There is a quandary in email marketing that all we email marketers,  despite our good intentions, have not found a way to correct.  We love sending email – it’s efficient, effective and inexpensive.  Our subscribers love signing up for email – the promise of great deals and timely information always sounds wonderful at the start.

Yet, most of the email marketing in our inboxes is pretty terrible.  It’s irrelevant, untargeted and poorly timed.  Why does this happen?  We want to break free.  We want to do the right thing by our subscribers.  We want to abandon the broadcast model once and for all and start to take advantage of email marketing as a dialogue channel, built and optimised around the customer lifecycle.

Sure, we email marketers have a lot of pressure on us right now – perhaps now more than ever.  The global recession, the tightening of spending by consumers, jobs being eliminated… there is a lot of stress in the macro-economic environment today.  Plus, there is stress in our micro-worlds… no one outside the email marketing world really understands what we do, how complex email marketing is or why it matters that we send subscribers messages that they love.

Now more than ever, we email marketers are being asked to deliver more than ever – higher revenue, larger subscriber files, more active lists and longer lifetime value.  None of our bosses will invest in this channel or support our efforts unless we can prove that the channel deserves more resources and more careful segmentation and content strategy.

Stop complaining.  Stand up for your subscribers.  Advocate for them – because the only way to increase revenues from email marketing is to create great subscriber experiences.

Here’s seven ways to do that now – which is a quick summary of what I presented at the DMA UK’s email conference the other week.

1.    Improve Relevancy in Small Steps.  We all know about the behaviour triggers that help make our programs more relevant.  Basically, you change your contact strategy and cadence to send more email when subscribers are more inclined to buy.  This is effective, but can require additional resources or technology.   What to do if you don’t have those resources or technology?  A great way to improve your programme without new technology or data integration is to think about a content strategy that improves the value of your email messages over time.  Adding value to just some of your messages, even SOME of the time, will improve response to ALL your messages.   So instead of just sending promotions over and over, replace some of them with messages that feel more custom, even if they are still sent to large segments of your file.  Insert a few tips in your next promotion or business newsletter.  Host a poll.  Say “thank you” to everyone who bought this past quarter.  Send a no-strings-attached whitepaper to everyone who visited the website last month.  Encourage everyone who uses product “a” to take a free trial of product “b.”  Help subscribers network with each other.

2.    Reach the inbox. There is no better way to boost response and revenue than making sure you reach the inbox consistently and avoid the junk folder or going missing altogether.  Reaching the inbox is based on your sender reputation – the “score” that ISPs like Orange, Hotmail and the others give to you. It’s based on your practices, including the number of times subscribers complain about your email by clicking on the Report Spam button.  First thing is to know your sender reputation by visiting www.senderscore.org or www.dnsstuff.com.  Work with your email broadcast vendor, IT team or a deliverability expert to address the root causes of deliverability failure. 

3.    Publish Serial Content.  I give you full license to abandon that long notion in email marketing that every permission grant has to be for long term content.  If the message and action you want someone to take is short term – optimise it!  Identify places in the customer lifecycle where three or five or even 15 messages over the same number of days or weeks will move the customer forward in the sale process.  For example, subscribers might welcome additional email messages during  the two weeks before a big sale, if there are really cool deals or offers.  Or, two months before a contract renewal is a great time to send subscribers information about how to evaluate success and integrate your products deeper into their operations.  New subscribers might welcome a 3-5 message series about how to  do business with you, navigate your website features or get the most out your new partnership.

4.    Show Up the Way You Intend. Test your messages and your templates to be sure they render correctly in the various email clients.   Be sure that they are readable, even with images turned off.  If subscribers can’t see your offer or find a link, they are less likely to download images at all. You will find that your messages are more quickly deleted than read.  Consider the many shapes and formats of the preview pane (e.g.: vertical, horizontal, large, small) when designing your masthead.

5.    Get Personal.  Be careful when personalising with first name, as some audiences do not welcome this.  For examples, Brits like their first name, but Germans do not, and Americans often find this spammy.  If you use someone’s name, be sure your relationship is authentic – customers can tell when a machine calls them by their first name.  More than just a salutation, however, think about how to adjust content so that it feels more custom to each recipient. Move content up and down your template for different audiences, featuring the products, promotions and articles that appeal to them most.

6.    Understand your Opt Outs.  Never get in the way of someone who wants to unsubscribe. However, polling subscribers at exit can give you good feedback for improving your programme relevancy. Also, offer alternate frequency and content options to retain subscribers.

7.    Gather Email Address Everywhyere.  Consider this:  The most important function of your website, customer service team and even retail operation is to capture email address of prospects, so you can continue to market to them.  Really.  Make the invitation appealing and put it everywhere prospects gather on your site – especially search landing pages.

Questions?  Need help applying this to your own programme?  Please email Stephanie Miller.

Stephanie MILLER
Global Markets Catalyst
Return Path, Inc.