In December we conducted our Annual E-Mail Attitudes Research to establish how general consumer attitudes to email have changed in the last year. We expected to see change in email perception, especially given the growing feeling that control of content is the entitlement of the masses, however, what we received back from the research was a resounding confirmation that consumers expect a lot more from e-mail as a marketing channel.
The research made it apparent that the momentum which had been building for several years with the advent of sites like Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, finally reached a critical mass of enthusiasm for the power of the individual over content.
At e-Dialog we have been consistently advocating the importance of preference when it comes to sharing relevant content with your customer base, and engaging with them on as many touch points on the customer life cycle as possible. To the extent we’ve begun to feel like a broken record.
As one of my colleagues, Luke Griffiths, discussed in an article on the results, our E-Mail Attitudes Survey confirmed that those brands that continue to send generic communications risk alienating consumers. 53 per cent of consumers would opt-in to a service which allows them to select the type of e-mail messages received from their preferred brands. This reveals that brands could be limiting the marketing potential of tactics such as “share-with-a-friend” (SWAF), by not giving them a choice over content.
This research also showed that not only has perceived relevance of marketing e-mails decreased over the past year, but consumers are actively removing themselves from mailing lists.
With a prediction of further sizeable increases in the volume of e-mails consumers receive, brands are going to have to work harder not just to gain the attention of the consumer, but even simply to ensure their marketing messages do not end up being discarded in the inbox.
17 per cent of those who feel that e-mail has become more relevant in the past year claim this is as a result of opting out of e-mails which are not of interest or that they no longer wish to receive. The implication of this is that where consumers have control over the frequency and type of e-mail they receive, engagement and interest increases. Clearly more research is needed to verify these results, but all indications are that the trend we are seeing in other channels applies to e-mail. Give consumers power over the content they receive and engagement will increase.
However, this in itself poses a challenge, as consumers are much less likely to give brands a chance to get it right if they are able to unsubscribe or alter their preferences after one or two inappropriate messages.
Something which all of us have really taken away from the results of this research has been that overlooking your customer’s right to chose will have a detrimental effect on the email marketing campaign. However, it needn’t be a time-consuming process to establish this. Customer preference can be easily collected through an online preference centre or customer outreach. If registration is required to access a service, then it is a simple process to collect a little more data at this stage. Giving the consumer control of e-mail frequency and content guarantees that they are receiving something they genuinely need and want.
This year’s research has clearly demonstrated that managing consumer preferences will provide the greatest challenges for marketers over the next year. However marketers have a huge opportunity to engage with consumers through an increased desire and propensity to share content and use different channels to interact with a brand.
Election fever seems to be in the air. No sooner does the DMA Email Marketing Council announce the results of its own election, than Gordon Brown dissolves parliament and fires the starter pistol for the 2010 general election.
As the country waits with baited breath to see if there will be a change at the top, the EMC can now reveal that it has a new chairman. Richard Gibson was the first past the post in a hotly contested election after former chairman Chris Combemale stepped down from the role. Richard is a longstanding member of the EMC and has been closely involved with many of the council’s successful initiatives over the past few years, not least the quarterly Email Benchmarking report.
Richard’s experience will be invaluable as the EMC faces a packed agenda. A white paper on deliverability; new best practice guidelines; a glossary of email marketing terms and definitions; and the Council’s first Client Email Report all promise to keep Richard and the EMC members rather busy over the next 12 months. Infobox will of course keep you updated on their progress.
In this month’s Infobox Riaz Kanani of Silverpop looks at what email marketers can do to get more bang for their clients’ buck; The Database Group’s Guy Hanson explains why email marketing data can yield interesting consumer behavioural insights; in Campaigns We Like Return Path’s Richard Gibson tells us what impresses him about ING Direct’s reminder campaign; in the Special Report for DMA members’ eyes only, Chad White of Smith-Hanson explains why B2C marketers are failing to address some rendering issues.
This month’s articles:
Rise Above the Noise: Email Marketing Tactics That Get Attention and Results: Riaz Kanani, Silverpop
Insights all around us: Guy Hanson, The Database Group
Campaigns We Like: ING Direct : Richard Gibson, Return Path
Special report: B2C marketers failing to address some rendering issues: Chad White, Smith-Harmon. (For DMA Members Only)
March 2010: Legal firm Osborne Clarke reports on a verdict in Germany in which the CEO of a travel company was personally responsible to ensure that each individual on a database of email addresses had explicitly given his prior consent to receiving marketing emails. Osborne Clarke reports that this new legal assessment will lead to changes in the scope of personal liability. The case coincides with the EU Commission’s plans to strengthen enforcement of EU email laws. (read more – requires free registration)
As a headline it would surely grab the attention. From Tuesday 6th April 2010 the Information Commissioner is now able to issue Monetary penalty notices up to £500,000 where companies persistently contravene the Data Protection Act.
