One of the more unlikely celebrities to emerge from the recently completed football World Cup was Paul the Octopus. For those of you who are unaware of the background to this story, Paul lives in an aquarium in Germany, and has become an expert predictor of the results of the matches that feature Germany ( as well as correctly calling Spain as the winners of the final ). To assist Paul with the making of his predictions, aquarium staff would provide him with two clear boxes, with each having the flag of one of the competing teams affixed to its side, and a tasty titbit inside in the form of a mussel or an oyster. Whichever box Paul climbed into was treated as being his selection, and incredibly he ended the World Cup with a 100% success record.

I got to thinking that Paul’s predictions have a lot in common with email marketing. Think about it :

• There are differing outcomes associated with whichever box you ultimately end up in !
  When Paul correctly predicted that Germany would lose to Spain in the semi-finals, German fans called for him to be cooked and eaten, while the Spanish prime minister jokingly offered to provide him with protection.

  Similarly, “inbox placement” is now widely regarded as a more accurate campaign metric than “delivered rate”. Campaign responses are markedly higher when the emails are getting delivered to a location where they will be seen, and responded to. E-marketers need to be challenging their ESPs to provide them with the reporting capabilities to see whether this is an issue that is affecting their programs. And if so, to implement the best practices that improves their inbox placement performance.

• Recognition plays an important role in delivering a positive outcome !
  One theory about Paul’s astonishing success rate was that Octopuses, which are highly intelligent creatures, can differentiate between shapes ( apparently with a preference for rectangles ! ) as well as between contrasts in brightness. The German flag, which he chose 5 times, was therefore an obvious choice for him, except when presented with the even greater contrasts that were represented by the stripes of the Serbian and Spanish flags.

  Similarly, the typical inbox is a massively congested space right now, and consumers are more likely to respond to marketing emails when they immediately recognise the sender. E-marketers need to be careful to ensure that they maintain a consistent “friendly from” and that the subject line clearly explains why the email is worth opening. And with many recipients using some format of preview pane, making sure that this limited amount of real estate is able to effectively convey the sender’s brand and call to action.

• A good incentive is more likely to achieve the response that you are looking for !While Paul’s psychic capabilities are undeniably phenomenal, it is unlikely that he would have displayed them without the incentive of the mussel that was place in each box. Octopuses are equipped with sensitive chemo receptors on their tentacles and Paul, knowing that there was a tasty treat inside the boxes, was eager to engage.

  Similarly, consumers are more likely to respond when they consider that a fair exchange of value is taking place. This doesn’t necessarily need to be in the form of a prize or a free giveaway either. Good content carries a value ( think moneysavingexpert.com ) and consumers will respond more readily to marketing emails that they think that they will benefit from. Email marketers will be rewarded by the application of even simple profiling and segmentation against their marketing audience so that they can consistently apply the marketing mantra of “right target, right message, right time.”

So what else does Paul the Octopus have in common with email marketing ? Cynics may respond that it is a case of having a highly intelligent brain at the centre of operations, which is attempting to control the behaviour of thousands of suckers, and sometimes coming unstuck in the pursuit of a few more squid !

However, I would prefer to tip my hat to Ringo Starr, who wrote Octopus’s Garden for The Beatles, after eating octopus for dinner, and learning from the ship’s captain that they travel along the sea bed picking up stones and shiny objects with which to build gardens. So the octopus analogy is with something that creates value without necessarily having an ulterior motive, that can take many different forms, that populates a variety of different channels, and that ultimately is capable of leaving a good taste in your mouth – just like well run email marketing program !

We all talk about the power of email marketing, but it really comes home to roost where you’re on the end of a bad experience.

Let me set the scene. With summer on the way I decided to buy some plants for my garden. I chose a company I’d never bought from before but had the recommendation badge from a leading horticultural organisation. At first I had good service, they delivered quickly, but the problems arose with my second order. My second order was left on my doorstep and whilst the box clearly said ‘do not tip’, the delivery company had left it on its side resulting in six of my nine plants being damaged.

I went to the website of the company I bought them from and the only way I could get in contact was through completing their website form (not a good start). There wasn’t an email address for them anywhere. So I sent off my complaint and waited and waited. In fact I waited one week and heard nothing even though their website said they would get back to me within two working days.

I did some more digging around and found an email address hidden on the receipt I’d had for the order, so I sent off another complaint and waited and waited. In the intervening time I received an email from one of their other businesses offering me incontinence products. Signing up for emails from the gardening business and get emails from the incontinence business. I was not impressed.

