Archive for the ‘Email Marketing Strategy’ Category
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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Posted by Dave McCue on August 19th, 2009
Every time I hear the word “assume” I can’t help but recall the old saying (say it with me now): “when you assume you make an ass out of u and me.”
But when it comes to email marketing, making assumptions about your subscribers only makes you look the fool.
Here are a few assumptions I’ve seen email marketers make before, and why a subscriber would disagree:
• Assumption: You subscribe to my emails, therefore you likely visit my website often.
• Reality: Not exactly, in fact I might not have visited your site for a long time. It doesn’t mean I don’t read your emails, I just haven’t seen anything that made we want to click to the site in awhile. Don’t be afraid to make mention of the cool new features or special offers you have on your site; assuming I’m going to discover them on one of my “frequent” visits could lead to me never seeing them at all. Your emails shouldn’t be an exact replica of your site content, but some overlap can help keep email subscribers in tune with what is going on with your business beyond the inbox.
• Assumption: Using a “teaser” subject line will make recipients want to open my message.
• Reality: Risky move. If I’m not in a rush I might take the time to scan a preview or actually open your message, but don’t bet on it if your subject line doesn’t give me at least some idea of what to expect from your message content. Vague subject lines ["Have you seen what's new at ABC Company?"] are only going to work for those email marketers whose messages I loyally open most or all of the time. Which leads us to…
• Assumption: You open my messages all or most of the time
• Reality: I get email from dozens of different marketers, often in rapid succession. Some of them I don’t even read the subject line, let alone the message content. Of all the marketers who send me email, I would consider myself a “loyal” reader of a very small percentage. That percentage often shrinks over a given time period, but it rarely grows. Even if your metrics show that I am an engaged, active recipient, it’s your job to win me over again every time you email me—the line between “loyal reader” and “delete upon receipt” is perilously thin.
• Assumption: If the unsubscribe link is on there, you’ll find it.
• Reality: Have you looked near the bottom of your emails lately? I need a magnifying glass. I need the ability to read light gray letters against a white background. I need to deduce that I think we should see other people is your quirky way of saying click here to unsubscribe. If I don’t want your emails anymore, make it easy for me to part ways, or else I’m just going to mark you as Spam.
Avoid making assumptions about your email subscribers, and you’ll be better off. Unless, of course, you’re assuming that any assumptions you have are not entirely accurate—in that case, you’re just being realistic.
These are just a few assumptions email marketers should avoid—do you have any others? Post to the Comments section!
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Posted by Bill Leming on August 10th, 2009
Regardless of your political inclination there is little doubt that the CARS program (or Car Allowance Rebate System) has been successful in its effort to increase new car sales. (Six months ago I would have bet heavily against the odds that 250,000 new cars would be sold in the US in July or that Ford Motor Company would post its first car sales increase in 19 months.) While the costs associated with kick-starting the auto industry and who will ultimately bear the burden is debatable, there is little doubt that the offer itself has caught hold and is gaining traction both inside and outside the auto industry.
Just this morning a large, local furniture retailer began a campaign that offered a “cash for clunkers” rebate to anyone purchasing a new sofa, armoire, dining set, etc. between now and August 16 including pick-up and removal of the “old” furniture.
This is a great idea from a variety of standpoints. First of all the offer is easy to understand, it provides a valuable incentive on a limited-time basis and, perhaps more importantly, it solves a perceptual problem (what do I do with my old sofa?). It did not address the environmental benefits touted in the CARS program or any philanthropic donation benefit and my feeling is that doing so could have enhanced the cash-for-clunkers offer.
Xerox has announced its version of this offer called the Trade-In Promotion by offering rebates of up to $1,200 on eligible Xerox printer(s) purchased or leased between January 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009 with an eligible laser or multi-function trade-in.
Like the furniture retailer the Xerox offer also indicates “Xerox will pay shipping on your eligible laser or multifunction trade-in(s) which for many will be highly attractive. Unlike the furniture retailer, the Xerox offer also includes a Donation Program component which indicates that, “Xerox may also donate functioning equipment to the National Cristina Foundation” and furthermore that, “The NCF works to ensure that technology resources are given a second productive life as a tool for non-profit organizations, public agencies, disabilities, students-at-risk and the economically disadvantaged.”
From a What’s-In-It-For –Me perspective, it’s a triple winner: it gets me a new printer/mfp at a discount, it alleviates any real or imagined concerns about having to pay high shipping costs and it makes me feel really good about where my old, but-still-operable piece of equipment will end up.
