Solution providers are organized around them. Agencies base their specialties on them. Corporate teams divide by them. By our own design, we’ve made it hard to build and run multi-channel campaigns on behalf of one brand.

Local marketers are caught up in the channel conundrum too. Sales reps from print vendors promote direct mail, pURLs and more. Reps from local TV stations pitch a blend of traditional broadcast and digital display on their stations’ websites. Local papers sell print ads. Email options come from local agencies as well as solution providers such as Constant Contact. Reps promote local search, social, mobile and more. All of these options are organized around channel silos.

Meanwhile, the only channels consumers think or care about are the ones you change with the remote. Fortunately, thanks to distributed marketing management platform technology, the primary barrier for moving from a single or cross channel approach to an all channel mindset is a mental one.

The corporate marketer needs to help the local marketer with this transition by providing simple-to-use and connected marketing programs that are all based in a single marketing platform.

Email Should Not Stand Alone

Email marketing can be an excellent launching point for a brand-to-consumer conversation, but it is not the destination point. Email marketing should never stand alone. They should have a call to action which provides an immediate next step the consumer can take. An email can lead to a landing page which can launch a mobile coupon, initiate a direct mail, etc. If no action is taken at the landing page, it can automatically plant a cookie on the recipients computer and trigger a retargeting digital display ad campaign for that individual.

If the local marketer has to work with a variety of sales reps to put this type of campaign together, it will never happen. Frankly, if most corporate marketers who manage distributed marketing networks are charged with putting such a campaign together, it will never happen. It feels too intimidating, too challenging, and too hard to pull off, while in reality, it’s not.

HELPING LOCAL MARKETERS INTEGRATE WITH OTHER CHANNELS


72Make Multi-Channel Mandatory

To ensure multi-channel integration, corporate marketers who use a distributed marketing management platform should consider offering only multi-channel options for local marketers. When adding a second channel to an email marketing message, an excellent approach is requiring the addition of a customer engagement landing page. Consumers already expect to click through an email to a web page. Adding a workflow step to create landing page copy at the same time email copy is generated will feel natural to the local marketer.

Once the email / landing page combination feels familiar, consider adding a digital display retargeting campaign focused on individuals who click through to the landing page but do not respond to the offer or call to action on the page. This has a logical connection that should be easy for the local marketer to grasp. A prospect who has responded to an email by clicking through to a landing page obviously had an interest in the email content / offer. Retargeting digital display ads provide an opportunity to invest a little more to place display ads in online sites the target individuals visit in an effort to move this highly defined target audience from interest to action.

There are many other ways to connect multiple forms of brand-to-consumer messaging together. Emails can be used to launch social interactions, mobile engagement (keep in mind nearly a third of email messages are only engaged with on a mobile device), website visits, and many more actions. The key is to keep the campaign set-up process simple. While distributed marketing management platform technology is not essential, it is a simple way to move corporate and local marketers away from a process focused only on email communication.

HELPING LOCAL MARKETERS INTEGRATE WITH OTHER CHANNELS


83Personalization of content lifts response rate no matter what form of communication, and email is no exception. While studies vary about the boost personalization provides within email marketing, all point to the efficacy of a dynamic approach to content creation. This tactic takes on multiple forms and can quickly make a difference in your performance.

The first aspect to think about when creating a personalized email is localization. As described earlier, the information provided by the local marketer can be highly valuable in creating messaging that is relevant to the target audience in a specific trade area.

Second is information that can be driven from a basic list. Adding a person’s name, for example, can add a 10 percent increase in an email open rate. If age, sex, income, purchase history or any other similar data is a part of the email list, these can also serve to trigger changes in the marketing content.

Basic personalization actions simply rely on conditional logic formulas that are associated with the email content creation process and that are triggered by database fields. For example, if the data showed the individual was female and over 60, the template construction would automatically insert a photo of a retirement-age woman with grandkids versus other options for different age groups and gender.

The third level of participation is more complex and more powerful, where corporate insight and local intuition come together. An email can be generated and sent to an individual based on customer data and any number of marketing analytics inputs or data triggers such as social chatter, location or website visit. This can be corporate-driven or locally initiated and can influence the content of the email, the offer presented, and what additional channels are integrated.

For the corporate marketer managing a distributed network, local input can be added to the mix. A corporate marketer might notify local outlets of an upcoming email designed to drive store traffic. Rather than highlighting a specific product, the email would be structured to optimize the message and offer sent to each individual. In this scenario, the corporate marketer would reserve about 70 percent of the content for the personalized messaging and another 15 percent for the local store information. The last 15 percent would be left for the local marketer to select. This might involve highlighting an individual or department or simply the ability to select a local product to feature (a local sports team branded product, for example).

In summary, leveraging the power of dynamic content can dramatically improve message relevance and lift response. Whether it’s implementing localization or a complex personalization, corporate marketers should strive to make it easy for local marketers to access the power of dynamic content in email campaigns.

LEVERAGING DYNAMIC CONTENT AT THE LOCAL LEVEL


94One of the biggest challenges in integrating a corporate and local email marketing program is managing the frequency of email distribution. As noted in Step 1, corporate and local marketers launch email marketing campaigns for different reasons. Local marketers are often more opportunistic or reactionary. Piggybacking on the marketplace awareness of a local event or activity may be the impetus for a local email campaign along with slow sales days.

