As a well-known sceptic of the less email = more revenue theory, I have always found it puzzling and somewhat insulting that members of the anti-frequency brigade assume that anyone who follows my advice will by definition simultaneously shut down their brains and start sending 100’s of completely pointless, ugly emails containing terrible offers or irrelevant content; while everyone who follows their advice will automatically start sending out works of art and be given a knighthood for their creative genius.

That’s just stupid!

What I advocate is that everyone who increases send frequency ALSO significantly improves their creative, targeting, offers and analytics. My point is simple – most companies expect their email
program to at the very least pay for itself. And to get budget or funding or additional resource you need to generate the cash to pay for it.

By far the cheapest way to do that in the short term is to increase frequency.

You then have a choice be stupid, bank the cash and send more and more crap or irrelevant email OR maintain or continue to  increase frequency for the long-term by re-investing the gain in GROWING your list and/or trying to deliver more value or as some would prefer “relevant” emails.

The inconvenenient truth is that all things being equal a 2nd email a month sent to the same list (even a resend to non-openers) will ALWAYS beat 1 email a month however well targeted and is without doubt quicker and cheaper to do.

The biggest returns in email come in order of priority from (again all things being equal and you don’t do anything stupid):

1. List size

2. Mailing Frequency

3. Offer value

4. Segmentation and Targeting

5. Deliverability

If I was to advise a client that wanted to increase their investment in email how to spend their money that’s what I would tell them. I would also point out that while frequency is the quickest and cheapest win, it is the most likely to suffer from diminishing returns and the most dependent on investment in the other tactics.

Ours is the only channel that promotes itself by telling the world less is more and that 1 email a year is better than 12. Can you imagine Radio and TV telling the world that 1 slot a night is better than 2 or Google telling you that to be effective you should buy less keyword or banners?

Take it from me a, marketer who tries to get customers and prospects to enjoy receiving more email will be more successful than one who spends time and money trying to find a way to grow their business by sending less email!

If you don’t believe that simple truth here is a simple test – go ahead and significantly reduce your email send frequency and see if any of your competitors follow suit.

Then start updating your cv.

Sound familiar?

If you are involved in email marketing that comment – or something similar is something you will have heard many times. In fact I would be very surprised if none of your relatives or friends made a comment like that over Christmas lunch! I did and as always I found out what he did (Publishing) and ripped his industry to shreds

The term “spam”, with all its infernal catchiness and infinite adaptability, is the albatross round our industry’s neck. It’s given everyone a charge that they can lay at our door – one we feel obliged to defend with monotonous regularity. In fact I have had several clients say that they would like to do more email marketing, but can’t because the CEO thinks consumers hate email.

Changing the narrative

The bottom line is that most readers of this blog NEVER spam deliberately and are not stupid – they learn from their mistakes. So why do so many people equate email from legitimate email marketers working for well-known high street brands to Spam when every piece of available research indicates that email is the no 1 way that consumers like to be contacted by brands they know?

I believe that it is partly because we do a poor job of promoting legitimate email marketing to consumers, but also the fact that email marketing experts are happy to accept – actively promote even – the view that spam is anything that a person says is spam, even if the recipient double opted-in to receive that email from a well-known and respected company selling legal products or services.

Serves you right for sending irrelevant emails; spam they say self-righteously is anything that a subscriber says is spam. Gee thanks.

Let’s think about that for a second; if that’s the case we are all spammers because we can’t be relevant to everyone on our list all the time. It’s no wonder people spend more money in every other channel and spend so much time looking for the next best thing. RSS, SMS, Social, whatever.

Stop apologising

The legitimate email marking industry needs to stop apologising for the sins of others because and to paraphrase Ken Magill: it’s like a WI member in Shropshire apologising for having an 8” carving knife when she is told about an increase in London knife crime!

So how do we change the narrative? We need to flip the telescope round.

We are all spammers get over it!

