Author Archives: Fiona Robson

Fiona Robson

About Fiona Robson

As managing director of Rocketseed, Fiona works with customers to ensure they are not wasting marketing opportunities via email. The focus is not just on their email newsletters but also on their everyday business communications. Fiona has over 15 years experience in sales & marketing plus ecommerce roles. Prior to joining Rocketseed, Fiona worked for Hilton Hotels and Walt Disney.

What do your emails say about you?

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In my last DMA blog I made the mistake of highlighting the “branding” gap in Apple’s emails. And I was duly punished by the “Apple gods”, who caused me to drop my new iPhone 5 in the loo. Actually, a recent YouGov survey showed that 21% of people check their emails in the toilet, and I can tell you that there are literally hundreds of web posts advising on how to repair iPhone water damage. So, though it probably wasn’t a personal punishment, I’m certainly going to be more careful about what I say in future. But I would still like to explore further one of the areas that this blog touched upon, and that’s the importance of keeping consistent and relevant branding in all email communications. There’s a profusion of advice on how to optimise your email marketing, a deluge of articles about how mobile is impacting email, and a large wash of commentary about new functionality – testing, responsive design, HTML 5 etc. And this is all good stuff. But there’s not much marketing advice on how to get your employee email up to scratch, for those one-to-one customer communications, and consequently there are still many email basics that businesses are not getting right. If you were to send a mail now from your work email address to a client, what impression would that give them of your brand? Would it help reinforce your business proposition or increase awareness of your company’s services? Well, I received an email today from one of the team at the DMA and I think this is a great example of how email signatures can be used as a marketing tool. (And I haven’t turned from criticism to sycophancy out of fear of retribution before you ask….). Here’s their current email signature:-

180days

The email footer delivers the powerful message “180 days to save your industry”, with a strong call to action “Act now”, and this links directly to the event sign-up page for the DMA Data Conference. As well as linking directly to their site, and helping to promote registrations, it also helps to demonstrate one of the core activities of the DMA – that they lobby on our behalf, and ensure DMA members are informed about the implications of any proposed marketing legislation. And what’s good about their signature is that it also works on mobiles. So if, like me, you are reading their emails on the loo, you will still experience their branding. – And, actually, you’ll get an even better experience on your phone than on Outlook…they have used an animated gif in their signature, that looks particularly good on my (new) iPhone, creating a neat “countdown effect” that shows that time is running out, and increases the urgency of their message.

170days

Having a good email signature can make all the difference to your communications. Here are my top tips of things to think about for your email signatures plus any headers or footers that you include, to help increase the marketing potential of the thousand individual emails that each employee in your organisation will send every month. • Define your objectives: Is it to achieve a consistent corporate look? To generate sales? To increase awareness? To distribute content? Do you need to measure the results? (These factors will impact the design style plus the kind of solution you’ll need to implement your signatures.) • Aim to keep image weight under 30KB • In terms of image size, don’t make your designs wider than 650 pixels or deeper than 100 pixels. • In signatures, use web safe fonts, so that they will render consistently for all recipients • Use basic HTML without nested tables as these can cause issues with reply mail chains • Try to avoid background colours in the HTML layout as these render differently in different email clients • Try to avoid using background images as many email clients do not support them • Minimum font size should be 8pt or size 1 for best legibility

EU Data Protection International Transfer of Data

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The development of technology has enabled businesses to act globally and be less limited by geographical boundaries. From our sofas we can shop online from almost any country in the world, companies can achieve a market presence in a country without having a single employee there; and in the world of iCloud and Dropbox we can access our files wherever we are, yet have no idea where they are actually stored.

So, as digital “borders” blur, how is the EU Data Protection Legislation evolving and what are the implications for marketers?

Let’s look firstly at the existing legislation. The existing UK 1998 Data Protection Act says that “Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area (the 27 Member States of the EU plus Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway) unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.”

Of course that’s not quite the whole story. You still have to adhere to other principles of the Act, informing individuals that their data is being transferred, and ensuring that you do it with the right security. Also, in the UK our current legislation allows a data controller to transfer data outside the EEA based on their own assessment of adequacy of protection – and this difference highlights another key challenge – that there are differences in national implementation of the 1995 European Data Protection Directive across the EU. Complaints have also been voiced about the complexity of the 1995 Directive regarding data transfer.

Those hoping for some advancement with the new European Draft Data Protection Regulation are, however, likely to be rather disappointed.

While some of the rules on transferring personal information to countries outside the EEA have been made more business-friendly the Draft Regulation arguably also takes a step backwards, and raises many more questions.

One of the proposed key changes is that the laws of the country where the data is held become less important than the question of whose data it is. So, for an EU Citizen, no matter where their data is processed, the law that would apply under the Draft Regulation is EU law. It’s nice to feel protected, but one wonders just how practical it will be to enforce implementation of this globally. How will organisations around the world even be able to identify that they are dealing with EU Citizens? In a digital world, nationality is not always obvious, and even if it were, why should organisations really care about laws in another country?

