Do you spend time writing and preparing content for your email newsletters, crafting your newsletter, hit send – and then check it off as a finished campaign?  If so, you are missing a big digital opportunity to reach beyond the inbox and use your content to draw attention to your company and attract new subscribers.

It’s referred to as a ‘splash and drip’ approach. After you’ve emailed your newsletter and “splashed” all the content out to your subscribers, you can take a few more steps and expand your digital presence. First, promote the newsletter to your own social networks. Then, give your readers the tools to post your newsletter content to their own social networks. Now, extend the life of your newsletter by “dripping” individual content elements of the newsletter.

This content includes links to your articles, and event alerts, videos, graphs, podcasts and presentations within them. Post these newsletter links in your own social profiles, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, etc.  When the opportunity arises, use relevant newsletter article links in your posts on discussion groups, as well as in comments on blogs. As I say, make sure it’s relevant to the topic – or worthy of starting a discussion with! Also, take advantage of social bookmarking outlets such as Digg or Delicious as places to post your newsletter or links within it. (Check out this article showing how social bookmarking can raise your SEO profile.)

P.S. Don’t forget to conduct an subscribe form audit to ensure people coming across your newsletter content via all this social activity can sign up to your newsletter.

If we open an email it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re engaging with the message or the brand. That’s why it takes more than open and click rates to measure subscriber engagement, as Dr David Chaffey points out.

As the year draws to a close, James Bunting does a spot of crystal ball gazing for us email marketers, and it seems the future’s bright.

Email is still the core communication for ASOS. Back in January, I found its email designs lacking, with key messages hidden when images were blocked. ASOS has since totally revamped its designs and is now making the most of all that email has to offer. That’s why it’s this issue’s ‘Campaigns we like’.

But before we say goodbye to 2011, come join David Chaffey and myself at Fusion Marketing Experience where we will be sharing insights and giving master classes on how to improve your marketing efficiency and the all-important ROI.

Kath Pay, editor, Infobox
Co-Founder, Plan to Engage

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As an email marketer, I’ve come to expect the unexpected. Something as arbitrary as the colour of a CTA button can boost your conversion rates.

In this issue of Infobox, expert commentator Mark Brownlow helps you squeeze more out of an A/B subject line test, by testing other elements within your email.

Guy Hanson from Return Path comes up with eight ways to improve your email unsubscribe process, while Sara Watts of Data Media & Research explains how to stop your email marketing from going bad.

Kath Pay, editor, Infobox
Co-Founder, Plan to Engage

Article: Five ways to make more of your A/B email tests
Article: Goodbye – hopefully forever!
Article: When good email marketing goes bad
Upcoming event: Email Customer Lifecycle: Win-back
Survey: The 2011 DMA National Client Email Marketing Survey

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Due to the exponential growth of communication our day to day lives have become saturated with marketing messages. This makes it now so more important than ever for brands to create engaging, relevant email marketing strategies. Consumers are much more likely to shop online or send an email rather than use the phone. Therefore you’d expect brands, in particular retail brands to have perfected the art of online communication. It appears not.

At eCircle we recently conducted a study of thee top UK retailers to analyse just how effectively they used email as a method of communication. To carry out the study we signed up to all available newsletters from the Top 100 Hot Shops/Websites as listed by the IMRG and Hitwise.

The results we surprising with many brands failing to get even the email basics right.

Here are some of the results:

• Retailers that had option to sign up to newsletter but never sent any emails out: 19 per cent
• Retailers that failed to deliver regular email communications: 29 per cent
• Retailers that failed to send a welcome message: 60 per cent
• Retailers that didn’t have a newsletter sign up option: 10 per cent
• Retailers that had option to sign up but needed mobile phone number or credit card: 6 per cent

I’m not saying it’s simple but the fundamentals of email marketing shouldn’t be that difficult to get right. I’d suggest these three key steps retailers should take to improve their global email marketing strategies:

The three golden rules

1. Engage: Customers are often most receptive to communication from brands after making an online purchase and engaging customers at this point is integral to any email marketing strategy. Relevant, personalised post-purchase emails that target the customer on an individual level are also critical in encouraging a second purchase whilst simultaneously reminding them of your brand and reinforcing the benefits.

