Adestra

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

Clients are always asking about using Forward to a Friend or Colleague (FTAF) to grow their lists and collect more subscribers.  There has also been a lot of debate over the effectiveness of FTAF in list growth and whether it works or not.

What FTAF does achieve is that it can be effective in reaching like-minded people to your subscriber and spreading the word about what you have to say. So, answering our Clients’ questions, what are the best practice guidelines for sending emails through a FTAF form?

• First and foremost, people who have been sent an email by a friend through a FTAF facility are not automatically new subscribers for you to email.  In order for you to email them again, they need to opt-in to receive your communications.

• Think about the email that is sent using the FTAF.  Ensure that the email gives the new recipient the ability to subscribe to your communications from that email, otherwise what’s the point in sending the email?

• Ensure that the person receiving the email knows where the email has come from, otherwise it may be dismissed as SPAM.  Perhaps allow the sender to add a personal message or ensure the sender’s name, and intention, are in the subject line to avoid confusion.

Finally, do remember that all the normal email best practice guidelines still apply.

To find out more about FTAF functionality email us at strategy@adestra.com

Reena Mistry

Group Account Director

In the current financial climate it’s no surprise that clients are asking me how they can extract extra value from their online marketing activity. “I want to generate extra sales/bookings/visitors but I don’t have the resource available right now to put together additional content. How can I squeeze extra value out of what I have already?”

This need not be as difficult as it might sound!

With email marketing you have access to information that is all too often overlooked – visibility of how recipients interact with your communications. Of course, we all use open and click information to generate stats but do you know you can drill down to see which individuals clicked and which didn’t?
Might not sound that interesting but consider the opportunities to:

• Resend to non-openers, perhaps with a different subject line, or at a different time
• Resend to those that open but don’t click, perhaps with revised content
• Resend to those that click but don’t convert. Maybe with a greater incentive or offer

All of the above and more is possible using MessageFocus – now, using the new filter tool, available within your MessageFocus account. The filter tool can be used to segment a list by pretty much any combination you can think of using data in your list and interaction with previous email campaigns.

Speak to your Strategy Consultant or Account Manager to discuss how filters can help you improve your campaign performance.

Rob Hunter, Client Strategy Consultant

We all know how costly and time-consuming it can be to build your email lists.

If collecting organically, getting the balance of collecting commercially viable data without adding a huge barrier can be tricky (one for a blog topic in its own right).

Buying in data can seem like the easy way out, but there is a considerable risk of bringing in poor quality data that can negatively affect overall results and the deliverability of your campaigns as a whole. It can be a bit of a minefield but by using the right suppliers and data collection techniques you can get it right.

What do you do as an organisation to protect the quality and useful life your list? Once you have built a good list do you look after it? It’s easy to think of a list as a resource that is there to be tapped into when required. It is often overused or conversely, neglected. To maintain the life of a responsive list you need to use it consistently and use it well or 6 months later you will be asking yourself why your results are declining and you will be looking to bolster your list again

This probably sounds familiar to you. I know many of my clients experience these problems. They put all their time and effort into obtaining new data but then 6 months later find that despite their hard work the list has become unresponsive.

How can you prevent this?

There are some simple steps you can take to keep your list responsive and reduce the impact of list churn

Keep subscribers active and engaged. Empower them to distribute your content

• Manage expectations from point of signup (What will they receive? When?).
• Welcome them immediately to ‘start the conversation’ and use this message for initial ‘housekeeping’ such as add to safe senders.
• Contact them consistently as per the initial expectations. If you said it would be a monthly communication make sure you deliver (where possible without sending poor / irrelevant content).
• Your subscribers are likely to have access to many contacts working in the same field or interested in the same topics and they will know far more about their colleagues/friends than you could possibly know. Utilise this by providing opportunities to send to a friend and sign up to your services (perhaps at a discounted ‘friends referral rate’)

Reach out to inactive subscribers

• Ask them if they are still interested? If they are not perhaps you can cross promote another communication / product. Failing that, they unsubscribe but at least they leave with a good perception of your brand – perhaps you can cross promote another service on the unsub page?
• Forcing people to stay on your list will lead to ‘emotional unsubscribers’ – not good for your results. Don’t make it difficult for recipients to unsubscribe or change their preferences.
• Allow them to change their email address.
• Consider offering ‘breaks’… perhaps they are going away for a while. Allow them to suspend their email for x weeks / months to give them added confidence in your email marketing ethics whilst your competitors are seen as spammers!
• Make use of Adestra MessageFocus ‘recurring campaigns’ to contact inactive contacts with a gentle reminder that you are still there “We miss you!”

