ten commandments for email marketing

new thinking for direct marketing11

March 18, 2010

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing(Circa 2010)

new thinking

for direct marketing

Presented by: Ken Lane

Senior Marketing Consultant

J. Schmid & Assoc.

strategy branding design analytics

new thinking

for direct marketing

Email marketing has become the fastest growing strategy for many direct marketers and will certainly continue to be an important component of the marketing mix. As technology changes, so do the rules or “commandments”

marketers must

follow.

Agenda

10 Strategies to maximize email

Tactics to add incremental sales

Scalable to your size needs

Learnings

Integrate meaningful data

Increase click-through rates

Develop trigger emails to add immediate sales

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing(Circa 2010)

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number One

Thou shalt collect, clean, update & verify email addresses at every

point of contact

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number One

Thou shalt collect, clean, update & verify email addresses at every point of contact

Use your Call Center

Referrals

Change of address

Use the Social Networking sites as sources…i.e. Facebook

Newsletter Sign ups

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Newsletter Sign-ups

Example of Newsletter Sign-Up above the fold…

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Newsletter Sign-ups

Example of Newsletter Sign-Up above the fold…

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Two

Thou shalt segment your file or perish

Thou shalt segment your file or perish…

Based on RFM

Average “M” as well as total “M”

Assign and segment by “engagement” metrics

Open History

Click History

Email Appends

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Email Segmentation

Small marketer that listens…

Personalized with first/last name

Product offer based on past history

Short term offer based on a cancelation with customer’s preferred service provider

Includes offer for Referral

Thou shalt segment your file or perish…

Traditional Direct Mail best practices are applicable…

Time-sensitive promotions motivate readers to take a specific action in the desired timeframe.

This is a classic DM technique that works well when applied to email marketing.

This approach applies to offers and purchase requirements, as well as to creating a sense of urgency to buy by a certain date.

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Three

Thou shalt realize email marketing is a strategy…

…not a tactic

Thou shalt realize email marketing is a strategy…not a tactic

Triggered programs…

Send email to those that didn’t purchase

Re-send those that didn’t open

First purchase

Newsletter sign-ups

Tag on category / mark as interest in category

“Welcome” responses

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing “Welcome”

Emails

First contact delivers multiple messages

Offer w/purchase requirement

Sale Items

New Product

Cross Brand Support

Credit Offer

Find a Store

Change your preferences

Thou shalt realize email marketing is a strategy…not a tactic

Abandoned shopping cart programs

Daily, automated email sent to shoppers with items in their cart for more than 24 hours

Recoup up to 25% of abandoned sales

Collect email early in the order process

Consider/test price incentives

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Abandoned Cart Emails

Approach is C/S

Performance reports

“Noticed” cart

Problems?

Click to complete

No offer

No “big brother”

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Four

Thou shalt not take your customer name (or email address) in vain…

Thou shalt not take your customer’s name in vain

Personalize when you can

Offers based on region where you have retail locations

Collect more than just an email address for newsletter sign-ups

Mailers uses zip code to drive retail traffic

Thou shalt not take your customer’s name in vain

Manage contact frequency – helpful if it is done right.

Frequency testing should be stratified based on the engagement levels of the list. Certain segments that are highly engaged might support higher frequency levels.

Consider different frequency of blasts on parts of your list that aren’t responding to frequent e-mails.

Don’t ignore the inherent seasonality of your business.

Collect more than email or mailing address

Find the right “segmentation” variables

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Five

Thou shalt realize that if NCOA adds value and saves money, shouldn’t

“ECOA?”

Fact 1: –

50 million people changed their email addresses last year…

Fact 2:–

Companies experience ~ 30% email list attrition per year…

Fact 3:–

Good address hygiene (email & Dmail) is good for you, good for business & good for your customers

Fact 4:–

Your customer email database is one of your most valuable assets

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Email Change of Address (ECOA)

Quarterly (yes, quarterly) email list hygiene processing -

identifying bad emails and updating

them with good ones –

maximizes your results

Benefits:–

Reconnect with lost customers faster–

Improve email deliverability–

Avoid being blacklisted by major ISPs–

Reduce marketing costs associated with bouncing emails

Several companies are now capable of doing this

Make this a Program within your marketing/IT department

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Email Change of Address (ECOA)

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Six

Thou shalt be relevant…

Establish area for customer to define “preferences”

Frequency of Contact

Product

Using zip codes wisely

Thou shalt be relevant–

If they ask for Italy…–

If they have already booked…

Personalize email contacts as much as possible…

Thou shalt be relevant with your email contacts

Personalization improves relevancy.

Find an internal champion of advanced personalization techniques and encourage pushing the envelope for improving results.

Develop a “behavioral”

segmentation approach

Recognize that it is not a matter of “if”…it is a matter of “when.”

Your competition is already making this a priority.

Build loyalty by giving customers what they want, when they want it, wherever they go (mobile).

