Groundhog Day for Email Marketers

For most people, the month of February brings thoughts of flowers and candy for Valentine's Day. For me, February reminds me of one of my favorite movies, "Groundhog Day," in which Bill Murray relives Groundhog Day over and over until he learns to recognize his faults. I think many email marketers are in the same situation; performing the same action over and over, but expecting different results each time. Some would even say this is the definition of insanity. Marketers wonder why response rates are dropping, but are blind to the fact that they are sending the same non-targeted, irrelevant messages over and over again. Of course subscribers are losing interest; you are conditioning them to expect the same redundant email every time.

One online retailer I know of has sent 13 consecutive weekly emails with the same subject line. Here's a hint: if I wasn't enticed the first time, the 13th time probably won't convince me. This retailer does themselves no favors in a cluttered inbox. We know that consumers often save an email to go back to later when they are ready to shop. Make it easy by using distinctive subject lines for each message. Create distinctive offers as well. Using math to trick your customer into thinking they are getting a deal may initially drive sales, but after a while they'll catch on. No matter how many ways you change the percentage off, or offer free shipping, if the end result is $24.99 every time, customers will eventually stop looking for that "special" offer.

Another way marketers train customers to ignore emails is by sending too often. Seeing that email in the inbox each morning becomes routine. In most instances, people actually may want to receive all of those daily deal emails, but just skim the subject lines each day until they see an offer or brand that they may want, while deleting the rest without opening, and this can influence spam filters. So why not just ask what they want and segment based on that information? A simple preference center can allow your customers to set products, categories, and brands they are interested in. Your customer may have bought that deal for 50 percent off bungee jumping today, but chances are they won't be interested in a buy-one-get-one-free deal on knitting classes tomorrow.

All of this boils down to engagement. ISPs are factoring engagement into the filtering process and marketers will need to test and refine their strategy to remain in the inbox. Regardless of your opinion on the matter, it's here, and it's not going anywhere. If you aren't testing, how can you know what it is that's driving your performance? I understand that developing a testing strategy can be time-consuming and a bit intimidating, but start small and ask for help. Your email service provider can help you develop and test programs that will ultimately give you actionable information. Just like in "Groundhog Day," it might take a while to find the right combination, but it's worth it.

 

Jay Brangiforte, senior deliverability operations manager,

e-Dialog

 

This article originally appeared on ClickZ. 

 

Email New Year's Resolution Check In!

It’s almost February, so time to do a quick gut check on your email New Year's resolutions! Wait, you didn’t set any? No worries, you can apply some common New Year's resolutions to your email program to yield significant results

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Resolution 1: Lose weight!

With customers being bombarded by email and other mediums, the sad truth is that as email marketers we often fail to trim the fat off our lists, so to speak. Ways to make sure you continue to send your relevant messages to only those customers that are actually engaged is by updating your preference center. Consider sending a re-engagement email driving customers to update their preferences. The inactives that don't respond may need to be kept off the main list after a specified period of inactivity. 

  

Do customers have a way of opting down from your program as opposed to out of it completely? Can your customers elect to communicate with your brand via other channels? Provide options for text messages and allow for direct links to your Facebook or Twitter accounts to keep them engaged if email isn't their preferred channel. 

Cleaning up your preference center is an easy and efficient way to optimize database health and provide users with additional ways to engage with your brand.

 

Resolution 2: Have more fun!

Have fun with your email program. Don't be afraid to shake things up. Are you sending the same emails as last year with no change to your content? If so, consider switching things up a little. Add a fun game, poll or a call to action to encourage engagement via your Facebook page. Not only will you learn some new things about your customers, you might make a new fan or two out of it.

 

Resolution 3: Make More Money

Nothing drives additional revenue like new customers, right? One easy way to acquire new customers is by making sure your website prominently displays the email enrollment option. That means having it on every page, not just the home page, because with many visitors arriving at your site via search, they may never see your home page. Already have that covered? Try adding a viral component to your emails encouraging customers to forward your great deals to their friends.

Taking the time to even try one of the 3 "resolutions" will have you well to making your "new and improved" 2012 email program a bit of a boost! And don't forget, you can try e-Dialog's Email Resolution Generator app to help you as well! 

 

Paola Cerda, e-Dialog

Are You Asking the Right Questions for Relevance?

The email tools available to marketers today can provide reams of information on subscriber behavior, including opens, clicks, conversions and shares. This info can be really valuable and provide insights into how effective your newsletters are, what topics you cover, how frequently you should be contacting your audience and more. But there's another way to get this insight; ask subscribers what they want directly.

 

I recently got an email from GE Appliances soliciting my preferences. I had no idea they had a preference center, or even which emails I was getting from them. I probably signed up originally as part of contest for a new stainless steel range or some other promotion. The creative was simple, with one call to action: visit the new preference center and select which emails I want to get from GE Appliances. They show and mention that there are samples of each newsletter, which is great.

 

 

 

Once I clicked through to the landing page, there were seven newsletter options, each with a visual depiction and a link to a sample. It also told me how often the newsletter is sent for five out of the seven. One thing that was confusing to me was that each newsletter had a radio button for subscribe or unsubscribe. Some were already ticked, but some had neither choice selected. So I assumed that for newsletters where the subscribe button was selected, I was not currently subscribed and vice versa. For the newsletter with no option selected I had to assume I was not currently subscribed.  

 

 

 

 

At the bottom of the page they have some options for which topics or products interest you and the link to unsubscribe from all emails. Overall, I think it's a solid program, and one that's important for a company like GE, because a purchase of a new range or dishwasher may only happen every 5-10 years, so keeping up to date with subscriber needs, and offering newsletters the give an added engagement point, like recipes, keeps the relationship going even when the customer is not in the purchase cycle.

 

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this campaign, and preference center best practices or missteps you've experienced. Just leave a comment!



