Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

How To Measure Email Effectiveness

How do you know if your emails are effective? Wouldn't the easiest way to look for studies that say, "The industry average for click-thru rates for B2C or B2B emails is X%" and make sure that your efforts are above those marks? Of course it is. But how often is the easiest road the best one?

The problem is that there are too many factors that go into determining your click thru rate:

• How old are the members of your mailing list? - There are many factors determining the quality of the people you send emails to. If they just signed up for your email, they are new and highly interested. If they have been on your list for a while they could be a highly engaged customer or one that could care less they just never took the time to unsubscribe.
• How did you acquire members of your list? - A better list member is someone that signed up specifically to receive emails. Many lists are comprised of people that put their email address in to get an order confirmation.
• How often do you send emails? - If you send more than once a week you will probably see lower click thru rates because it isn't likely that you appeal to someone frequently enough. If you don't send that often you run the risk of the recipients forgetting you.
• What information do you send them? - If you send full articles or just information then you probably won't get a high click thru. A sample of the information or a promotion that entices them to click thru to find more details increases your odds.
• What is your subject and branding? - They have to recognize your from address, the subject line and your company to open your email. If they don't even open it, odds are pretty good they won't click thru.
• Does your email get past spam filters? - Software today is getting more sophisticated where the strangest words cause emails to be flagged as spam. If your email sounds like it is selling something and it is flagged because of it, you are probably sunk because most people don't even look at what is caught in their spam filter. One way to know is to have a proof list that your email is run against and make sure that list has different accounts with strong email filter software. The obvious next piece is to also make sure you don't have the sender of your emails in your safe senders list.

There are no right or wrong answers to most of the items on this list. Each company and their unique set of customers change how they should manage their email campaigns. Which leads to how you measure the effectiveness of your mailings. Set your baseline, not on industry averages, but on your own history. Averages of past emails and trending that information will give you a better indication of how you are doing. How do you prune your mailing list of dormant recipients? How have the changes you have made from one mailing to the next impacted your numbers? Hopefully it is all positive. Ideally you want to see a growing email list with increasing open and click thru rates and the ability to tie conversions on your site and ultimately an ROI to your efforts. If you get a good return, then who cares what the industry averages are, you are successful.

2 Email Marketing Ideas To Drive Sales

Idea #1 - Internet Retailer had an article about Draper's & Damon's abandoned cart emails and how it they have a click through rate of almost 38% on their emails to customers that abandoned their shopping cart. Does your system remind customers that they started an order? They should be pretty likely to buy if they got that far in the shopping process on your site. Send them an email and help them finish their order.
Idea #2 - I have a client that has been having great success with time limits in their email promotions. The email will say that the offer is only good until a specific day or time to get people to act. Most systems should allow you to have a limit on when a promotion goes away. If not, who cares, send the email anyway and see if you get more people to act. If you don't turn the promotion off for a couple more days does it matter? The idea is to get sales and get people to act.

An even better idea is to combine #1 and #2. Send that abandoned cart email and say the cart is only good till the end of the week. Might get them to act faster if they think the offer is going away, nobody wants to start over.

Image Suppression In Emails

Reader Eric pointed me to a study on image suppression in a comment on Thinking Beyond Email. Worth noting is that 65% of American Email users have image suppression defaulted to on. What this means is that out of the box users probably don't see the images in your emails. The encouraging thing is that 69% activate suppressed images for all messages and over 94% do so occasionally. I have seen the same thing those stats show. When I received my new computer I left image suppression on, partly just to see how people speak to those that have it off. Many people are surprised if they notice that I still have it off. I do have some senders that I have enabled to always show images so I'm in that 94%.

The key for you to remember, when you are marketing via Email, is to look at the message with images turned off. Does it still speak to your customers? Is the call to action still clear? Will they read it? The other thing is to become a trusted source to your readers, obey spam laws and send them relevant messages to them and 94% will turn on the images.

Thinking Beyond Email

Email, that unsung hero of online marketing. Many just consider it spam, but when you look at the numbers, the costs to deliver Email are so low and it is still effective when you have people sign up and ask you to send them information. (Please, always ask for permission, even if you have an email address.) Don't be afraid to keep working on building your email list and practicing good marketing techniques. (More can be found about good subject lines and keeping email fresh.)