Four days later I sent my complaint email again. This time I had a response and was pleased with how they coped with it. They were mortified and offered to refund the plants that were damaged, so I responded reminding them that six had been damaged. Sadly I’ve heard nothing since and whilst I’ve emailed I’m a little lost and disappointed that having chased and chased and chased communication has fallen off a cliff.

Email marketing is a powerful communication tool. It can build positive customer experiences and long standing relationships. However, it can also destroy them very quickly. Use it wisely.

Jonathan Burston, Director

Customer Solutions Group, CACI

I recently saw the chart below from Morgan Stanley showing that social networks have now overtaken email in terms of usage and total users.

Now whilst the global number of users does not look very accurate (See Return Path’s post here for a good look at why); I think a useful takeaway is the upwards trend of both social networks and email. This is very much because there is a place for both. Or to be more clear; the future of email is inside the social networking environment.

What do I mean by this?

Well social networks provides a better visualisation of a user’s network of contacts and the content it generates. It does this by separating different use cases into different areas within the interface. Be it the news feed; the messages box (read email) or the photo area. Here are some of the use cases for social networks today:

1. Sharing content (photos; videos; links)
2. Updating people on your status/short messages notifying your network
3. Managing your network of contacts
4. Managing events
5. Social Gaming

In the past email took over all of these albeit for a smaller network of friends. Yes even Social Gaming – you used to be able to play chess, monopoly and even Civilization over email!

Just imagine receiving everyday in your inbox links to all your friends latest photo albums – whether you were there or not – links to whatever Youtube video they just liked – and dozens of one liner emails (and their friends’ responses) about what they had for breakfast that morning. You know what? Email would be dead under that scenario. It would be unusable.

Social networks allow you to keep track of and interact with a much larger network of people. In theory, though it doesn’t work well today, it should place the content you care about the most in front of you; pushing the rest of the content into a separate view which you can dip into as needed. Messages shift off the screen and disappear unless you actively go looking.

Email’s purpose is therefore changing. A Microsoftie at the Media Post Email Insider Summit recently mentioned that consumers are using Hotmail primarily for business purposes today. That is because the C2C (consumer to consumer) communications have shifted inside the social network already. Over time I see these coming together again or possibly delivering into separate views inside a social network. “New Email” now has a smaller number of reasons to use it but this is a positive. Email was struggling to cope with all the use cases it had before and has now limited to:

1. Private longer form or “letter” type messaging
2. Private attachments (confidential presentations; documents etc)
3. Messages that need to be retained in the future (receipts; vouchers etc)
4. Other business and marketing communications
5. Notifications.

Good marketers understand where their audience is and so ignoring social media opportunities within social networks is a dangerous game; but then so is ignoring email. People still want to receive valuable information from companies they are interested in; they will happily join fan pages on Facebook and still sign up for emails as long as there is value to them in doing so.

Email will move into the social network itself; in fact the seeds have already been planted with Facebook Messages or Twitter Direct Messages. What is next is also clear. Facebook have already announced they are rolling out an email platform; whilst Myspace webmail has already launched.

From a marketer’s perspective; does it matter that the inbox sits within a Facebook account or within a Google account? I think not.

While the date has yet to be set for the forthcoming general election, all political parties are gearing up to campaign in what promises to be the most closely contested general election in years.

As the Obama presidential campaign in 2008 showed, the difference between winning and losing could come down to which candidate operates the most effective communications campaign. A well executed digital marketing campaign undoubtedly helped to connect President Obama with voters in a way no politician has done so before.

Regular targeted and personalised emails to voters proved to be one of the most powerful communications tools in the Obama’s election campaign. It remains to be seen whether any of the UK’s mainstream political parties will harness the power of email marketing in a similar fashion, but recent history suggests they’d be foolish not to.

In this month’s Infobox Return Path’s Stephanie Miller looks at the rules of engagement when it comes to inbox placement; David Hughes of Email Academy puts forward his case for why averages don’t tell us anything interesting; Newsweaver’s Denise Cox addresses the challenges and choices around videos in email; and James Bunting of Communication explains why he’s impressed by the way Amazon uses data. For DMA members’ eyes only, this month’s special report is Anatomy of an Email Newsletter Checklist.

