Category Archives: Creative

Are high open rates holding you back?

Our findings last month on the Obama campaign caused a lot of debate but the bare facts of our analysis still stand – had Obama’s team optimized for improved open rates, their send volumes would have dropped and their all-important donations would have followed.

Open rates remain a widely used and hugely misleading measure of performance and engagement in the email industry. At best they give you an idea of a campaign’s performance in isolation but at worst they lead email marketers to focus on optimizing the wrong strategies for their email program.

Here we discuss how to identify if maximizing open rates is holding you back and how to go about identifying the strategies that will have the biggest impact on your results.

The open rate paradox

Using EDS Analyst we examined the relationship between open rates and total unique opens for the top 200 email senders by list size in the US for 2012.

We were confident that, like the Obama campaign, there would be an inverse relationship between rates and totals – so as rates increase, totals decrease and vice versa. We call this the open rate paradox or to paraphrase a popular sports trusim: rates are for show, totals are for dough.

Each dot on the graph below represents a single sender and we picked out some well-known brands as reference points.

Sure enough, the graph shows that for most large senders, there is an inverse relationship between open rates and the total number of opens – the higher the open rate, the lower the number of total opens. Rates are for show.

It’s also no coincidence that nearly all of the brands with the biggest lists (orange dots) also have highest number of total opens because they are sending more opportunities to open.

Although opens don’t directly correlate to revenue, even the most avid fans of open rate maximization would agree that the more people that actually open your emails, the more engaged your database and the more revenue or conversions you are likely to generate. Totals are for dough.

Keep it simple – focus on just three strategies

If your goal is only to improve open rates, then your strategy is simple: halve your list by suppressing your less active subscribers and watch those rates soar… and those total opens plummet! But if your goal is to increase total opens, then the bell curve in the graph above helps define three clear strategies:

List size:
Has the biggest impact on totals and can be improved independently of the other two.
Increase send volume:
Significantly increases total opens for relatively little effort (low effort to gain ratio).
Optimize for rates
Increases total opens but requires the biggest effort (high effort to gain ratio).

Most brands are clustered towards the lower middle of the curve because it’s the easy place to be. By and large, they all put a similar amount of effort into their program and use the same undefined strategies.

The outliers, however, go above and beyond in one of three ways – those to the right have very high open rates, those to the left have high send volumes and those at the top are combining high send frequency with very big lists to produce massive send volumes.

In effect, this is the three different strategies implemented to their extremes.

Of course, there are limits to the effectiveness of each strategy and these are defined in the graph above by the orange line to the left (frequency cap) and green line to the right (optimization cap).

These boundaries exist because for any given list size there is point at which diminishing returns kick in for both frequency and open rate. And, as the big empty space to the right of the green optimization cap shows, it’s very hard to send a large volume of email while still achieving a high open rate.

So the basis of a successful email program is to continually grow your list while finding a balance between increasing send volume and maximizing open rates with better offers, targeting, subject lines, etc.

And you find that balance by ignoring your open rates…

Define your strategy by ignoring open rates

To illustrate the effect these strategies have on an email program, we have created a simple optimization chart, below. The green curves represent the impact of send volume on total opens and the brown lines represent the impact of open rate on total opens.

Each intersection represents a hypothetical 10-hour unit of resource, as a means of comparing the effort required to implement each strategy. As you get closer to each cap, the effort required to improve your totals with your chosen strategy increases exponentially.

Imagine your brand is the star in the middle of the curve and you want to take on your leading competitor, the lightning bolt.

If you use open rates to define your strategy, then you focus your resource on maximizing those, route A. Your open rate may now be much better than your competitor’s but they are out-mailing you, so they are still creating twice as many opportunities to buy or convert.

If you choose to increase your send volume, ‘route B’, then your open rate drops but your total opens more than double. However, as you approach the frequency cap, the impact of your strategy diminishes and you still trail your competitor.

If you use totals to define your strategy, then you take ‘route C’, which balances resource between increasing send volume and maximizing open rates. Your open rate drops but you are finally creating more opportunities to buy than your competitor.

Smart email marketing is not just a case of increasing send volume indiscriminately or of only focusing on ever tighter targeting. There is a balance that exists for each brand, you just have to find your own sweet spot.

Total opens the key to optimizing your program?

In this instance, we have highlighted the open rate paradox using total opens because that was the data available. However, we’re confident you will find the same inverse relationship in your own campaigns with total clicks and, more importantly, revenue. And in the end that’s the only metric that matters!

Stop everything – we need to re-design for mobile devices

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There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks among various groups about whether or not mobiles have become so important that we should all be designing new templates for mobiles either optimised or using responsive design. A recent study by Blue Hornet says that 80% of people will delete an email on a mobile device if it doesn’t look good so this suggests that we should.

Now, a survey is only as good as the questions it contains and how these are phrased so let us look at the question. “If you get a mobile email that doesn’t look good then what do you do”. So what constitutes “does not look good”

Lets go back a few years to the days when Blackberrys where the only smartphones we had to worry about. In these days the html renderer on a Blackberry was pretty terrible and only the simplest of html would be readable and older versions would only give you the text version of the message. If was pretty safe to say that any html you sent would not look good.

