Archive for the ‘Relevance’ Category
Email: The power and the glory
Last week Adestra sponsored the 2012 Figaro Email Seminar. The agenda focused on how email is the ultimate outbound channel, and set out with a team of industry experts to instil the lesson that marketers need to ensure their messages are timely and relevant.
We had our own Adestra industry expert, Account Director, Kate Gowers present on; Email: The power and the glory. Below she gives a brief synopsis of what she covered:
30 years ago (way back when the Dead Sea was still only sick), we had one commercial television station, one commercial radio station in London, and we got our news from newspapers and television. Fast forward to 2012 – the consumer of today gets his information from a myriad of sources. He reads his email, watches one of over 500 channels, surfs the net and opens his post. Media has truly fragmented, so the savvy marketer needs to adopt a truly multi-channel approach to keep our consumer’s (limited and transient) attention.
Email marketing is probably the only channel that allows for dialogue – it has the potential to be a true two way conversation. You have the opportunity to reinforce your brand, to educate your customers (or readers) about your offering or industry, to chase that elusive sale, to keep your customers happy and to create advocates amongst your customers (allowing them to do some of your work for you). To achieve all these things, though, you need to talk not SHOUT and ensure that when your programme does initiate response that you LISTEN to what your recipients have to say. Your customers are speaking to you – by opening, or failing to open a message; by clicking (or failing to click) a link and by purchasing (or, you guessed it, failing to purchase) your product or service.
I discuss how best to deliver interesting and relevant (two very important words) content and how best to listen and take note of the response you get.
If you would like to view my presentation, click here.
Sending to non-openers can seriously improve your results
There are definitely differing opinions about the practice of resending to non-openers a few days after an initial email send. There are many reasons why a recipient did not open your email the first time around:
- They may have been too busy at the time to read it
- They may have deleted it by accident
- The subject line may not have interested them
- They may have read your email content without turning images on
- They may have read the plain text version of your email
- and so on and so on.
The key thing to remember though, is that if a recipient did read your email without turning images on and did not open it’s likely that they just weren’t interested in your message, and won’t open the second time around. To try and engage those who were just too busy the first time, can be an attractive idea to marketers. We spend a lot of time creating our finely tuned email campaigns. Why not try and generate that little bit more ROI from all of that effort?
On the other hand, is the extra ROI worth the risk of a potentially higher unsubscribe rate, a higher number of spam reports and the risk of annoying people who have read and dismissed your email in the preview pane.
In November 2011, we launched our new “Resend to non-openers” button within the campaigns in MessageFocus. Many of our clients had asked for an easy way to extend the longevity of the email messages, without lots of effort and this was a great answer to their requests. Since then, we have undertaken some research into what impact the use of this functionality has had on our clients results and we’d like to share them with you here.
The results:
- The resent email achieved an open rate that was half that of the original send. So if Email 1 achieved a 20% open rate, the follow up to those who did not open the first time, will achieve around a 10% open rate, increasing your reach by around 50%.
- Unsub rates of the resend were on average 0.06% less than the original email send.
These results show that resending your email campaign to non-openers can increase your email campaign ROI with minimal extra effort. However, it’s important to keep an eye on your results. If you see a big increase in your unsubscribe rate then you need to decide whether it’s worth losing those people, in exchange for the extra opens and clicks? Also, remember to look at the click through rate. If you are getting more opens, but people aren’t clicking through, is it really worth sending the email again?
As with many things in email marketing, give it a test. You’ll never know unless you try and our research shows resending to non-openers can have a big impact on your results.
Reena Mistry
Marketing Director
Mobile and social drive UK email industry growth – Econsultancy
Following the release of their 2012 Email Marketing Platforms Buyers Guide, a recent post from Econsultancy stated that despite the rise in social media use and consumption, the UK market for email marketing platforms and services was worth £336 million in 2010 and grew by an estimated 15.5% year-on-year to a value of £388 million by the end of 2011.
Adestra’s Henry Hyder-Smith comments:
“With the rise of social media, the talk of the industry
at the beginning of 2011 was all about social media being the death of email. The market has actually grown and the two channels have grown to complement each other.”
“Email marketing has not lost its place in the marketing communications mix, but it has and will have to evolve to fit into the changing times. There has been a rise in email automation to fit into this change, moving from ‘load and blast’ to a focus on relevant and 1:1 communications. The coming years will see email evolve even further, to fit into this social world we are rapidly becoming.”
The email marketing sector continues to flourish, with growth driven by various factors, including competitive pricing and efficiency. Email continues to be highly cost-effective and to deliver strong returns. Growth in this market stems from an increasingly cross-channel approach to marketing, with companies integrating data and insights from a variety of channels to increase the effectiveness of their emails. This is demonstrated by Econsultancy’s 2011 Email Census (published in association with Adestra). It shows that companies are becoming more familiar with the rules of email marketing best practice. Almost three quarters of companies (72%) rate email marketing as “excellent” (26%) or “good” (46%) in terms of return on investment.
