Archive for the ‘Email Marketing Strategy’ Category
Posted by Drew Miller on October 8th, 2009
Nobody can argue the value of segmentation in email marketing campaigns. For those marketers that are blessed with rich customer data and the wealth of segmentation opportunities it provides, the real issue is choosing what to segment (lucky them). But for those whose data is thinner than a deli slice of black forest ham, the goal is to fatten up just so the opportunity to segment can even exist. If you happen to fall in the latter group, you need not to worry. Here are 4 steps that can help fill out those loose pants (your customer database):
1. Make Time
Segmentation sounds easy enough in theory, but building a more robust database doesn’t happen overnight or by simply snapping your fingers, it takes time. Make a schedule and stick to it. Need some motivation? Learn reasons why you should find the time for email marketing segmentation.
2. Determine What Data to Use
This may be pretty cut and dry for some, and a challenge for others. You need to have a firm grasp on who your target audience is and the capabilities/resources you have to market to them. Check out 5 ways to discover key data fields for segmenting your email marketing campaigns.
3. Capture Your Data
There are several ways to go about acquiring more data on your customers, and it’s important to take the right approach that doesn’t lead to remorse or abandonment. Learn 3 simple ways to capture data for email marketing segmentation.
4. Test Your Data
Testing is an important component of all successful email marketing campaigns. For instance, if you are a lawn equipment company, you might try geographic segmentation using zip code to vary your message depending on where someone lives. If you are a shoe retailer, gender might be a good segmentation tactic to use. Learn more about the benefits of testing in this quick video.
Building a more well rounded database is no simple task. The real key is taking a baby step approach and exercising patience. By planting the right type of seed under the right conditions, you could be well on your way to “fatter” customer data.
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Posted by Drew Miller on September 25th, 2009
If you’ve read The Email Newsletter 3-Course Meal, you understand the importance of grabbing readers attention from the appetizer (your email) all the way to dessert (purchase or other desired action). This is an especially important concept when it comes to B2B Email Marketing. There are several ways to improve your Newsletter if you are in this space – Here 4 quick ways that can make a big improvement:
1. People are People
Believe it or not B2B customers are people too. Keep that in mind when you are conceptualizing your Newsletter content and design. Sure you want to keep within company guidelines, but don’t be too formal with your approach or the results could be deletes and unsubscribes. Make your content easy to comprehend and keep the design simple and appealing.
2. Think VALUE with Your Subject Line
With work inboxes flooded with everything from meeting requests from your boss to soccer schedules from your spouse, it’s become even more important to have a subject line that breaks through the clutter and delivers relevancy. Instead of using something passive (”XYZ Company Newsletter: Vol 3. Issue 12″), think VALUE and entice an open by highlighting your most compelling content in the newsletter (”Learn How To Save Money on Office Supplies”).
3. Don’t Make it a Scavenger Hunt
Even if your Newsletter contains some of the best copy ever written, your readers are busy people too. Some might take the time to read through five paragraphs on “How to Choose Better Paper Products”, but odds are they are just don’t have time right now. A better approach is to give them a tease (sentence or two) of why they should click to learn more, then send them off to your landing page where they can read, bookmark for later, or find something else that peaks their interest. This way you create multiple opportunities to connect and interact with your company. Your email acts as the appetizer, and your landing page as the main course.
4. Make it Interactive
The goal of your Newsletter shouldn’t be to solely inform readers with written content – Make it interactive and get them doing something actionable. This could be anything from watching a quick video on a new product or service, interacting on your Facebook page, or signing up for a sweepstakes to win something. Think about your brand and audience and get them doing instead of just reading.
When it comes to Email Marketing and your B2B Newsletter, remember to take steps that align with company goals and objectives, and always think from your customers’ perspective. Is this something you would read if it was sent to you? If you can answer, “yes” to that question, you are on your way to a better Email Newsletter.
What are the biggest challenges with your B2B Newsletter? Would love to hear your feedback.