Nowadays the html renderers on smart phones are excellent and they will pretty much render anything that a desktop email client will. Just because people are opening your email on a mobile device and you haven’t fully optimised your campaign for mobile it doesn’t mean these people aren’t engaging with your campaign.

So, everyone can relax a little. Without doing anything, you have a mobile strategy because people can read your emails on a smart phone and engage. It maybe harder to navigate around the email on a mobile device and the calls to action a little difficult to click but if your email looks good on a desktop then the odds are it will look ok on a mobile device. If you want to improve the user experience on a mobile device then it is not about getting your campaign to render on a mobile device but about optimising it for mobile devices.

The question is will this improve your campaign results? Every campaign is different and just because Litmus say that 43% of emails are read on a mobile device it doesn’t necessarily translate to your target audience. Tim Watson from Zettasphere analysed the data and found there are still campaigns at both ends, some with almost no mobile activity and some with almost only mobile activity. If you have historical campaign data to your subscriber base then look at your open stats and see what your mobile open rate is across a variety of campaigns.

However, don’t be misled by your mobile open rate. Just because someone opens your email on a mobile device it doesn’t mean they don’t then open it on their desktop as well. If I receive an interesting email on my mobile device but find it difficult to read I just wait until I’m in the office and read it on my desktop.

One thing that does generally improve campaign performance is re-designing an old template whether it is related to mobile or not. If you put the time and effort in to look at your existing template and re-design it with the mobile user experience in mind then I would expect your results to improve. No matter whether this is related to mobile opens or not. Its a win win. The new template should get more opens on the desktop and mobile devices.

Everyone should be thinking about mobile devices and how this affects their campaigns but you don’t necessarily have to drop everything and rethink what you are doing. Look at your recipients and stats. If it has been a long time since you changed your template then it may be time to think about creating a new simplified template with mobile devices in mind.

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:-

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.

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

LOCOG deserves a gold medal for email marketing

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Well the Olympics was pretty stunning, wasn’t it? I think it’s fair to say that London 2012 delivered and then some. Olympic fever gripped the nation and left us all clambering for information as Team GB soared up the medal table.

As the main Olympic broadcaster in the UK, the BBC certainly gets a fair dollop of credit for the 24/7 coverage it provided across the full spectrum of digital channels. But I think LOCOG – the organisation in charge of running the Games – needs to be commended. The London2012 official website did a great job of providing real-time updates and the mobile apps were another leap forward providing information whether you were attending events live or just catching up on the train.

But, for me (as you can imagine!), the way LOCOG used email was particularly interesting. And I was very, very impressed.

Every day, I woke up to find a ‘Today at the Games’ email waiting for me. Across the spectrum it really ticked the box, offering a one-stop shop with all the detail and information needed to plan every Olympic day. Not only this, but one of my friends who went to see the handball received an email on the way to the event advertising related handball souvenirs that could be purchased onsite or online – a great personalised upsell opportunity.

In particular, these areas really stood out:

Calls to action – there are powerful calls to action throughout this email. Whether it is viewing further information (like medal tables) on the website, downloading the mobile apps or topping up your Olympic merchandise in the official ecommerce store, these are all designed to encourage engagement.
Personalised – the email I received was clearly targeted to someone living in the UK, supporting TeamGB. In fact, right up there in the top right hand corner, you can see the postcode you registered with and the country you are supporting. There are also links to allow you to change these options. Fantastic! With an event like the Olympics, where there is so much going on, selecting the right content for each recipient is vital to success.
Mobile – these emails are great examples of responsive design. When viewed on an iPhone (see image) the two-column structure you see on a desktop email client automatically shrinks to a one-column version. This makes it easy to read and visually appealing, no matter what device you are viewing the email on.
Images – this email has a great balance of images and text. Images are used sparingly to ensure that the email size isn’t too large but, when they are used, it’s in a way that really brings the message to life and engages anyone that opens.
Content – there is a perfect mix of content in this email. It’s actually quite long, which isn’t a bad thing at all. More important is the fact that content is varied throughout the email. There’s a mixture of news, features and calls to action. There really is something for everyone here; you don’t need to be an Olympic obsessive to get value but the message perfect captures the excitement around the games.
Sharing – links to social media channels are clearly visible in this email and, with the large numbers of social media that ran throughout the two weeks, it’s no surprise to see LOCOG making the most of this. The ‘forward to a friend’ link is also prominent in this message.

This is a real value-add email. With so much information being shared about the Olympics over the last two weeks, making sense of all the noise was a real challenge. This email hits home by providing a succinct but detailed companion to what many think was the greatest sporting show this country has ever seen.

The Olympics, piggybacking and how to make the most of it

Email marketer and recipient = man chasing woman of his dreams

The relationship between an email marketer and recipients can be likened to that of a man and the woman of his dreams he’s trying to woo. No words are wasted, no contact is without motive and not a single landmark date goes by without a gesture to show he only has eyes for her.