Liz Lynch, senior marketing communications specialist

e-Dialog, @eDialogLiz

 

 

Getting to the Point at Point of Sale

At this time of year, with consumers heading into the mall for some serious shopping, retailers are looking to capitalize on that warm body in-store by promoting their online programs and collecting email addresses at the register. This can be a good idea, if it is well-planned and well-executed. Handled the wrong way, it may not even be worth doing. You must keep in mind upfront costs, backend costs, and the true value of the resulting email address.

Retailers will often give an incentive on the spot to entice customers to provide an email address at checkout, like $5 off their purchase. This makes sense, since the $5 in this example to acquire a valid email address is a good value in the long run. But depending on how you actually collect that email address, you might be throwing $5 out the window. For instance, using a guest book where the shopper scrawls the email in the midst of their rush to complete the purchase and not hold up the line of people behind them is probably not the best approach. It leaves too much room for human error when the customer is filling out the form, or when it is entered into your CRM system at the end of the night - particularly since a lot of people's handwriting is less than legible these days. A better method is when the cashier enters the email directly into your POS system, confirming the address back to the consumer as they enter it.

Even better, think about how and when the incentive is delivered. To increase the chances of getting a valid email address, structure the program so that the incentive is delivered via email, to be used on the next visit. This is also a perfect opportunity to ask for a confirmed opt-in (i.e., "To get your coupon and to receive marketing messages click here"). While confirmed opt-in may sound scary, it validates the email address and interest of your customer to participate in your online marketing. More importantly, it effectively eliminates any possibility of hitting spam traps, which are often part of the backend costs of POS acquisition programs.

Building incentives for your customers is only half of the equation. How you motivate your employees is equally important. Don't build programs based on total number of email addresses collected each shift. Your employees can easily be tempted to make their quota by fabricating addresses, some of which might actually belong to a real person who will flag your email as spam, or have now been made into spam traps by an ISP. Employee incentives should only be based on the number of deliverable and confirmed email addresses collected.

Offering an incentive to customers or employees comes at a cost, which you can estimate up front based on your acquisition goals. But there are other costs to keep in mind. One is data auditing. You'll want to make sure you catch common errors in addresses like misspelled domains or missing dots in dotcom. An easy way to do this with online data collection is to add a real-time validator to your enrollment applications. This is easy to do and usually not very expensive. This will not only make corrections on they fly, but it can also be configured to catch your current customers who are already in your system.

Another hidden cost to consider is the time spent in the checkout process overall. Depending on how time-consuming it is to collect email addresses, it could mean fewer transactions per hour, and some shoppers might even abandon their purchase if the line doesn't move quickly enough. So be sure to train employees well, and perhaps set guidelines to keep the line moving.

Once the email address has been added to your database, the work is not done. Don't add these new addresses to your latest promotional message stream right away. It is important to nurture the new subscribers and keep them engaged past the holiday in order to make the acquisition efforts worthwhile. So make sure the first email you send delivers the incentive you promised, but also sells your email program. Outline that the reward they just received for signing up is only the first of many great things coming their way. If you can do that, hopefully that first point of sale won't be the last.

 

Rick Buck, vice president of Privacy and ISP relations, e-Dialog, @eDialogRick

 

This post was originally published by ClickZ.

 

What Haunts Email Marketers

There are many urban legends and superstitions related to email deliverability, primarily from the early days of the industry. Lots of best practices and never-ever's that float around and get shared on discussion boards and at trade shows. In honor of Halloween, here are a few of the misconceptions still haunting email marketers that I think it's time to debunk.

The misconception that I hear the most is about subject lines. The biggest one is that there are certain words or characters that will flag your email as spam and no one will ever see your email again. Words like" free," a dollar sign, using all capital letters, or lots of exclamation points. Or even words like "lose weight" or "Xanax." Now, if you're Weight Watchers, or Pfizer, the manufacturer of Xanax, you're probably going to be using those supposed "spam triggers." In today's deliverability climate, whether or not messages get delivered is based more on overall IP reputation than specific words in the emails themselves. The only thing you need to worry about when crafting a subject line is whether or not it will motivate the recipient to open the email. Of course, it never hurts to do some A/B split testing to see which subject lines work better, and whether using a dollar sign leads to more opens than a percentage off message. And to be sure that your creative or content won't cause trouble, run it through one of the many spam assessment tools before sending your campaign.

Obviously, list building is a priority for all email marketers, and figuring out how to grow a list, usually quickly, has lead to some questionable practices. One that just won't die is trading your email list with another business. This one probably comes from the direct mail world, where it's common practice to buy access to a mailing list of a company similar to yours and mailing to it. In email, this doesn't fly. While it is technically legal under CAN-SPAM, it is likely your spam complaints will spike because people getting your email don't know why you are speaking to them. Instead, think about reciprocal marketing. Share space in your email with another marketer and ask them to do the same. You'll both get exposure to new customers and the opportunity to grow your list.

On the surface, it makes sense that consumers are more welcoming to emails at certain times of day or on particular days of the week. There's been research done, looking at the metrics to find out when the most opens and clicks happen, but I don't think it's something you can pin your program's success on. It's a moving target. It varies from person to person, and can depend a lot on where the person is and what they're doing. Focus instead on sending relevant messages and people will open them.

Finally, as we move full steam ahead into the holiday season, email marketers continue to think that mailing to inactive subscribers will somehow wake them up just in time to contribute to the bottom line. In fact, if they haven't opened an email from you in the last nine months, they probably won't start now. You've missed your chance to reengage. It's painful, but use your energy to create compelling messages for your active subscribers and you'll get more bang for your buck.

 

Rick Buck, VP, deliverability and ISP relations, e-Dialog, @eDialogRick

 

This article was originally published by ClickZ. 

 

One List and SO Many Things To Send. How Do We Manage?

I was recently asked this question - with so many internal stakeholders wishing to send messages to our email list, how do we manage the user experience and growing frequency? Here is what I said...