2. Remind: Show lapsed customers why they signed up to receive your newsletter in the first place. What did you use in your original message and can you try to re-employ this tactic to encourage users to respond to your emails now? Overall, make sure your email marketing campaigns are based around users’ identified interests. If this doesn’t work then it might be worth removing these subscribers from your list. A drastic step, yes, but it’s better to have quality over quantity.

3. Reward: Identify frequent buyers and reward them with appropriate offers. You could set up a triggered loyalty scheme campaign where subscribers are rewarded with exclusive discounts, points for every £1 they spend or voucher codes if they spend a certain amount online within a set time.”

Regular email communication is intrinsic in engaging potential customers, rewarding loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases. The basics of email marketing aren’t as tricky as many people think, ESP’s are there to provide the tools and support for you to run your email marketing and as long as you keep the ‘three golden rules’ front of mind you’ll be on the way to email marketing success!

One of the contentions that surround email marketing at the moment is the issue of when you retire an email address. Leading up to Christmas, when the heat is on, ambitious sales targets tempt even cautious marketers to push out the boat and send to everyone. If an email list is causing deliverability issues, it is quite common for a bit of a clean up to be suggested. It’s not a “stab in the dark” strategy, because when used correctly it can lead to a net increase in response and revenue.

However, you cannot ignore, when retired email addresses are mailed, they often produce some revenue. This almost flies in the face of the no response/retirement strategy, but in reality, some fine tuning is in order to squeeze all the value from your list.

To deal with this issue properly, you will certainly need response (sales) data for your customers, and need to know which email addresses the data relates too. In most instances the full picture of your list can only be achieved through wider knowledge of the customer.

All too often, the most responsive customers are the ones who have been opening and clicking your emails recently. But it’s also important to segment those who are no longer interested, from those that have disengaged from your emails due to a higher contact frequency than their needs require.

The first stage of the solution should be test the differing frequency of those people who haven’t opened or clicked for a while. Although a 6 month open/click window might be fine for some businesses, it might not suit those businesses with a longer sales cycle or a wider range of buying frequency. In these instances, sending mailings for twelve months or even longer might be better, but proper testing should help you decide when a customer is signalling defection.

If you have transactional data, you can use the principles of RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary value) to build up a model which predicts your most responsive customers. In an ideal world you could marry up the purchase RFM data alongside the online engagement data, to see the point where Recency for online engagement (opens/clicks/visits) signals a lapsed customer.

Using email response data, we create two segments, those that are recently engaged, and those that are not (don’t throw any away yet!). The engaged segment can carry on receiving the main campaign emails at the normal frequency. The less engaged segment now gets a rest (for about three to four times the normal frequency of you campaign emails). So if you generally send weekly, rest this segment for a month.

What we are trying to do is identify a segment within the email database that has stopped responding to emails due to a mailing frequency that is too high for them. By responding to the users behaviour, you are able to make changes to the email frequency of this group.

If people from this lower frequency segment, respond, it is important that they don’t go straight back into the main campaign mailing frequency, but give them more of a rest between mailings.

What we are trying to do is to start down the road of mailing people at a frequency that suits them, keeping them engaged and encouraging them to buy more. Managing frequency is the easiest way to respond to behaviour (or lack of it) but if you have more resource, you could try content too. One of the other top reasons why people stop opening emails, is that the emails are no longer relevant to them. The difficultly with content relevance, is that it relies on a deeper customer knowledge, or web behaviour data.

