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.

In 2011 a study on how consumers interact with brands via email and social media was commissioned, which reminded me of the importance of digital marketers integrating their marketing channels effectively.

Some key statistics were uncovered by the study, which marketers across Europe can capitalise on to interact and engage with their consumers within their preferred method of communication. Interestingly, of the European countries sampled, (France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the UK), it was the UK that had the highest number of respondents ‘liking’ brands’ Facebook pages with 33%. In total a third of Facebook and Twitter users in the UK ‘like’ brands – more than double the number in the other European countries. In other countries less than 16% of users were signed up as ‘fans’. This highlighted the different levels of engagement with social media across Europe.

Email marketing was found to be the most popular digital channel with an average of 83% of respondents being subscribed to receive newsletters. Respondents from Germany, France and The Netherlands were the most likely to be reachable only via email, whereas in Spain, Italy and the UK, integrated communications, including social media, were the preferred method of communicating with brands. Across all respondents 95% said they check their emails at least once a day and 75% said they use email to receive social network notifications.

For me, the most important issue that marketers need to understand is why people are behaving a certain way via social networks and email, and effectively integrate the two channels to maximise ROI, rather than treating them as separate entities. Only 18% of all consumers said they only use email with the majority preferring to use a combination of channels. The study uncovered that there is currently a large gap between what consumers want and what marketers are delivering.

Due to the extensive amount of information gathered, this infographic has been produced to display all of the information and summarise the key takeaways.

In light of these statistics, are you tailoring your strategy to ensure you are occupying the right channels or driving your consumers to your desired location from the networks they favour?

If you have read or listened to any commentary on email marketing in the past two years, you have most certainly witnessed some version of the now-popular script I call, “In Defence of Email Marketing”. The decrees from on high have repetitively predicted the imminent decline, or worse yet, the eventual death of email marketing in the growing presence of social media, mobile marketing, and other emergent channels. But, despite that commentary, month on month, year on year, our experiences defy those decrees and largely prove that email marketing is not only alive and well – but thriving!

In fact, I would argue that social media in particular has done more good for email marketing than any other technological advancement in the past decade. And the proliferation of smartphones is creating another positive change for our beloved medium. We have labelled this new world “Mocial” marketing (a bit silly but also a bit catchy, right?!?). It represents the intersection of Email with Mobile, Social and Local marketing channels—all working together to increase the impact of the other.

So the key for email marketers lies not in preparing a proper funeral for our channel, but instead, in learning how make our programmes thrive in this new environment.

5 Ways Email Marketing is Thriving in a “Mocial” World:

• Email is More Viral than Ever. With new integrations between email vendors and social media platforms, email marketing is now more viral than ever with offers and content that can easily be shared across any number of social networks. And better yet, in many email systems sharing and downstream viral activity can be measured and attributed back to the original recipient – helping marketers identify what social networks are most impactful and who in their database is their most ardent brand evangelist.
• Mobile is Creating an Always-On Connection. Smarthphones and tablets provide an always-on connection to consumers and prospects. Email is consumed at a faster pace than ever with consumers and business decision makers reading email on the go, connected and not, at all hours of the day, from all corners of the globe. Gyro HSR calls this the At Work State of Mind, and I think we will all agree that email and our work lives are with us for more hours each day than ever before in our lives.
• Triggered Email Creates Deeper Relevance and Real-Time Connections. Triggered emails and real-time alerts can be delivered with local offers triggered from check-ins and other location-based services – tying email marketing seamlessly into the world of location-based and on-premise marketing. The timeliness and the relevance of these triggered communications is higher than that of outbound programmes, and their triggered nature takes the guesswork out of when an email message should be sent and what content would be most valuable – the consumers behaviour is often telling you exactly what to send and when.
• Social and Mobile are Fuelling List Growth. Quicker email list growth can be achieved by using opt-in forms on Facebook company pages and by promoting newsletter options across various social channels. Email has always been a relatively poor (and often invasive) acquisition channel. By leverage social media and fan pages, marketers can now create cross-channel connections that allow social media fans and followers to more deeply connect with the brand through email opt-in.
• The Online and Offline Worlds are Colliding. On-the-go opt-ins are now possible with mobile apps, QR codes and text-to-opt-in campaigns. These new technologies allow consumers to opt-in to programmes and email communications from a variety of locations: from mobile applications on the handset to opt-in campaigns on billboards and bus stops. With Internet-connected mobile devices, consumers are now only a text or scan away from opting-in to email communications and connecting with your brand – turning historically brief advertising impressions into long-lasting online relationships.

