48% of companies do not know what proportion of the emails they sent were read on mobile devices – such as smartphones or tablets – finds the Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2012. They are effectively wasting marketing resources when messages are not optimised for the relevant reading device/email client, be that mobile, desktop or webmail – and tracking and monitoring email client usage is the first step.
Not optimising for mobile audiences, or taking account of recipients’ reading habits, can have a detrimental effect on both response rates and ROI. Are you sending desktop sized emails to iPhone users? Do recipients read once on a mobile device and then later on a desktop? How does changing the broadcast time or day of the week affect mobile opens? Many companies have no idea.
Being showcased at TFM&A Manchester is a new feature within Adestra’s MessageFocus enterprise email platform – it highlights the type of email client brands recipients are using, with a breakdown of each major version. This enables a greater understanding of reader behaviour and optimisation for a company’s specific audience.
Reena Mistry, Marketing Director at Adestra explains: “Half of companies cannot identify which emails are read on phones or tablets, let alone optimise for mobile and tests to improve results. A significant amount of budget is thus being wasted through not understanding their audiences. It’s easy to set up a tracking system as a starting point – a first step to maximising response from this important growth sector.”
The new email client detection reporting is split into several sections: desktop, webmail and mobile clients:
TFM&A Manchester takes place at Manchester Central on 30th May 2012. This year, visitors are welcome to come to Adestra’s stand for a glass of bubbly and a preview of the new features within its MessageFocus email platform, including Email Client Detection reporting. Situated on stand 201, close to the entrance, here’s what else Adestra has in store for TFM&A Manchester…
Email advice centre
The Adestra Email Advice Centre is a great opportunity to gain free email marketing advice from the experts. Each private session lasts 20 minutes and any aspect of a company’s email marketing can be covered, from email templates, to automation and how to re-engage inactive email addresses.
Watch Adestra’s presentation – “Stuff Email Marketers Say”
The Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census results are hot off the press. Email marketing has consistently come out on top as one of the most valuable channels for ROI, but are all marketers making the most of the channel?
In this presentation, we’ll go through 4 key areas where email marketers can maximise their email marketing and stay ahead of the game.
Time: 16:00 – 16:30
Place: Integrated marketing theatre
Date: Wednesday 30th May 2012
Presenter: Reena Mistry, Marketing Director
If you haven’t registered already, sign up to TFM&A Manchester here
Last month, Adestra’s Account Director, Parry Malm, presented at Internet World on the subject of “how to create the most interesting email in the world”. 
This meant the most interesting email specifically to your recipient, not to the whole world. The days of always sending the same email to all of your data are disappearing, with a focus on targeting and segmentation rather than load & blast.
In his presentation, which you can view in Prezi at the bottom of this blog, Parry covers 4 key points that will help you to engage your recipients and take your email marketing to the next level.
1) Using your data to personalise your email content
Do you collect additional information on your subscribers? Can you use it to personalise your emails, making them more interesting to the recipient? Here our client Centaur Media did just that for the promotion of the National Home Improvement Show (NHIS). The registration process for NHIS collected a wealth of specific information, such as what areas of home improvement they were interested in. Using the functionality of Adestra’s MessageFocus, dynamically personalised emails were then sent to engage the visitors before the show. The email template created by Adestra could render up to 196,608 different possible combinations all driven by the pre-registered visitors self-selected demographic information. This highly relevant and targeted campaign received a 43% open rate and an astonishing 34% of openers then clicked through to their website.
2) Free up time to concentrate on your strategy
Emails can take some time to put together. This was a problem for Adestra client, Telecoms.com who are part of the Informa Group. They spent an hour a day, copying and pasting the content from their website into the email template, and looked to Adestra for a solution to reduce the amount of time spent creating the daily email, whilst improving the results. Using MessageFocus functionality, they were able to pull the most up-to-date articles into their emails every day using XML feeds. This meant that the time spent creating each email was reduced from an hour a day to 20 minutes.
3) Tapping into existing insight
You could be sending content that isn’t quite relevant to your audience. Looking at your email results, your subscribers could already be telling you what they actually want to hear about, by clicking on certain topics or opening emails with certain topics in the subject line. Using this data will help you to engage your audience and increase their interest in your emails. Adestra client, Future plc did this with their new “App chart” email for T3 mag. They looked at their past emails, and found that SmartPhone apps encouraged a much higher engagement than other articles. The answer: a specific App Chart email sent to their data, giving a weekly update of the best apps on the market. Plus this email is completely automated, pulling content from their website. The recipient can also personalise the content further, by choosing what mobile devices they would like to receive information on.
Case study coming soon…
4) Test, test, and test again
Assuming your content is engaging and interesting to your data is a mistake, and one of the the only ways you can know for sure is by testing different content. Testing doesn’t have to be complex as simple subject line testing can make a huge difference to your results. Take Adestra client OUP ELT as an example. They wanted to maximise the reach of an email informing their global audience of a training webinar they were running. Just by testing different subject lines with MessageFocus split testing features, they were able to improve their open rates by 6%.
