Archive for the ‘Topics’ Category
Want to build your list size? Don’t dive in head first.
A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”. He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.
A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.
One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!
- Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
- Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.
- Prioritise all ‘new things’ you’re going to do – You might end up with a big ‘ole list of stuff to do. All exciting, all stuff you want to do. But some will take time to implement, some will cost more. Factor all those in and prioritise in which order you’re going to tackle stuff. Don’t be afraid of paying someone Project Management fees to handle this either – it will help get it done.
- Get emails to new signups quickly – Whether this is enforcing a double opt-in process or just sending them a thank you email. You should aim to send them their first email from you immediately. It’s a technical issue to resolve but resolving it will be the biggest thing you can do to improve the engagement of your email list. I promise!
So assuming you’re rocking these four things, what’s next?
- Social sign up - If someone likes you on Facebook, follows you on Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn, that’s great. At some point though, any or all of these social channels might change the game, making it more difficult to market to these valuable brand advocates. It is not uncommon these days for a brand that has 300,000 likes on Facebook but only 30,000 people on their email list. The value of your efforts on your social channels is fine, and can be discussed elsewhere – but at least for now email is the still the best route for you to send messages with traceable results. Every place you have a presence in the Social world you should link to, or embed, a sign up form. And in available text boxes (think Twitter bios and G+ “About” pages) promote it (even incentivise it) and say what they should look forward to when they get your emails. Have a read of Parry, one of our Account Director’s blogs on the subject here. There’s a great presentation available here too from our industry colleague Loren McDonald on this subject.
- Text signups – Lots of ESPs (like us) offer the ability to rent a shortcode (or a shared shortcode) and use it for data capture. Pick up your phone now and text the word ‘subscribe’ and then your email address to 81222. You’ll then see it in action. It’s great for events, great for charities, shops and many other applications too. As per the social sign ups, if you go for this, don’t hang back in promoting it, put that text everywhere!
- Leverage all customer/prospect touch points – even if you can’t run with the SMS signup route, and you only have a website signup, think about all the places you might be able to entice people on to your list, and how you can entice them. Trade shows, training sessions, conferences… point of sale, shop window, partner websites, banner ads. Check out the section in the emaildirect blog post here, entitled “How to Build an Email List: Offline”
- Give signups something in return – doesn’t have to be money off offers, we could be talking about some top tips. Send a personalised offer.. doesn’t have to be about money. Lay it out all through the signup process – tell them what they should expect to receive and show examples. You can also think about ranking these new signups – ask them what and when they might be interested in joining a paid program of some sort. See how our client Celtic Manor grew their email list organically by encouraging their existing subscribers to recommend their friends – also check out Jordie van Rijn’s excellent signup process on Emailmonday.com.
- Don’t forget your website – you may push all channels towards one form on your website. All cool. Don’t forget though that you can improve signups on your site through search or organic traffic. Make the form more obvious. Link to it from your header and footer. Place links to it at points across your site enticing people with exclusive content if they sign up.
- A step further? – Do you have “share this email” or “share this article” links in your existing emails? You can make this shared version of your email carry specific content – so think about adding a data capture form to all shared versions of email newsletters or promotions.
Right, that was enough to get my friend started list building. What about you? Would be great to hear your ideas on how to build a list organically.
Steve Denner
Director
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
Want to build your list size? Don’t dive in head first.
A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”. He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.
A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.
One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!
- Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
- Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.
- Prioritise all ‘new things’ you’re going to do – You might end up with a big ‘ole list of stuff to do. All exciting, all stuff you want to do. But some will take time to implement, some will cost more. Factor all those in and prioritise in which order you’re going to tackle stuff. Don’t be afraid of paying someone Project Management fees to handle this either – it will help get it done.
- Get emails to new signups quickly – Whether this is enforcing a double opt-in process or just sending them a thank you email. You should aim to send them their first email from you immediately. It’s a technical issue to resolve but resolving it will be the biggest thing you can do to improve the engagement of your email list. I promise!
So assuming you’re rocking these four things, what’s next?
- Social sign up - If someone likes you on Facebook, follows you on Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn, that’s great. At some point though, any or all of these social channels might change the game, making it more difficult to market to these valuable brand advocates. It is not uncommon these days for a brand that has 300,000 likes on Facebook but only 30,000 people on their email list. The value of your efforts on your social channels is fine, and can be discussed elsewhere – but at least for now email is the still the best route for you to send messages with traceable results. Every place you have a presence in the Social world you should link to, or embed, a sign up form. And in available text boxes (think Twitter bios and G+ “About” pages) promote it (even incentivise it) and say what they should look forward to when they get your emails. Have a read of Parry, one of our Account Director’s blogs on the subject here. There’s a great presentation available here too from our industry colleague Loren McDonald on this subject.
- Text signups – Lots of ESPs (like us) offer the ability to rent a shortcode (or a shared shortcode) and use it for data capture. Pick up your phone now and text the word ‘subscribe’ and then your email address to 81222. You’ll then see it in action. It’s great for events, great for charities, shops and many other applications too. As per the social sign ups, if you go for this, don’t hang back in promoting it, put that text everywhere!
- Leverage all customer/prospect touch points – even if you can’t run with the SMS signup route, and you only have a website signup, think about all the places you might be able to entice people on to your list, and how you can entice them. Trade shows, training sessions, conferences… point of sale, shop window, partner websites, banner ads. Check out the section in the emaildirect blog post here, entitled “How to Build an Email List: Offline”
- Give signups something in return – doesn’t have to be money off offers, we could be talking about some top tips. Send a personalised offer.. doesn’t have to be about money. Lay it out all through the signup process – tell them what they should expect to receive and show examples. You can also think about ranking these new signups – ask them what and when they might be interested in joining a paid program of some sort. See how our client Celtic Manor grew their email list organically by encouraging their existing subscribers to recommend their friends – also check out Jordie van Rijn’s excellent signup process on Emailmonday.com.
- Don’t forget your website – you may push all channels towards one form on your website. All cool. Don’t forget though that you can improve signups on your site through search or organic traffic. Make the form more obvious. Link to it from your header and footer. Place links to it at points across your site enticing people with exclusive content if they sign up.
- A step further? – Do you have “share this email” or “share this article” links in your existing emails? You can make this shared version of your email carry specific content – so think about adding a data capture form to all shared versions of email newsletters or promotions.
Right, that was enough to get my friend started list building. What about you? Would be great to hear your ideas on how to build a list organically.
Steve Denner
Director
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