Hopefully these pointers will help, feel free to comment and let us know your thoughts and experiences.

Rob Hunter

Client Strategy Consultant

The latest report from E-consultancy shows that 7 in 10 companies use email marketing as the most powerful way to engage with their customers.

The E-consultancy/cScape Online Customer Engagement Survey Report 2008 found that the overwhelming majority of companies surveyed (69%) agree that email newsletters have resulted in a tangible improvement in customer engagement.

Hollie Williams, Client Strategy Consultant at Adestra says: “Despite the growth of social media networks, blogging, video, microsites etc – this report clearly shows the best way to really engage with your customers is via email marketing. Timely, relevant and targeted newsletters help build long term loyalty as part of your online strategy.”

The future of email looks promising too: in terms of spending over the next 12 months, the report found there will be most investment in email newsletters, with 59% of respondents saying that their organisations will increase their spending in this area.

Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research, E-consultancy adds: “Done properly, email marketing is a proven way of boosting customer loyalty and getting a tangible return on investment. Our research shows that email newsletters stand head and shoulders above other tactics as the most effective and tangible way of driving online engagement.”

The success of email marketing as a customer engagement tool is due to a number of key reasons: email is a personal medium and once customers have opted in they are interested in receiving material from your company; it is ideal in a multi-channel scenario working alongside direct mail, call centre and website strategies; and it allows techniques such as behavioural targeting to be used that improve relevancy. In addition, using accurate tracking means the established metrics such as open rates and click-throughs enable marketers to demonstrate the effectiveness, and even ROI, of each campaign.

However it must be remembered that 43% of marketers cannot track the ROI from their email marketing – according to E-Consultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2008. Without accurate tracking, testing programs cannot be measured. Without measurement, improving your email marketing will always be slow progress.

Top 10 tips for effective email newsletters:
1. Segment, target and test – the golden rules
2. When to send – test different times of the week and follow-up non-opens/non-clicks/abandoned baskets
3. Implement ROI tracking – it may be simpler than you imagined!
4. Before sending – select relevant and informative subject line
5. Make call to action clear
6. Content – place key messages above the fold, not image heavy, keep it simple
7. Focus on each step: deliverability, opens, click-throughs and conversions
8. Data hygiene – it’s extremely important, keep it updated regularly
9. Set clear objectives for each campaign
10. Monitor user behaviour – even simple split tests can boost response

Co-registration could be the answer for you…

What exactly is Co-registration?

A textbook definition would be along the lines of : a negotiated arrangement in which companies collecting registration information from users (such as e-mail sign-up forms and shopping checkout process) include a separate box for users to check if they would also like to be added to a specific third-party mailing list.

So users opt in to receive marketing communications from multiple companies – usually complementary products – eg offering magazine subscriptions when you buy a product/sign up to a newsletter in the same industry sector.

The partnership is simple to set up and can be integrated into your current registration process. Setting up a co-registration partnership is easy – one site collects the new registrations for its partner by either adding a separate form to the registration process or an option to opt in. Data can then be double posted to yourself and your partner usually on a daily or weekly basis, whichever suits.

How does it work?

One way to boost your email database using co-registration is using someone else’s newsletter registration to acquire new members. For example, when a visitor to your partner’s website registers for their newsletter, they are offered the option to sign up for newsletters from your website. So because they’ve already expressed an interest in a newsletter, they are quite likely to sign up for an additional one so long as it’s relevant to them. A promotion or incentive is a great way to encourage people to sign up – when you consider the lifetime value of these potential customers, and the cost of acquiring new business elsewhere, this could be an ideal answer.

Make sure you enter into a co-registration deal with a company who targets a customer base with a similar profile to yours, but isn’t directly competitive (clearly your competitors would provide the ideal customer base, but that’s not really feasible!). Consider looking for complementary organisations and brands. One sector, for example, is event organising – where you share registration for similar events or offer magazine subscriptions relevant to that sector. As Adestra is a co-sponsor/co-registration partner of TFM 2009, when users register on the website they are encouraged to sign up to receive our latest industry email marketing whitepaper.

Typically, co-registration is open to all types of email marketers – and can equally work for both b2b and b2c sectors. The trick is identifying relevant partners and tracking responses. Remember, building relationships with key organisations now could forge strategic partnerships in future – make sure your competitors don’t beat you to the best data owners.

