Category: Email Marketing

Define Success for Your Online Marketing

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It’s common for people to use general metric standards as a guideline for success when analyzing online marketing data.  This can lead to real problems with their campaigns because it doesn’t take into account individualized goals.

Each webpage, email communication, or social media post needs to have a clearly defined metric for success rather than being analyzed on general metrics. General metrics like visitors, open/click rates, or post views can be misleading on the effectiveness of online marketing.  This data is informative but should not be the measuring stick for most online marketing initiatives.

In upcoming posts we’ll look at three separate areas of online marketing and general metrics that people use to measure success.  We’ll then outline how in many cases the general metrics are feeding false assumptions.  The three areas we will focus on are:

  • Email Marketing
  • Website
  • Social Media
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New Year’s Resolution – Evaluate Your Online Marketing Programs

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Once we get into a system for email and online marketing that works for us we can get lazy and blindly stick with it.  As 2011 begins it’s a good idea to challenge what you are doing.  If you don’t regularly review your web and email marketing performance, start now.  If you are regularly monitoring results, check your trends over a longer period of time, at least into the previous year.

Are your initiatives performing as well as they had? 

If so, great, you might tweak some things here or there but at least you confirmed that you are doing well.

If not it’s a good time to reevaluate your initiatives and either revamp them or at least give them a facelift.

It’s a clichéd resolution but make sure that online marketing initiatives are in good shape.

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Email Subject Lines – Be Direct

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Jakob Nielson wrote a great article on email usability.  There is a lot of good points but I wanted to focus on his section about subject lines.  As a rule of thumb, if you have doubts on what the subject line should be . . . be direct.

There is a great example in the article of a subject line that the ad or marketing people probably loved.  And with good reason, it’s a witty one liner.  It just sucks as an email marketing subject line because it doesn’t give recipients a clue as to what the email is about.

In marketing and advertising it’s easy to be swayed by our cleverness.  The problem is that almost all email recipients don’t have time for clever.  They get too many communications to want to revel in advertising wit.

Make subject lines to the point and open rates will be better.  Our testing typically shows a 10% – 20% decrease in opens if a question or tag line is used in the subject line vs. a direct subject line that summarizes the email content.  The same is true for subject lines that are too long, so don’t attempt both direct and witty.

Tell recipients what you want to talk about.  The email is the chance to tell them again with more detail.  Finally the web landing page is a chance to tell them a third time and give them an opportunity to act on it.

It might not be flashy, but in email marketing the subject is your first chance to say something. Make sure it sets recipients up for the email’s content, not leave them guessing about what a clever subject line has to do with anything.

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Email Marketing: What’s in it for . . . Them?

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As a broad guideline, at least 50% of your email communications should have a clear benefit for your recipients.  A higher percentage is fine, a lower percentage will often result in list fatigue and opt outs.

This seems like a simple equation but it gets complicated when email marketers confuse what benefits them and what is a benefit to the recipients.  So here is a sample of “for them” and “for us”:

For Them:

  • Valuable information – This can be research papers, articles, audio or video tips, or directories to other information but it has to be quality content.
  • Product or service discounts – This can be a special offer to the recipient base or coupons but it has to be a legitimate offer that is simple to take advantage of without strings attached.
  • Request fulfillment – This should be a direct response to a request typically resulting from targeted list segmentation.  For example, if a person specifically asked to know when new items come out in a certain product line, then an email highlighting that item is for them.

For Us:

  • Product or service launches – These emails talk about us.  Of course they should be written to highlight the value to recipients, but it’s still about us.
  • Untargeted promotions – A store wide sale isn’t a specific offer to a select list.  Hopefully it will garner recipient’s interest but it’s an open promotion that recipients may or may not be interested in.
  • Events – Events are another step in engaging or closing prospects and benefits us.  Even if your event has valuable information or entertainment (which they all should) and is free, the event is more about us than recipients.
  • Surveys – Surveys are always asking for recipients’ time which is valuable.  We reap the benefit of their responses so unless there is an easily redeemed reward, a survey is for us.

As a general rule, if the email’s primary goal is about moving prospects further into a sales or marketing funnel, it’s about us.  Of course that is what almost every email campaign is about in one way or the other, but we need to provide a give and take.  It’s perfectly reasonable to promote your products, services, or events, just make sure that recipients don’t get flooded with too much about you and very little for them.

