Adestra

In a recent meeting with a client, they wanted to know what to do in order to improve their open rates, my suggestion was to test. As everyone’s recipient base is different, there is no one rule fits all answer, the only way to find out is to test what works for your recipients.

The client did a number of controlled tests, testing one aspect of the email at a time, allowing them to see exactly what caused the increase/decrease in response. The client split their list into two, sending half of the list their regular email, and the other half the email with the testing element. There were a number of aspects which had a small impact on the campaign results, such as, the layout and design of the email, however the aspect which had the greatest impact on the results was personalising of the subject line with the recipients’ company name.

This test saw a 5% increase in open rates, compared to the non personalised version, as well as an increase in the click through rate too.

By personalizing the subject line the recipient knew that the email was relevant them encouraging them to open and interact.

Please email support@adestra.com for the demonstration videos on how to Split Test, and Personalise your Subject Line. Or if you would like any further information please contact your strategy Consultant strategy@adestra.com

Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive

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

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

I had a meeting recently with a client who were looking to improve their unsubscribe process after feedback recentlyreceived from their customers highlighted the fact that some were receiving communications that were not of interest to them. With a big push in list growth a while back, the need to manage the relevance of their emails was soon seen as a high requirement.

I was actually impressed that the client came to me with the need to evaluate their whole unsubscribe process, too often the unsubscribe process is seen as a negative thing and doesn’t get the attention it requires but it is important; after all, who wants to speak to someone who doesn’t want to listen?

Now when it comes to why people unsubscribe the reasons are never straight forward, there can be numerous factors as to why someone may want to unsubscribe, not just because they don’t want to receive messages from you. This is where the preference centre comes in.  Adestra have seen that when a preference centre option is offered unsubscribe rates drop significantly.

A preference centre is a way for subscribers to pick what titles, what type of communication (events, marketing, newsletters for example) and what 3^rd party emails they want to receive. It overcomes the problem of just offering a global opt-out and also gives them the chance to opt in to titles that they may not have previously been aware off; a method of cross-promoting titles. It can also act as ‘an update your details’ form, a great way to capture updated details, especially useful if you are segmenting data based on demographics or work information.

Adestra’s preference centre functionality can automatically manage all this. When clicking through from an email to update their details, a subscriber can automatically see what they are opted in to receive, as well as what they may be missing out on. Once they have amended their details and submitted, their contact information will automatically be updated, meaning no manual work is required from you. The form can also be hosted elsewhere, on your website for example, so subscribers always have a chance to update their details.

Ultimately a preference centre is a way of keeping your customers engaged and allows them to just receive the emails they want to receive; something that us email marketers keep going on about.

To find out more about  this please contact your account manager or email us

Andrew Abram, Client Strategy Consultant

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

There are many theories regarding the best days and times to send your email campaigns.  In truth there is no ‘right answer’ but some simple considerations could improve the open, click and all important conversion rate of your broadcasts.

1.        Test and monitor.  Varying send times or split testing your email Campaigns, sending at different times or days will give you the initial insight to the ‘best’ times.  Monitor peaks, especially activity away from the initial send, when interrogating the results from your ESP.

2.        Follow them around.  Rather than reacting to email activity, speak with your web team to find out when the website is most active away from your scheduled email marketing / newsletter send times.

3.        Consider the goals of campaign and ensure you are gauging success on the correct variable.  If the campaign requires a form complete sign-up then consider the volume of completed forms and not perhaps the open or click rate.  The open or click rate could be high early on a Monday morning but the conversion rate of the form sign-up maybe low as a busy time in the working day.

Test again!

Reena Mistry, Client Strategy Consultant

I spoke at a SIPA email marketing network evening with two other speakers from Electric Word and Incisive Media.

A really interesting evening, it was very refreshing to see the comments being made about what work and doesn’t work reflecting the recommendations we’ve been making for quite a while.

The main points were

Be relevant, it works:

Target don’t blanket: pushing out emails to loose selections can often be the easiest solution. However, this bad direct marketing practice pushed up unsubscribe rates. If you are working for an organisation with a large number of marketers, all of whom share the database, having a high number of unsubscribers is not good for anyone.

Third party data rentals for email are dangerous:

Attendees reported limited success, but many highlighted experiences of low response rates. This is particularly prevalent if the list is quite high profile and rented a number of times. Some senders had got into problems with getting emails delivered due to black listing issues which caused some serious consequences.

Emotionally unsubscribed are useless:

Review your database. There will be a number of people who have not read any email you have sent them for a number of months. There is some research that extols the brand benefit of simply being in a person’s inbox. However, the budget you are wasting and the dilution of your campaign results this creates means that this benefit has to be out weighed.

When thinking about over what time period you should use to remove people, there is no golden rule, but we’ve been recommending 3 months if you’re sending weekly emails, and the analyse to see if anyone you suppressed resigns up! If there are a considerable number, then extend the time period.

Designs can be improved:

An excellent presentation highlighted that tweaking from names, subject line, the layout of body copy and actual copy tests can impact on campaign results significantly.

Is there an industry best time to send email marketing?

No! Many marketers are sending their email campaigns out through habit- “we always do our newsletter on a Friday as we always have!”. To discover the best time for you to send your email marketing look at your web logs over the past 3 months. See when people have already chosen to come to your site and use that as an indicator.

It is always interesting to be in the presence of people who have such a refreshing approach to testing and are committed to improving their email marketing. I for one took a number of new ideas from it, and are looking forward to the SIPA conference in July and learning more.

In the latest DMA National Benchmarking report (Q207), all contributing ESPs were asked what value their clients could allocate to an email address.

The average result came to £9.11 – but how did the DMA come to this figure and is it right to use it to inform your marketing activities?

You can read the post in full here on the eConsultancy site

Rob Amos, Client Strategy Manager