Let’s start with a harsh reality spammers don’t give a damn about either the law or permission, so lecturing readers of this blog about spamming is completely pointless.  Then we have to look at the notion that anything a consumer chooses to call spam IS spam. If that is true then anything a consumer doesn’t call spam or chooses to respond to by clicking or buying isn’t spam! This is why spam exists.

But us legitimate marketers do care! Passionately. It therefore stands to reason that if the difference between us and a true spammer or phisher is NOT whether the recipient gave us permission to mail them or even that what we do is within the law; it is the fact that we will stop mailing you as soon as you ask us to and will NOT sell your name without your explicit permission.

We should be proud of that fact and shout it out to the whole world!

I am not suggesting that we stop trying to promote permission based email marketing. I am saying that we should educate consumers about the difference between us (legitimate companies with a reputation to uphold) sending you an email, whether you deem it to be relevant on the day or not and spam.

Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Email errors can be  a turnoff – don’t let mistakes affect your response

Even in the age of textspeak, instant messaging and social media chitchat, people still care about quality control in communications of an even slightly more formal nature. They may write “lol” and “CU tonite @ 8” on facebook or their mobile, but they don’t like it when spelling mistakes and errors creep into a letter from the energy company or even a restaurant menu. Or, come to that, a marketing email.

In these contexts, poor quality control can quickly undermine brand credibility and – as research repeatedly shows – even lead to loss of business. After all, would you give someone a job who couldn’t spell your name?

Many emails err alike…

Here at Alchemy Worx, we’re up to our necks in email. Hundreds of messages flood into our accounts every day as we monitor what’s going on in the world of email marketing. And guess what? Loads of them contain errors. And loads of those errors are the same. And all of them could easily be avoided.

To err is only human, of course, and often only too understandable. For most marketers, an email send means tight deadlines, quick turnarounds and last-minute changes. All of which can open the door to errors. But none of that will count for anything if a subscriber leaves your list in disgust because you’ve emailed them twice. And got their gender wrong both times. About an offer that’s already expired…

Catching the glitches

So what can be done? Increasingly ESPs are adding tools and functionality to help you avoid sending poorly constructed emails (after all poor emails can upset ISPs – relationships that good ESP rely on). But there are still some areas that even the best software struggles to catch. With our help, you can still fix that glitch and save the day…

How to avoid the top 6 mistakes your Email platform won’t spot

Tailoring your content according to what you know about subscribers can boost response. Here’s what you need to know…

What’s the difference between dynamic content and personalisation?

The difference lies in how the email is built. Personalisation inserts data that is held in your database directly into the content of your email. Dynamic content, on the other hand, is where blocks of tailored content hosted by you or your ESP are inserted according to specific rules set by you.

Give me some examples

For a personalised campaign, you might include details such as your subscriber’s name, address, date of birth – any data that you hold, in the format in which it’s stored – so long as it’s relevant or adds value to your message.

Using dynamic content, meanwhile, you might opt to send different content elements to different subscriber groups that meet certain criteria such as:

• interests: a DIY store might send one content element to customers who browsed garden  furniture, and something different to those that browsed soft furnishings
• geography an international campaign might send content in different languages to users in different countries
• gender you might send one image to males, and a different image to females
• customer type for instance, sending high-value offers to big spenders and lower-value deals to lower-spending customers

Personalisation? Don’t people see through that “Dear <First Name>” stuff nowadays?

It’s true that simply personalising a message with a user’s name doesn’t have the impact it once did. Any message that just tops a completely generic message with a user name is likely to disappoint, and consumers are wary of supposedly personalised messages that turn out to be spam.

However, with a little lateral thinking, there are lots of easy ways to use personalisation to improve campaign performance such as:

• add credibility to welcome messages by including the source of the registration you’re confirming or
• include the Account Manager’s name or signature in B2B campaigns.

Better still, many platforms also enable you to set up dynamic personalisation – enabling you to build rules around personalisation. This gives you some of the advantages of dynamic content without the complexity, such as a rule like: “if ‘first name’ blank, use ‘customer’”.

Isn’t creating dynamic content very complicated?

