« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
Managing your Preferences
August 29, 2006
Clothing retailers are some of the worst offenders of "missing the mark". Over the last couple years that I have been on Banana Republic, Nordstrom, and J. Crew email lists, I have yet to receive an email that is about men's clothing. While I don’t mind looking at the women that come through in the emails from them - they pull from a pretty nice talent pool - it is never going to entice me to buy.
None of these brands has a way to update your notification settings on what you would like to receive. In order to switch it has taken multiple emails (Banana Republic) as well as phone calls in store (J. Crew) but some have not changed (Nordstrom).
Note to online retailers, and marketers in general, if you offer multiple product lines, let people update what they want to see. In our most recent quarterly study we found over 60% of people unsubscribe to irrelevant content - and marketing to the wrong segment year round is not a good idea.
If it is around the holidays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, then that makes sense, but all year, come on guys, you are better than that.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 8:15 AM | Permalink
RetailEmail.Blogspot.com study
August 28, 2006
Chad White over at RetailEmail.BlogSpot.com put together a phenomenal study on the top 101 retail emailers and the entire process of subscribing to their email communications. This is worth a read for sure. Not only is this study great, but he also comments on the campaigns that come in daily and weekly from these subscriptions.
He also wraps up a his daily posts with the Subsjectivity Scanner. Which hightlight the subject lines daily.
Here is an example:
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Staples, 8/22, 4 pm — Staples Easy Mobile Tech is here to help with a $10 coupon!
Polo, 8/22, 5 pm — Introducing New Multicolor Big Pony Styles
Saks Fifth Avenue, 8/22, 1 pm — Just in: SAKS.COM FALL CATALOG + New Fashion Incubator
Bass Pro Shops, 8/22, 3 pm — RedHead Sale and Sweepstakes at Bass Pro!
Harry & David, 8/22, 4 pm — Going fast: The world's biggest, sweetest Peaches - order now!
L.L. Bean, 8/22, 4 pm — Fall Favorites under $30 + Lower Prices on Polos
Office Depot, 8/22, 12 pm — Toshiba Week Savings
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 9:14 AM | Permalink
Customer lifetime value campaign - Email marketing best practices
August 25, 2006
We have worked with a number of companies and organizations that want to do a multi-part email campaign that is automated based off a customer response (such as a purchase). One thing that most companies want to do is mold everyone into a campaign that is generic and timing is set the same for everyone. Now, the point of these campaigns is to provide value to each customer.
Adding flexibility in your schedule and content is key in this area. Ask them questions down the road that readjust their campaigns, adjust content based off of items of interest (base this on behavior, not just what they say), stop sending emails that are not helping the cause - which if you forgot is to create an advocate out of your customer, that nirvana a customer reaches when they would spar with Roy Jones Jr just to tell people about your company.
If you are not doing these customer lifetime value campaigns, you should consider it. Not only can our platform manage these, but we can help you with creative, copy, subject lines, programming that you would need.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 8:17 AM | Permalink
Email Integration in Multimedia Campaigns
August 17, 2006
Lynn Russo from Mediapost breaks down a good article this past week that is worth your time. It hit home with me as with ALL the full service campaigns we produce, we ALWAYS integrate email on the front, back or integrated in real time with the other campaign outreach devices we plan to use. It IS the Mix and not just a part to consider. If you are just now "Considering" using email as "part" or a campaign you are putting together, you are at least half awake. Get on board and see why so many campaigns are suceeding and EXCEEDING goals when all media avenues are used in the right mix.
E-mail should be integrated within multimedia campaignsWhen you hear about a good case study on an e-mail campaign, all too often it's just that an e-mail campaign. But asiloed marketing program is not competitive enough in today's market. With savvy customers using multiple media simultaneously, and given that multichannel customers have been proven to be more profitable than single-channel customers, marketers need to support their e-mail campaigns with a complete multimedia strategy. Those that don't will lose out on incremental opportunities and miss the chance to reach customers at times when they're ready to buy.
According to Scott St. Mary, vice president of customer relationship management at Carat Fusion, one financial services company gets a "15 percent increase in response when e-mail is sent in advance of a direct mail package to an existing customer list, and a 25 to 30 percent lift when an e-mail is sent in advance of a phone call from a sales rep."
Meanwhile, according to Archana Deshmukh, partner and group director for MEC Interaction, her agency was able to prevent a weakening e-mail response from getting worse and even turn it into a lift, simply by taking siloed e-mail campaigns that were run by disparate divisions of the same company and creating a single integrated program that staggered mailings. The goal was to prevent customer wearout.
To turn siloed e-mail campaigns into a fully integrated customer strategy and improve overall campaign response, Deshmukh suggests first determining which channels work best with e-mail, then choosing metrics for tracking, and determining the objectives the e-mail program needs to achieve.