Already marketing by email, but need inspiration? This intermediate session will show you how to accelerate list growth by building on your existing email marketing programme  – and reach beyond the inbox to find new subscribers.  
 
This breakfast briefing, sponsored by email marketing experts Silverpop, is the first in this series of four seminars.

In this first session, we will be looking at b2b and b2c list growth practices. We will be running an intermediate session and an advanced session. 

In the intermediate session we will show you how to accelerate list growth by building on your existing email marketing programme – and reach beyond the inbox to find new subscribers.

The advanced session is for those who want to take their campaigns to the next level and explore ideas such as how to use social media to grow your list.

Agenda

8.30 am Registration & Breakfast

9.00 am Introduction by Chair
Richard Gibson, Channel Relationship Manager UK, Return Path

9.05 am Keynote Speaker
Richard Evans, Silverpop. Richard will inspire you with some great List Growth tactics including using Social Media to grow your list. 

9.35am Intermediate/Advanced Case Study
Intermediate – Susan Young, Screwfix. Screwfix excel in their email marketing efforts, so come along to this session to learn from their Case Study.
Advanced – Guy Hanson, DBG.

10.10am Tea & Coffee

10.25am Intermediate/Advanced How To
Intermediate – denise cox, Newsweaver. This session is a ‘How To’ session covering creating effective subscriber forms and taking advantage of Preference Centres and Welcome Messages.
Advanced- Richard Austin, Silverpop. In this session Richard provides expert ‘How To’ advice on how to grow your list using social media, competitions and many other techniques.

10.55am Q & A Panel Discussion
Richard Evans, Silverpop
Susan Young, Screwfix
Guy Hanson, DBG
denise cox, Newsweaver

11.25am Closing Remarks from Chair
Richard Gibson, Channel Relationship Manager UK, Return Path

11.30am End of Seminar

Next in the series will be…

Part 2: Conversion on Tuesday 12 July 2011

Part 3: Retention, Date TBC

Part 4: Win-back, Date TBC

So come along and put your questions to the experts – and enjoy breakfast with your peers.

Date: Wednesday 25 May 2011
Time: 8.30am-11.30am
Venue: The Kings Fund, 11 Cavendish Square, W1G 0AN
Cost: DMA Member: Free
Non-DMA Member: £25 (+VAT)

Book Here

Recent research from TNS revealed the number of mobile web users visiting social networking sites grew from 30% to 46% globally, highlighting that mobile phones are a crucial part of any social media activity, and will continue to do so (click here for press release). Just like Smartphone users ability to access their emails, they don’t have to rely on or be restricted to their home or work computer to access their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account and carrying a mobile in your pocket is a lot easier than carrying a laptop on your daily commute.

Mobiles are making online content even more accessible than ever before. This provides opportunities for such industries such as leisure, travel and tourism, where the target audience are frequently out and about. Hotel companies such as Hilton, Marriot, and Holiday Inn have created a large social media and mobile presence. People can use these social media sites to book rooms, read and post reviews, and interact with other hotel visitors. They can also connect to that brand at any time which fits in to their daily routine and don’t have to be strapped to a computer to do so.

Therefore, if a customer or prospective customer of your brand posts or tweets a question to your social media site it is the same principle them calling your customer service team for advice. Your social media page would be seen as a 24 hours, 7 days a week online customer service channel, even more so with mobile users logging in at different times than usual. Social media should not just be used for brands to promote new products; it is a way for your audience to communicate to your brand too, otherwise known as ‘Interactivity’.

With the amount of company information available on the internet increasing, customers are contacting brands with more complex questions and expecting a quicker response than ever before. So track of all your points of contact, including your social media page. Regularly update and monitor your pages for queries and questions, and respond to them as quickly but efficiently as possible. Interact in a personal and humanised way, so refer to them by their name when answering their questions. Encourage interaction on your profile too. I noticed an example of this on BBC Good Food’s Facebook page encourages people to ‘like’ a post if they found a blog offering seasoning tips useful. On another occasion for their page to reach 30,000 likes, they asked followers to share a post to help them reach the 30,000 mark (the post included cake recipes as a thank you!).

Finally, take advantage of mobile apps. Advertise these on your social media site and allow them to be downloadable. BBC Good Food did this on with their ‘Good Food for Friends’ application, by advertising on their Facebook page and can be downloaded straight from the page. Make use of the opportunities mobiles have to integrate online, including email and social media activity, with offline, so incorporate QR codes and SMS into your campaign to allow a multi-channel approach. This way you will have a great integrated and interactive campaign.

In the spirit of Red Nose Day—fast approaching on Friday, 18^th March—I’ve been thinking about what makes email funny. Other than two great cartoons (see below), which I have tacked to my office wall, I couldn’t really come up with much.

