Adestra

Our 2010 Email Marketing Industry Census found that more than a third of companies (37%) are using email to encourage the sharing of content on social networks, and just under a third of companies (31%) say they are planning to do this. However this just doesn’t have to be a one way relationship; Facebook has a great little tool that allows you to host email signup forms on your fan pages also. Instructions on this can be found below.

Add the Static FBML app to your page

You will need to have access to the Facebook Static FBML app in order to do this; simply type Static FBML into the Facebook search box and choose ‘Static FBML’.

Once you are on the page, on the left hand side of this screen select the link ‘Add to my page’, a pop-up box will ask you which fan page you would like to add this to and select ‘Add to Page’ next to the relevant one.

Adding your Sign Up Form

Now, go to your page and select ‘Edit Page’ from the left hand menu, this will provide you with a number of options; choose the edit link under FBML

You are now presented with a box that you can copy and paste your subscription form HTML code into.

If you currently have a form created by Adestra, contact us here or if you would like to have one setup, you can get in touch with us here. Once you have the code, simply copy and paste into the box and choose Save changes.

Add as a Tab to your Fan Page

Finally, go back to your fan page. If your sign up tab is not already there, choose the “+” symbol next to your tabs and select the form you have just created. People now the option to sign up to your emails direct from Facebook.

Andrew Abram, Client Strategy Consultant

Whilst we all feel the need to have a forward to a friend (FTAF) link on our email, are we doing enough to get those who are forwarded the email subscribed to our emails? Clearly if someone has taken the time out to think a friend or colleague would be interested in your content then that friend is more than likely going to want to receive your emails.

But have you thought how to get these signed up to receive future emails?

Traditionally links have been placed on the email ‘Have you been forwarded this email? Click here to subscribe.’ But these would have to be placed on the original email sent to those who have already subscribed, using up valuable space. So how about dynamically adding in a link to only those that have been forwarded the email to a subscription page?

This is possible through the Adestra platform (MessageFocus) FTAF feature.

A forward to a friend form would typically ask for your name and email address and your friend’s name, email address and any additional message you would like to add at the top of the email sent on. How about adding in a link here that says ‘Like what you see? Click here to subscribe to further emails like this one’ with a link to your subscription page or a subscription centre setup by Adestra that can automatically trigger out a welcome message and subscribe them to the relevant list(s).

A one off setup that can result in a high amount of new subscribers without using up valuable space in your original email; if you would like to find out more about this feature please contact us.

Andrew Abram, Client Strategy Consultant

Last month I presented at the B2B Marketing Magazines email excellence seminar, and this debate popped up again.  Adestra commented on this very subject in 2008 on the E-consultancy blog but how much has actually changed since then?

It is true that email results for acquisition are still substantially lower than for retention emails, and load and blast isn’t the best method either. There is one obvious reason why retention emails perform better than acquisition and that is because recipient knows who you are and so they read your email.

Now, if we transfer this to email for acquisition, the question is not “Is email for acquisition dead?” it’s “when should you use email for acquisition?” The simple answer is, when they know who you are.

Possible ways to do this:

• Following up your sales teams call list with a newsletter about the service / company.
• Using the data you have collected at an trade show to nurture prospects.
• Your company has spoken at event. See if you can use that data to send out the presentation and start a dialogue with the prospects.
• Competition entries, signups for whitepapers etc etc… use the information you have.

From here, these prospects can be entered into a lead nurturing programme which can include events, letters, email, telesales and face-to-face meetings to ensure they know who you are and you are building a rapport with your leads.

So no, email for acquisition is not dead, but using it to blanket email a bought list just won’t work for you any longer. Email should be a part of the lead nurturing process and cannot be relied on to close the deal for you, but it will help you to build that relationship with your prospects if used with other channels.

Reena Mistry, Group Account Director

Econsultancy and Adestra annual email marketing census has just been launched,  as always it will cover email marketing topics such as  Use of email services, Email marketing budgets,  ROI and effectiveness, Email Integration and Deliverability.

To take part all you will have to do is fill in the Email marketing Census 2010 survey, at the end of the survey you will also get the chance to fill in your details to get your own free copy (worth £150).

Adestra will hold a breakfast briefing in March where we will discuss the latest hot topics and best practice for email marketing for 2010, if you are interesting in taking part of that please feel  free to fill in your details on our contact us page.

Finally we would like to thank the Linus plus the team at Econsultancy and everyone else that has taken part in the 2010 Econsultancy and Adestra email marketing census, if you would like to stay up to date on these hot topics please subscribe to our RSS feed and/or newsletter to make sure that you receive the latest news.

You don’t need to be a whiz at HTML code to create emails nowadays. Like in our platform MessageFocus there are editors that you can use to create nice looking campaigns without the hassle of learning how to bold text or change text to a specific branded colour.

But have you ever thought about learning some basic code to make your emails more enticing for your readers to open, click, reply to and convert?

Here are some easy tips to move your emails forward:-

• Do you send long or lots of infromation/offers in one email campaign?

Why not try adding anchor links so readers can click on the story they want to see.

• Are you creating the same campaign for different data segments?

Use dynamic content to create targetted messages at a click of a button. This will send the correct information from your database to the recipient.

• Who is Mr  ?

Why not add some personalisation code so if a field is blank within your data show a default or another field.

• Want to personalise your subject line?

Adding a recipient’s first name or company name within a subject line could intrigue to open to find out more.

Want to know how to do these tricks? Contact our support team on how add these onto your campaign or email our training department and learn how to do it yourself.