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Transition into Multi-Faceted Online Communication With Social Media

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For years there were essentially two forms of online communication.

  • Website –  A one-to-many media passive media
  • Email – A one-to many or one-to-one proactive media

The two have the potential to work seamlessly together.  Websites are always available and easily accessed by any interested party.  It casts a wide net.  Email could proactively promote specific initiatives or be targeted to ideal.  Furthermore email could drive traffic to the website for targeted conversions.

Of course there were subsets of online communication like ads and link sharing but technically those fall in the website category.

There is now a third major platform developing:

  • Social Media – A one-to-many, one-to-one, or many-to-many media

Social media is opening up a new kind of communication and it’s quickly becoming one that isn’t optional.  On the surface it appears to be a clone of email, a one-to-one or one-to-many scenario.  However, as it develops social media is becoming a many-to-many communication device.

Of course social media started out as a one person communication platform.  Basically it emulated email.  You could do blast communications or personal messages.  However, as “like it” and “retweet” features become more prevalent we find that groups of people are serving a role of spreading your message.

Websites and email is not going away any time soon but neither is social media.  If you are running online campaigns and have not ventured into social media, it’s time to start.  Not only are users expecting to have an option of receiving communications through popular social media systems, but the systems are opening up a new many-to-many media that can be leveraged for viral communication.

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Email and Internet Testing Needs Some Planning

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In a previous post, I said that email testing didn’t have to be a monumental task for smaller lists.  While that is true, the statement shouldn’t be taken to mean it is easy.  Detailed analysis is necessary to get a true picture of how your campaigns are running.  An integrated set of reports that takes all of your online initiatives into account is critical to make sound decisions on how to improve your metrics.

As a general rule a complete understanding of your online campaigns hinges on knowing how the numbers affect the bottom line.  Here is a real life example.

Company X was running an email campaign and were fairly diligent about reviewing their results.  Over the course of a few months they modified their emails and found that their open rate improved by 10% and their click rate improved by 2%.  They were thrilled with the results and made the changes permanent.

For about a year after making the changes they saw decreased conversions.  Fretting over the trend, they decided to go through a full campaign analysis.

I won’t describe the specific situation but as a generic idea, but here is a genericized comparison.  They sent an email to a list with a revised subject line that said fill out a simple form and get $100 (a great offer).  The copy was tweaked to make filling out the form a singular focus.  The email generated recipient interest and open and click rate sky rocket.  Then recipients were directed to  a form that said,  “Only available to 10-year-old’s from Peru” (It only applied to a small subset of their list).  The conversion rate plummeted because they were getting clicks but it was coming from poorly suited prospects.

The in depth analysis revealed that while the email numbers improved, the landing page conversion plummeted by 50%.  After understanding that their average lead was worth about four thousand dollars, they estimated that their “improvement” had cost almost one-hundred thousand dollars.

A big picture is critical while testing online campaigns.  Making decisions on segments of data might improve that area but could cost a lot overall.

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Email Marketing Strategy to Promote Events

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Promoting events through email marketing is very popular.  And why not?  It allows for a targeted audience to receive event information and provides a simple and immediate way to register for the event (or at least it should).  However, because it’s an ideal tool doesn’t mean a strategy doesn’t need worked out.  Plan your email marketing event promotion schedule and stick with it.

Here is an outline for a typical plan:

  1. Identify the Audience and Segment – Will there be a single invite or multiple invites for subsections of the audience?  For example can you send the invite to “Marketing Professionals”?  Or do you need subsets with different content for “Print Marketing”, “Online Marketing”, and “Social Marketing”?  Do those need broken into “Professional” and “Executive” categories?
  2. Account for Logistics – Your email marketing plan needs to adhere to logistic guidelines.  If registration closes a week before the event, sending a reminder on that day is pointless.
  3. Set a Schedule – A send schedule broken up into segments is critical. Setting a schedule really depends on the event. Is it a large event needing months of lead time?  If so, a save the date invite might be appropriate, followed by an invite a month away from the event, and a “last chance” invite a week before the event.  Is it a webinar?  An invite 2 weeks beforehand might suffice.
  4.  Craft the Email – Get all the content together.  Make sure it holds true to any other marketing materials (mailed invites, ads, etc.)  It  needs to have a clear next step which for event emails that is likely a link to more info or a registration page.
  5. Send the Emails – Follow the send schedule making sure that each audience segment receives the right information at the set time.
  6. Track the Results – You’re not going to have a perfect plan to promote your event through email right off the bat.  Track the results so you can tweak your strategy and implement it for the next event promotion.

