Adestra

Our 2010 Email Marketing Industry Census, found that 39% of respondents do not know the ROI of their email campaigns. Whilst this has fallen from the 42% reported in the previous year’s research this is still a worrying figure considering that email marketing accounts for an average of 17% of total marketing spend; the second highest digital channel spend.

So, why not use our ROI calculator to work out your return on investment. If you don’t like what you see in the results there are many ways that we can help you stream line your email strategy to ensure that your budget is well spent.

Try our ROI calculator today

The 2009 Marketing-Gap Tracking study conducted by fast.Map and the DMA has revealed that email is the consumer’s preferred direct marketing channel.

The study showed that consumers are now more than ever more willing to receive emails from trusted brands and products they are interested in. The study also revealed the fact that marketers are largely underestimating this consumer willingness. A panel of 300 marketers thought that 28% of consumers would be happy to receive emails about companies that they know of when actually 51% of the consumer panel expressed interest.

Robert Keitch, chief of Membership and Brand for the DMA commented that “consumers are largely receptive to direct marketing, but only under the right circumstances”.  Marketers now need to ensure that emails are relevant and targeted in order to increase this consumer interest that will then drive revenue from email as a channel.

Regardless of this underestimation among marketers email is still coming out on top as an excellent tool for ROI. The 2010 Email Marketing Census conducted by Adestra and Econsultancy revealed that 75% of companies rank email as a good channel for ROI. This was the second highest among the channels that saw only SEO coming in higher at 78%.

To read the full Marketing-Gap Tracking study click here >>

To read our Email Marketing Census 2010 click here >>

Serena Elston, Client Strategy Executive

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.

The age of load and blast is officially over, and reporting on open rates and click throughs just aren’t enough. So, how can you use what is available to you to find out more about the people who have taken action on your email?

1. Who has converted? Whether a conversion for you is a purchase, subscribing to a free trial or downloading a PDF, analysing your conversions is important. With Adestra’s conversion tracking (see case study), not only can you see the “conversions”, you will also see who has abandoned the conversion process allowing you to follow up these warm prospects. If you are finding lots of people are abandoning the process, it may be time to refresh the process or the page that people are getting stuck at.
2. Where are they going after your email? Using your web analytics package, you can track and see where people have gone after your email. Compare the number of pages visited and the average order value of your email recipients versus other site visitors. Also see if email-driven visitors are steering clear of certain navigational paths popular with other visitors; perhaps you should then incorporate those pages into a future email. Using Adestra’s web analytics integration, you can do this quickly and easily.

To find out more about conversion tracking and web analytics integration and how we can help you to get more out of your email marketing, please email strategy@adestra.com

Reena Mistry, Group Account Director

Businesses are always trying out new ways to promote brand awareness and interact with subscribers through email. So taking the typical customer lifecycle and superimposing it on to a digital strategy may seem overly complicated or expensive to maintain.

Fortunately, the ability of Adestra’s MessageFocus application has empowered marketers to do just that.

James Bunting explains on his DMA blog the top 5 automated campaigns that every marketer should look to undertake. These are very easy to setup, require little or no maintenance (except when you want to update the copy) and can provide huge uplift in response and ROI.

The top five mentioned here are:-

• Welcome Campaigns
• Order Confirmation Campaigns
• Customer Satisfaction Campaigns
• Abandon Cart Campaigns
• Post Purchase Campaigns

What other ways can marketers approach automating campaign in a typical customer lifecycle?

Here is a simple breakdown on segmenting the customer lifecycle into three distinct manageable groups.

Campaigns for Interested Recipients

• Welcome messages – setting to scene for what subscribers have signed up to
• An educational campaign – getting subscribers familiar with your brand & website
• Lead warming activities – for establishing subscribers interest
• Promotions to encourage first purchase – to encourage a conversion

Campaign for Engaged Recipients

• Shopping cart abandon notices
• Service alerts – for informing about existing and new products/services
• Order receipts
• Reminders of upcoming events
• Special promotions for regular customers
• Targeting based on web analytics tracked behaviour
• Subscription Renewal Reminders

Campaigns for Lapsed Customers

• Sending surveys to identify reasons for lack of engagement
• Offering incentives to re-visit the Website
• Delivering promotions to encourage associated purchases

For more information on how to get these types of automated campaigns up and running please contact your Client Strategy Consultant or email us here

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

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

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

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