If you haven’t created dynamic campaigns before, your first campaign can seem complicated, but the effort is well worth it: dynamic campaigns can save you significant amounts of time and resource in the long run.

Once you have your rules set up, you can often save them for future use, making ongoing dynamic campaigns only slightly more time consuming to set up and test.

To get you started, follow these steps:

• Create a test list with internal contacts or seed addresses with data that mirrors the data you hold for your subscribers. Then have a play with your platform.
• Start off simply with live data. Use just one dynamic content segment and a couple of rules, then you can build on your campaign’s complexity from there.
• Consider outsourcing the set-up and deployment of dynamic campaigns, so freeing you up to spend more time on generating content and strategies for future campaigns.

Checklist for developing campaigns with tailored content

Personalisation and dynamic content can provide a significant uplift to your campaign performance when done well; get it wrong, however, and you can harm your brand and reputation. Here’s what you need to get right:

• Check the quality of your data – are all fields complete and accurate?
• Make sure you’ve thought through the logic properly, and specify default values where appropriate.
• Test your campaigns thoroughly. With some ESPs you can test before deployment using live data; otherwise, create some dummy data and generate a test mailing to that list before your final deployment.
• Check your hosted version: whether personalisation or dynamic content carry through to your hosted version will depend on your platform.
• Find out what reporting is available for dynamic/personalised campaigns. Even if your platform cannot report on the performance of different content segments, you should still be able to run reports offline, though this will incur additional time and resource.
• Don’t personalise for the sake of it: only include information that is relevant and valuable to subscribers
• Always test the performance of your personalised campaigns against less targeted campaigns: sometimes broad offerings will generate unexpected sales, after all the fact a customer is male does not preclude them from buying a dress for a friend, relation or even for themselves.

The  question “How do I write effective subject lines?” with all its variants is the No1 FAQ in email marketing, despite the fact that subject lines are probably the most frequently A/B tested variables in email marketing. Most email marketers A/B split test subject lines on a regular basis so why hasn’t anyone come up with the answer yet?

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I think it’s because most email marketing departments do not have enough resource to test more than 2 or 3 subject lines at a time. At that rate it could take several years to gather enough results to come up with a truly effective methodology for subject line writing. Which leaves no other option but to keep A/B split testing.

But relying on relying on A/B split testing to tell you which of the 2, 3 or more subject lines you come up with is like expecting someone to give you a fish every day for the rest of your life. we think it’s time to learn to fish; so we’re launching a unique new research project.

Our aim is to conduct the first ever subject line study to evaluate the impact on ROI of language – grammar, syntax and word choice. In association with digital copywriting agency Sticky Content, we’re analysing the results of hundreds of subject line split-tests conducted by us and participating clients over the last 18 months to find answers to such questions as:

• Which work better in subject lines – questions or instructions?
• What are the most effective words to use in subject lines – and what are the words to avoid?
• Does mentioning your brand name in a subject line really make a difference?
• Does personalisation in the subject lines improve performance?

Send us your subject lines – get a FREE advance report

Have you run A/B subject line tests in the last 18 months? If so, we would like to invite you to pool your test data with ours to create the largest collaborative subject line study ever run (and get a free copy advance copy).

Send us your subject line test results by Friday 2nd July and get a free advance copy of our whitepaper.

Find out more >>

Too often, email marketers get fixated on measuring benchmarking and improving the open and click rates of their email campaigns. But the problem with that is open and click rates are only symptoms of what is actually going on and tell you very little about the cause. As an exercise we looked up the causes of a headache using the symptom checker on WebMD (don’t try this if you tend towards hypochondria), and it threw out 20 possible causes for our headache, ranging from caffeine withdrawal to meningitis – two very different causes indeed!

If you extend the analogy to campaign open and click rates; low or falling numbers may be a result of a number of different factors each requiring a different fix. The numbers do very little to increase your understanding of the cause of the decline, what’s happening to your audience – the people you are trying to reach, engage and ultimately convert. Open and click rates are just a snapshot of the symptoms – and it’s a mistake to focus on them in isolation. The best way to understand what’s going on with your subscriber base is to track open and click behaviour over time.