This is general and can fluctuate from event to event.  However, it gives a good checklist.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to follow the plan.  You likely will be asked or be tempted to do an “on the fly” email for events, especially if attendance isn’t what the event coordinator hoped it would be.  These requests are invariably made right before the event.  If you’re forced into it, do the best you can but be aware that it’s rare to have an impromptu email sent have it be well received.  Successful event promotion from email happens when the email marketer is prepared, knows why and when they are sending invitations, and refines that strategy for future events.

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Presumptions Can Kill Online Marketing

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Never assume you know how you achieved success online.  Theories are fine but every theory that we intend to take action on needs backed up with data.  Running online marketing campaigns on presumptions will lead to erratic results and makes it impossible for consistent gradual improvement.

Recently I was working on an ongoing online marketing campaign to promote events.  One event in particular got a surge of registrants.  The owner of the company was thrilled.  He then declared that the success must have come from the new list of email addresses that had been added to the subscriber list.  These new arrivals were 200 (roughly) people that had opted in to receiving promotions at a trade show.  The event had 40 registrants (roughly) so if they all came from the new list that would represent a 40% conversion.  A phenomenal number!

A problem arose when a follow on promotion was developed and sent there was no response.  All 200 people had suddenly lost interest. In fact 10 unsubscribed, a 5% attrition rate.  How had things gone so poorly?

Upon analyzing the initial email only 1 of the 40 registrants came from the new list of email subscribers.  The other was a mix of people who found the event through internet sources and long-standing email subscribers.  The second email did poorly because it was based on a false presumption.

My theory (haven’t proved it with data) is that the new list responded unfavorably because they got an email and then a quick follow on email presuming they were interested.  Immediately getting two emails and assumptive “sales” language led to a distinctly negative response.  They feared they were opting in to a SPAM list.

It turns out that the email subscribers that registered for the event had, on average, been receiving promotional emails from this company for 3 years.  The spike had more to do with the topic and presentation than a fresh list of names.

Don’t take action on presumptions.  It costs time, money, and future opportunities.  It’s what you know for sure, that just ain’t so, that can cause the most problems.  Use your email and web data to confirm your theories before acting on them.

Note: These numbers are rounded to easily illustrate the point and provide some anonymity

Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Site Conversion

Graduate to Multimedia

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Increasingly email and conversion experts are advocating multimedia.  They point out how video is engaging and can quickly grab a visitor’s attention.  Metrics also support the claim.  Here’s what’s lost in translation.  Doing multimedia takes more time, money, and/or energy.  So while multimedia is advantageous, you need to decide if it’s worth investing in, or whether it’s something you want to graduate into.

For instance doing a video email campaign will likely show improved open and click through rates over a static one.  However if the email campaign is in its infancy and only has 100 subscribers, the extra cost of producing the videos probably isn’t worthwhile.  The key to making a decision on doing multimedia is factoring in the return on your investment.

For instance if the email campaign above has a 20% open rate and of those opens it has a 5% click through rate, then we know that 1 person takes action on every email (as an average).  Let’s pretend research showed that a video email campaign in the same industry and similar business size resulted in click-through rates tripling.  If the average action results in a $5.00 sale, then the subscriber list likely needs to grow significantly to justify the investment into multimedia campaigns.  However, if the average result is a $20,000 sale, then we’d be foolish not to begin a video campaign.

Multimedia has shown to increase conversions in email and on the web fairly consistently.  However, like most business decisions we need to weigh the pros and cons.  Spend some time with your web and email metrics to see if adding multimedia is a worthwhile endeavor.  It’s very possible that you’ll want to graduate into the technology, just make sure the numbers agree.

Email Marketing, Site Conversion
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