The differences in interpretation of the 1995 Directive between Member States were one of the key catalysts for the revision of the legislative framework. And, indeed, one of the key provisions of the Draft Regulation is for there to be co-operation between the national data protection authorities in the Member States to ensure consistency in the way the Regulation will be enforced. But in the revision, there has been an element of prescriptiveness which is actually more limiting for UK organisations than the current data protection laws – for instance, the Draft Regulation now removes the ability of an organisation to make their own risk assessment on data transfers to countries outside the EEA. Instead it reinforces the need to adhere to sanctioned processes and the Draft Regulation’s own definition of adequacy.

And this is one of the key areas that the ICO felt was not going in the right direction. The ICO have doubts about the way the Draft Regulation bases “adequacy” on the nature of the law in a particular country. It feels that “adequacy should be assessed more in relation to the specific circumstances of the transfer and less on the adequacy or otherwise of the law of the country the recipient is established in.” So, in other words, if I am transferring data to a reputable global firm in a country whose national data protection legislation is not adequate, why would that really be a problem?

Aside from the general concerns about the practicality of many of the proposed changes, the question of adequacy seems to be the hottest topic to debate. This is one of the aspects of the Draft Regulation that the ICO believes most needs to be amended to deal more realistically with current and future international data-flows. It (and we) believe that a future data protection framework should focus much more on risk assessment by the exporting data controller and that it should be clearer about data controllers’ responsibility, wherever they choose to process personal data.

Related articles

What do consumers really want from their email?

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In the media today, ether email marketing is associated with spam, and journalists complain that there is too much email flooding our inboxes, or they say that email is dead and will soon be replaced by social media. It’s all part of the “Fear and Loathing in Email Marketing”, that Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx is setting out to combat. Actually, what the DMA Email Tracking 2012 report shows is that consumers value the emails they receive from brands, and that customers are signing up to emails in greater numbers.I chaired the event last week, and can share some of the insights that came out of the report and the subsequent discussions.

43% consumers are now signed up to receive emails from 10 or more brands, but inboxes are not as crowded as you think – 40% of subscribers still only get less than 3 emails from brands a day, and 63% get no more than 6 a day. Presenting the report, Paul Seabrook, from FastMap, however urged marketers to ensure that they have a value proposition for their subscribers – over 50% of consumers give their secondary email address when subscribing, so by making it clear what the benefit of the emails will be, consumers are more likely to engage with the address that they actively use.

Email Consumer Tracking Study

It was not surprising to learn that they key reason to sign up for email was for offers – with 55% citing money off emails as their favourite ones, but what was also interesting to note was that offers like free delivery were no longer perceived to have such a high value. The report also found that people signed up to receive emails as they “liked the brand” (40%) or because they were “a regular customer “(42%), hence the need for brands to ensure they also provide value-adds like advance notification of new products, to develop the client relationship.

Paul also impressed up on the audience the need to look at wider attribution for impact of emails, not just direct purchases through clicks. The study showed that people take several other actions as a direct result of receiving an email, like visiting a store (27%), or going directly to a brand’s mobile app (32% of mobile opens).

Speaking next, Dela Quist from Alchemy Worx, stressed the importance of email as a mechanism to build brand visibility. He also urged the audience to focus on growing their database. “Who has a target for conversions of website visitors to sign ups?” he asked. The “shocking” answer was almost nobody. He reconfirmed the value of building your email list with a simple truth – “Driving traffic to your site is harder and more costly via search than it is via email”.

But what about social media? What did the study add to the email vs social debate? Well, in terms of social sharing, there was a small increase from 12% to 22%, of people who regularly share email content with their networks. The “social” talk at the event, however, was much more controversial (and entertaining). “Why do we keep talking about social? said Dela “It’s back to that Fear and Loathing in Email marketing again? Why would I want to grow my fans and followers on a social network for other brands to be able to target them? Preaching to the converted, of course, we were forced to agree.

So, email is still the best, most-cost effective way to drive business and foster our client relationships, and the DMA email tracking study, shows that customers still want even more.

Email marketing….because I’m worth it!

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Like many of you, I recently received an email from the DMA entitled “Find out what you’re worth”. I opened the email immediately hoping for some long awaited confirmation that I am in fact worth my weight in gold or perhaps to discover that I am being hopelessly underpaid for my job but instead I was confronted with some unexpected results from a recent DMA study relating to the value of direct marketing. The study revealed that the direct marketing industry in the UK is now responsible for 23% of all UK Sales.

Forget what I’m worth – ‘23% of all UK sales’ is a phenomenal amount! For the Travel and Retail industries the figures are higher still, where 30%+ of sales are driven by direct marketing. This reminded me of a recent comment made by the Head of Email Marketing at a major UK travel company who explained to me the enormous battle he had fought within his organisation just to get an email sign-up form included on their website homepage. With rates of success from Direct Marketing so high, it seems strange that a vital tool, such as a homepage email sign-up form would be such a struggle to implement.

