More Incremental Improvements for Rockin’ ROI

Last time , we talked about adding triggered automated emails to your email marketing program as an incremental improvement that can add up to a big boost in email marketing ROI. As promised, here’s the second of our suggestions for these kinds of small changes with rockin’ returns.

This one might have you scratching your head at first, however. Today’s suggestion? Incrementally grow your list.

Yes, incrementally. Rather than go for a huge jump in numbers by focusing on quantity, go slow but steady. Slowly build that list and you’ll build a better list, guaranteed.

Does that sound counter-intuitive coming from an email marketing consultant? It shouldn’t it. It’s the smaller, higher quality list that will outperform the random, quantity list. And performance is what we are after, after all.

Ways to incrementally grow your in-house email list include asking people to sign up for your emails at every possible touch point:

• In your employees’ email signatures
• On every page of your website
• On your Facebook page
• In your blogs
• In every transactional email

• At checkout, whether buying online or in person

Each one of these “asks” is a small one to implement and—like the small changes we’re recommending to your email marketing program—will add up to one big improvement.

Even if your in-house email list only grows by 5% with your quality focus, that’s 5% more names of people who want to hear from you…much better than 20% more names of people who don’t!

Next time, our third suggestion for incremental improvement: Be straightforward. Watch for it here in our email marketing consultant blog!

Make Incremental Improvements for Rockin’ ROI

If you’re searching for email solutions as big, huge fixes that will give you big, huge boosts in ROI, consider thinking small instead. Incremental improvements in your email marketing program can add up to that big boost you’re seeking.

As email marketing consultants, we see all kinds of opportunities when new clients come to us. That’s  because email is made up of so many parts. Rather than applying one big email solution to a program, we often find that making all the small ones can do a lot for the bottom line too.

For the next three blog posts, we’ll suggest three ways you can make small changes to your email marketing program, changes that might seem ho hum on their own, but add up to a big difference when taken together.

Our first suggestion: triggered email.

When your email marketing program includes triggered emails that are sent to a customer or user based on a behavior, you’re marketing to people in a very relevant, timely way by following up on an action taken by them. Plus, they are more likely to open these emails since they are quite often transactional, such as order confirmation emails. Welcome emails also enjoy a very high open rate.

Triggered emails can be transactional, or they can arrive on anniversaries, for example, as reminders that it’s time to renew or replenish a supply. They can recommend items likely to be of interest to the consumer based on past behavior. Or offer special pricing.

No matter what the automated, triggered email message does, it does it with no effort from you. So whether that adds up to a little gain or a lot of gain, you win!

Does triggered email sound like a bigger email solution than you’re ready for? It’s not. As long as your in-house solution or email service provider (ESP) can offer the capability to you, it’s only a matter of determining your triggers and messages.

If your current ESP isn’t set up to assist you with triggered email, call on email marketing consultant ClickMail for help. (http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/contact.html)

Protect Your Reputation to Protect Your ROI!

Your sending reputation is a critical component of your email deliverability…which is, of course, a critical component in your ROI! The more emails delivered, the more conversions possible.

When your reputation is poor, so is your deliverability rate, directly impacting your sales. After all, how can someone click through and act on an email if that email never shows up in their inbox?

Make sure your reputation is the best it can be. The latest ClickMail Marketer explains how to know, improve and protect your sender reputation. It’s not rocket science or even buried information you’ll have to dig deep to find. You only have to know where to look. As an email marketing consultant, we give you the steps to take to do just that. Plus the latest email marketing newsletter offers practical advice for improving that reputation once you know your score, and protecting it moving forward.

It’s all in the latest ClickMail Marketer.

And if you need help with any part of researching or monitoring your sending reputation, this email marketing consultant is standing by to help!

A while back, we talked about five signs it’s time for a new email service provider (ESP). If you’ve digested and considered those and you’re still not sure if your current ESP is still good enough—or not—here are five more reasons to ponder whether it’s time to switch.

1. You need in-depth reporting: It’s hard to move forward and improve when you can’t really tell what’s working and what’s not. If your email service provider can’t deliver the kind of in-depth reporting you need, it’s time to move on.

2. You need more support: Sometimes ramping up your email marketing program to the next level requires more than your in-house team. Sometimes it requires outside help from an email expert. After all, you’re busy with running the program you already have in place and that’s got your staff maxed. If your ESP can’t meet your support needs, it’s time to move on.

3. You need in-depth testing: Any and all email marketing program requires testing to improve, but not every ESP offers the kind of granular testing you might need. If your ESP’s testing capabilities are limited and your needs for insight are not, it’s time to move on.