Instead, I’d like to use this post to expound on a few ways to make email fun. Yes, that’s right— fun. As a marketer, this is likely not your primary goal for the email channel. Or even one at the very bottom of your list. Or actually on your list at all. However, I can’t help but think of a famous Groucho Marx quote: “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.”

While I’m sure Marx never thought this could be applied to email marketing, there’s something to be said for creating fun, entertaining and witty email campaigns. Standing out in the inbox is getting increasingly harder to do as the email channel becomes more and more saturated, both with legitimate permission-based messages, as well as spam. As a result, it’s not only important to provide your subscribers with value and send relevant content and offers, but to grab your subscribers’ attention, however you can. Sometimes, that means being funny, or at least showing that you’re having fun and you want them to as well.

How to achieve this?

• Start by injecting your brand with some personality. Social media is a great place to start. When email marketing is done well, it can create opportunities for having a dialogue with your customers and prospects. Social media takes that one step further and provides the opportunity for your brand to have a voice and a personality. Yet, many marketers ignore this by creating dry, static and product-driven social media pages and content. This won’t keep your audience’s attention. They are looking for fun, entertaining and exclusive information, as well as the chance to interact with your brand in a completely unique way. It’s important to treat interactions in this channel differently from what you’re doing via print, broadcast and other more traditional channels. So loosen up—and don’t forget that your content needs to be more about your audience and less about you. Of course, the goal is still to sell, but instead of communicating new product specs, explain how your product can help your audience be smarter, more organised, have fun and ultimately live better lives. If you’re already doing this with your email marketing content, it shouldn’t be too difficult to apply this approach to your social media efforts.
• Video in email is another great option. Interactivity is always fun and can get subscribers clicking and engaging with your content. The great news is that many studies point to the fact that consumers who watch videos are twice as likely to convert as those who don’t. In addition, ISPs like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail are now allowing YouTube videos to be played directly in the email inbox, so the hurdle for response is significantly lowered from when Flash and Javascript were the only options, which often caused ISP blocks. Marketers can now leverage the visual draw of video in their email templates by inserting an animated GIF or image of the featured video. Simulating video with images can create more visual interest and therefore boost response rates. A variety of companies offer some great options for implementing this. One is Liveclicker, which detects each subscriber’s email client in real time—as the email is opened by the recipient—and only then delivers a compatible video asset directly in the email.

So this Red Nose Day, consider the entertainment factor of the email messages you are sending. Not only will this help you to stand out in the inbox, but you’ll find that it’s the humorous and entertaining messages that go viral. To capitalise on this, be sure to include links for the traditional “forward-to-a friend” option or the newer “share-to-social” option in your email templates, which makes expanding your reach—and potentially growing your email file and your fan/follower base—simple and easy.

In this month’s Infobox:

• What are the challenges facing email marketers? We look at the latest trends and developments, including hotmail Active Views, Facebook messaging and the surge in mobile browsing.
• Video is making a comeback this year. Find out what this means for email marketing and how to use video successfully in your campaign.
• PizzaExpress hit a home run with Guy Hanson of DBG when it sent him an email telling him he wasn’t a winner!
• Read the results of the latest Email Benchmarking Report to find out the big trends and challenges and why it will pay to improve your email strategies in 2011. (DMA members only)

Kath Pay, Editor, Infobox
Strategic Consultant, DM Inbox

We’ve just released the latest in the DMA UK Email Marketing Council’s ongoing series of Benchmarking Reports. Two key findings: UK business’s are becoming more dependent on email to achieve their marketing goals, and there’s been a  huge shift towards social media integration with email.

Here’s the full press release:

17 February, 2011

The latest Email Benchmarking Report (Half 1 2010) from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reveals that UK marketers sent over 1.7 billion emails in the first half of 2010, an increase of 50% over the same period in 2009. According to Dela Quist of the DMA’s Email Marketing Council, “businesses turn to email in adverse economic conditions because it is very versatile from a tactical perspective and extremely cost effective.” The Report also reveals a huge shift towards social media integration with email. Fully a third of marketers are including ‘share with your network’ (SWYN) links, which allow the email recipient to forward content or offers to their Facebook friends or Twitter followers in their messages.

Despite the increase in email volumes the Report also shows that average Open Rates for email appear to be holding up year on year at around 24% for retention emails and 11% for acquisition emails. “What we are seeing is evidence that email marketers have become better at targeting their promotions and that their customers are getting used to receiving email from brands they trust which is great news” says Quist. Much of the growth is being driven by acquisition email programmes, which represent almost one third of the volume sent over the period covered.