What’s in it for me?

Co-registration delivers confirmed subscribers who have positively opted-in to receive communications from you – they want to hear from your company! So make sure you have a planned approach to communicate relevant marketing messages.

List growth with co-registration is fast – ideal if you need to boost your database for a new launch or key sales period such as Christmas. When done correctly, co-registration can often generate thousands of new subscribers each day, so ensure systems are in place to deal with them.

Another key point is that the results need to be directly measurable – monitoring new sign-ups is one thing, accurately tracking the worth of the customers long term, and ROI, is quite another. Discuss with your Email Service Provider about how to go about this.

What are the drawbacks?

Co-registration can be an effective tool to increase your database in a short space of time, however there are a few limitations: because you are using third party data – be aware of what that means – Open rates, click-through and conversion rates tend to be much lower than qualified, segmented in-house lists.

Unsubscribes tend to be higher – it’s human nature for people to change their minds after a short time – therefore it’s critical for your new readers to make your early communications targeted, relevant… and interesting!  Ensure that you are able to fully track your core metrics – typically you can expect to be looking at high volume, low quality data, generating very little ROI.

Armed with that intelligence, you need to be asking some hard questions, chiefly “is it really worthwhile?”
This is part of your marketing strategy and represents your brand online, so make sure you are able to have enough space on the signup pages to include your logo and some compelling copy to attract your target audience. Again, relevancy is king.

What best practice methods should I follow?

At sign-up, it’s a legal requirement to use the standard confirmed double opt-in methods for data capture. Be up front about who you are and make it clear what new subscribers can expect. Just saying we won’t spam you doesn’t wash.

When contacting co-registration lists make sure you carry out your own segmentation of data and make your messages relevant (this will significantly help to keep your open rates and click-throughs up and unsubscribes down). Let them know why they are receiving the email (this is especially important if they have signed up from the partner’s site and not your own) and include the usual unsubscribe message at the end.

Trigger a welcome message after opt-in has been confirmed – this way they see you while they still remember what is it that they have signed up for. Don’t leave it a week, otherwise it’s too late.

What does it cost?

This is usually on a pay-per-registration basis, in other words a set price for each new email address that subscribes. You need to work out how much a new subscriber is worth to your business and how much you can afford to spend, you could even look at paying on performance.

Better still, don’t pay for it. It appears an outstanding idea if it costs you nothing – ie a data swap – what have you got to lose? Here you would swap a set number of contacts with the cooperating organisation – aim to carry out an initial test where you track to the value of the data over a set period, say 3 months. If you’ve not done it before, this practice might make a good introduction to co-registration as you’re more likely to get management buy-in if you use the f word (free that is!).

Return on Investment

Tracking the performance, i.e. ROI, of your new list is absolutely critical to see if co-registration is a successful tool for your organisation (or if you have identified the correct data partner). Large volume is not the most important factor here, identifying the lifetime value of that customer is.

If 80% of the co-registered names unsubscribe within the first four months, then the list has a very low value. However, if your co-registered customers convert more than those who signed up using other methods, then you have a nice profitable partnership.

How do I find a partner?

The easiest way to find co-registration partnerships is by using list brokers. They can help you identify the right customer base profiles and begin a new business relationship.

Other data generators

Don’t forget, other ways to boost your database quickly, and can be used in tandem with co-registration for website and email campaigns, are viral marketing and encouraging ‘forward to a friend/colleague’ techniques. An example, such as Thresher’s 40% off in-store promotion that went ballistic after staff forwarded it around the world, shows the power of this technique. Note if it’s a good enough deal, most people will forward it anyway. Also using viral games as promotions have proved successful for brands such as IWOOT.com and ba.com.

Summary

Overall, co-registration could be a fast lead generation activity for your business. It’s a good way to collect lots of names, but beware the quality – it’s critical to track the value of the dataset over time, otherwise your carefully planned marketing communications strategy will fall at the first hurdle. A smaller, better quality database could produce significantly improved results.

Given the state of the economy at the moment, managing to engineer a free data-swap is a great way to embark on your co-registration journey.

Hollie Williams, Client Strategy Consultant

This question just keeps coming up with our Clients weighing up which subscription procedure is the better one for them – standard opt-in or confirmed double opt-in.

Both sign up procedures are fine from a legal point of view, but when it comes to getting relevant and qualified addresses for you to grow there is a clear winner.