You’ll be relieved to hear that the sign up form is now in pride of place on this particular company’s homepage. However, with the kind of results that the recent DMA study has highlighted, it is disappointing to hear how these types of discussions and internal hindrance still take place. As a business, your email database is one of your most valuable assets. It astonishes me that many businesses still don’t understand the value of their database and in fact the individual value of every person on that database. This brings us back to the DMA’s compelling ‘Find out what you’re worth’ subject line that caught my eye.

Earlier this year I tried the ‘What am I worth’ app, which helps consumers to calculate how much they are worth to businesses based on their online behaviour and consumer preferences. It’s a fun idea, but actually the basic idea that a single ‘consumer’ can be given this type of potential value is critical, and every business should focus on being able to attribute a specific value for their business in adding a customer to their database. (According to the app I am “worth” £525 if you are interested!)

It is really only when you know the value of your database that you can set meaningful targets for database growth and measure return on your efforts/spend to grow it. And of course it’s also helpful if you are trying to persuade your bosses to help you grow it, and to communicate that an email sign-up on the homepage of your website is a key asset not a wasted space.

As well as your website, here are some other suggestions on other ways that you can grow your email database:

  • Everyday email – don’t waste easy opportunities!

    • Your company employees each send out around 15,000 normal outlook emails a year to customers and potential customers in the course of their normal work. Adding a newsletter sign-up button to your email signatures will encourage the clients interacting with you to subscribe to your database. Don’t underestimate how much this can contribute- we’ve seen conversion rates of up to 40% with some of our clients.

  • • Use your social media communities

    • Have you integrated your newsletter sign-up with your Facebook page? Are you promoting your sign-ups on Twitter? Also are you using the tools within your email marketing tool to distribute your newsletters via twitter and Facebook directly to your followers and fans. We recommend taking an integrated approach across all your channels.

  • • Search

    • It was also interesting to see, at the end of last year, that Google started testing a new form of Google Adwords with Honda. I believe this is still in testing but the new format included a direct email subscription option, which allows companies to capture an email address opt-in via search, without the new subscriber having to visit the corporate website (and, by the way, the sign-up is pre-populated for logged in gmail users). This type of ‘search and sign-up’ technique will ultimately allow companies to grow ‘targeted’ quality databases through their paid for adverts.

    In conclusion, it is great news that so much value has been attributed to the role of direct marketing in driving sales across all industries, but for Email Marketers the challenge is often convincing the rest of the business of their true worth. It’s clear that we still have some way to go in joining the dots between the value of the sales and the value of the database that drove those sales. Because we Email Marketers know we’re worth it!

    DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2H 2010

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    I saw a great infographic recently on the importance of email (see below). What really hits home here is that the industry buzz centres predominantly on social media, yet email – “the workhorse of the connected world” – is still used far more than both facebook and twitter put together. There are now more than 2.9 billion email accounts in the world and a staggering 188 billion messages sent daily. Compare this with twitter (140 million messages per day) or facebook (a mere 60 million daily updates). As this infographic shows, “Email is the most used, most valuable and highly prized real estate on the Internet. This is why everyone wants it. Enough said. (click here for a larger version)

    Now that’s all very interesting on a global perspective, but what about in the UK? Well, looking at the latest findings from the DMA National Email Benchmarking Report (H2 2010), there is still significant growth in the email channel, in fact +35% in the second half of 2010.

    Aside from factors like seasonality, which you would expect, it was also good to see that almost 20% of the volume increase was attributed to the effectiveness & ROI of campaigns that ESP’s were delivering to their customers. More consumers, it seems, are also signing up to receive emails, with increased list size being another key factor in volume growth (+7% in database size from Q2 to Q3, and +3% from Q3 to Q4).
    There is more good news: both open and click rates were higher than for the same period in 2009, and click-throughs from email to websites delivered impressive increase vs. 2009 of over one third. (16.1m vs 12m).
    The key challenge moving forward is going to be how to retain these results. The ‘more is more’ approach will deliver more traffic to websites from email campaigns but this can be supplemented with more advanced tactics for targeting the booming number of recipients. However, with all the talk about the importance of relevance and personalisation, there has been less headway in 2010 than expected in terms of implementation of more sophisticated segmentation, automation and triggered content. The biggest reasons for this? – The usual suspects: perceived effort, time and resources – plus of course data constraints.
    With a growing number of emails vying for attention in our inbox, not to mention the increased channel fragmentation, email marketers are going to have to keep working hard to deliver good content & value in their emails, and to continue to improve their segmentation and 1 to 1 marketing.
    The H2 2010 Email Benchmarking Report also features the latest data on strategy and segmentation, as well as open rates and deliverability. You can download the study here (DMA members only) and see the news release here.