email strategies that work dunham+company nrb 2010
DESCRIPTION
Presentation from National Religious Broadcasters Convention February 2010TRANSCRIPT
Email Strategies That Work
Brad Davies Director of Web Services
Dunham+Company
Overview• Best Prac*ces and Case Studies of things that work
• Email Execu*on
• Mul*-‐Channel Integra*on
• Web Copy Guidelines
• Landing Pages that convert
• Social Media and Email intersection
• From a visitor to donor
• Acquisi*on musts
Effectiveness of Email• Your donors and customers now spend more
*me reading and sending emails than watching TV. Source: Responsys 10 Quick Wins for Email Marke5ng
• Providing relevance is the missing ingredient in most email marke*ng ini*a*ves.
• Relevance = right message, right person, right *me.
From Lines:• Send emails from a
Recognizable “From” address.
• Subscribers are more prone to open messages and enable links from organiza*ons they have a rela*onship with.
• Use your organiza*on’s name and a valid email address in the “from” line and then remain consistent in each mailing.
Subject Lines:
• Personalize subject lines.
• One test found a personalized email achieved a 22% open rate, compared to a non-personalized email at 16.9%.
• Email Makeover: 7 Email Optimization Tactics to Boost Revenue; MarketingSherpa.com January 2010.
Mail Chimp
Subject LineAnalyst
PreheadersAdd a preheader that supports your subject line.
Make sure your headline and your button copy work together.
PreheadersAdd a preheader that supports your subject line.
Make sure your headline and your button copy work together.
Button CopyCalls to action must be meaningful, concise links that tell your visitor where they are going and why they should go there.
Avoid cliches and over used links like:
“Read More,” “Click Here,” “Submit,” “Donate Now.”
Replace them with something persuasive, use an imperative verb and an implied benefit.
Increased click rate of 27%
Integrating Multiple Channels
• The future of email marketing will involve its coordination and integration with other data and channels. Marketers using email as a hub for other direct marketing spokes are more successful than marketers using email as a silo. Mailings that integrate with other data and use targeting tactics are four times more effective and efficient than mailings that use broadcast tactics. JupiterResearch Report “The Road to Relevance”
When to send Emails • Send them when they are most likely to get
opened.
• Mail and email delivered on the same day can lift your response rate above 10%.
• 98% of consumers retrieve the mail the day it is delivered, and 77% sort through it immediately.
Ray Chin, Gray Hair Software, DMNews Email Marketing Guide
Value of integration
Research done by Convio
Donors with online interactions are significantly more valuable than those without.
Offline-only donors receiving email are more than twice as valuable life-to-date as offline only donors not receiving email.
Writing for the Web
• You probably have 8 seconds before half of your Web traffic drops off your page, so the most compelling copy should be strategically placed to grab interest.
• The presentation of words through text size, font type, emphasis (bold, italics, underline), color, and location can make an incredible impact on response.
Web Copy Guidelines
• Know your audience:
Are these donors?
Major donors?
How did they come onto the file?
Will they get the direct mail appeal?
• Tailor your language with words that strike a chord with your audience base.
Web Copy Guidelines
• Ask yourself, “So what?” before you send each email. You need to be able to answer “Why do I care?” “What do I do about it?”
• Tailor your language with words that strike a chord with your audience base.
• Be Clear, Concise, and Consistent. Visitors want quick, digestible information.
• Multiple calls to action and unrelated information on your web pages may cause confusion and can distract your visitor from the main objective.
Web Copy Guidelines
Web Copy Guidelines
• Reduce Reading Burden.
• Highlight key words or phrases with bold lettering or alternating coloring. Increase font sizes and place key text in a more prominent position on the page so it’s easy to locate.
Test and Change
Use different templates, try not to get stuck in a rut. Keep things fresh.
Audiences may react differently to the same message delivered in the varied formats.
Test and Change
Use different templates, try to not get stuck in a rut. Keep things fresh.
Audiences may react differently to the same message delivered in the varied formats.
Landing Pages
Landing Pages
• Avoid distractions.
• Don’t put full site navigation and links on a landing page that will encourage visitors to abandon the page.
• Create a cul-de-sac.
Landing Pages
• Use color. Colorful, high-contrast donate buttons work better than grey buttons.
• Amnesty International saw a 25% increase in their conversion rate when they went to a red submit button compared to a grey button and a 29% increase when they used a red “Donate Now” button compared to a grey “submit” button.
Source: Perfecting your Page: Can donation page optimization boost online giving? May 9, 2008 Donor Digital www.donordigital.com
Landing Pages• Color does matter
Source: Perfecting your Page: Can donation page optimization boost online giving? May 9, 2008 Donor Digital www.donordigital.com
Landing Pages• Remove unnecessary fields from the
personal information form (“title” or “suffix”).
• Amnesty International saw a 31% increase in their conversion rate when they removed the “title” and “suffix” fields in their donor information form. Perfecting Your Page: Can donation page optimization boost online giving? Donordigital, May 2008.