What it boils down to is effective segmentation that is based on subscribers’ profile attributes and preferences. All content cannot be relevant to all subscribers, so there have to be mechanisms in place for the various internal stakeholders to either prove that their message/offering is most relevant to a particular subscriber segment and/or offer subscribers an option to request their specific content, supplemented with clear expectations and branding around that content. Here are some examples of both points:

Point 1: Proving that a message is relevant to a particular segment (note: the key here is “segment” – an individual stakeholder’s message simply cannot be relevant to every single person on the list, or at the very least, there is very little probability of that being the case) 

• Use a tool like e-Dialog's Relevance Scoring methodology to have different stakeholders prove that their email is worth sending. The higher the relevance score, the higher the probability that the email would in fact get sent (there are also minimum scores that need to be met for the email to even be considered). The methodology includes scores in the following areas:

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  • ~ Lifecycle management – does the message support a particular lifecycle stage?
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  • ~ Segmentation – is the message targeted to a specific audience group?
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  • ~ Personalization – how personalized is the message to individual subscribers?
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  • ~ Contact management – is the message tied to a subscriber action, or preference selection?
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  • ~ Interactivity – does the message offer an opportunity for interaction?
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  • ~ Testing / Measurement – does the message have a test plan and definite success metrics incorporated within it?

• "Pilot" any new concept/message on a small subset of relevant audience segments. During the pilot determine the following:

~ Overall response to the message/initiative, and in turn make projections for message performance/impact over time

~ Impact on other areas of the program (e.g. fallout from other message, increased unsub rates, etc.) 

 

Point 2: Offering subscribers a choice to receive content from the different stakeholders is a good option, if the types of content can be categorized or organized in some meaningful way. When choosing this option, it’s important that frequency expectations around every option are clearly defined (e.g. “Deal of the Day”, “Weekly Partner Offers”, “Monthly Newsletter”), and topic/interest selections can be easily made (e.g. “Dining”, “Entertainment”, “Sports”, etc.)

• To address the issue of high frequency, NAR (National Association of Realtors) recently launched a weekly All-Member Newsletter that incorporates content from ALL the different departments within NAR, and it is up to the individual subscribers to make personal selections around which departments’ content they are interested in receiving. 
• 
  
• So the key components here are:

~ Individual departments are responsible for submitting their weekly content
 

~ Dynamic newsletter design allows for publishing of selected content only

~ Preference Center that allows members to make content selections
 

• Some marketers choose to offer preference selections on the unsubscribe pages only, as opposed to managing a preference center. For example, Citizens Bank offers the following selections on their unsubscribe page:



How do you handle the question of email frequency in your organization?

 

Lilia Arsenault, e-Dialog

Is Your Email Address Worth an Invite to Spotify?

Our UK counterparts have been enjoying it for a while now, but the Spotify music service has finally launched in the US.  With the launch, early invites are being given out by marketers in exchange for an email address, like this offer from Coke. Click the image to view the full offer.

Generally when promotions like these happen, the user experience can go one of two ways.

 

Some people will avoid giving up the email adress entirely because they think they’ll get tons of third party email and it’s not clear what giving up their email address really means.  How respectful will that company will be with their email address?  To this type of user, the value of the invite does not offset the hassle of having their inbox flooded with mail they never wanted to begin with. The reverse may also happen, a user signs up immediately, without reading the unnecessarily long terms.  A  few days later, they begin to receive all the messages they ‘signed up’ for and begin regretting their decision. 

 

Kudos to Coke and Spotify for not burying the terms of the offer in 10 pages of white copy that 99% of us will never read. They have clearly laid out what the user can expect, i. e. messages from Coke, and messages from Spotify, that’s it. 

 

I highly suggest embracing this straightforward approach on signup pages. Be honest about what people are really signing up for.  By not burying it, or adding countless pre-checked boxes, your customers will appreciate it, new users will be more apt to sign up, (with their real address) and it will result in more long-term success for both that campaign and more importantly, future ones.

 

Now if you still don’t trust them and want to see if they hold true to their promise, give a tagged email address (if your email provider supports it) and see what they really do with it. :-)

 

<youremail>+spotify@gmail.com

 

http://www.spotify.com/us/coca-cola/

 

Jay Brangiforte, senior deliverability operations manager, e-Dialog

Like Weather in New England: New Rules of Digital Communications

There's no denying that 2011 has brought us some of the wildest weather on record for many regions in the U.S., and we're only half way through the year with hurricane season just getting started. But I'm from New England, where "weather prediction" is a laughable oxymoron, much to the chagrin of our meteorologists, so we're accustomed to just going with the flow. Mark Twain captured this sentiment best when he said, "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes."

The same can be said for the rules and regulations of digital communications - like the weather in New England, change is the only constant, so how can marketers keep up, stay on the right side of the law, and make sure their marketing messages get delivered. Unfortunately, shrugging your shoulders in resignation and just going with the flow, like how many New Englanders handle the weather, won't cut it. You have to constantly stay abreast of the new rules and regulations of digital communications, not only for the U.S, but across the globe.

Permission, Disclosure, and Choice - Close to a Silver Bullet

The good news is that there's a fairly straightforward and common sense approach to managing the complexity of the digital communications legal landscape: put yourself in your customer's shoes. Like you, most consumers welcome timely, relevant marketing messages they've opted in to receiving from their favorite brands. Anything short of that is at best perceived as a nuisance and in many cases considered spam. Achieving a high degree of marketing relevance will put you well on the road to ensuring compliance with even the most stringent of digital marketing regulations from any region across the globe. Getting there means taking a close look at your marketing practices for permission, disclosure, and choice.

In the case of permission, make sure you take a clear and transparent opt-in approach for all of your marketing channels, including email, SMS, text, social marketing, and tracking. You must also ensure that any and all third-party marketing partners and affiliates follow these same across-the-board opt-in policies.

You also need transparent disclosure when gathering consumer data for your opt-in marketing programs. Make sure consumers clearly understand the following:

• ~ What information is being collected
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• ~ How the information will be used
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• ~ How and with whom the information will be shared
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Finally, give consumers control by empowering them to make their own choices about the use and collection of their personal profile information. Marketers can also provide consumers with tools to access, view, and correct inaccurate profile data. You should always give them the option to delete some aspects of their profile or to opt out at any time by deleting their profile altogether.