If you’d like to find out more about any of the topics Parry covered in his presentation, get in touch by calling us on +44 (0) 1865 242425 or emailing moreinfo@adestra.com
Date: 24 May 2012
Where: ThinkTank, Birmingham
Stand: 31 – 32
On the 24th May 2012 Adestra will be at the ThinkTank in Birmingham for the Specialist Media Show. There are over 1000 specialist media businesses in the UK: print and digital publishers and event organisers. They work in different markets but all face the same challenges; how to increase the efficiency of their core business and take advantage of the opportunities created by new media technology with limited skills and resources. All are searching for the perfect balance between print, digital media and events for their specialist market. The Specialist Media Show is a unique opportunity to meet their peers, share ideas and tips, learn about new opportunities and grow your business.
Specialist Media Show 2012
As the official email partner for the show we’ll be on hand at the show to talk to you about how email marketing can best fit your business. Why not come and see us on stand 31 – 32? We are also holding 1-1 email clinics in the expert zone. If you would like help with your top level email strategy or anything down best practice email campaign creation we would love to help and an email clinic is the perfect place to do this. You’ll need to register for the show and once that’s done you’ll be able to book a clinic in the expert zone.
Also our Account Manager, Catherine Holt, will be holding a workshop at the show on the value of email marketing automation:
The benefits in terms of both time and money
In this workshop Cat will talk through how you can automate many parts of your email marketing to save you both time and money. From automating strategic processes down to automating tactical activities like creating email content or automating your email lists, this table will help you streamline your workflow and content. Better workflow will free up your time, allowing you to focus on many more important tasks.
Benefits:
Lotus Children's centre Mongolia
On the 13 July 2012 Adestrian David Robertson will be embarking on a 10,000 mile trip from the United Kingdom to Mongolia in a car your Grandmother would use to do her grocery shopping! David is taking part in the Mongol Rally a race of pure adventure over mountains, deserts and some of the most remote terrain on the planet. It will however involve some discomfort and a little danger is guaranteed.
Apart from the adventure element David is doing this for a good cause and for that reason (and because he promises to drive to Mongolia in a tutu) we at Adestra are sponsoring him. We would greatly appreciate it if you could dig deep in support of the Lotus Children’s centre in Mongolia and Alzheimers UK.
If you would like to follow David on his adventure visit Dances with Yaks.
“50% off now!” | “Breaking news!” | “Free beer!”
Every email marketer on the planet knows the importance of a subject line. But what really makes a great one? Believe me, if I had the holy grail of subject lines then I’d be a rich man. Sadly (and much to the chagrin of my wife’s wardrobe) I’m not.
Last week I delivered a presentation at Figaro Digital, a collective of thought leading digital marketers who meet semi-frequently to discuss all things digital. You can view my presentation and my beard here.
Afterwards, a gentleman came to speak to me and he asked me point blank, “What’s the best subject line ever?” I did my best to change the subject to no avail.
This is a question I’ve been asked many times before, and I’m sure I’ll be asked many times in the future. My answer often underwhelms, however it’s the absolute truth.
Now, before I go into what the answer is, a bit of a caveat. When I was working client-side, I knew what the best subject lines were. But my definition of “best” was very specific. The dictionary says:
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/best?s=t
But in an email marketing context, none of these are quite right. What people really mean when they are looking for the “best” subject line is the one that works better than all the others. It is fundamentally impossible to know which is the “best”, short of running a campaign with infinite splits; testing out all possible permutations of subject lines, from the mundane (“Here is your email”), right through to dangerously spammy (“Get free Viagra delivered by Britney Spears now!”)
So, the way I interpret the question is as follows:
“What subject line will deliver my business the most value, given the constraints and nuances of my industry?”
But, that’s a bit of a mouthful, so most people just ask what the best subject line is.
And my answer?
“The best subject line is the one that works the best for you.”
Yep, as you can guess, this underwhelms people. Perhaps they are expecting a magical silver bullet that will suddenly make their email campaigns double in effectiveness… however, these successes are fleeting.
From a game theoretic standpoint, once one player in an industry finds a lucrative subject line strategy, competitors will mimic it, thus levelling the playing field and taking the global results to the previous equilibrium level. Therefore, short-term wins in terms of subject lines will deliver short term benefit, but in the long run will deliver nothing but wild response variance and thus a very stressed out marketer.
The key is to focus on building up your digital brand, and your subject line is a key conduit in doing so.
The best subject line should be:
There is much more to optimal subject line selection – right from word choice, to length, even to inclusion of symbols and old, previously-perceived “spammy” words which no longer seem to be.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic then get in touch with your account manager. Just don’t ask us what the “best” subject line is because we’ll change the subject!
This month we’re hosting a webinar on “Simple testing strategies that improve email marketing results”. The webinar will be hosted by Account Manager Marta Goral and will give you more insights into testing methodologies. Register now
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