Why Good Email Gets Marked as Bad, Stephanie Miller

Don’t be Mr. Average: why averages are a bad, bad thing in email marketing, David Hughes

Video in email, denise Cox

Campaigns We Like: Amazon, James Bunting 

Read the entire issue

Welcome to the January 2010 issue of Infobox. We have now set foot in what is ostensibly the email marketing industry’s second decade of existence. As we entered the new millennium, few could have predicted just how email would quickly evolve to become one of the preeminent marketing channels. Technological developments aside, what has been most impressive is how sophisticated the medium has become in such a short period of time. What the digital world will look like ten years hence is anyone’s guess, but I’m confident that the next decade will see email marketing continue to be at the forefront of marketing innovation.

This month, Infobox features articles on how the ’spray and pray’ approach used by some email marketers needs to be retired and make way for the three Ts: tailored, targeted, timely; taking a level-headed approach to integrating email  with social media marketing; and a case study on how Apple uses email to effectively up- and cross-sell.

Don’t forget that we’d also like to see you in the real world at our series of Email Customer Lifecycle seminars during 2010. On 3 March, we’ll be looking at conversion – how to earn that click and open and drive revenue. Tickets for the first Lifecycle sold out, so to guarantee your seat today, please make your booking here.

The 3 T’s – Tailored, Targeted, Timely by Jonathan Burston

Email as a social stepping stone by Simone Barratt

Campaigns we like: Apple by Tink Taylor

Read the full issue of Infobox here

 The wintry weather has given us all plenty of un-expected “down-time”, whether waiting in hope on snowy station platforms or huddled around an open fire with our families. Rather than succumb to the clutches of Cabin Fever I have been thinking about the “big wins” that treating customers differently delivers email marketers. With that in mind, here are some suggestions for treating people differently to reflect their unique registration, transaction and click-stream profiles.

Acquisition tools – if you’re renting data, ask the list owner what variables they hold and then deliver different versions of the same message. For BtoB that should be different subject lines, opening paragraphs and calls to action based on “job function” or “industry sector”. For consumers you may know their lifestyle and affluence from geo-demographic variables that list owners like Acxiom hold…have different propositions for less affluent and older prospects or use a different creative for young professionals. Let you imagination run free!

Conversion - as digital marketers we sit on the most valuable real-time prospect data so let’s use it. Who clicked on an email link but did not complete a successful outcome? Who looked at deep product pages on your site but did not buy? These re-marketing campaigns should deliver 4-16 better conversion rates than one-size-fits-all messages so start building them.

Retention – send different message programmes to your newer customers, or have a different tone of voice for purchasers of specific products. Build “personas” to help with your tone of voice, imagery and calls to action.

Re-activation – how do you know when you’ve lost a customer? Probably when they’ve not bought for a specific time period. So develop a “win back” programme with the first message triggered by a “date of last purchase is more than 60 days”. And be relevant…”we’ve noticed that you have not bought from us for a little while….” is a good start.

These are certainly not new or radical ideas, but it is surprising how few campaigns in my in-box are trying to follow these rules. Now that the dust has settled at the end of a demanding 2009, and whilst UK PLC is slumbering in icy grasp of winter, we should be using this precious time to develop relevant, engaging segmentation and personalisation strategies. Happy New Year!

Chris Combemale and David Hughes, Co-founders The Email Academy

When the lead goes cold – what to do with inactive e-mail segments

The festive season is here again and the ‘inbox’ is bursting with invitations and enticing offers from a wide variety of email marketers.  As the number of shopping days diminish and the pace of life, for the consumer, intensifies the easy option for retailers would be to increase email frequency in the hope of achieving the highest return on investment.  However, the intelligent e-marketer knows that by segmenting ‘inactive’ consumers it is possible to highlight where new opportunities lie.

Before considering tactics for inactive segments it is important to define exactly what is meant by ‘inactive’. We live in a multi-channel world where consumers are able to connect with you by many different mediums, so while e-mail, for example, may not be particularly effective they may happily interact with you on any number of others. It is essential to take a holistic view – activity from customers or prospects on other channels should have a direct bearing on your email tactics.

When does inactivity become ‘inactive’?  How dead is dead?

The first question to consider is: how long does a recipient have to be inactive before you officially classify them as ‘inactive’? One company’s ‘inactive’ can be another’s ‘active’. The key criteria for your decision should be an understanding of where a customer is in the buying cycle. If it typically takes your customers 30 days to make a purchase then your definition of inactive will be substantially different from a company that’s buying cycle is 60 days. It may also be appropriate to consider how many different spells of inactivity are required before you officially categorise someone.