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Posted by Dave McCue on September 23rd, 2009
There was a time when I was, indisputably, the most feared pitcher in my small town Little League—for all the wrong reasons. Let’s just say that if you were within three feet of home plate, you had best be wearing a helmet, or you might soon be wearing a fastball. It got to the point that umpires asked my coach not to let me pitch, because my taking the bump meant a long afternoon of hit batsmen and/or walking the bases loaded each inning.
But it wasn’t always like that. Early in my Little League career I was a fine pitcher, but one season I got a new coach who decided that I should change my grip on the ball. Being so young, I didn’t know that the grip my coach insisted I start using was a curveball grip. Suffice to say, not everybody can control a curveball.
My being forced to throw wild curveballs is very similar to the situation faced by email marketers who must contend with “coaches” who don’t realize the damage they are causing. It’s a tough situation to be in; defy the authority of someone who could bench/fire you, or follow orders and hope for the best. Marketers are being told to send more often. Marketers are being told to find more people to send email to, permission-based or not. In a survey SubscriberMail conducted earlier in 2009, one reason cited by marketers who were not conducting adequate testing of their messages was “a C-level aversion to testing.” If that isn’t bad coaching, I don’t know what is.
Occasionally I’ll come across an article in my RSS feed or a post to Twitter that says something to the effect of “Email marketing study finds that relevance is key.” My initial reaction is usually to chuckle and think of similar headlines, such as “Drivers report difficulty when blindfolded,” but even though the importance of relevance in email marketing would seem to go without saying, it’s something that can easily be lost when a misguided mindset of “more more more” controls the strategy of an email marketing program.
For a pitcher in baseball, the ability to throw 100 miles per hour doesn’t mean a thing if the ball isn’t anywhere near the plate. The story is much the same in email marketing; the power is only effective if you can control it.
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Posted by Bill Leming on September 14th, 2009
A question came up last week regarding how to best measure the impact of a specific commercial email we recently deployed for a client and which, on the surface, appears to have produced nearly unbelievable positive results. While this endeavor is far more preferable than proving that you’re not guilty of lying, cheating or stealing, it’s nonetheless a challenge.
Anyone and everyone responsible for promoting the offer through the website, or via banner ads, social media, print and email wants to claim responsibility for the parentage of this genius idea and the attendant sales figures associated with it. So how do we “prove’ our numbers?
One suggestion that was offered was the idea of matching the email addresses of actual buyers against our email list to see how high or how low our match rate actually was. The hypothesis here was that a high match rate would indicate that there was a strong correlation between our list and those who bought and that either our email efforts must have been successful or that we had the ability to predict before deployment who was likely to buy.
Conversely, a low match rate would signify that our email efforts were less than successful. Without going into the various scenarios that might explain why this approach is less than logical and therefore less than irrefutable, suffice it to say that statisticians and most non-statistically oriented people will have problems with this methodology.
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Posted by Drew Miller on August 27th, 2009
The importance of optimizing your email marketing messages for preview pane viewing cannot be understated. Once you’ve gotten someone to click on your message with a winning subject line, the next step would be to make sure that you capture their attention in the preview pane viewing area.
It’s important to keep in mind the varying sizes of monitors, screen resolutions and the actual preview pane itself. Taking a worst-case-scenario approach, here is a view of my inbox in Yahoo! on my 17” laptop:
Again, this is my size preference so others may vary, but I personally try to keep about half of my inbox viewable and the other half for preview pane viewing. Here is a look at a few messages once I click on them:
Sears:
Jet Blue:
Amazon:
Out of these three selections, Amazon does a really nice job of optimizing the preview pane with several links and reiterates the subject line promoting Blu-ray Movies. By having multiple touchpoints in the preview pane area, they have greatly increased their chances of getting someone to click.
For more great information on preview pane optimization, check out these other blog posts:
Email Marketing Minute – Power of the Preview Pane
Are Your Subscribers Organized? Why It’s Better to Assume the Worst
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