Are these approaches the silver bullet to achieving full compliance? Unfortunately, the rules, regulations, and legislative initiatives are changing all of the time, not only in the U.S., but in every region and in many different countries, so there is no silver bullet. But, sticking to strict opt-in and transparency will put you on the white hat side of best practices digital marketing nearly 100 percent of the time. The rest of it is keeping up with the fine print. In my next column, I will take a closer look at each region and some of the specific regulations in progress, first starting with the U.S. and followed by Canada, the European Union (EU), and Asia Pacific (APAC).

 

Rick Buck, vice president, privacy and ISP relations, e-Dialog

 

This post was originally published on ClickZ.com.

Spring Cleaning: The Top 10 Deliverability Misconceptions

As I think back on my many years working in the direct marketing industry, I am reminded of the French proverb, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Here's why. While the medium has seen a tremendous shift to online, the message from many marketers is still the same: I need to grow my list and I need to mail everything to all people on it. Well ladies and gentlemen, get the kids, wake the dog, it's time to do some spring cleaning and wipe away the top 10 deliverability misconceptions direct marketers seem to consistently have.

1. 1. The bigger I can get my list, the more money I will make from it. A large list might make you feel better, but unless all of the people on it want to be there, the size of your list could actually be losing you money. First, you are paying to send information to people who don't respond to it. Second, removing these people will change your denominator and your mailings will actually be more profitable. Lastly and most importantly, the old and unresponsive names on your list are turning into spam trap complaints, ruining your IP reputation and degrading your delivery and deliverability potential.
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3. 2. When consumers click the "report as spam" button it's OK to continue sending them marketing email. People primarily click this button because they don't see the value of your email. Some people also still believe this is the only way to safely unsubscribe. Continuing to mail to them is counterproductive. You need to unsubscribe people who complain about your mail. In fact, some ISPs will penalize you for not doing so.
4. 
   
5. 3. Subscribers read and understand your privacy policy. When was the last time you read a privacy policy or EULA (end-user license agreement)? Burying the fine print about what and how you will use personally identifiable information (PII) in a privacy policy is a waste of the paper it's printed on. People want to know what the rules are and what they will get in return for giving you their information. Make it very easy for this to be communicated. Think about adopting a privacy-by-design mentality for your company. A good place to start is with a very simplified and straightforward privacy policy clearly posted near all data collection points.
6. 
   
7. 4. I need to have 100 percent delivery and deliverability rate 100 percent of the time. For the most part, this is simply unattainable all the time. Surprisingly, you - not the ISP - have complete control over this metric. If you keep your lists extremely clean and your customers are actively engaged with your email program, you will have a great IP reputation and outstanding delivery rates and inbox presence.
8. 
   
9. 5. Doesn't the ISP know how much money we spend in advertising dollars? Why are they blocking my mail? Clearly there is a separation of church and state here. Try as you may, your account person at your favorite ISP will have no influence getting you unblocked. No matter how much money you spend with them, you are getting blocked because you probably mailed something you shouldn't have (a bad list, mismatched content, your opt-outs thinking they will opt in again, etc.)
10. 
    
11. 6. ISPs should care that my email gets through because we are a known brand. While this may seem redundant to No. 5 above, it is worth separating out. Honestly, ISPs don't care if you are the Girl Scouts or an adult video company. If the people on your list have asked to be there and are interacting with your mail, it will get delivered.
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13. 7. All of my customers want to hear from me all the time even if they never open or click on my mail. This one's easy if you put yourself in their shoes. At some point, don't you want the guy at your door to stop trying to sell you encyclopedias when you never answer your door?
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15. 8. I can pass this message off as transactional, so I can mail all of my customers who have unsubscribed. In the U.S., sending transactional messages containing content that you need to tell people (order/shipping confirmations, order status updates, warrantee, or legal notices) does not require suppressing opt-outs. Further, including commercial content in transactional messages can be done and is often very effective. But for example, messages that are sent to remind people that they forgot to buy something are most likely considered commercial and need to have opt-outs suppressed. Pretending this is transactional content will potentially raise enough complaints to instigate deliverability or even legal issues.
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17. 9. Just because it's legal, it's OK to do it. It's not illegal to color your hair neon rainbow colors. But it's probably not a good idea to go to a job interview with it (unless it's to a neon hair color salon). The same holds true for your marketing offers. Treat your customers with respect and tell them targeted and intelligent things. They will reward you with their continued business.
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19. 10. I got a CD for $50 with a list of 100 million double opt-in names. I am going to make so much money from this. By now, most people know better, but there are still a few hold-outs that think buying a list from an unconfirmed source is a good idea. If it sounds too good to be true…it probably is. 
20. 
    

Rick Buck, vice president, ISP relations, e-Dialog

Note: this article was first published in ClickZ. 

Returns and Exchanges: Operation Domain-ation: A Call to Unsubscribe

As email marketers, we identify any wave of deliverability instability as an urgent call to examine list health. How old is our list? Do we have the safest opt-in practice? Are we segmenting? Are specific acquisition sources, aka “sweeps” tanking our performance? Are we over mailing? Why then are our subscribers hitting that devilish SPAM button?

More often than not, retailers pull the victim card and directly follow up with their Email Provider to sway the Postmaster to play nice. “Our email list is not contaminated… we have a double opt-in process, our buyers want to be on our list-they didn’t uncheck that pre-checked sign up box.” Oy, we’ve heard it all! And truthfully, your friendly email team empathizes; a dip in delivery will directly impact subscriber engagement, brand affinity and revenue potential. These are considerable losses, and you need to act now to mitigate issues down the line that will inevitably impact your bottom line. 

So what can you do before the “Post Bouncer” crosses your brand off the list? A call to unsubscribe!