On the other hand, corporate marketers are typically oblivious to these local events or issues. As a result, email marketing is centered on promotions such as a holiday campaign or part of a systematic, prescheduled campaign plan. These different approaches both play an important role in the brand’s engagement with customers and prospects. Clearly, consistent brand messaging provided by the corporate campaigns helps to solidify the brand to a consumer relationship and to keep the brand fresh in the customer’s mind. At the same time, the local messages serve to foster personal, local relationships between the brand and consumer. The challenge for the corporate marketer lies in keeping the scheduling of the corporate and local campaigns coordinated.

The first step for any organization is determining the desired cadence and frequency for email marketing messages. While it’s obvious that both too much and too little communication can damage client and prospect relationships, there is no magic formula for email frequency. Each

organization must determine the proper frequency based on the nature of the business, how often the product or service is purchased, and the role of the brand in the customer relationship.

With frequency determined, the corporate marketer can begin to build a campaign schedule. At first glance, one might expect this calendar to include both corporate and local tasks, each with assigned dates to version and launch an email marketing campaign. But that approach doesn’t capitalize on the power of local intuition. When forced to find content to fit a target date, many local marketers will struggle and default to content that could have come from corporate marketing. When this happens, the opportunity to imbed the brand in the cultural fabric of local market is lost.

MANAGING EMAIL FREQUENCY


104Alternatively, to enable and encourage the insertion of such local connection into the email marketing campaign, corporate marketers should view its email schedule as default content subject to being overridden by locally produced content. The corporate-driven email marketing schedule is set to fill all email communication at the predetermined frequency with local marketers obtaining the right to override corporate content with their own content.

Such an approach ensures both the proper frequency of email marketing messages and a beneficial blend of corporate and local content.

Finally, email campaign coordination between corporate and local is virtually impossible without a shared platform. While manual systems that enable a local marketer to opt-out of a given distribution date can work, they are difficult to manage, labor intensive, and error prone. With a distributed marketing management platform, however, the process is simplified. Local marketers who receive notice of an upcoming corporate email can simply not respond, triggering the use of corporate’s default email message or launch a point and click process to version and send alternate creative fortified with locally relevant content.

In conclusion, there are many ways to set and manage email marketing distribution frequency. The best approach blends corporate and local messaging and scheduling to create an engaging dialogue with clients and prospects.

MANAGING EMAIL FREQUENCY


115 With the barrage of email flooding inboxes today, quality email content is not optional. From the subject line, to the featured graphic and call to action, the email must be highly relevant to the recipient if it is to be opened and acted upon.

Even with a staff of copywriters and graphic designers, meeting these criteria can be challenging for the corporate marketer. Add to that the need to meet corporate brand guidelines and, without aid, it’s a virtually impossible assignment for the local marketer. Corporate marketing managers of distributed marketing networks must provide an easier alternative.

In this endeavor, most are turning to distributed marketing management platform technology. With these platforms, local marketers point and click to create locally versioned, fully brand compliant email marketing campaigns.

CREATING AND MANAGING EMAIL CONTENT


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SUMMARY

Corporate marketers who manage distributed marketing organizations face numerous challenges in keeping email marketing coordinated, focused and impactful. In addition to managing brand presentation and messaging, these individuals must also ensure that email frequency is coordinated and that the customer or prospect experiences a single voice from the brand.

To be fully effective, email marketing must:• Deliver highly relevant content• Provide consistent messaging from corporate and local• Connect email to other channels• Easily create dynamic content• Share customers and lists• Make it easy for local marketers to create and distribute content

Achieving these objectives requires a strong commitment by both corporate and local marketers, but the rewards are high. When corporate insight and local intuition are optimally blended, especially in the context of a digital marketing management platform, a powerful email marketing program will naturally emerge.


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ABOUT SAEPIO

Saepio makes it easy for corporate and local marketers to build and run effective and engaging all-channel marketing campaigns. Saepio’s powerful MarketPort marketing platform starts with easy…

• Easy to Build and Run Cross-Channel Campaigns because everything – email, landing pages, social, mobile, digital banner ads, signage, print ads, direct mail, and many more – are all managed in a single, integrated digital marketing platform.

• Easy to Maximize Brand Value at the Local Level because local and corporate marketers share a single platform but experience the same platform differently based on their roles. Brand control, speed to market, and content localization is all easily accomplished whether messages are for local, national or global audiences and corporate marketers can easily assign campaign tasks to local marketers.

• Easy to Engage Customers with personalized, relevant messages because corporate intelligence gleaned from CRM data, customer analytics, consumer actions and more can determine what content is served when, where and how.

• Easy to Automate Marketing Fulfillment because robust workflow enables every cross channel customer touch point to happen automatically whether launched by corporate marketing, initiated by a local marketer or triggered by a customer’s action.

This robust yet simplified approach to today’s complex marketing challenges is in use at hundreds of leading companies and organizations, including many of the world’s most powerful brands. It is transforming the way corporations focus and manage their marketing efforts in a world that introduces new channels, new competitors, new regulations and new opportunities at every turn.

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