Adestra

Client: Jane’s Information Group

Challenge: Taking a newsletter subscriber base and turning it into revenue.

Result: 27% increase in YTD online sales

Read more

Yes and here’s why…

Studies have shown by using personalisation in your email marketing, you are more likely to have an average conversion rate of over 3%. Inserting a person’s name into the subjectline can increase open rates by as much as 10% [Jupiter Research].

Personalising an email can be as simple as adding a salutation “Dear Mr Smith” or inserting into  the subject line. However, it can be so much more powerful if you use the information you have in your data.

Let’s take gender for example. Below is an example of conditional content from one of clients Clothing at Tesco.

Quite simply, women receive the bikini email and men receive the swimming trunks (although there is some debate that is should have been the other way around).

This was created using conditional content and creating only one email, but the relevant information being shown to the relevant gender. And guess what, it worked!

Now things can get even more exciting, if you are inviting people to an event you could send them personalised maps based on the venue and their postcode? Or for an e-commerce email, why not personalise the email based on past purchase behaviour. If it’s in your data, you can use it!

For more information on personalising your emails please speak to us.

Joanne Taylor, Trainer

Email Marketing is an effective tool when marketing during a recession, according to research published by Econsultancy and Adestra today.

The Email Census 2009 found that 78% of company respondents now rate email as “excellent”  or “good” for ROI, this is higher than for any other digital marketing channel and up 12% since 2008.

However, the research also found that significant numbers of marketers are still failing to adopt a range of best practices relating to email, and many are still failing to get to grips with deliverability. Less than a fifth of companies (18%) know what percentage of their email budget is lost through non-delivery, according to research.

Crucially, lack of strategy is now more likely to be regarded by company respondents as a significant barrier to effective email marketing, up from 32% of email marketers in 2008 to 44% in 2009. An even bigger proportion of agency respondents (69%) say this is the biggest barrier for their clients, up 16% since last year.

Econsultancy Research Director Linus Gregoriadis said: “While some companies are mastering various tactical elements of email best practice, such as segmentation, deliverability, list cleansing and triggered emails, it is clear that there are still problems for many organisations at a strategic level. A well thought-out strategy has to be the starting point for email marketing success.”

The research found that, on average,  42% of emails (by volume) are acquisition-focused compared to 58% for retention-based emails. Additionally, there has been a 9% increase in the proportion now re-marketing through email as companies attempt to get as much value as possible from existing customers.

But worryingly, the research also found that 42% of email marketers do not know their return on investment (ROI) from email marketing .

Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director at Adestra, a leading email service provider, said: “With belts tightening throughout this recession, it is very concerning that 42% of marketers do not know their ROI from email marketing. It is the most cost effective medium, accounting for just 14% of online marketing budgets. With many marketers recording ROIs of over six times, budget constraints should not be seen as a barrier.”

The third annual Email Census produced by Econsultancy and Adestra is a crucial benchmarking tool for marketers and is based on the findings of a survey of more than 1,000 registered Econsultancy users.

Click here to get your copy of the census

One of the reasons for the failure of NatMags’ Jellyfish magazine has been blamed on email distribution problems.

What lessons does this hold for email marketers?

Read the full post on the eConsultancy web site here

Hollie Williams, Client Strategy Consultant

Following my presentation at last week’s ECMOD event on email marketing, I noticed that most home shopping and e-tail email marketing strategies centre around offering discounts or promotions.

This is despite the fact that one of the major benefits of email marketing is that it is measurable. You can use this information to learn and further refine your communications.

After recently moving into our new house, I’ve been keeping my eye out for any bargains on home ware. This weekend, I found both the answer to over-reliance on promotional based marketing and extra storage in our bathroom.

It was delivered with Saturday’s copy of The Sun. Amongst the numerous pages dedicated to Sir Alex’s 20 years at Manchester United, was a small catalogue for Argos.

Serendipity led me to pick it up and flick through the pages. Before I knew it, I’d found something that would look good in the corner of our new bathroom.

Firing up my lap top, and going to www.argos.co.uk, I discovered that I could reserve the item and go and collect it from my local store, which I did.

On reaching the store, I used the self-service check out. My first human contact with any member of Argos’ staff was when they handed my goods to me.

Apart from this being a completely multi-channel experience, it shows quite how much information could have been gathered on me, as I interacted with technology at almost every point:

1. Product preferences: what other products did I browse on the website before buying, and what sort of complimentary products could I be offered?

2. Geography: where is convenient for me to shop, and what items are/are not in stock there?

3.  Intent: I reserved and showed up to collect and buy, proving that I am a ‘serious’ customer.

4.  Payment preferences: I used debit rather than credit.

If Argos was able to bring this information together it would have a lethal cocktail of information to power targeted and effective email marketing – including:

1. Niche newsletters: I’m buying homeware, so would other ‘mini brochure’ email newsletters on homeware be relevant?

2. Product cross-sell: I’ve both browsed and bought, so could my preferences on individual products be used to power ‘featured products’?

3. Local store: Can specific communications promoting ‘slow’ products in stock at my local store be pushed? Would ‘new catalogue available’ and opening hour pushed drive foot fall?

4. Converted: I have converted into a real customer – could I be pushed to recommend others? Or perhaps surveyed to understand my perceptions of using technology in this way to understand impact on brand value? If I had abandoned without buying, could I be encouraged to convert in the future?

Of course, in many organisations there would be many barriers:

Internal factors:

1. Available resources
2. Integrating data sets accurately and in a timely fashion
3. Internal politics
4. Not enough accurate measurement to prove/disprove the business case

External factors:

1. Is your ESP able to power such trigger based communications?
2. Are your customers happy to be contacted in such a way?

As yet, I have only received a confirmation email only, and to be honest I’m not surprised – my purchase was only 2 days ago. Add to this, that even as one of the more forward thinking catalogue shopping firms, I would fully expect them to will be facing almost all of the challenges above. Over the coming weeks, it will be interesting to see what email communications I receive.

As an email marketing agency with the technology to power many of these communications, I’ve seen a number of our clients achieve significant ROIs and generate the information to build a business case for sensible investments to overcome these challenges.

At the very least, it means that companies do not have to risk brand damage and sales hold back by having to rely on discount based promotions only. This flexibility in the communication plan can only be a good thing and opens the doors email marketing offers to high value companies that cannot use discounting.

Henry Hyder-Smith is Managing Director of UK ESP, Adestra and sits on a key hub of the DMA Email marketing council. More information at www.adestra.co.uk.