The e-mail component should then be paired with other media that have the same goals. She also recommends that companies drop their brand media first, and have direct marketing programs follow a few weeks later. "The awareness softens the marketplace and by the time [consumers] get the hard sell, they're more apt to be aware of your message so your e-mail doesn't have to do double work."
To get the best end result, St. Mary says, it's critical to track return on investment (ROI) for each channel independently at the start. "It helps us understand the allowable investment, or what we can afford to spend, by asking, What is this channel best at? What are its efficiencies? How can I acquire x number of customers, manage my investment mix, and optimize it, so that I'm not spending too much on TV and not enough on converting prospects?"
This is particularly important with e-mail, he says, because while it's a relatively inexpensive channel, it's also time-consuming and labor-intensive. If St. Mary finds a low allowable cost, he uses e-mail to either drive a better response or drive down the cost of a particular objective something Carat couldn't do if it didn't know the ROI of e-mail alone.
While different agencies have their own techniques, one thing experts agree on is that integrating a multichannel campaign is less about technology and more about people skills specifically, communications.
"There are different timelines for creative and for when media are available," says Marion Z Murphy, senior partner and director of direct marketing for Mindshare Interaction. "Often we're dealing with different creative agencies for different elements. There's a lot of coordination among people who aren't necessarily working in sister companies, and that can be a challenge.
Technology can make a difference, particularly when you have good templates to work with, such as a dashboard, Deshmukh says. "A dashboard is helpful because it lets you easily look at your campaign across channels and metrics. It includes every metric and every conversion rate for each channel."
Murphy also suggests looking to media vendors for integrated programs. A cable TV channel will have a magazine, a Web site, and an e-mail list, and will provide a packaged program along with integrated metrics and campaign support.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:15 AM | Permalink
eROI Release Q2 2006 Deliverability Study
August 15, 2006
Home and work users have different preferences.
For e-mail marketers looking to make the biggest impact, it makes sense to pay attention to whether users are receiving their e-mail at home or at work.
According to a Q2 2006 study of e-mail marketing preferences by eROI Inc., 79% of people who subscribe to business-to-business e-mail marketing messages receive them at a business e-mail address. Just 19% of people who receive consumer-oriented e-mail marketing messages subscribe with their business e-mail address.
Those who receive consumer-oriented messages were also much more likely to use an e-mail address created specifically for e-mail marketing: 24% did, vs. 6% of those who received B2B messages.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:05 AM | Permalink
An interesting Gmail discovery
August 14, 2006
Are you receiving someone else's email?
Gmail doesn't recognize dots (.) as characters within a username. This way, you can add and remove dots to your username for desired address variations. messages sent to your.username@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are delivered to the same inbox, since the characters in the username are the same.
Keep in mind that hyphens (-) and underscores (_) can't be used in a Gmail address. Also, usernames are case insensitive, so it doesn't matter if you enter upper case or lower case letters.
If you created your account with a dot in your username and you wish you hadn't, you can change your 'Reply-to address.' To change your reply-to address:
Click 'Settings' at the top of any Gmail page.
Enter your username@gmail.com without a dot in the 'Reply-to address' field.
Click 'Save Changes.'
When you log in to Gmail
, you need to enter any dots that were originally defined as part of your username.
Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 9:43 PM | Permalink
New emailROI email marketing ESP BETA launched
August 14, 2006
After 12 months of surveying customers, rewriting millions of lines of code and testing a new user interface we are happy to announce our latest version of emailROI is going to be released to ALL emailROI customers currenlty using the email marketing platform.
The new system will was built as an upgrade to the already amazing functionality of the emailROI platform and will allow customers and agencies even greater control over the system. New XML API and CSS abilities will permit clients to create a system that is perfect for their needs.
Also introduced is a new RSS to Email system, as we had email to RSS in Dec 04. This new system allows you to set up automatic email campaigns using the RSS feeds you have produced from your site, blog or other source. It automatically wraps the RSS feed (and segments number of articles, day, time and frequency as you choose) into your brand template and sends it out through the emailROI platform. It was orginally built in mind for news and publishing clients, but has uses in consumer (think product feeds) as well as B to B product, events and news updates on a daily, weekly, monthly or date of the month based format.
The greatest of all new functions (IMHO) is the ability to completely rewrap the entire UI for agencies or companies to allow them to have a completely customized email marketing platform that allows them to level the playing feild against all other ESP and agency competion.
Learn More about eROI and emailROI
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 11:00 AM | Permalink
E-Mail Plus Word-of-Mouth: A Marketing Revolution
August 14, 2006
The possibilities are enough to make a marketer's mouth water.