As your email team constructs and deconstructs your reactivation strategy, you can start “operation domain-ation” with an executionally painless and impactful re-position of your unsubscribe link. Athletic retailer Lululemon recently launched this clean up approach. Check out their email header, and find an option to unsubscribe in a clear, clutter-free location in the upper right hand corner--prime real estate usually inhabited by a forward to a friend or “Share” link.   

Note: not buried in footer legal

    

This tactic is certainly not new, it's often suggested to “complaint-prone” retailers to help avoid SPAM feedback. Easier said than done? Still debating whether lost emails contribute to lost potential revenue? Remember-if bad emails cause spam trap complaints and blocks-the negative impact is inevitable.

Why not try this tactic for a 1-off campaign, for a week, or target a problematic segment?  Whichever one you choose, do your brand a favor and don’t hesitate. Present subscribers with an organic opportunity to fall off before they do so via feedback loop or undel bounce. It’s not hard saying goodbye to dead weight if the return is higher engagement, retention and profitability!

Plus… it’s a good way to stay on the “Guest List” and not have to pay your way in the backdoor!

 

Anna McCarthy, strategy specialist, client services, e-Dialog

 

What Recent Breaches Mean for Marketers, Even if Their Data Wasn't Compromised

The string of recent data breaches at Email Service Providers, and in particular the Epsilon breach, have brought to consumer attention what happens to personal information, like name and email address, once you hit submit. Some articles advise consumers to get off every list they possibly can and change their email address and password for every site. Obviously, this is unnecessary and if consumers follow this advice, the impact on brands’ email marketing effectiveness could be quite significant in a number of ways. So what can marketers do?

 

Build Trust With Subscribers

Consumers are already leery of giving out personal information, including their email address. Marketers will need to be even more transparent about what data they ask for, how that data is used, how it is stored, and for how long. Many complaints I saw on Twitter were from consumers asking why they received a notification about a data breach when they unsubscribed from emails more than a year ago. They also questioned why their data was shared with a third party. Be up front about the fact that you use outside vendors for your database, email or mobile marketing and outline how you ensure these vendors protect customer data. 

 

Keep a Close Eye On Your List

The average email marketer sees 30% of their list go inactive each year. It's likely this will increase in the short term as consumers abandon existing email accounts and perhaps create new ones. Most people have several accounts, and they could simply abandon one or two that they feel are the least secure. In addition, consumers may begin to think more seriously about disposable email aliases, like the ones offered by Hotmail. Hotmail users can set up five aliases that deliver to one inbox. When the user no longer wants to use the alias, they simply delete it. They don't even need to unsubscribe, so you as the marketer would have zero chance to re-engage with that subscriber. Given this, you may need to re-evaluate how you define an inactive subscriber, acting proactively to try and reinforce your commitment to customer satisfaction and data security. 

 

Make the Most of Your Preference Center

If you have an email preference center, you're ahead of the game, but you may want to make a few changes. For instance, be sure your preference center allows subscribers to change their email address. Otherwise, they may unsubscribe and not re-subscribe. And even if they do re-subscribe, you will have lost all the data associated with their previous email address. To you, it will be a new relationship, but the customer may wonder why you act like you don't know who they are, which will have a negative impact on overall customer experience and potentially your deliverability and bottom line.

 

Have you seen an impact on your list since the data breach? I'd love to hear your tactics for increasing subscriber confidence. Just leave a comment!

 

Liz Lynch, senior marketing communications associate, e-Dialog

 

What My Lunchbox Says About Me

I am an avid online shopper. I love to buy books, clothing and home decor online. I even bought my car on eBay! I like getting emails from retailers and I actually like getting catalogs as well. It's fun to flip through the catalogs and imagine what the products might look like in my home.

 

Generally I get catalogs from companies like Pottery Barn and J. Jill and Garnet Hill. But recently the catalogs landing in my mailbox have changed. Now I'm getting Growing Up With Garnet Hill and Hannah Andersson and other kid-product catalogs. And I have an idea of why. I think it can be traced back to my lunchbox. Several months ago, while making a purchase at Garnet Hill, I saw that kid's insulated lunchboxes were on clearance, and since I didn't have one to use for bringing my lunch to work, I bought one.

 

It seems pretty likely that Garnet Hill identified me as someone who purchased from their children's line, added me to their children's catalog list, and then sold that list to other retailers looking for customers for their kid's items. Unfortunately, those retailers won't really get their money's worth, since I'm not really a buyer of kid's things, this was just a one-time anomaly.

 

You see this in email marketing as well, especially around holidays. If I buy my brother a Red Sox cap for Christmas, suddenly I'm getting offers targeted to Red Sox fans. It's a good strategy, to look at purchase data and use that to increase the relevance of your marketing messages. However, it needs to be implemented correctly. Just as an abandoned shopping cart trigger should only deploy once every 30 days or so, one purchase does not make a pattern. On the other hand, if I buy Red Sox gear every Christmas, that would be an opportunity to target me for a gift-themed email featuring the latest Red Sox collectibles on Black Friday.

 

I'd love to hear how you handled the challenge of analyzing purchase data and implementing a targeted messaging plan for your email subscribers.

 

Liz Lynch, senior marketing communications specialist, e-Dialog

 

Preference Centers: The Nexus of Deliverability in 2015

We find ourselves at an interesting point in the evolution of the Internet. Advances in technology have put us at the crossroads of a truly integrated, multichannel approach to marketing where messages are converging across the channels, including e-mail, mobile devices, and social media. Demonstrating an understanding of your customers' wants, needs, and preferences has become essential to a successful communications strategy and for building trust with your audience, yet many marketers lack this basic knowledge - information that could be easily obtained simply by asking for it.

 

One of my favorite movie quotes that I have always found applicable to our industry is from the movie "Arthur" (not the aardvark or the Russell Brand reboot). At one point in the movie he says, "Aren't waiters wonderful? You ask them for things and they bring them." Folks, it's really that simple. Give your customers the opportunity to tell you what they want and bring it to them. Preference centers are an ideal way to get this information.

