The Whitelist

Welcome Emails Engage!

Do you know the capitalist adage about business, “If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking”? It means your business must constantly be on a growth curve, never stagnant because stagnant is the same as stuck and falling behind.

In today’s world of email marketing, we might alter that adage to say, “If you’re not engaging, you’re losing.”

Strong language, yes, but it makes the point that we have entered the age of engagement. As social networking has turned consumer expectations upside down and the inbox has become even more cluttered, your ability to engage with your audience goes beyond the warm fuzzies into actual ROI.

Get your relationship off to an “engaging” start by sending new subscribers a Welcome email.

As an email marketing agency, we can’t say enough about the importance—and ease—of this email marketing best practice. At its best, your Welcome email:

• Validates the subscriber’s decision to entrust you with his email address
• Reinforces the promises made on your signup page
• Begins the process of relationship building with that new subscriber
• Sets the tone for all future email communications
• Builds your brand

Remember too, the Welcome email has a higher open rate than other types of emails!

If you’re not using a Welcome email, now is the time to start. It will become a critical part of your engagement process, and the sooner it’s in place, the better.

If your email marketing program already uses a Welcome email, now is the time to review it.

Review your Welcome email for:

• Promptness: Does it get to the subscriber immediately upon signup?
• Content: Does it validate the signup and reiterate promises made?
• Design: Does it complement and reinforce your brand?
• Rendering: Does it render correctly in different email clients and on mobile devices?
• Tone: Does it engage?

If you’d like your Welcome email reviewed, or you need help setting one up, turn to ClickMail.

For fun and inspiration both, check out 53 different real-life Welcome emails you can peruse for ideas.

P.S. Was the advice above useful? We “welcome” your feedback!

How to Improve Your Email Marketing Program in Six Months or Less

It’s the beginning of a new year. Advice is flying at you from all directions. Predictions too. 2011 this and 2011 that… It can be a little overwhelming for an email marketer, especially in light of the growth of social media and all the buzz about content marketing!

At the risk of tossing even more advice your way, we want to suggest you review some of your email tactics. But rather than overwhelm you, we’ll make it easy on you: Here’s a six-month plan for improving your email marketing program.

We’ve chosen six often overlooked email marketing factors. Simply do one of these tasks below per month between now and this summer. Or if you’re on the fast track, make it a six-week plan, or even a six-day plan if you’re super ambitious. The point is, break it down into smaller pieces and you’ll be more likely to do it.

Task 1: Review your welcome message. Does it reflect your brand or is it boring and generic? Do you confirm what you promised, meaning if you’ve promised a monthly newsletter, does your welcome message confirm that? Are you offering any special rewards to people who sign up? Are you selling in your welcome email? Are you tracking the results of your welcome email over time? Choose one factor of your welcome email and run an A/B split test on it.

Task 2: Review how often you’re sending out your newsletter. If you’ve been sending out your email newsletter on the same schedule for over a year now, you might want to reconsider it based on results. What does the trending show, an increasing or decreasing open rate or is the open rate holding steady? How about click throughs? Do you have a preference center that lets subscribers choose how often they want to hear from you? Have you done any testing to see if more or less often gets better results?

Task 3: Review your transactional emails, including your confirmation and shipping emails: Give them the same once over as your welcome emails.

Task 4: Review your email design. Use a tool like eDesign Optimizer from email marketing vendor Pivotal Veracity to make sure your email marketing renders correctly in all email clients.

Task 5: Review your list building efforts. What are you currently doing to grow your in-house email list? Is there anything not working? Can you add one more technique this month, like adding an email sign to your company’s Facebook page?

Task 6: Find a reputable email marketing vendor to partner with when you need a little extra help. The time to find an email deliverability consultant or technical services agency isn’t when you need them. Find them when you have time to do your homework and make a good choice.

This is a doable list, right? And in six months, weeks or days, you’ll likely be seeing better results from your email marketing!

Once again, the numbers show that marketers are missing out on a critical touch point with their email subscribers: Return Path recently found that 60% of the companies studied fail to send out a welcome email message to a new subscriber.

We all know from our own experiences as real-life people who sign up for emails and newsletters how infrequent the welcome message is: We don’t get them most of the time! So we really notice when we do. Take note: So do your customers.

Other studies have shown that welcome emails have higher open rates than regular emails. That alone should be reason enough to make them part of your email marketing program.

But then there’s the missed marketing opportunity too. Why are email marketers so negligent of this chance to further the relationship? The person who signs up for your email has already raised their hand and said “yes, I want to hear from you.” Who better to extend a warm welcome to?

Then there’s the branding component: If you are doing welcome emails, hurray for you! You’re ahead of the crowd. But give your welcome email a critical eye: Is it boring, bland, generic? Or does it use a tone, voice and design that emphasizes your brand?

If you’re ready to up your email marketing ROI by making the most of the welcome email, also see the Email Experience Council’s Retail Welcome Email Benchmark study. It’s free only to EEC platinum members, but you can get highlights from it at http://blog.emailexperience.org/2007/09/retail_welcome_email_benchmark.html…or join the EEC. And see what kind of welcome email you get.