In much the same way, a seasonal email campaign offers marketers the chance to woo new recipients and to make existing recipients fall in love with them all over again. It’s an opportunity to make a gesture that either keeps them coming back for more or catches their eye for the first time.

Don’t just send out anything

Careful analysis of your database cannot be underestimated. One of the biggest mistakes any email marketer could make would be to send out a campaign without careful analysis.

It could be argued that the Olympics are fairly universal but other seasonal events will be more suited for particular segments. For example, a database of mainly elderly women are very unlikely to respond favourably to a campaign relating to the commencement of the new Premier League season, that is until you meet my mother!

Consider how campaign fits in with you overall strategy

It is easy to loosely attach the ‘O’ word to any campaign or to throw a ‘gold medal’ into the subject line without strategically weaving the theme into other aspects of the message. A lot of marketers lazily jump on a bandwagon without a proper plan of how the campaign fits in with the overall marketing strategy.

These campaigns will come across as desperate and, even if they don’t end up in the junk folder, they will end up as the email equivalent of that gift you got for Christmas ten years ago but never really used.

It’s another chance to send more emails

As mentioned earlier, seasonal campaigns are an opportunity to send more emails and reach more inboxes. There is a common belief in email marketing that the more you send, the more money you make. There is also research that suggests many businesses are missing out on opportunities and leaving money on the table by not sending enough targeted email campaigns in sufficient volume.

Events like the Olympics offer you another opportunity to score brownie points with recipients. It’s also an opportunity to win hearts and minds with your latest offering.

Don’t forget those who are not involved

In the midst of it all, it is important to remember those who might not be interested in the season or event your campaign is focused on. Use the information you gathered at the initial sign-up stage to segment your database and approach them with the appropriate campaigns. With something like the Olympics, it might be difficult to make that distinction based on sign-up information but with other seasonal sending, those distinctions will be easier to make.

Once you have sent a seasonal email, review your results and use this to inform future events.

What do you have planned for the Olympics?

Autoplay video in email

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Video in email is not a new concept. A static image with a “click to play” call to action that starts the video playing in the browser or media player is a standard technique. However, since the advent of HTML 5, having a video that starts to play in the email client as soon as you open the email has become simpler. In theory.

Whether this is something you want to do in an email campaign is open for discussion. In the Implix 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey, video in email marketing was shown to increase click-through rates by over 96% in some cases. I believe, like many marketing techniques, there is a time,place and audience for which autoplay videos will work and give improved campaign results. If someone is sat at their desk at work they might not appreciate a video playing in an email with the soundtrack blasting out of their speakers. Video is probably better targeted at a B2C audience rather than B2B but thats not to say it wouldn’t work for B2B with the right content. Horses for courses.

Unfortunately HTML 5 is not the total solution for video in email. Not all email clients support HTML 5 and of those that do, some have disabled the support for the <video> tag. But lets look on the bright side.

Hotmail starting supporting HTML 5 in 2011 and you can get a video to autoplay in Hotmail for most browsers (not IE7 or IE 8 as HTML 5 isn’t supported). The same is true if your email client is Apple Mail. On IOS devices (iPhone or iPad) the video shows as a clickable video link which then starts the video in the media player. For all other desktop and web based email clients the fallback image is displayed, which can include the call to action to click the link to play the video.

So, using HTML 5 you can get a video to autoplay in Hotmail and Apple Mail and all other recipients will see the fallback image with a call to action to click to watch the video. Using an alternate technique you can also get the video to autoplay in Yahoo.

Earlier this year Yahoo released the Yahoo! Mail Widget Engine which allows you to play video in the body of the email received by Yahoo without using HTML 5. The first stage is to email them and ask nicely if you can test drive the widget engine. Once they email you back and you accept the invitation you then need to enable the widget within your Yahoo email account. The widget engine doesn’t use any custom html tags so the code will work in any email client and the video is identified by the id of the span tag “yEmbed1″. Yahoo then converts the span to an embedded flash video player.

If you send yourself a test email with the subject “witness the inline video magic” the video should automatically start to play in your inbox. The initial span class is treated as an image so unless you are a certified sender the image will be blocked by default and hence the video won’t play unless you enable the image. If Yahoo agree to approve your production emails then they will whitelist your DKIM-verified sender and the recipients won’t need to change anything to see the autoplay video.

So what do Yahoo gain by creating their own way to play inline video rather than supporting the HTML 5 video tag ? Firstly I guess it gives them more granual control over who can send inline videos to Yahoo email addresses. Probably the biggest advantage is that they convert the span tags to an emded object so the video should play in any browser including those that don’t support HTML 5. However in my tests I couldn’t get it to play in either IE 7 or IE 8.

I think autoplay video could have a massive impact if used in the correct scenario with video content that is relevant and exciting to the recipient. Due to the technical limitations some segmentation is required to achieve the best results and as ever test,test,test.