The ubiquity of e-mail, among marketers and Internet users, has created a take-it-for-granted attitude that detracts from its actual power. But with 90% of Internet users — and over 55% of all Americans — e-mail unquestionably has access to an audience with critical mass, and it is increasingly becoming a primary delivery vehicle for word-of-mouth marketing.
The combination of e-mail and word-of-mouth affords marketers a potentially vast, and very powerful, new marketing tool.
"The fundamental purpose of e-mail marketing is to enhance a company's relationship with its customers and to draw in new prospects. That might mean direct response sales messages, CPG coupons, building brand awareness, weekly or monthly e-newsletters, service messages about packages shipped or funds available in bank accounts, driving traffic to a company or brand Web site and, increasingly, word-of-mouth communications," says David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, E-Mail & Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers. "More and more marketers today are joining the conversation among consumers — another way to say word-of-mouth — through e-mail to blend in with marketing today's trend of consumer-generated content, such as blogs, social networks, video and related media."
Just as e-mail is central for most interactive marketing, it is also intrinsic to online word-of-mouth, also called — in its variations — viral marketing, buzz marketing or word-of-mouse. Some distinguish viral marketing from traditional word-of-mouth by citing viral's digital augmentation, as typified by the pass-along or forwarded e-mail.
"As e-mail marketers look increasingly to make the most of their lists, segmentation techniques can help them identify customers who might be willing, or even eager, to forward e-mail messages to friends and family," says Mr. Hallerman. "That might mean offering discounts or samples to customers who've bought over a certain amount within a recent period, and then inviting them to pass-along that offer to others."
Internet word-of-mouth depends on Metcalfe's Law — from Robert M. Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet networking technology — which says that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of people using it. In this case the value in each network constitutes the number of people passing along any particular marketer's message. If the offer is enticing enough, e-mail becomes the viral carrier, where a large share of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, and the whole process escalates quickly with exponential growth.
"Many doubt that marketers can create true viral marketing using incentives targeted at people on their e-mail lists. Just as with other consumer-generated media (CGM), such as blogs, giving up control is essential to the word-of-mouth e-mail process," says Mr. Hallerman.
Marketers surveyed by Osterman Research for BoldMouth, a word-of-mouth marketing company, indicate that satisfied customers, along with great products or services, are the most important things needed to generate word-of-mouth.
However, like any powerful force, e-mail can also be dangerous.
"Marketers need to tread gently when using their opt-in e-mail lists to create buzz about products or services," says Mr. Hallerman. "Messages that were once welcomed can be seen as spam if marketers press too hard, are too obvious or imagine that word-of-mouth can be direct-marketed in today's increasingly consumer-controlled marketplace."
Discover the potential, avoid the pitfalls, get the whole picture, read the new eMarketer report, E-Mail & Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers today.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:33 AM | Permalink
Direct Marketers START to get Targeting
August 7, 2006
Good Article on email targeting and what can be done from MediaPost.
Beyond Batch And Blast: Direct Marketers Start To Get BT
by Phil Leggiere, Friday, August 4, 2006
THE PROMISE OF E-MAIL AS an advertising medium has been to bring brands and consumers together more directly than ever before. Reality, unfortunately, has proven more complicated. For consumers, finding the needle (the offer they really want) in the haystack of info-glut has become more and more frustrating, For advertisers, it's meant their "signal" has been increasingly lost amidst the noise. One way of moving beyond these limitations is for direct marketers to adopt and adapt behavioral methodologies still mostly associated with their brethren in the online advertising world, as Elaine O'Gorman, vice president of strategy of Atlanta-based interactive marketing firm Silverpop, explains below.
Behavioral Insider: Why has e-mail advertising remained largely siloed in relation to other Web advertising?
O'Gorman: The advantage of e-mail is that you have a more precise idea of who the customers are on your list than you would of just who's browsing your Web site. But it's a different mindset to do e-mail marketing from the one advertisers bring. E-mail marketing has been the province of direct marketers. And, frankly, most direct marketers don't do a good job of executing e-mail campaigns. They haven't changed the way they work. Most direct marketers are stuck in an old-school mentality where you do mass mailings based on very broad and rigid targeting criteria, the broader the better. Messaging and creative were set far in advance and once set were not seen as variable.
BI: What sorts of targeting data has "traditional" e-mail advertising relied on?
O'Gorman: The pinnacle, the holy grail of what's possible, is targeting that ties together multiple streams of data to paint a far richer composite picture of the customer. This includes transactional data on e-mail click-throughs, Web site analytics on search, browsing and shopping cart behavior, and then demographic data atop that.