Landing Pages
• Horizontal gift string layouts performed significantly better than the vertical giving string layout.
• Amnesty International USA found a horizontal gift string performed 21% better than the vertical gift string. Donordigital, Landing on Gold, Optimizing your donation landing pages to increase giving: a bright spot in a tough economy. April 2009. www.donordigital.com
21% Increase
Landing Pages• Supporters with no giving history respond better to
more conservative gift string values, e.g. $35 to $250, than wider range gift strings, e.g. $35 to $1,000.
• A donation page with a conservative gift string had a 15% better conversion rate than larger ones. The conservative string also brought in 1% more revenue than the page with broader gift strings. Average gift was 13% lower, but that is to be expected. Donordigital, Landing on Gold, Optimizing your donation landing pages to increase giving: a bright spot in a tough economy. April 2009. www.donordigital.com
Landing Page• To solve the problem of too many unqualified
leads vs. creating a complex lead form with dozens of questions, create a two-part lead form.
- On the first page ask the minimum amount of questions possible to have a visitor become a lead.
- On the second page ask several more optional questions that will better help qualify the lead. Make sure the content is saved from page one to page two.
Two Page Form
Premier Christian Radio
Promise to Vote Campaign
Email and Social Media
Email and Social Media8 Steps to Getting Started
1. Determine your goals and objectives for email campaigns and Social Media Marketing (SMM).
2. Determine who will be the owner of your social media efforts.
3. Create methods for measuring your progress towards goals.
4. Spend time listening to the conversations on your target social networks.
Email and Social Media5. Start participating in conversations on those
social networks by providing value-added comments, suggestions, and information.
6. Find ways to encourage your social network to opt-in to your email lists. Free newsletters, create surveys, have free offers, ect.
7. Measure.
8. Optimize and repeat.
Share with your Network
Email and Social Media• Social Media Marketing adds valuable
functionality to email.
• Using free SMM widgets increase the “shareability” of your email message.
• Posts or Tweets about your relevant email marketing content across your social networks encourages fans/followers to repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
• Share with your network is the new forward to a friend.
Conversion Process
Conversion• Conversion = # of visitors who take the
desired action divided by the total # of site visitors.
Where do you start?
• Reduce friction first, then focus on persuading more traffic to get further along in the process, then go get more traffic.
Conversion
• Most ministry sites are lead-generation sites. Your lead generation is your check out process.
- Average conversion rate is: 2% - 4%
- A rate of 5% is outstanding
- Above 10% is reason to celebrate Responsys, What 90 percent of Marketers Don’t Do - But Should. www.responsys.com
Conversion
• Conversion page can not just provide information, it must clearly guide visitors to a particular action.
• A page that cannot clearly guide users promotes unsupervised thinking and reduces the likelihood of completion. Increasing clarity for the user increases click-through and conversion. No Unsupervised Thinking: How to increase conversions by guiding your audience. Marketing Experiments, 2009
ConversionThe three reasons why leads fail to convert
1. They don’t understand the value they get in exchange for giving their information.
2. They are informationally challenged and collect too little, too much, or incorrect information.
3. You haven’t established trust and set proper expectations of what to expect when doing business with you. Bryan Eisenber “Three reasons your visitors don’t convert to leads.” Grokdotcom 25 April 2008.
ConversionInclude a link to view a sample email from your organization.
People want to see that the emails you send are going to be valuable to them.
Welcome Series
Welcome Series• Constituents who went through a welcome
series process had a 15% higher first gift, than those who did not go through the process.
• First time donor conversion is 83% higher than the control group of supporters.
• Rate of conversion from subscribers to activist increased by 110%.Common Knowledge, Case Study for International Fund for Animal Welfare. An integrated email program will take the initial touchpoint into consideration when creating its email messages.
Welcome Series• Online customer affinity is typically highest for
the first 30 days after the customer opts in.
• During this “honeymoon” period, the customer typically has a strong and favorable opinion of the company, and a stronger propensity to engage with the company.
• This online high affinity phase is characterized by the new subscriber demonstrating higher email open rates, higher click rates, and higher conversion rates.
Welcome Series
• The first email a customer receives is the one most likely to get opened and read, which means that any un-targeted, irrelevant messaging will result in a faster decline in engagement.
• Include bullet points that address the question, “What’s in it for me?”
• A good first impression is a necessity.
Acquisition
Acquisition
• The natural churn rate of your in-house list will be 20-30% every year, even among loyal customers.
Responsys, Best Practices Guide to Email Acquisition; www.responsys.com
AcquisitionSummary of Best Practices:
• Use prominent locations on home page and landing pages to sign people up.
• Review the script of call center representatives on the phone. Work to create incentives to gain a caller’s email address.
• Keep the opt-in process short and painless to complete.
• Set expectations up front regarding type and frequency of email content.
Conclusion
• Execute the basics well.
• Small changes can make a significant difference.
• Test - Measure - Change
Resources
• MarketingSherpa.com
• MarketingExperiments.com
• Lyris.com
• Responsys.com
• Futurenowinc.com
• Convio.com