On a more technical level, be sure that everyone in your team knows what inactive means to your organisation. Not opened? Not clicked? Not purchased? Most important, though, be sure to double check that the e-mails are actually being delivered in the first place! With careful planning and understanding, it is always possible to predict and prevent inactives in the first place.

Change e-mail content for the inactive segment

Re-engaging inactive customers presents a very convenient opportunity to try new content tactics such as adding interactive elements or experimenting with a new format. The first thing you should do, however, is test new subject lines – any other changes will be irrelevant if recipients don’t open the mail in the first place.

If something new manages to rekindle the interest of a certain percentage of inactive customers, it may be worth testing it against the rest of your e-mail list. Of course, if these changes have no impact, there’s no down side as you haven’t exposed your most faithful and profitable customers to the changes.

Invite inactive customers to update their profile

If an inactive customer hasn’t evaluated her profile in a while, it could well be the reason your e-mails have gone unnoticed. Send an e-mail that encourages inactive customers to review their profile information. Let them know that updating profiles will help you deliver more relevant e-mail. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to re-engage inactive customers with your brand.

Experiment with e-mail test streams and zero frequency

Another option is to suppress the inactive customer list and re-introduce it when a new e-mail communication stream with a compelling offer goes live. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and inactive customers may well be apt to open or click on e-mail when they realise they haven’t heard from you in a while. One test that we conducted recently showed that eight to nine per cent of inactive customers opened or clicked on an e-mail after they were reintroduced into the communication stream.

Survey customers about current e-mail content

It may sound simple but the most effective ideas often are. An e-mail survey to inactive customers can help determine the root of the problem. Did the e-mails they were receiving not meet the customer’s expectations? Was the content not relevant to their interests? Were they receiving emails too often or too infrequently? The answers you receive may allow you to engage inactive customers with an alternative programme, or at least understand what improvements or changes need to be made to current e-mail programmes.

Any of these re-activation programmes can be implemented as a trigger simply by targeting segments that have been inactive for a year, six months, or three months – the earlier the better. As said earlier though, never forget that we live in a multichannel world. If you find that none of these tactics is working, look to contact the individual on another channel – there’s no point in fretting or wasting time if you can quickly determine whether an address is incorrect and really ‘dead’ or simply inactive and a prime opportunity for re-engagement.

Welcome to the November 2009 issue of Infobox. As autumn has well and truly arrived, kick back, warm your hands in the glow of your PC, sip from a mug of hot chocolate and read about the latest news and views from the world of email marketing. This month, Infobox features articles on whether or not the Royal Mail postal strikes will have a positive effect on the email sector; taking a consumer’s eye view at email marketing messages; advice on when to use the word ‘free’ in subject lines; and a review of a recent email marketing campaign that’s impressed us. For DMA members’ eyes only, this month’s special report looks at the effectiveness of using navigation bars in email templates.

Don’t forget that we’d also like to see you in the real world at the first of our four Email Customer Lifecycle seminars. On November 10, we will be addressing tactics for growing your lists with active and engaged subscribers. Tickets are going fast for this free morning seminar in central London. To guarantee your seat today, please make your booking here.

Also, now is your chance to take part in fast.MAP/DMA’s 2009 Marketing GAP study. This vital piece of research measures the gulf between what consumers think of marketing messages and what marketers think they think. Sounds confusing? Well it’s not, and if you take part then you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win £250 for your favourite charity. To start this short survey, please click here.

Our articles this month include:

Postal strike – good or bad news for email marketing? Simon Bowker

Research from my inbox…James Bunting

Free email marketing deliverability advice – when to use ‘FREE’ Chris Combemale

Campaigns we like – Firebox denise cox

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

In many cases, businesses earn more in the 10 weeks prior to Christmas than the other 42 weeks of the year combined!

Although the busy period may start in late November, customers are already starting to think about what to buy well in advance. Email is a great way to remind them about products and services that are perfect to put under the Christmas tree. But first, in order to sow the seeds for these emails, you need to have a good list!

As an early Christmas gift to all our email marketers, the DMA has partnered with Pure360 to offer a FREE List Growth Email Marketing event to get you started and make your campaigns successful for the holiday season. With an increase in site visits and click through rates throughout December, list growth and capturing good quality data is vital.

Find out how to grow your opt-in list size from the founder of the Email Experience Council Jeanniey Mullen; gain insight into a case study on how Europe’s largest ticket exchange Seatwave built their database; and make sure all your permissions are legal with email legal expert Stephen Groom at our next free event.

Availability is limited and seats are going fast, so make sure you book today!