If the cash-for-clunkers offer is as strong as I suspect it is in both the b2b and b2c arenas, we’re going to see many more iterations of it in the weeks and months ahead. The question becomes how to make it work within the context of your business. I’d love to hear how this has worked (or not worked) within your particular industry.
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Posted by Bill Leming on July 15th, 2009
Several months ago I wrote a post about Re-Touch Efforts and Seeing Positive Results. In it I noted some unexpected success with re-mailing the exact same offer to individuals who neither opened nor clicked the original email they received three to four days earlier. What was surprising to me at the time was the fact that the re-touch effort resulted in the same response rate as the original. And it was surprising because the rule of thumb in direct mail was always that you’d get about half the response rate that you received in the initial mailing everything being equal.
But when you think about it, when are all things ever equal? They never are. Today is not like yesterday; next Wednesday won’t be like this past Wednesday, July 15 this year won’t be like July 15 next year. And that may well be the reason for email re-touches being much more effective than direct mail re-touches. Despite the differences, yesterday is generally more like tomorrow than a day 28 months from now just as an individual’s recent past behavior is more like is/her near term future behavior than their behavior at some distant point in the future.
I don’t have any empirical evidence but I think the reason email re-touches are more successful than direct mail re-touches is that they generally occur so much faster. You don’t need to wait 30 days for results or even two weeks for projected-results to determine which segments are responding to which offers using which creative approaches. Nor do you have to worry about production schedules and print queues. With email your questions are answered in hours. You not only know which segment(s) responded at what rate to which offer using which creative, you know that you can deploy the re-touch email to the right target in minutes with the winning offer tucked neatly into the winning design.
Since April we’ve had the opportunity to use these findings in combination with one another with some even more impressive results. Not only have we managed to equal the response rate’s of the initial offering, in more than one instance we’ve managed to triple it by combining the most responsive list segments with the most appealing creative.
In each of these scenarios we’ve chosen to hold the offer constant for purposes of simplicity and I think we’ve made a mistake in doing so. Inasmuch as the “offer” generally carries more weight in the email success equation than does “creative”, the next effort will be to measure the effect of quickly re-touching winning segments with winning offers using winning creative to see if we can’t raise the response rates even further. The trick will be to do that without getting so narrow and so microscopic that we find the one guy in 100,000 who’s ready to buy and no one else. Will keep you posted on our progress.
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Posted by Drew Miller on July 7th, 2009
The start of any new relationship is always something that requires handling with care. Be too evasive and you’re more than likely to be forgotten quickly. Come on too strong, and you could potentially scare someone off with your rabid persistence. The same can be said with Email Marketing relationships.
I recently signed up for Lands’ End email on their website (June 29th) interested in seeing what kind of specials they offer for men’s clothing. Their opt-in form made no indication of frequency, nor did the redirect confirmation page. Their welcome message indicated that I would “… soon be receiving fast-breaking news on products, details about special savings events and more.” but I had no idea what their definition of “fast-breaking” was until I started receiving their email messages.
Three days later (July 2nd) I received my first email offer promoting a surprise offer and their All-American savings. They also included a “today only” offer highlighting a $15 women’s zip-front hooded cover-up. Relevancy issues aside (I don’t look very good in women’s clothing), it was a nice first email and definitely had me clicking to see what my special offer was. Over the next consecutive days it was more of the same:
July 3rd – Promotion of surprise offer and $10 women’s layering tees
July 4th – Promotion of surprise offer and a $12 beach towel
July 5th – Promotion of July 4th offer and women’s swimwear
July 6th – Promotion of surprise offer (final day) and more women’s swimwear
I unsubscribed not because of the emphasis on their women’s line (although that would have been a close second), but because of the daily frequency of their email messages. It was simply more Lands’ End than I could handle.
A few things that I think Lands’ End could do to improve in this area:
1. Provide frequency expectations at the beginning of the relationship. If I had known the emails were daily, I probably would have had second thoughts about subscribing.
2. Give your subscribers the power of preference. If there were an option to change frequency levels or opt-in/out of different email programs, I would have gladly changed updated to a more manageable level.
In today’s economy it’s easy to get caught up in the ROI of Email Marketing and think that more is better. Frequency in Email requires thoughtful planning and putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. If not addressed in the right way, you could be seeing a dwindling customer list.
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