 

Currently, most preference centers are focused around e-mail communications. What type of information do you want to get, when do you want to get it, and what format do you want it in? While this is important, it's only a small part of knowing how your customers want to interact with you. For example, they may not want any e-mail communication from you but will follow you closely on Facebook and then go to your website to make a purchase. Sending e-mail to that person (and like others) will at best result in a non-responsive message. Cumulatively it will taint your IP reputation and negatively affect your relationship with the ISPs.

 

As communication channels evolve, so too should your preference center. This is the perfect opportunity to educate your customers, and in turn, be educated by them. Consumers want marketers to demonstrate knowledge of their interests, the types of products or services they like, the kinds of offers they want, and importantly, their communication and shopping preferences. In fact, you may well find they'll accept more frequent messaging in return for honoring these preferences. The preference center is the vehicle to tell them about and get permission for things like:

 

• Product categories. Most consumers want marketers to know what products or services they like. Marketers must ask for this information in their preference centers, and can even improve the ability to capture it by placing a bookmark capture function, such as "Add this category to my preferences" on product description pages. 
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• Message type. Does your consumer like offers and discounts? Product recommendations based on items they've purchased? Surveys or other interactive activities? Rich media like video? New product announcements? Personal alerts or follow-up messages? Make sure you find out the types of messaging they're most likely to engage with and combine that knowledge with their preferences for channel type and frequency.
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• Communication channels. Provide greater options for consumers to choose the manner in which you interact with them, for example, e-mail, mobile, or social messaging. Until unlimited data plans are ubiquitous and it doesn't cost a consumer extra to receive your texts, it is extremely important to gain permission to send SMS messages to them. Further, there are channels and tactics you may not even have considered using yet, like IM (which Facebook Messages employs), or behavioral retargeting messages. With all the talk about Do-Not-Track, now is the time to get to know your customers, their preferences, and the types of communications they'll opt in for.
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• Frequency. Survey your subscribers about message frequency and ask them within the preference center how often they want to receive messages on a monthly or weekly basis. You can even manage frequency by message type. For example, marketers could increase frequency when soliciting product review data or alerting subscribers that a new review had been posted to the website.

The preference centers of the future will play an essential role in establishing a 360-degree view of your customer, providing the customer intelligence needed to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time - through the right channels. This doesn't mean you will abandon channels; rather you will use each in the most effective and integrated way.

 

The industry continues to evolve toward more targeted, relevant messaging mapped to consumer preferences. From an e-mail perspective in particular, this will drastically reduce bounces and complaints and increase engagement metrics, which translates to good IP reputation and ultimately delivery to an inbox. It comes down to giving the people what they want in the channel they want it - an approach that's a win-win for your customers, ISPs, and marketers.

 

Rick Buck, VP of privacy and ISP relations, e-Dialog

 

This article originally appeared on ClickZ.

Reaching Out to Web Site Browsers

One of the great things about online marketing is the amount of data and information marketers can get about their customers. Consumers might be a little surprised by how much tracking goes on, but most are willing to be tracked if it results in more relevant advertising, including e-mail.

 

In previous articles on Moments of Engagement, we talked about using e-mail to follow up with customers who had browsed your Web site, but not purchased. This is an advanced tactic, and few e-mail marketers actually do it. I recently received one of these e-mails from Pottery Barn. I have been looking for a new sectional, and Pottery Barn has two that are small enough to fit my space. I've been looking at these two sectionals online, trying out different colors and posting to Facebook to see which one my friends like. I haven't purchased yet because this is a big purchase.

 

A few days after browsing the site, I received an e-mail from Pottery Barn with the subject line "Make room for great design!" At first glance, I assumed this was a standard promotional message, but when I opened it, I saw that it was actually a message based on my browsing behavior.

 

 

 

This message gets a lot of things right. It includes the image and the name of the sectional I was browsing, along with ways I can reach out and contact Pottery Barn with questions. It also includes other related product options and my closest store. I would have loved a discount-saving 10% on an item like this would have spurred me to purchase for sure.

 

You might have noticed that I mentioned that I had been looking at two different sectionals on the PB site. It looks like this template is designed for one product, which is fine. I actually got another message a day later with the same subject line featuring the other sectional I had been browsing. While this is one way to address a customer browsing several products, I think a program like this benefits from a suppression strategy, so that messages are deployed once every 7 to 14 days. It makes it a little less Big Brother-ish if they only come occasionally, rather than every time a customer browses. I am also wondering if Pottery Barn has a criteria for dollar amount of the item browsed. I wonder if they would send a message like this if I had been browsing pillows...

 

Do you think these types of campaigns are effective and a good use of data? I would love to hear from a marketer who has deployed these types of messages to see how they performed for you. Also, please let me know if you have other examples of these kinds of e-mails!

 

Liz Lynch, communications editor, e-Dialog

Swimming With Sharks

In case you haven't heard, it's Shark Week, Discovery Channel's annual ode to all that is shark. Here in the Northeast, we've also had a slew of Great White sightings that have beaches closed and seals sleeping with one eye open. Sharks have always loomed large in our imaginations, and films like Jaws only reinforced our fears, but with Shark Week's increasing popularity, we're learning more about sharks than ever before. And that increase in knowledge is resulting in respect and even admiration for the efficient predators.

 

Now, I'm sure you're wondering what sharks have to do with e-mail marketing, and on the surface, it's not much, but I think it's actually a good metaphor for the lack of insight and fear marketers have had when faced with managing customer data to create targeted, relevant e-mail marketing campaigns. Just as the traditional reaction to a shark has been to get out of the water altogether, marketers have shied away from complex data-driven e-mail because they just don't know enough about the process and how to make it work. But that's changing, and marketers are seeing the powerful results that can be achieved when moving beyond knee-jerk batch and blast campaigns. Here are some steps to take that will help you get more comfortable working with data.

 

Step one: be familiar with the types of data you have. Do you have basic demographic data, web behavioral data, e-mail open and click data, online purchase data, in store purchase data, social media data...the list can be quite long, and you need to identify and classify your data so you can figure what kinds of campaigns you can create. Don't be afraid to get in the water and take an up close look at exactly what customer data you've got to work with.