Joanne Taylor, Trainer

Recently I attended the Webtrends Engage conference and one of the most interesting questions that came up was should you let your customers opt in to relevance?

With today’s technology you can easily integrate any ESP with analytics vendors, most free vendors like Google Analytics will not let you track PII but when you are at a level to start harnessing the power of your data and are ready to take the step to an enterprise analytics vendor like Webtrends and Omniture you really can track everything.

But before you do this with automatic retargeting campaigns  should you let your customers opt in for these higly relevant emails or campaigns?

I am not talking about opting in for email marketing as I am sure that before you get here you have already fined tuned your confirmed opt in experience for email marketing.

My question is more… should you let your users opt in for relevance?

All comments and feedback are welcome here.

Fred Wahlqvist, Partnerships and solutions

Before adopting the ‘load and blast’ technique (used widely due to the cost effectiveness of email marketing) take time out to make sure you have a communication plan that works. At Adestra I hear numerous clients saying “I want to acquire more data” this is a great objective to have, however, you need to acquire good mailable data (unless you want to see your core metrics reduce significantly). It’s better to send to responsive customers with targeted, relevant messages than to send the same message to everyone on your database.

Get the basics right …

• Targeting contacts with relevant messages from an accurate database is fundamental. Without clean, complete and accurate data, you can never be relevant and targeted despite your best intentions. Only 60% of respondents from the Email Marketing Census 2009 carry out regular list cleansing which will be one of the reasons why many respondents have experienced problems with deliverability.

• Although budgets are increasing, a worrying finding is the continual lack of ROI measurement (42% of those surveyed still don’t track it). Without accurate tracking, testing programmes cannot be measured. Without measurement, the speed at which you can improve your email marketing to the level where it is achieving ROIs of over 5 times will always be slow.

…Then look at advanced techniques

• Segmentation is moving up the agenda, but some of the more sophisticated behavioural targeting and trigger sends are still not widely adopted. Before investing in setting up these programmes ensure that your house is in order. The age-old adage of walking before you run applies.

• Integrating different databases and touch points across the company to create one customer view to power relevant multi-channel communications is a dream that is impossible if there are problems with the accuracy of your data… data in, bad data out.

Hollie Williams, Marketing Manager

Up to date information on your recipients will allow you to personalise email content, help to build relationships with your recipients and in turn lead to an increase in response rate.

But how and when do I get this information?

At sign up – It is important not to bombard them with too many compulsory questions, this could deter them from signing up. Ask for the essential information only e.g. email address and name, you can append further information later.

Welcome email – to encourage the recipient to give you more details about themselves, again, don’t over do it, only collect information you really need and are going to use. Tell them why you want this information (you want to send them  relevant information) -  if they know why you want to know their hair colour, they are more likely to tell you.

Up-date your details link – include a link to an up-date your details form on every email. Their details/interests may change; give the recipient chance to amend their details at a convenient time to them.  This will see a steady flow up to date data.

Incentivise – Encourage recipients to up-date their details, if they can see they are going to get something out of it by updating their details, they will be more inclined to do so.

For more information on gaining up to date information on your recipients please contact your client strategy consultant or email us strategy@adestra.com.

Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive

In a case study cited on the Marketing Sherpa website, Chiasso, an American online catalogue site used a Green Marketing strategy to increase their open, click and conversion rates to great effect. Chiasso realised that their customers were becoming increasing environmentally aware, which is why they decided to use green marketing to spearhead a new email campaign. It was very simple and effective, given that they would always possess a percentage of customers that will prefer a paper catalogue.

Chiasso embraced a four stage approach–

1. Provide greener options for clients with emotional marketing copy to push the uptake.
2. Redesign email templates to boost conversions and compliement counteract paper catalogue opt-outs.
3. Re-launch email campaigns, sent to subscribers 3 days before the paper catalogues land.
4. Remarket to non-openers 48 hours after the initial campaign was broadcast and provide 10% discount.

The results that Chiasso experienced are really promising –

Customers embraced the fact that Chiasso was becoming socially responsible by incorporating greener options into their business. The migration from paper to online catalogue was gradual with around 1% immediately opting out of the paper version. Their conversion rates saw an increase of 19% with overall revenues increased by 20%.

In relation to the campaign launched 3 days before the paper version, they experienced a 19% open rate with a 7.7% click through rate. The remarketing campaign to non-opens achieved a 21% open rate and a 3% click through rate.
To view the full case study please click here:

To learn how you can run effective campaigns like this and get the most out of your database, please refer to Adestra’s whitepaper ‘The power of automatic data filtering and recurring email campaigns’ or  get in touch with your assigned client strategy consultant to investigate whether green marketing would work for you.

Daniel Murphy, Client Strategy Consultant

We all know that we need to test and segment our email campaigns, but why? With the economy as is, it is even more important to start sending emails that are relevant to your customer base to increase your ROI (return on investment)

Testing has become a lot easier and quicker to do, and MessageFocus (Adestra’s Email Marketing Platform) can randomly split your lists automatically! All you need to decide is what you want measure and how you will measure success (Opens, Clicks, Conversions)?

Below is a small list of options that you can test;

• From Name
• Subject line
• Links
• Copy
• Personalised content versus non personalised content
• Discount versus free postage

Make sure you have a control cell and that you are only testing one element at a time, this way you will know exactly what you did to increase response. therefore launch your campaigns at the same time. You don’t want the time or day of the launch to influence results (unless that is what you are testing).
For more information on the what, where, when and how of testing, contact your strategy consultant, or if you are not a client of Adestra please email us on moreinfo@adestra.com

Jo Taylor, Trainer