There are more ways to reach your customers electronically. Know your demographics and how they maneuver through the Internet. Consider things like Instant Messaging, Text Messaging and RSS Feeds as new ways to reach your customers. Everyone has their own preferences, follow the new Internet Golden Rule, provide the user the information they want as they want it presented to them.

3 Reasons to Attend a Conference

I was thinking back to why I started this blog and ways in which I'm helping direct people to the wealth of information available about online marketing. One topic I haven't talked about is conferences. Currently there are two major conferences going on, Search Engine Strategies and eTail. I attended the DMA's ACCM in May and Internet Retailer in June, two other good shows. If you are serious about online marketing I would encourage you to find a conference to attend once per year for the following three reasons.

1. New Ideas - People are not only talking about what works today, they are also talking about where things are going. You are guaranteed to come away with many things to try, usually too many to start on right away.
2. Sharing What Works - There are endless opportunities to talk to other people that face the exact same problems as you do. Not only do you learn from others, you can form networks of people to talk with throughout the year.
3. Re-energizing - I can be exhausted at the end of a conference, but when I get back to the office I am off and running, and probably annoying my co-workers. Something about being around some of the top minds in the industry and feeling like you are getting the inside scoop on things gets me going.

What I learned going to two conferences within 4 weeks is that they can be too close together. The industry changes fast, but most of what they talked about was very similar content. I also wasn't able to get through everything from the first show by the time I made it to the next. You are able to stay up on things pretty well because you learn whose blogs you should be reading and what sites to review to stay current.

Along with the conferences I mention above, here are some others that I haven't personally attended but give some more options for dates and locations. The content is similar in many but there are definite target audiences with each so look at their agenda and keynotes.
PubCon - From Webmaster World
eComXpo - Interesting Virtual Trade Show (Free to attend so why not give it a shot)
ad:tech - Multiple locations
eMarketing Association

CAN-SPAM is not a guideline

The FTC has charged Kodak with violating the CAN-SPAM Act because they didn't have an opt-out, a notice for the right to opt-out and a valid physical address. You can read more about what Kodak is having to do or the full FTC report. Always remember that just because you have an email address and they've purchased from you once doesn't mean you can keep sending them emails. Kodak said it was a glitch but they got the emails legitimately, but that didn't sway the FTC and Kodak had to pay a penalty of all the revenue gained from that campaign.

E-mail subject lines

E-mail today has a black eye with its use for spam and viruses. However it is still one of the most effective marketing tools around. The subject line is the key for most people to get their message read. People today get hundreds of messages and many they don't read. Their first determining factor is the subject line.

Some things to consider doing in the subject line.

1. Keep it short - long copy in the subject tells people the message will be long.
2. Use your company name and the date.
3. Don't use words that will trap it in filters, even less obvious ones like "gift", "free" or "shop".
4. Don't use exclamation points, seems to be a warning for many people on what to avoid.
5. Use the word "newsletter" - implies short, relevant and timely information.

First and for most though with email is to make sure they want the email. What I strongly recommend to anyone using e-mail is to use what is called a double opt-in method where you ask for a person's e-mail address and send them a message that they need to take action on before they are opted in to your mailing list. If they never take action you don't market to them.

For more ideas on email check out my post on Keeping Email Marketing Fresh

Keeping Email Marketing Fresh

They say that 70% of the email sent today is spam to the recipient, this has given email a bad name, however it is still a very cost effective and productive way of interacting with your clients. I was doing some reading on eMarketer's Web site about how people can be more effective with email marketing and a couple things stuck out for me.

One was about cleaning in-house email lists periodically to remove names that aren't effective. Many people will hold onto names and continue to send them emails even if they haven't purchased, clicked through or even opened an email in months. It is important to set metrics around when to remove names from your mailing list even though it is tempting to send to more people. It has been shown that people lose interest over time, if they remain active or are new to a list that is when you are most effective with them. Think about not sending emails to those after a period of time if they haven't bought from you or haven't opened your emails. If you get a 1% open rate on a list of 100,000 names or a 5% open rate on a list of 20,000 names, you are getting the same response but more cost effectively.

The other thing that was interesting was that almost half of all companies sending out email aren't tracking conversions to see if their email marketing efforts are actually driving what they are meant for. Most everyone today is tracking delivery rate, open rate and click-through rate, if you're not these are essential metrics to know. But you should also track conversion of those people clicking through and actually placing an order or even going beyond the first entry page that the email sends them to. The goal is to obviously get them to your site, then you have to make sure everything is working together to keep them there and actually buy.