 

Step two: start interacting with and manipulating your data. Build segments you think may yield a viable audience for a mailing. Also, look at available content to see what might increase relevance and entice customers to open and click. Different audiences respond to different content, whether it's based on something simple like gender or more complex like products previously placed in a shopping cart.

 

Step three: start testing. See if your use of data is increasing relevance and campaign performance. Are recipients responding, and are they responding in the way you want, either by purchasing more, interacting with your brand by sharing your content with their social networks, contributing product reviews, or other KPIs?

 

The last step is to manage your data and safeguard it. It's a valuable asset! Perform regular list hygiene, run re-engagement campaigns if you see response rates slipping and remove recipients that have stopped responding at all.

 

Hopefully I've convinced you to get back in the water, so to speak, and not be afraid to see what you can do with all that scary customer data lurking on your servers. If not, you can always check out the schedule for Shark Week programming on the Discovery Channel!

 

Liz Lynch, communications editor, e-Dialog

 

Theme Park E-mail Critique: Oh No Dolly!

Earlier in the summer, I signed up for e-mails from four well-known theme parks across the country and I've been chronicling my experience as a subscriber in a series of posts. Overall, the e-mails I received have been about what I expected, with good aspects as well as areas that could be improved. Recently however, Dollywood disappointed me.

 

On July 14th I received an e-mail from Herschend Attractions with the subject line Herschend Family Entertainment Internet Study 2010. On July 17th, I got a second e-mail from the same sender with the subject line Local Attraction Online Travel Planning Study. Now, I'm thinking, "who the heck is this?" since I've never heard of them before, and my first instinct is to mark as spam and delete. But then, I look up Herschend Attractions and it turns out they are Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation and they own several properties, including Dollywood.

 

The content of the message states they are reaching out to select guests at various properties to ask them their opinion. Well, I'm not actually a guest, I'm an e-mail subscriber, so right off the bat, there's no way I'm taking the survey. In addition, by using the permission I gave to Dollywood to send me e-mail from Herschend, my opinion of Dollywood takes a nosedive. I went back and checked, and when opting in to Dollywood e-mail, there is no option to select other Herschend properties, or take part in surveys.

 

I think the thing to learn from this experience is to look at your program from the consumer's point of view. I'm sure to the execs, it seemed like a great idea to send a survey to their entire database and ask them about their travel plans or entertainment likes and dislikes. But to me, the recipient, this came out of nowhere, and did not build on the relationship I already had with Dollywood. A better tactic would have been to segment the list by property, then create a message specific to that property. I can tell you, if I had gotten an e-mail from Dolly asking me to help her out and take a quick survey, I would have done it.

 

What do you think? Am I overreacting? Do you think this tactic is fair and effective? I would love to hear your comments.

 

Liz Lynch, communications editor, e-Dialog

Opt In vs. Opt Out: What's Fair and What's Legal

You are in complete control of how long customers should and will maintain their online relationship with you. 

 

Some marketers stack the deck by pre-checking fields that sign a customer up to receive e-mail, such as during the purchase process. Some prefer to make customers check a box to opt-in.  Others acquire names and just add them to their mailing list with without any advance notice or consent from the consumer.  So what's the right thing to do?

  

 

The first thing to consider is legal compliance.  Remember though, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it's right.  Think about this for a moment, would you stand in the middle of Times Square and yell insults at people?  Expressing your opinion in that way is legal, but it won't garner you any friends.  In the US opt-in is not required.  It is legal to make people opt out, but is it the right thing to do? 

   

 

The answer to that question is philosophically steeped in the definition of the relationship the marketer wants to have with their customers.  The relationship needs to be about mutual respect and a reciprocal value proposition. For example:

  

 

· IF, the marker clearly and conspicuously discloses that by entering an e-mail address the customer will begin to get relevant and targeted information about their respective services, opt-out might be fair.

  

 

 

· IF, the marketer does a good job explaining what the benefits are of the e-mail and then honors them, opt-out might be fair.

  

 

 

· IF, the registration form clearly states that the customer needs to uncheck a box, opt-out might be fair. 

  

 

 

· IF, there is a link to the privacy policy that explains what happens to their PII and how they can change that information or limit who it is shared with is next to the registration form, opt-out might be fair.

  

 

 

On the other hand, in the EU and many other countries, opt-out is not legal.  Permission is required to send commercial e-mail.  But, if the marketer doesn’t adhere to the principles above, their customers will probably opt-out or stop responding anyway.

  

 

Whether names are acquired via opt-out, opt-in, or double opt-in really don’t matter (assuming you are legally compliant).  Regardless of what type of permission you have the responsibility to maintain the trust and respect of your customers ultimately falls on your shoulders.  It is critical to be:

  

 

· Transparent about your data collection/use

 

·  Respectful of your customers’ preferences

  

· Timely and relevant with the content you send them

  

 

The fallacy of the opt-out strategy is that it will yield a larger customer database.  The myth of an opt-in policy is that the customer is willingly expecting your next e-mail.  The reality is that the customer gets the final say.  They will flourish, become dormant, complain or just leave if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain.

  

 

Rick Buck, VP privacy and ISP relations, CIPP, e-Dialog

Is Opt-In On the Way Out for B2B?

This week, Harvard Business Review posted a guest article on B2B e-mail marketing in which the author opined that B2B e-mail marketers are applying B2C e-mail opt-in policies to their B2B contacts when they don't need to. She stated that B2B contacts are more in favor of an opt-out policy than the opt-in model most companies use. This, of course, raised a lot of debate on the HBR blog, on other blogs, and on Twitter.

 

While I do believe that B2B marketing is different from B2C in some regards, in this case, I have to disagree with the author. Technically, she is correct that it is legal to send e-mail to a prospect without an explicit opt-in, as long as the e-mail includes physical mailing address and an unsub link. But is that really how you want to start your relationship? OK, maybe you met at an industry event, but getting a business card from someone is an opt-in for you, not your company's sales team. I admit I do tend to be pretty forgiving when I get spam in my work inbox, because I know everyone needs to make a buck these days, but it makes me think twice about doing business with a company that is wasting time and energy marketing to unqualified leads like me that they got by scraping a website or purchasing a list.