So what metrics should you be tracking?

Open reach is the total number of unique opens your email campaign attracts over a given period. The greater the number of cumulative unique opens, the greater your chances of making a sale. The more your uniques are growing, ideally in a consistent upward trend, the better you’re doing over the long run.

Frequency tells you how many of your unique openers and clickers go on to open and click one or more additional messages in the month quarter or year.
Different solutions for different problems

Separating out reach and frequency gives you much more insight into why and how your open rates might be falling. And because frequency and reach are very different things, and the tactics for dealing with them are different, you have access to a wider range of remedies than just “I need a better subject line or offer”.

Frequency and reach work together, but the trick with campaign strategy is to balance the claims of each to maximise your returns. In a recent issue of Email-Worx our newsletter, we look at this question in depth and suggest practical remedies to address a falling open rate or click rate.

Read the full article

Popular opinion states that an unopened email means your subscriber is disengaged and uninterested in making a purchase – we disagree. Unopened email communications have a tangible impact on brand awareness and can lead to purchase activity across all channels.

How? That’s the subject of an article in published the latest edition of Email-Worx our weekly newsletter, on the phenomenon known as the Nudge Effect.  At Alchemy Worx we have spent the last 12 months or so looking at what we as email marketers can learn from behavioural economic theory in general and more specifically how behavioural architectural techniques – the Nudge Effect can be utilized to drive sales both on and offline.  

What is the Nudge Effect?

Essentially it’s a way of influencing people’s behaviour without telling them specifically what to do. You may be frustrated with unopened emails and low click-through rates, but be reassured that even if your subscribers don’t open your email, its presence in their inbox leads to a tangible impact on brand awareness and sales via online and other channels.

The complete article which includes a short video clip is definitely worth a read and covers the following:

• Why the Nudge Effect works for email marketers
• How to make an unopened email sell
• How to optimise your emails for the Nudge effect
• How to tell if your unopened emails are impacting sales or conversions in other channels

» Find out how to create emails that sell – whether they are opened or not.

Additional research

For an amusing and thought provoking insight into how the Nudge Effect works in daily life, watch this video from the entertainer and master of suggestion, Derren Brown.

You can also learn more about the Nudge Effect from the book that explored it in detail – Nudge: Improving Decisions About, Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk

  A/B split testing is an essential part of any marketer’s tool box and is particularly great for email because it’s quick and easy - however the temptation is to act on results too early.

Typically, A/B split testing is done by isolating two small groups of around 5% of your list and sending them two different creative’s, subject lines or offers. Both campaigns are left until they have generated enough response  in the form of opens, clicks or sales to be statistically representative (this generally takes less than six hours). The best performing creative or subject line is then sent to the rest of the list.  Surely nothing could be simpler?

At Alchemy Worx we’ve found that the best performing cell in the first few hours rarely ends up in the lead at the end of the campaign. So there is a real danger that the version you select will not perform as well as the version you reject! In email split testing, patience really is a virtue.

It’s simple: the longer you leave your analysis, the better your results will be. The people on your list that respond fastest are often not representative of the whole list.

Our advice is to resist the urge to act to soon, no matter how much better the initial response for one version appears to be. Hold off for as long as you can, several days as a minimum – a week if possible and you’ll find email split testing really comes into its own as a device for marketers.

If you would like learn more here is a free guide to A/B split test for email marketers published by Alchemy Worx

The term "emotionally unsubscribed" as a way of describing the subscribers who do not interact with your emails for long periods of time seems to be making a comeback – unfortunately.

I first came across the term 2 – 3 years ago and I have never liked it, particularly when it comes to describing people who have given you permission to email them.

I dislike the term because:

1. I really find it hard to believe anyone is so disengaged with your program that they can’t be bothered to unsubscribe – it only takes a click!

2. It is a very negative way of looking at the issue of inactives and implies that it is a result of some kind of failing on the part of the person sending the email; a classic case of what I call fear and self loathing in email marketing.

