emarketer webinar: best practices for email marketing
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©2011 eMarketer Inc.
David HallermanPrincipal Analyst
J U L Y 1 4, 2 0 1 1
Best Practices for Email Marketing
Sponsored by:
©2011 eMarketer Inc.
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…
ValueMoneyMeaningRelevance
ControlOpt-in or opt-outFrequency, content…Channel
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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 acquisitionProven 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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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 retentionProven 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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
55% in study cited building opt-in email lists as a top interactive marketing goal in 2011
Top metrics marketers use to gauge their interactive performance
Email list data quality reaches peak with full-scale opt-in (a committed audience)
Single Opt-In
Affiliate Network orForward 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)
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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.
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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)
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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.
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
Twitter – #eMwebinar
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
©2011 eMarketer Inc.
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
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©2011 eMarketer Inc.
Best Practices for Email MarketingQuestions & AnswersRegistrants 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/productsor contact us: (800) 405-0844 or ben@emarketer.com
Twitter Hashtag: #eMwebinar
Sponsored by:Presented by:David HallermanPrincipal Analyst, eMarketer, Inc.
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