E-mail is incredibly measurable, That's its great edge--but also a big challenge. The reality of Web analytics is that although there's a ton of information, there are only a small number of advertisers at this point who can really deploy it well. The ones that gave successfully integrated analytics and transactional data are retailers or other kinds of e-commerce firms which have deep insight into the buying cycle of their customers.
It helps if the buying cycle is relatively simple. If you are a b-to-b firm selling airplane engines, for instance, the length and complexity of the buying process will be far different from and tougher to model than yellow sweaters. If you have a wealth of transactional data about sweater-buying habits, you can use analytics in a relatively straightforward fashion to time the right moments to push e-mail promotions to close the sales loop.
BI: What has been the extent of behavioral targeting deployment by e-mail marketers so far? Who have the early adopters of next-generation e-mail targeting been?
O'Gorman: Using transactional data about previous purchase and browsing behavior to push information about new products to high probability targets is the most developed form of targeting. Another increasingly common form of e-mail targeting is based on tying together current transactional data with purchase history data to know when to respond to changes in behavior. If you find a steady customer has suddenly dropped off in shopping frequency, or conversely, someone who's been a relatively inactive shopper on your house list suddenly steps up their browsing or shopping activity, you've got an opportunity to seize.
BI: Can you cite examples or case studies of how BT is currently being successfully deployed in the industry?
O'Gorman: An online banking firm we work with has used customized purchase life cycle data to get real-time visibility into where customers are in their purchase process. In the firm's business model, customers have to go through several steps, often taking some time between when they sign up and when the bank gets paid. They have to add merchants to their account and then actually make purchases with those vendors before the banks get paid.
So the bank employs an automated system to push particular messages at specific times. Knowing, for instance, that customers who sign up but don't choose merchants after X number of days are likely to drop out, the bank triggers follow-up push ads optimally timed to prompt action.
So the "campaign" is activated when consumers sign up, and is timed to coincide with phases of their purchase cycle based on what we know about their buying behavior and analytics about [broader] customer purchase patterns.
BI: What are the main challenges and opportunities for BT in this space going forward?
O'Gorman: E-mail is still a very immature medium. There are still all sorts of formatting and deliverability issues that preoccupy marketers. The time e-mail marketers should be spending on learning much more about their customers is instead being spent mostly on putting out daily fires, like "why is gmail blocked today." But marketers who are making the upfront investments are finding big ROI advantages to doing more enhanced targeting. An emerging body of research is documenting this trend. For instance, JupiterResearch recently found that though enhanced targeting methods increase amount of investment by about two-and-a half-times versus traditional batch and blast, they boosts ROI by over nine times, with big improvements in unique opens, click-through and conversion rates. It's the kind of calculation that's becoming more compelling for serious e-mail marketers every day.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:12 AM | Permalink
What To Measure in Email Marketing
August 3, 2006
Wendy Roth from iMediaConnection writes:
If you have a website, chances are you have a form asking visitors to subscribe to your email list. Those subscribers are interested in your company and want to know more about what you have to offer.
It’s easy to take this key group of customers for granted, especially if you aren’t looking for signs that they’re tuning out your messages.
You can gauge your campaign’s success by looking at these seven key email marketing metrics:
Delivery
Opens
Clickthroughs
Funnel navigation
Conversions
Unsubscribes
Spam complaints
By tracking these metrics over time for your email campaigns, you’ll establish success benchmarks for your email list that will not only show you how effective your campaigns have been, but will suggest changes to optimize future email campaigns.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:07 PM | Permalink
What Email platforms should I consider when creating my emails?
August 1, 2006
I recently was asked the follow question by a partner of ours "What are the most common email clients used?" It sounds like a pretty simple question, but after looking hard online, and not wanting to drop $1000 on a "certified research study," ( it became clear that not that many people know. I posed this question to a number of industry experts, no solid answers came back.
The likely answer is Outlook and Hotmail. What version of Outlook, Hotmail or MSN or Yahoo, or AOL (and again what version of AOL)? We recently set out to get a good understanding on what email client people use for work and personal email, what email addresses they use to sign up for email and a few other burning questions.
We will be releasing this in our Q2 study that looks at day of the week, hour of the day and the aforementioned questions. Keep an eye out because some of the answers are astonishing.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 12:02 PM | Permalink
Week-End Trends: Back-to-School Drives Volume Higher
August 1, 2006
From Chad White at RetailEmail.Blogspot.com. If you have not bookmarked Chad's Blog yet, you should. This site is operated by its founder, Chad White, who has covered the retail, e-commerce and technology industries for more than six years as an editor at Dow Jones and Fairchild Publications.
The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.Week-End Trends: Back-to-school drives volume higher
The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.
Read More and See the Charts >>
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:18 AM | Permalink