With very few exceptions when it comes to sales and marketing, long term inactivity is perfectly normal. After all, how often do you actively interact with marketing communications of any kind from a car dealer, insurance company, estate agent, bank, consumer electronics retailer, hotel chain etc? 

 So why should email marketing be any different?

I prefer to call them Unemotionally Subscribed

Given that between 35% and 55% of your list will NOT have interacted with your emails for between 6 months and a year,  I think that a better description is that they unemotionally subscribed – that is they do want to receive your emails, but don’t need your content or offer yet.  They would prefer to ignore your messages until they are ready to buy, because it is easier than unsubscribing and having to remember your url or Google you at a later date.

We have gathered plenty of evidence of this phenomenon, from our deep dives into client data and here are some examples:

- £70,000 generated by subscribers who had not opened (downloaded images) or clicked on the previous 25 to 40 emails – it was a great offer.

- 10% of 2008 revenue generated by subscribers who did not open or click at all in 2007

- The most common or modal open, click or purchase frequency across every email audit we have ever conducted is 1.

The takeaway is simple.  While some of those inactive addresses may be people who fit the emotionally unsubscribed description, the vast majority are unemotionally subscribed – they don’t need you – yet!

So don’t beat yourself up over the fact that they don’t feel compelled to read every email you send.

Most email clients block email images from unknown senders by default. So best practice advice for the use of images on email (particularly large ones that appear in the preview pane) is to avoid using them if at all possible.

If you do have to use images the general recommendation is that you use them sparingly, making sure you use carefully thought out Alt Tags AND text descriptors for the images. Other design techniques used to compensate for the image being blocked include, putting text behind them and using collapsible boxes.

So why so many companies persist in sending image only emails with no ALT Tags?

The short answer is that for some brands and markets – Fashion for example, images are integral to the sell, so they have to be used. However it is much less easy to understand why such great brands, with significant email budgets and very smart people working on their campaigns completely ignore best practice advice when it comes to ALT Tags etc. Surely their results must be adversely affected!

It would appear not. Analysis conducted by my company into the impact of images on client campaigns reveals a very interesting phenomenon.

Emails such as Email-Worx our own newsletter that is optimised for image blocking generate clicks from people who did not “open” the email. We typically find that around 3% of the clicks do not have a corresponding open (false negatives).

By comparison emails that use lots of or consist entirely of images generate fewer clicks without opens. In fact the harder it is to decipher the content of an email with images blocked the lower the incidence of false negatives!
 
It would appear that by withholding any information about what is in the email until images are downloaded, brands are able to get more of their subscribers to download their images. A very important tactic for brands that rely on creative to sell! Clearly this is only likely to work if the email is about a product their subscribers desire or are highly engaged with the senders brand.

So does this mean that you can ignore best practice and start to use images with impunity?

There's no right or wrong answer to that question, in our experience an approach that is highly effective in one market may not work for another. However we believe that marketers have 3 options and in the most recent issue of the Alchemy Worx newsletter we provide examples of how brands use images and discuss how images can be used in greater detail.

Here is a quick summary of the article.

Fully optimised for image blocking

Email designed in such a way that the content of the email is easily decipherable and downloading the images makes very little difference.

More suited to:
• Products and services that are not reliant on visuals
• Emails where content is the value proposition
• Transactional or update emails
• Newsletters
• B2B

Optimising for creative driven or image only emails

Emails designed to have little or no value until images are downloaded.

More suited to:
• Products and services that are highly visual
• Brand building
• B2C
• Building Desire
• Price indifference

Optimising for both

Emails designed to “sell” with images blocked, but look more appealing with images downloaded.

More suited to:
• Products and services that are quite visual
• Retailers with many product lines to promote
• Groceries
• Price sensitive products and discounting

There you have it! If you are more likely to sell to a person who has seen your product or creative than a person who hasn't you may be able to maximise the number of people who download your creative and generate more sales by completely ignoring best practice.