 

So, if you can't opt people in automatically, how do you feed the sales pipeline? Easy: inbound marketing. Use your website, use search, publish a blog, and use social media to create a presence, and most importantly, provide something of value, and your audience will find you.

 

But you don't necessarily have to throw away those business cards either. One point the original author made, that I agree with 100%, is the importance of having a preference center for your communications. Consumers are demanding control over marketing communications in their personal inbox and at work. Instead of dumping them into a promotional e-mail stream, send a personal e-mail reminding them how you met and offering them options for keeping up to date with what's happening at your company.

 

Liz Lynch, communications editor, e-Dialog

 

Taking Action On Inactive Segments of Your E-mail List

  

No matter how excellent your acquisition strategy, it’s a sad fact that response rates for e-mail marketing campaigns begin to drop almost immediately once a consumer joins a list. After the first thirty days, you could have a drop in engagement averaging 20%. After six months, the drop can be even steeper, rising to an average of 50%, a statistic that should move creating a re-engagement strategy to the top of every marketer’s to do list, if only to not waste the valuable dollars that went into adding that consumer to the list in the first place.

  

There’s nothing to lose in trying to re-engage this dormant segment of your list – they aren’t interacting with your brand right now, so why not test some of these re-activation techniques?

  

Survey customers about current e-mail content

A simple e-mail survey to inactive customers can help determine the root of the problem. Did the e-mail program not meet the customer’s expectations? Was the content not relevant to the customer’s interests? The answers may allow you to engage inactive customers with an alternative program, or at least understand what improvements or changes need to be made to current e-mail programs.

  

Change e-mail content for the inactive segment

Re-engaging inactive customers presents a convenient opportunity to try new things – for example, adding interactive elements, experimenting with a new format, or testing new subject lines. If something new manages to rekindle the interest of a certain percentage of inactive customers, it may be worth testing against the rest of your e-mail list. If these changes have no impact, there’s no down side, since you didn’t expose your most faithful and profitable customers to these changes.

Invite inactive customers to update their profile
If an inactive customer hasn’t evaluated her profile in a while, it could be the reason why the e-mails have gone unnoticed. Send an e-mail that encourages inactive customers to review their profile information. Let them know that updating profiles will help you deliver more relevant e-mail. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to re-engage inactive customers with your brand.

Experiment with zero frequency

Suppress the inactive customer list and re-introduce it when a new e-mail communication stream with a compelling offer goes live or a can’t miss event comes around. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and inactive customers may be more apt to open or click an e-mail from a company when they realize they haven’t heard from them in a while. This strategy can achieve solid results. Tests have shown between 5% and 10% of inactive customers opened or clicked on the e-mail when reintroduced into the communication stream after being suppressed for a time.

Finally, remember that any of these re-activation programs can be implemented as a trigger, simply by targeting segments that have been inactive for a year, six months, or three months – the earlier the better. A monthly inactive trigger means less work for you, with more results!

  

Alison Belanger, senior program manager, e-Dialog

 

 

 

Never Mind the Girth, Feel the Quality

At the start of this New Year and when everyone is setting New Year’s resolutions, I wanted to propose a bit of an heretical idea.   Please, please stop focussing on the size of your database.

  

 

How many readers are tasked or even rewarded for achieving KPIs around growing the size of their database?  Too many, in my view.

  

 

I’m in danger of exposing my West Country agricultural roots here but my dad used to say – ‘never mind the girth, feel the quality’.   Advice that all e-mail marketers should take when it comes to getting the best out of their e-mail database.

  

 

So keeping with the farming analogy, I see a lot of rubbish going into the hopper but not enough time spent cleaning up the contents and sorting the wheat from the chaff, as it were.  Then marketers find themselves spending too much time and money trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Ok, enough farming analogies now but I hope you see what I mean. Basically, the quality of the e-mail data you hold is much more important than the simply the size of your database. 

  

 

The answer really is quite easy – but it does require discipline.

1.    Get rid of the poor quality data

2.    Focus efforts on adding good quality data in the first place

3.    Treat the result with the respect it deserves

  

 

Let me elaborate.  Many organisations either can’t be bothered to keep their data clean or simply aren’t approaching data hygiene in the right way.   There’s a kind of descending hierarchy of bad email data that you should get rid of or clean, starting with: 

  i. Addresses with syntax errors – no brainer – bad for your deliverability reputation – remove it .

  ii. Unsubscribes –equally bad for deliverability  and should be removed from any live mailing lists.

  iii. Repeatedly undeliverable – as above – but try and re-engage and re-capture an up-to-date e-mail address via another channel if you can.

So – assuming you have tamed the beast and have cleared out all harmful or useless data from your e-mail database, what next? It’s time to focus on gathering good quality contacts and data.

  

 

There are some obvious acquisition tactics that can yield some pretty impressive results:

  i.     Maximise your website (and not just the homepage). Are you providing visitors to your website with enough opportunity to provide their e-mail address? Calls to action not just on the homepage but deep throughout the website. Give them the chance to request information by e-mail that is relevant to them – so a tailored weekly newsletter based on their preferences for example.

 ii.     Maximise every single prospect touch point (both off and online) We know from research we carried out in mid-2009 that customers are willing to provide their e-mail address in a range of circumstances such as when ordering from a catalogue, answering a survey, when speaking to customer services or when placing an order online.

iii.     And if you work out the long term value of an e-mail address (subject of a future blog post) – you’ve got an extremely persuasive argument to go and influence your colleagues and superiors of the value of gathering these e-mail addresses.

Leave no stone unturned in your quest to build a healthy database and within months you will see both the number and the quality of contacts improve dramatically. Now if you make that your New Year’s resolution and keep it, you’ll have a very successful 2010.

 

Simone Barratt, managing director of e-Dialog International