4. You need advanced segmentation: Segmentation is critical in order to deliver the kind of personalized, relevant messages people expect today. Are you ready to move beyond ZIP codes into more refined segmentation? Will your current ESP enable that kind of advanced segmentation you’re looking to do? If not, it’s time to move on.

5. You need triggered emails: Yes, your staff is maxed but your company’s email needs are not. Triggered emails can work so you don’t have to, whether it’s an order confirmation or a welcome email message. The only caveat is your ESP must offer that capability. If not, start shopping for a new one.

Keep in mind the best time to switch is before the capacity is needed. You want to be up and running on your new platform, with everything migrated and all training done and the new IP address whitelisted, before you find yourself lacking keep capabilities.

For an easy way to get started on your search for a new email service provider, try our free online tool, the ESPinator. It’s built by email marketing vendor ClickMail to help you jumpstart your search.

Be an Email Expert With an Inverted Pyramid Approach

Here’s some oldie but goodie advice that’s as relevant in 2012 as it was in 1912: Use the inverted pyramid for your content.

The principle is this: The highest number of people will read the top of the message and fewer as you work your way down the page. Hence the inverted pyramid.

For those of us old enough to remember the days before email marketing, those days when magazine ads and direct mail postcards were the norm, the inverted pyramid was how your crafty copywriter approached the content. Assuming most people would read the headline, then fewer the subheading then even fewer the beginning of the body text, and so on, until the fewest number of people made it to the bottom of the page or postcard, the copywriter would put the most important information first.

This same approach so commonly used in print can be used for emails too. Once people get past your From name and subject line, you hit them with the most important information in the Preview Pane in case that’s all they see. If they do open the email, assume many will only look at the headline and work that. Then continue to work your copy in such a way that if the reader since only the top part of this upside pyramid, they’ll still walk away with your message.

Be an email expert: Flip your content around with the inverted pyramid, and make sure the important info gets seen.

Need Email Solutions? Think Physics

Teenaged me avoided physics in school. It sounded hard, so I took geology and astronomy instead. That’s too bad because grown-up me has enjoyed learning about physics principles, especially how they apply to email marketing.

Take friction, for example. When you learn about physics, you learn friction slows motion. Just as your slick socks will slide across the kitchen floor more easily than your rubber-soled shoes, friction can impede motion in email marketing too. So if you’re looking for email solutions to improve your email marketing ROI, let’s start with friction. Or should I say let’s start with eliminating friction?

Friction happens in email whenever you impede the forward motion of your prospect. Consider these steps along the way from inbox to landing page to buy. At each and every point, you want to make things easy and seamless, removing any possible friction like…

• The From address: If they don’t recognize it, friction.
• The subject line: If it doesn’t intrigue, friction.
• Content: If it’s not relevant, friction.
• Design: Like content, if it’s not relevant, friction.
• Images: An email full of images that renders as a bunch of empty boxes–friction!
• Call to action: If it’s buried or unclear, friction.
• Landing page: If it lacks a clear transition from email, friction.
• Form: If it asks for too much information, friction.

Know your physics for email solutions. Stop the friction from email to landing page to buy.

Subject Line Length: Test for Results

Subject line best practices tend to be all over the map.  We’ve seen studies claiming the shorter subject line is better, and others saying longer subject lines are. And we’ve seen studies saying personalization works and other saying it doesn’t. On subject lines, don’t assume you know the best length. Instead, test, test, test.

What’s an email marketer to believe?

When it comes to subject lines, the only email marketing best practices you can really depend on are the ones you determine yourself through testing.

Consider just subject line length, for example. As email consultants, we still run into the mindset that there’s a hard and fast rule one must adhere to. Email marketers can get fixated on the 35-character limit but that’s not necessarily true. There is no hard and fast rule, only your rule.

A short subject line might work best for you. A long subject line might work best for you. Or something in between might be just the right length. There’s only one way to know: Try A/B testing for your initial answers. Then continue to test and refine.

Don’t automatically dismiss longer lines. Consider the benefits of the longer subject line. A long subject line tells the recipient more about what to expect from the email content, possibly leading to more opens. For example, a magazine touting their newest issue might reference three articles in the subject line.

On the other hand, short subject lines can be “long enough” to get opens when the emails are known to be relevant to the recipient, expected and timely. If you’ve built up a rapport with your audience, the shorter subject line might be the way to go.

And that’s another reason for continuing to test. It could be you’ll need longer subject lines until your audience gets engaged, then shorter subject lines will suffice. Or it could be for some kinds of content your subject lines will perform better shorter and other kinds of content will perform better with longer.

The key is not to take any advice for granted. Instead, test for results…the best results for you.

Emails Aren’t Sent in Batches but They Are Read in Batches!