Standard opt-in

This is when there is no confirmation of sign up. This method can generate more subscribers as it’s quicker to complete, but unsubscribe rates are higher and spam complaints occur more often.  This method is also susceptible to Fraudulent email addresses, especially when running subscription offers or incentives.

Confirmed double opt-in

Confirmed double opt-in (sometimes called double opt-in/closed loop) asks subscribers to confirm their email address/subscription by clicking on a link sent to them by email. The confirmed double opt-in process gives you with an audit trail, so if in the unlikely event of a complaint you can prove their subscription.  You will find that marginally fewer people will subscribe via the confirmed double opt-in process because of the extra step asking them to confirm their subscription, but you will generate high-qualified and relevant addresses delivering higher response rates, less spam complaints and lower unsubscribe rates.

And so which should you use?

The clear winner is the confirmed double opt-in subscription process. We recommend the confirmed double opt-in process to all of our Clients, which helps to ensure they are growing their database but also building a list of qualified, relevant subscribers that they can develop.

Reena Mistry, Client Strategy Consultant

Growing your database is likely to be high on your list when it comes to your email marketing strategy. So how do you get browsers to opt-in to your newsletter?

1. Make sure your signup is visible on site (you may know where it is but do your prospective subscribers?)  In my experience the optimum placement for this is on the header of your website, this way is doesn’t matter where they land on your site it will always be on the top of the page.

2. Incentivise – give them a reason to sign up.

3. Keep it short and sweet – only ask for the information you are going to use – Name, email address and email preference HTML or Plain Text (you can always append data at a later stage).

4. Show them an example – manage their expectations, make sure they know what they are going to receive.

5. Link to your privacy policy – if you are not going to sell your data to third parties highlight the fact since  it may encourage opt-in.

6. Validation – run validation scripts within the opt-in form to ensure the correct make-up of the email address. After all you want to be able to mail them.

If you are not sure what to do first then test one thing at a time, see if it increases your subscription rate.

Remember… There is no exact science, so test and find out what works best for your site and your browsers.

Hollie Williams, Client Strategy Consultant

Yes and Yes…

These are the golden rules – segment, target and test – absolutely fundamental to your ongoing email marketing, I can’t stress the importance of these enough. Unfortunately, so many emarketers blindly send emails to their database without any segmentation.

Even a simple male/female split will improve relevancy, boost click-throughs and can turn an average campaign into a great one. For example, Clothing at Tescos doubled their click-throughs using dynamic content for a gender spilt – so females received bikini messaging and men trunks.

Testing what works best is absolutely critical. Similarly test timing – there is no default best time-of-day or day-of-week to send, it varies considerably between company sectors, and audience. To get the best results you need to get the email into the inbox of the recipient at the time that is right for them.

If you know your audience is likely to work standard business hours, but you collect personal email addresses, then sending Monday morning probably isn’t going to attract the best possible response.”

Rob Hunter, Client Strategy Consultant

Building a list of opt-in subscribers is clearly a vital part of a successful email marketing campaign but do not underestimate the importance of getting your unsubscribe process right.

Allowing ‘opt-out’ is not a nice-to-have, it is a legal requirement. You probably know this but have you actually tried to unsubscribe from your campaign? Does it work how you would expect as a subscriber?

OK, making your process super clear could increase unsubs short term but is there any value in forcing people to stay on your list?

Make it difficult for people to leave your list and risk:-

1. Blacklisting and fines

2. Increased ‘mark as spam’ and complaints

3. Brand and recipient relationship damage

4. Reduced email deliverability for your account overall

5. ’Clouding’ of your results making it difficult to learn from previous results

So what should you do?

1. Make the opt-out process consistent with your opt-in process.

2. Keep the branding, terminology, style and positioning consistent

3. Make it clear what the recipient will be opted out from

4. Consider offering multi-level unsubscribe at multiple levels i.e.campaign/project/workspace for complex campaigns  An ‘email us’ call to action is appropriate for opt-out at the top level only i.e. “Email us to be removed from   all future marketing communications”. 

Otherwise unsubscribe should be web based and just one-click away from the  email.Do not force login or navigation through pages to unsubscribe. This is now a legal requirement for US email  marketing.

Consider using a preference centre to allow customers to change their area of interest rather than unsubscribe where appropriate. Look for opportunities to cross-promote other parallel brands/campaigns within the   unsubscribe process. One lists loss could be another’s gain
 
Key theme: It really is quality not quantity!

Rob Hunter, Client Strategy Consultant