Statements such as “I am trying to raise awareness not revenue” from Chris Graham, the Information Commissioner, suggest the probability of such a sanction for poorly maintaining an email programme is unlikely. This is backed up further by the guidance notes issued by the ICO.
However the change in the ICO’s power of sanction does provide a reminder to revisit the DPA principles and overlay them to your own data at a minimum. In fact it is a great opportunity to spring clean your programme, develop better targeting and improve the effectiveness of your activity.
The recent DMA National Client Email Survey reports that
- Only 30% have a newsletter based on purchase habits
- Only 43% have a contact strategy for the maximum amount of contact
- 55% don’t know if they segment , don’t segment or have only 2-3 segment.
- 77% are unable to track the value of an email
Even allowing for the fact that 62% of statistics are made up (source www.6sm.co.uk) this is more thought provoking given that respondents to this survey are likely to be more aware of email best practice.
Feedback from the recent DMA/IAB Ready Steady email workshop is that whilst the “Do – Review – Refine” approach is acknowledged, operational constraints often stop this from happening. People are too busy doing, to do it!
So how can the ICO’s new powers help you ?
a) Why to do ? The ICO’s new powers provide the opportunity / alarm call to review if and how well you comply with the Data Protection Act – Which manager would not want an update highlighting the risks and proposed mitigating actions?
b) How to do ? The DPA provides eight principles of good information handling e.g. personal information must be
- 3. Adequate, relevant and not excessive
- 4. Accurate and where necessary kept up to date
- 5. Not kept for longer than is necessary.
It does not provide definitions of what “relevant” or “kept longer than necessary” means but it does provide the questions your company should define and can highlight where you can be more effective.
For example
- Relevant - Does your sign up form collect information that you are not sure how you are going to use ?
- Excessive - Can you tell / control how often you email individuals ?
- Up to date - Can you confirm / prove opt in initially and how do you define it ongoing ?
- How long is it kept for – Do you set a date for a different approach for non openers / purge them after x months, keep mailing them in the hope that they will open one day?
Whilst the ICO’s new power of sanction headlines are moving data protection up the board agenda it provides a great opportunity to review and improve your email activity.
It was birthday a couple of weeks ago and imagine my surprise when I received a birthday email from a high street store that also operates a mail order catalogue. Well when I say birthday email it wasn’t really a card in the form of an email, but rather a marketing email.
Now it started me thinking about how if you’re going to employ that tactic, the approach you should use. Consumers expect that when they give their information about themselves that it is appropriately by that organisation. Marketers need to think about how the consumer will feel about receiving an email that utilises this information.
Whilst a birthday email might seem appropriate there are a few things that don’t work. Firstly, a birthday email is ok, but not when you’re trying to sell me something. It doesn’t give me a particular warm feeling about the brand. It’s more about you than it is about me. Secondly, the offer of free postage and packaging isn’t particularly strong or appealing to make me want to purchase. Finally, why send me an email on my birthday with the text ‘find the perfect outfit for your special day’, when in fact to take up the offer means I won’t get my ‘perfect outfit for my special day’. As far as I’m aware no home delivery service is that quick that I can order in the morning and get it by the evening (well not on a Saturday in a small village in the countryside).
Why not try the email a week to 10 days in advance, so that I have time to think about my birthday and might be inticed to purchase from you. So the message is, use the information I give appropriately, think about when I might want to receive it so that it allows me to think about your offer and potentially take it up. Then send me a birthday email and not a sales email on my actual birthday.
The DMA are running a series of events around the email customer lifecycle. The latest on ‘conversion’ was so popular that even after finding a bigger venue the next one’s over half booked after just a week! If email marketing is your thing and you want to attend the next one then I’d get in there sooner rather than later.
In the meantime I thought it would be good for those of you who couldn’t attend the last seminar on Conversion to get a summary view, so here it is:
Richard Lees ‘Initial steps: create conversions’
Richard Lees of the Database Group led off with a comprehensive strategic view, it’s absolutely fascinating the levels of planning these guys are able to support. This level of planning needs to be a part of any marketing plan, but can be intimidating for those without tonnes of resource.
If you simplify the messages, Richard was talking about these three key points:
1. Know what you are trying to achieve and make it the focus of everything you do.
2. Look at the customer lifecycle, all too often marketing works independently of sales (or ecommerce). Marketing can augment every stage of the buying cycle but often the input stops when the initial lead is generated.
3. What does a conversion mean to you? All too often “making a sale” is the default response, but are you considering converting existing customers to buy more or how about getting brand ambassadors on our side?