As email marketers adhering to email marketing best practices, we’re no longer doing batch-and-blast email on our end, but our recipients are probably checking email in batches on theirs.

That was a point made in the ExactTarget 2012 Channel Preference Survey. The survey is a must-read for email marketers from the email newbie to the email expert. Download it and review it for critical information about the channels your customers prefer, from email to direct mail to SMS to social. Today, however, we want to talk about one little gem in the survey.

While reading through the data, this paragraph on page 12 jumped out at us:

“…the telephone and SMS (text messaging) channels index well for alert-based communications. This stands to reason since both phone and text hold a place of higher communication priority in most consumers’ lives. If the phone rings, you answer it. If a text arrives, you can read it quickly. This is vastly different than email and social media updates which tend to get checked in batches.”

Email tends to be checked in batches…that is something we as email experts know, right? But maybe not something that stays top of mind as we carefully craft our campaigns, subject lines and offers. We already know the inboxes we sit in are crowded and cluttered, but do we also take into account customer behavior, their mindset as they tackle that inbox?

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, this is a gem of information to think about. Email lacks the immediacy of the phone and the text. That’s not a bad thing. But this idea that email is checked in batches, not as it comes in, well that’s important.

What does it mean? It means we’re not only in a cluttered inbox, but we’re even less likely to stand out as a recipient does email triage or deletes in bulk. We are more likely to be put off, to be dealt with later (affecting our immediate open rates).

Why does it matter? It is yet one more reason to be targeted, relevant, engaging and wanted in the inbox. Once you’ve won your customers’ hearts and earned a welcome place in the inbox, your emails will stand out, even among the clutter.

Granted that was only one tiny nugget from 35 pages of critical stats and data. Think about it, but don’t stop there. Read the survey and apply all of the insight to your email marketing program when you download the full report here.

Here are three more reasons to make triggered emails part of your email marketing program: content marketing, SEO and social sharing.

Content marketing is the new wave, and it touches every marketing channel, from video to social to email. And email is easily adapted to a content marketing strategy because it is content based. SEO is search engine optimization and still a necessary marketing tool, even in a time of social and visual domination (think Facebook and Pinterest). Then there’s the sharing aspect of social that triggered emails can help with too.

Triggered emails can help with both by building your content. Simply make asking for reviews part of your email marketing program.

For example, let’s say a customer bought a book from you. In addition to the purchase confirmation email and shipping confirmation email that are sent when appropriate, you can follow up a week or two later with another triggered email asking for a review. The customer clicks on a link, goes to a landing page, and submits a review that goes live on your website. Instant content that didn’t cost you a thing…or an email expert.

Because it is written by a customer using their terms and language, this kind of content tends to be naturally keyword rich too, for your SEO benefits.

Once the review is live, trigger another email with a link to the review and plenty of social sharing buttons along with text encouraging them to share their review.

There you have it, three reasons to make triggered emails part of your email marketing program: content marketing, SEO and social sharing.

Need help getting set up with triggered emails? Call on the email expert: ClickMail Marketing

These Emails Will Up Your Open Rates

If you want to see a jump in open rates, consider putting more emphasis on these two types of emails:

1. Triggered emails
2. Editorial emails

A recent MarketingProfs article highlighted findings from a combined Epsilon and DMA Email Experience Council study. The article provides plenty of snapshots and numbers from the report, and I highly recommend taking a look.

However, the biggest takeaway for us as email marketing vendors was the higher open rates enjoyed by triggered and editorial emails. If those emails are getting the higher open rates, you’re not stuck in the smaller numbers with your marketing emails. You simply need to integrate these types of messages into your email marketing program.

According to the article, triggered emails average open rates in the 40% range, and editorial emails are at 33.3%. Who wouldn’t want rates like those?

The reasons for their appeal are obvious. Triggered emails are timely, relevant and targeted. Editorial emails are content-based and useful. And both can be part of your email marketing program.

If you’re not using triggered emails yet, call on this email marketing vendor to lend a hand and get you set up to do so. Then use those triggered emails as channels for doing some up-selling or cross-selling. If an email is triggered by a purchase, say a confirmation email, offer a similar product or a discount on the next purchase.

Editorial emails are easy too. Rather than focus on what you want to do (sell), focus on what your subscribers want to know. Make your marketing messages more content rich with useful information, and play down the promotional part of the message. Or keep editorial and ads separate. You’ll still be more welcome in the inbox if people come to expect great content from your email newsletter. And the higher open rates enjoyed by your editorial emails might lead to higher open rates for your marketing ones too.

Again, if you need some help or direction, call on the email marketing vendors at ClickMail for guidance. Our goal is your success. Triggered and editorial emails can help make that happen.