Unfortunately there will be those email addresses in the list that despite your best efforts will never be responsive again. So, at some point you will have to bite the bullet and let these addressees go. It is important to accept that the damage that is done to the whole email programme (in the shape of poor inbox deliverability and reduction in response) will outweigh any extra revenue gained by mailing these inactive email addresses.

There have been many announcements over the last few months regarding the various types of inbox filtering being deployed by various webmail clients. At first they look pretty harmless, with the rules that the ISP’s intend to use ranging from the ambiguous, to the algorithmic detail. If you take the metrics that Google claim they are going to use to identify “wanted” email, it seems they are trying to find out how interested the recipient is in the emails they are sent.

Google’s metrics

- Messages read then deleted
- Messages deleted without being read
- Messages replied to
- Frequency of receiving/reading

As marketers, the only metric we can really measure, is the frequency of receiving/reading the emails. (How many people reply to marketing emails anyway?)This  reinforces the need to focus on individual engagement.

Although there have been one or two conspiracy theory mutterings regarding what might be motivating these changes, you can’t get away from the fact that they will be improving the user experience. And this is what the ISP’s want. If you are happy with the clarity of your inbox, and the management of your inbound mail, you’ll most likely stay with your provider, allowing them to gain further behavioural data, and serve you targeted advertising (and make themselves money). Let’s face it, as a web mail user, it might be free to use, but the trade off is the advertising exposure and revenue.

So this rush to improve customer experience is unlikely to stop. The fact is it’s going to become increasingly difficult to send poorly targeted and conceived campaigns. These campaigns will likely see a gradual decline in response rates, initially blamed on recession (although you can open an email for free), but as likely to be caused by inbox filtering. No matter how good an email marketer you are, you can’t stop the effects of economic slowdown. What you can do is start thinking how you can improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns, and getting into (and staying in) the inbox, is a good place to start.

Sending an email campaign in this new future could become one of the most nerve wracking experiences for the modern day marketer.

• What are my customers going to think of it?
• What if most of my customers don’t open it?
• What if these same customers haven’t opened for a while?
• Could this email discourage my interested customers from opening the next few emails?
• Am I going to lose them forever?
• What if my competitors are doing it better?
• Will I need to spend more money on acquisition?

And ultimately,  if you reduce the ability to influence your existing customers, sales will suffer, and with the costs of getting new ones up to 8 times higher, it’s going to hurt the bottom line.

But it’s not all bad news, in fact for some it’s going to be a big benefit as the inbox will become less cluttered. If yours is one of the “wanted” emails a recipient receives, the inbox filtering should help your message receive the attention it deserves. So for those that are prepared to invest in effective segmentation and targeting for their email campaigns, the future is bright, with email likely to become more effective..  So, we are back to recipient engagement once more, seen as a nice to have in the past, but now vital to protect the value of your email programme.

But it will mean the “one size fits all” weekly newsletter needs to be relegated to the past.

The ability to measure engagement has been with us for a while, and those in the email deliverability circle have been deploying this type of segmentation to successfully manage deliverability for some time. It must now be used to decide who wants to hear from you, those that need a rest for a while, and those who are sick to death of your emails. If the Marketer doesn’t do this segmentation, the Webmail companies certainly will, and once someone’s gone, there’s no going back.

In this month’s Infobox:

Kath Pay of DM Inbox looks at 8 opportunities that are often missed in email marketing and how you can make sure you miss nothing.

Do you have doubts about your existing ESP partner? James Bunting of Communication Corp shows what you should be asking to make sure they are right for you.

Starbucks never fails to impress Tim Watson of SmartFOCUS with their fun, clear and informative emails – he explains why he is more than happy to receive them.

Learn the real value of social media and download a DMA Report. (DMA members only.)

Pick up two new whitepapers by the DMA Email Marketing Council at the Data Analysis, Segmentation & Split Testing Seminar on Wednesday 15 June 2011.

Would you like to receive Infobox in your inbox? Then subscribe here!