If you can clearly establish these before you start the process of trying to improve your conversions, your chances of success are greatly improved. My favourite stat from Richard? – each page you need someone to go through to covert you will get an 8% drop off – wow cut those pages down!
I was up next, but we’ll leave talking about me for a bit.
Margaret Farmakis ‘Testing 1-2-3: Get true email ROI’
Margaret Farmakis from Return Path gave us some great insights into the effect further down the line of having poor deliverability, talking through what was to be the theme of the morning – testing.
A couple of interesting stats:
“84% of consumers report clicking through to a relevant email offer”
= So give recipients relevant content and you are very likely to get a click through.
“73% of email users report making an online purchase as the result of a relevant email offer.”
= They’ll end up buying as well!
My favourite speaker was up next, Jean-Michel Boujon.
One of the head honchos over at Theladders.co.uk, he provided a client side view into how he goes about improving the conversion rate of his email campaigns.
• First off – understand which emails are most important in your email campaigns – his password reminders actually generated the highest conversions. Apparently this indicates that the prospect is ready to re-engage with the site and therefore is likely to convert.
• Once you’ve picked the ones you want to improve, test, test then test again! Jean suggested using agency resource to facilitate the extra HTML you’ll need, after all you are working on improving conversions – getting a design budget for that shouldn’t be too tough.
Another interesting insight was that when emails are sent from a female name they got a 10% bump in opens, due to the fact that most of their subscribers are males – how can you apply this thinking to your list?
His slides around landing pages and email content were really interesting, I suggest you download them along with all the presentations from the day *here*. (http://www.pure360.com/email-marketing-resources-insights/conversion)
To finish, some guy from Pure360 (me) did a presentation.
I have 4 key “takeaways” when looking at conversions, follow these and I’ll bet you an overpriced coffee you’ll get higher conversions:
• Get conversion metrics into your email service provider, or wherever you make decisions on email marketing – don’t refine based on email metrics – do so based on conversions!
• Make the call to actions clear as day
• Invest in retargeting your subscribers based on what they have done – Jean-Micheal was a keen advocate of the cart abandon campaigns.
• Make sure your email creative matches your landing pages, you can see a good example from Citrix, poor matching of email and landing pages style, copy and creative will lead to a massive drop off.
You can still (for now) sign up for the final parts three and four of the email customer lifecycle series:
Part three: Engagement and Retention (June)
Part Four: Winback (September)
When done correctly, email surveys are an easy and cost-effective way to gather information that you can use to inform the content of future mailings, make business decisions and build stronger relations with customers. But if not handled correctly the results can be very disappointing – and even return inaccurate data.
I’ve come across an excellent whitepaper from Vovici: “The Seven Deadly Survey Sins … and How to Avoid Them”. Vovici helps companies engage their customers and increase customer loyalty. The paper is available free for download (after registering).
It provides lots of useful tips, metrics and case studies, including examples of invitation text and layout within emails.
Vovici says there are four elements to a successful survey (all discussed at length in the document):
- Who you invite to take the survey
- Timing of invitations and reminders for maximum impact
- The use of incentives to induce survey repsonse
- Overall survey construction
We are currently working on the 2010 instalment of our annual email benchmark study, Hitting the Mark. I was therefore particularly interested to see a great example of an email that was sent from STA travel to an Australian friend of mine who has just been to stay over here in the UK.
My friend had booked the trip through STA Australia and upon arrival in the UK he was pleasantly surprised to find an email waiting in his inbox from STA UK checking that he had a good flight and offering tips and advice on what to do during his stay. This included making sure he had all the necessary local STA contact details in case there were any problems.
STA scored very well in our 2009 Hitting the Mark report so it is good to see them keeping up the high standard.
Sending the right email at the right time
So often in email marketing, timing is everything. Getting that email to the right person at the right time with the right information is crucial in maximising conversions.
And it doesn’t just help with acquisition. This STA email is a great example of how email can be used to increase retention, by building a positive image of a brand in a customer’s mind.
By linking their booking database and CRM system with their email marketing, STA are making use of event based triggers, personalisation and dynamic content features to gear this communication to the specific needs and circumstances of my friend.
They used existing customer insights to great effect; they knew when he was flying and where he was flying to and responded accordingly.
This isn’t just an example that can be used by travel companies. I wrote an article the other month for the DMA looking at an equally good example from Apple, where they used the information they held to better target the timing of their email marketing .
Here are the three steps you should take in order to make the most of the customer insights at your disposal:
1. Work out what absolutes you know about your customers – e.g. purchase dates, planned activities or events, repetitive behaviour profiling
2. Develop ways to make the most of this – e.g. dynamic content, triggered emails
3. Create content that fits – e.g. offers, advice, up-sell/cross-sell
And, of course, don’t forget to test and segment all these variables so that you maximise your success.
Our bloggers
Follow us
Recent photos