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Seven

Thou shalt use templates…

Let the customer recognize you & your brand

Align your email creative with your other creative identity

Catalogue

Website

Develop an email template that is concise yet clear and impactful.

More is not always better, especially if your catalogue or website are not jammed with products & messages.

Your emails have only a few seconds to make an impression on the recipient.

Concise layouts help direct the reader where you want them to go: to a desired focal point and call to action.

Incorporate visual call to actions (i.e. buttons, photos, hyperlinks) into your layout, improving “involvement”, click-through rates and campaign performance.

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Incorporate visual call to action areas

Buttons and…

…photos and…

Buttons and…

…photos and…

…links

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Eight

Thou shalt be multi-channeled in your approach

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Eight

Thou shalt be multi-channeled in your approach…

Direct Mail

Don’t abandon

Don’t exclude

Social Media

Facebook

Impact of mobile & smart phones

“There’s an app for that”

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Impact of Mobile & Smart Phones

“We expect the mobile-phone email market will increase at an average annual rate of 68% over the next four years, totaling more than 1 billion mailboxes by the end of 2013.”

Radicati

Group –

March, 2010

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Impact of Mobile & Smart Phones

Does your message fit here?

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Be Multi-Channeled in your Approach

Put your 800 number in your emails

Multiple studies have found up to 20% of sales will be made via the 800 number

Use email to support direct mail

All the data suggests there is a lift in response rates

How to Better Connect Your Catalogs to Your Website

E-mail promotes both site and mentions catalog options

E-mail drives store traffic

Facebook –

link to catalogue request

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Nine

Thou shalt “measure & manage”

Thou shalt measure & manage…

Determine list of key metrics and expand list accordingly

Include deliverability, bounces

What are the metrics that drive success in your business…

Open rates

Click thru rates

Forwards to friends

Nearly 20% of emails fail to deliver -

Despite improvements, about 1-in-5 emails still fail to reach consumers' inboxes. In the second half of 2009, 19.9% such emails never reached consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada.

3.5% went to “junk”

or “bulk”

email folders•

16.3% were missing or not delivered at all --

with no hard bounce message or other notification.

Only emails that reach a subscriber's inbox can be opened, clicked and converted to sales.

Each ISP has their own criteria for inbox placement.

Source: Feb, 2010 research from email and reputation management firm Return Path

Create your sales “pie”

Direct shoppers typically type in your site’s URL directly into their browser or have your site bookmarked.

Natural SEO orders

PPC SEM orders

Emails

Catalogue/Direct Mail

Social Media sites

Create your sales “pie”

Direct

Social

Is your marketing spend by channel shifting fast enough…

100.0%

120.0%

Other 0.0% 0.0% 5.2% 4.4% 8.0% 5.0% 3.0%Internet 0.7% 3.8% 4.5% 5.5% 11.0% 22.0% 35.0%Brox/DM 90.1% 94.1% 78.0% 79.9% 72.0% 65.0% 55.0%Advertising 9.2% 2.1% 12.4% 10.2% 9.0% 8.0% 7.0%

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

…you can only spend to 100%

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Commandment Number Ten

Thou shalt not spam…

Thou shalt collect, clean, update & verify email addresses

Thou shalt segment your file, or perish

Thou shalt realize that email marketing is a strategy…not a tactic

Thou shalt not take your customer name (or email address) in vain…

Thou shalt realize that if NCOA saves money, shouldn’t “ECOA”?

Thou shalt be relevant

Thou shalt use templates

Thou shalt be multi-channeled

Thou shalt “measure & manage”

Thou shalt not spam

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing

Bonus Commandments

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Bonus Commandments

Thou shalt always be testing…

Subject line

Offers

Buying opportunities

Shout out the offer

Navigation bar in email creative

Match your tests with your business objectives

Testing subject lines will affect open rates, not address opt-out problems…

…but contact & frequency testing will.

Always have Control Groups

Manage what you are testing with a KIS approach

Change too many variables and you will not know what affects results

Test new elements one at a time

If you are an expert, consider multivariate testing—simultaneous testing of multiple elements and variables….better than A/B splits

Continually test “timing”

Day of Week, Time of Day

It is different for your business and differs by time zone

BTB is different than BTC

Are you ignoring weekends?

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Testing Offers

Club ABC Tours

Membership Renewal Offer

Percentage savings versus dollars off

Split cells by segment

Discussion

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing Contact Information

For copies of this presentation, please contact Jennifer Wells at DMInsite

jwells@dminsite.com

For information regarding J. Schmid & Assoc, please contact Ken Lane at kenl@jschmid.com

or call 913-236-8988 and mention this webinar.

March 18, 2010

Ten Commandments for Email Marketing

(Circa 2010)

new thinking for direct marketing

May 2007 - Reactivation Results

ten commandments for email marketing

direct marketing66ten

verify email

thou shalt

action areas

email marketing

2010ten commandments

thou shalt

manage create

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