How do you rate the following channels in terms of return-on-investment? Econsultancy / Adestra Email Census 2011
To download the 2011 Email Census click here
To take part in the 2012 Email Census click here
To download the 2012 Email Marketing Platforms Buyers Guide from Econsultancy click here
Email: The power and the glory
Last week Adestra sponsored the 2012 Figaro Email Seminar. The agenda focused on how email is the ultimate outbound channel, and set out with a team of industry experts to instil the lesson that marketers need to ensure their messages are timely and relevant.
We had our own Adestra industry expert, Account Director, Kate Gowers present on; Email: The power and the glory. Below she gives a brief synopsis of what she covered:
30 years ago (way back when the Dead Sea was still only sick), we had one commercial television station, one commercial radio station in London, and we got our news from newspapers and television. Fast forward to 2012 – the consumer of today gets his information from a myriad of sources. He reads his email, watches one of over 500 channels, surfs the net and opens his post. Media has truly fragmented, so the savvy marketer needs to adopt a truly multi-channel approach to keep our consumer’s (limited and transient) attention.
Email marketing is probably the only channel that allows for dialogue – it has the potential to be a true two way conversation. You have the opportunity to reinforce your brand, to educate your customers (or readers) about your offering or industry, to chase that elusive sale, to keep your customers happy and to create advocates amongst your customers (allowing them to do some of your work for you). To achieve all these things, though, you need to talk not SHOUT and ensure that when your programme does initiate response that you LISTEN to what your recipients have to say. Your customers are speaking to you – by opening, or failing to open a message; by clicking (or failing to click) a link and by purchasing (or, you guessed it, failing to purchase) your product or service.
I discuss how best to deliver interesting and relevant (two very important words) content and how best to listen and take note of the response you get.
If you would like to view my presentation, click here.
Sending to non-openers can seriously improve your results
There are definitely differing opinions about the practice of resending to non-openers a few days after an initial email send. There are many reasons why a recipient did not open your email the first time around:
- They may have been too busy at the time to read it
- They may have deleted it by accident
- The subject line may not have interested them
- They may have read your email content without turning images on
- They may have read the plain text version of your email
- and so on and so on.
The key thing to remember though, is that if a recipient did read your email without turning images on and did not open it’s likely that they just weren’t interested in your message, and won’t open the second time around. To try and engage those who were just too busy the first time, can be an attractive idea to marketers. We spend a lot of time creating our finely tuned email campaigns. Why not try and generate that little bit more ROI from all of that effort?
On the other hand, is the extra ROI worth the risk of a potentially higher unsubscribe rate, a higher number of spam reports and the risk of annoying people who have read and dismissed your email in the preview pane.
In November 2011, we launched our new “Resend to non-openers” button within the campaigns in MessageFocus. Many of our clients had asked for an easy way to extend the longevity of the email messages, without lots of effort and this was a great answer to their requests. Since then, we have undertaken some research into what impact the use of this functionality has had on our clients results and we’d like to share them with you here.
The results:
- The resent email achieved an open rate that was half that of the original send. So if Email 1 achieved a 20% open rate, the follow up to those who did not open the first time, will achieve around a 10% open rate, increasing your reach by around 50%.
- Unsub rates of the resend were on average 0.06% less than the original email send.
These results show that resending your email campaign to non-openers can increase your email campaign ROI with minimal extra effort. However, it’s important to keep an eye on your results. If you see a big increase in your unsubscribe rate then you need to decide whether it’s worth losing those people, in exchange for the extra opens and clicks? Also, remember to look at the click through rate. If you are getting more opens, but people aren’t clicking through, is it really worth sending the email again?
As with many things in email marketing, give it a test. You’ll never know unless you try and our research shows resending to non-openers can have a big impact on your results.
Reena Mistry
Marketing Director
Mobile and social drive UK email industry growth – Econsultancy
Following the release of their 2012 Email Marketing Platforms Buyers Guide, a recent post from Econsultancy stated that despite the rise in social media use and consumption, the UK market for email marketing platforms and services was worth £336 million in 2010 and grew by an estimated 15.5% year-on-year to a value of £388 million by the end of 2011.
Adestra’s Henry Hyder-Smith comments:
“With the rise of social media, the talk of the industry
at the beginning of 2011 was all about social media being the death of email. The market has actually grown and the two channels have grown to complement each other.”
“Email marketing has not lost its place in the marketing communications mix, but it has and will have to evolve to fit into the changing times. There has been a rise in email automation to fit into this change, moving from ‘load and blast’ to a focus on relevant and 1:1 communications. The coming years will see email evolve even further, to fit into this social world we are rapidly becoming.”
The email marketing sector continues to flourish, with growth driven by various factors, including competitive pricing and efficiency. Email continues to be highly cost-effective and to deliver strong returns. Growth in this market stems from an increasingly cross-channel approach to marketing, with companies integrating data and insights from a variety of channels to increase the effectiveness of their emails. This is demonstrated by Econsultancy’s 2011 Email Census (published in association with Adestra). It shows that companies are becoming more familiar with the rules of email marketing best practice. Almost three quarters of companies (72%) rate email marketing as “excellent” (26%) or “good” (46%) in terms of return on investment.
How do you rate the following channels in terms of return-on-investment? Econsultancy / Adestra Email Census 2011
To download the 2011 Email Census click here
To take part in the 2012 Email Census click here
To download the 2012 Email Marketing Platforms Buyers Guide from Econsultancy click here