Kath Pay, Editor, Infobox
Strategic Consultant, DM Inbox

I recently attended the DMA’s Email Customer Lifecycle Breakfast Briefing with sponsors Silverpop and came away with some refreshing ideas about how to grow email lists. Working in sponsorship, accessing a list/audience is one of the vital benefits within a sponsorship proposal. Most often, the audience has not opted in to receive 3rd party communications; however, it is perfectly acceptable and the norm to incorporate sponsor branding within the sponsored event communications. Options on how to do this successfully were in my last blog Email Newsletter Sponsorship: Who is Getting it Right?

However, badging logos to an email is not always the best way to organically grow your list through sponsorship within eNewsletters. More integrated approaches can be taken if both parties are flexible, which can create a more engaging relationship with the customer you are trying to reach.

Case Study: A Small World & Boujis

A Small World is similar to a private members online network where the audience is fairly exclusive and difficult to access. By invite only, a Small World has generated a unique and large enough audience that can become an attractive partner for luxury brands. Typically this has been done through display advertising. However, more recently there has been an increase in jointly supported events that are supported by communications sent by both partners to their respective database. The most recent partner through A Small World’s email newsletter promoting an event with Boujis – a nightclub located in London.

This email was sent by A Small World to their London members. By avoiding looking overtly commercial and sending communications which the audience has not agreed to receiving, A Small World has promoted their own event showcasing Boujis in the format and copy of the email. When tickets are reserved, guests are then asked whether they’d like to receive communications and similar invitations to events held with Boujis. This provides benefit to both parties – enhancing both the A Small World member experience through an exclusive invite specific to their city of residence as well as providing an exclusive audience for Boujis to build brand awareness and showcase their venue to.

In terms of using sponsorship for list growth, this is a great example illustrating how to grow your list organically through a partner – avoiding purchase or rental of data lists. Instead of spending the money trying to jump start building a new list of customers, Boujis have wisely spent the money in a tailored sponsorship opportunity. This not only provides them organic list growth, but also alignment with a trusted brand and a tangible event attracting new customers.

I can’t wait for more inspiration and email marketing tips at the second session in the Email Customer Lifecycle sponsored Silverpop on Conversion, 12 July 2011. Free to all DMA members, book early to avoid disappointment by emailing Amelia.Bingham@dma.org.uk

Last Thursday I presented the DMA Upwardly Mobile Webinar about the consumer charge to mobile and the impact on email. The session considered:

• Statistics charting the speed of change
• The amount of email use on different mobile devices
• The email activity on mobile devices by time of day
• Three key areas to factor into email campaigning in a mobile world

I found one of the most interesting charts the usage by time of day. This shows a big peak in email activity at the start of the day.

Consumers wake up and grab their mobile; during breakfast and on the commute they check to see what is new and important in their world. Its no longer about reading the newspaper for world headlines but all about personal headlines. Those things that are important to ‘me’.

Also consumers are not using just a mobile or a desktop email client to read their email but switching continuously during the day between devices. This demands an email that works equally well on any device, it is not a choice of making an email great for desktop viewing and another good for mobile. During the webinar I showed a real Starbucks email which we had modified to illustrate how this is possible. On the left is how the email looks on the desktop and on the right on the mobile.

Some HTML magic means the email automatically adjusts to the smaller display of a mobile device. If you would like to provide the code to your own designer as an example of how to create the magic, it’s available here. If you view this in Firefox or Chrome web browsers and simply make the browser window much narrower you will see the transformation before your eyes.
We ran several polls during the webinar including this one.

The people taking part in the poll represent just one consumer segment, professional marketers! However it is still interesting to see just 9% click through on emails. This is low, I believe, because the typical user experience of clicking through to a destination from an email is poor. This currently deters people from clicking on their emails from their mobile. To really work in the mobile world the destination after the email has to be improved for mobile users too. Make your email great and make your website great too.

The whole recorded webinar is available or you may view the slide deck.