Looking forward, the Report highlights some challenging trends for email marketers. First there is the ‘intelligent inbox’, which allows people to pre-sort their emails and prioritise messages from contacts and favoured brands. Similarly, the fragmentation of digital communications in the form of social media and other pathways can be a huge opportunity for marketers but a big obstacle too.

Email Benchmarking Report (Half 1 2010)
(Available free to DMA UK members, £100 to Non-Members)

Press contact:
Rachel Aldighieri
Head of PR, Marketing & Communications
Tel : 020 7291 3314 /07801 573324
Email: rachel@dma.org.uk

It’s not often that I share a “data gag” outside of my circle analyst friends, but I thought this was worth the effort! The title of this post comes from a Dilbert cartoon strip, which, whilst amusing, also made me think that remembering what data really is should be at the forefront of the email marketer’s mind. We all refer to our “email list” everyday, but I’m starting to think that maybe we should abandon the term “list” altogether. A list of email addresses alone has no value whatsoever, it’s the customers, or potential customers that own these email addresses that are truly valuable and the lifeblood of our businesses.

Put data at the heart of everything you do

In my organisation, data, i.e. insight about the customer, sits at the heart of every piece of marketing activity that we run. We’ve all heard that “Data is the new oil”, or personally I prefer David McCandless’ take which seems somehow greener – “Data is the new soil”, but what does this really mean? It’s true to say that we are in a new world of information and have never before had so much detail about our customers likes, dislikes, attitudes, motivations and so on. It is no longer the case that a campaign consists of direct mail pack, followed up by an email, or a one-size fits all email blast. We really do have the opportunity to tailor our communications to the consumer, by harnessing this insight and driving (I know it’s trite) relevance and therefore engagement. In addition to the data that is held in the customer base, we bring together a whole host of data sources including Brand Tracking, Web analytics, Buzz, market research and panel research, to ensure that the offer, the tone, and the messaging are right for each audience segment.

I don’t know my customers well enough

You may not have a huge marketing budget that allows you to set up brand tracking studies, or expensive focus groups and research panels, but there are cheaper ways of learning what your customers want. Let’s say you’re launching a new product…use your buzz analysis (check out free tools such as Social Mention) to find out what customers are saying about the product and concentrate your messaging on the features that are most talked about. You’re probably sitting on a sizeable crowd (new word for list, but more human) of email data. Use this data to send out surveys or polls to help understand the motivations of your customers. This type of communication, when you’re asking questions that are relevant to a customer’s recent interactions with you, can garner impressive and insightful results at very little cost.

So, let’s rehumanize our data and our lists, and by doing so, reap the rewards of more effective email marketing programmes.

When I wrote about Facebook Messages back in November, I closed the piece with the thought that it was really just another form of electronic mail. Or “email”, if you will. As such, it’s bound to live or die by the same rules.

So we were a little disturbed to read this post talking about how Facebook Pages admins can load 5000 email addresses at a time to “recommend” they like the page. If Facebook finds an associated profile, it’ll do the invite internally but if not, it simply sends out a traditional email to them.

What’s more, there’s no feedback method for people who don’t want to receive such invitations. This wasn’t quite what we had in mind when they said it would revolutionise email.

Angry or disappointed?

This goes against everything responsible email marketers have fought for in the last decade and shows you can’t just saunter into the messaging businesses without a few lessons to learn. Something Google learned with Wave in its own way.

My business is currently the number one result on Google when searching for ‘email marketing’, we get all sorts of enquiries from all corners of industry. We actually end up turning many of them away based on unsuitable content, databases or other factors.

The thorough human checks we put in place mean we tend to only end up with the best most responsible clients on our books. But even as if that wasn’t enough, we also have our ultra-sophisticated last line of defence; the merciless dotMailer Watchdog.

Terms and conditions

In the case of Facebook, they seem to simply lay out the terms and conditions how they expect users to deploy the service. How carefully will they keep watch on this though? Time will tell. You can imagine the spammers’ eyes twinkling at the opportunity here.

When you consider that there actually appears to have been something of a crackdown on spammers recently, have the criminal fraternity started to look at other ways of driving traffic to their websites? ESPs with lots of data and with IPs of great reputation are also a natural target to pursue as we have seen in the recent warnings from Returnpath.

This is something that people in our business including resellers have to take really seriously- and something Facebook will have to pay real attention to.

Moving on

Facebook Messages is just in the trial phase at the moment so hopefully this is something that will be ironed out but its exemplary of the dangers it faces. If they can slip up in an area of such fundamental importance, does that bode well for the rest of this new offering?

Time will tell.