'Net Features : e-mail

Website Magazine Hot Tip: Send a Welcome E-mail

Mike Phillips — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:26:00 GMT

These days, consumers are bombarded with requests to sign up for e-mail newsletters; handing over their e-mail addresses and risking future annoyances. Want to test out our new product? Enter your e-mail address. Want to leave a comment on a blog? Enter your e-mail address. So, it's important for consumers to know that they made the right decision when signing up for your website or newsletter. That means sending a "welcome" e-mail.

There are added benefits, for website owners. Research from Experian Marketing Services indicates that welcome e-mails have transaction rates nine times higher than bulk e-mails. Welcome e-mails also generate four times the open rates as bulk mailings, and five times the click rates, according to Experian.

Not only is a welcome e-mail an excellent way to reassure consumers, establish trust and lay the foundation for relationships but, apparently, also to increase clicks and facilitate purchases. So, the next time someone signs up for your site or services, send a welcome e-mail. And, consider some the below elements to include:

A "safety" message. Your information is safe with us, we will not spam, sell your information, etc.
An offer. We're so glad you signed up - here's a little something for you in return. This might be a percentage off a first purchase, free or discounted shipping, etc.
Social links. Here are some other ways you can connect with us. (Experian's study showed 6% higher click rates in welcome e-mails with social links than those without.)
Open communication. Please feel welcome to share your feedback, offer suggestions or reach out for anything you might need. (Provide an e-mail address and, again, direct them to your social media channels.)

WM Radio: October Issue Preview, Creating Memes

Mike Phillips — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:25:00 GMT

Get a sneak preview of Website Magazine's October, 2010, issue which covers YouTube marketing, e-commerce preparations for the holiday season, e-mail metrics and more. Also, we discuss creating Internet memes and offer up some tips about giving yourself the best chance of success with the next Internet sensation.

Listen now, and subcribe to Website Magazine Radio in iTunes!

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If you would like to have your questions answered on Website Magazine Radio, please send email to editors@websitemagazine.com with "WM Radio" in the subject field.

Relevancy Rules in E-mail Marketing

Mike Phillips — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:15:00 GMT

A recent study by ExactTarget shows that e-mail is still one of the most effective (and accepted) ways to market to consumers. Their survey of more than 1,500 consumers found that 93 percent are subscribers -- meaning they have provided their e-mail address to at least one company or brand. Further analysis shows that the average consumer receives 44 e-mails per day. Of those, 25 percent (11) are permission-based commercial messages.

Consumers have come to accept e-mail as a marketing channel. But that doesn't mean it's a fail-safe solution. For one, just under half of those surveyed opened e-mails from their "favorite" companies. Chances are the majority of subscribers on your list don't consider your company a "favorite." So how do you change that? The answer, is relevancy.

Consumers expect personalization. E-mail is much more sophisticated than it was even just a few years ago and consumers know it. Therefore, they expect a message to be tailored to their needs, wants and even behaviors. "Dear Customer" isn't going to work, and neither is an offer for a product that holds no value to them. To be successful, e-mail marketers must ensure that each message conveys a sense familiarity with the consumer. ExactTarget cites a recent CMO Council study that showed 41 percent of U.S. Internet users threatened to stop buying from companies that sent irrelevant messages. Not only does an irrelevant message waste consumers' time but it also erodes confidence in that company. If they don't know me, how can they serve me well? If they don't care, is my information safe?

Consumers expect benefits. Not surprisingly, consumers often carry a what's-in-it-for-me attitude when it comes to e-mail subscriptions. In other words, is this e-mail list relevant to my wants and needs? Some benefits might be discounts and coupons, free giveaways and contests, educational material, early notification of deals (exclusivity) and content tailored to them. As ExactTarget client and Groupon Manager of E-mail Optimization Andrew Kordek explains, "E-mail marketing is not a one-way communication. You need to take yourself out of the company and put yourself in the subscriber's shoes. As a marketer, you're not in charge of the e-mail -- your subscriber is. Let the customer and subscriber dictate how you should run your email program."

So what are those subscribers saying? The study asked: What motivated you to give a company, association, or organization your e-mail address?

67%   To receive discounts and promotions
55%   To get a "freebie" in exchange for my e-mail address
50%   To get updates on upcoming sales
45%   To get updates on future products
33%   To get access to exclusive content
29%   For fun or entertainment
28%   To learn more about their products or services
28% To stay informed about them
22%   For education about topics they specialize in
17%   Someone recommended them
14%   To interact with them
11%   To show my support

One number I find particularly interesting here is the 17% -- Someone recommended them. That seems to have much room for improvement. And social media might just help that effort. Read about social media sharing and e-mail.

E-mail with Social Features Boosts Click-through Rates

Mike Phillips — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:19:00 GMT

Over the past several months, many industry voices are surmising that social media messaging could one day replace e-mail. While that might seem far-fetched, recent research* from e-mail marketing company GetResponse shows that social networking and e-mail are most definitely cross-pollinating.

The study, "Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report," shows that e-mail marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30 percent higher click-through rates than e-mail without those features. What's more, when three or more sharing options are offered, the click-through rate is 55 percent higher, and a Twitter sharing option resulted in 40 percent higher click-through rates -- than those messages without sharing features.

Other findings of the study:

60% of all social e-mails included just one sharing icon.
Only 11.2% of social e-mails included three icons or more.
Twitter was the most popular social sharing option, included in 67.2% of all social e-mails. Facebook came in second at 62.7%.
E-mails shared on Twitter resulted in CTRs of 10.2% -- over 40% higher than messages not linked to any social media.
Nearly 19% of SMB marketers used the Twitter integration feature at least once. Just 13.5% included social sharing options.
SMB marketers used Twitter social media integration twice as much as social sharing links.

*GetResponse analyzed data from approximately 500 million e-mails sent by 19,149 GetResponse users.

You might also like: E-mail Marketing Gets Social With NutShellMail Acquisition

The Inside Scoop on E-mail Subscribers

Mike Phillips — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:20:00 GMT

The advantages of e-mail marketing are many - for starters, it's targeted, direct and measurable. But it's extremely important to know the minds of consumers when crafting an e-mail strategy. Miss the mark and you can easily earn a black eye for your company. New research from Epsilon, a direct marketing company, reveals some important insight into the mind of the e-mail subscriber.

The study shows some important e-mail trends and attitudes, such as what type of message subscribers are accustomed to receiving and preferences, such as desired formats. But three revelations are of particular interest to marketers.

The first deals with the reasons users unsubscribe to e-mail lists. The most popular is irrelevant content. That should come as no surprise to marketers. Companies should never send out unexpected e-mails; those messages not in line with the expectations of consumers when they signed up. Not only will unsubscribes result but so will SPAM complaints, hindering the business' future campaigns.

The second most popular reason for unsubscribing is "receive too frequently." This highlights a delicate balance for marketers. You want to stay top-of-mind with the consumer but you don't want to overwhelm them. E-mail is a personal space for most people - even more so when you consider the influx of smartphones in the marketplace. With e-mail enabled devices, a message hitting the inbox is akin to a text message or a phone call - it triggers an immediate reaction for the user. You don't want to invade their personal space during family dinner time, for example. In fact, 64 percent of U.S. respondents attributed frequency to unsubscribing - double that of privacy concerns. One workaround for this problem is to ask your consumers directly, how often do you want to receive messages?

The second important revelation in this study deals with the e-mail sender. Respondents indicated that the "from" line of an e-mail is vastly more important than the "subject" line (68 percent vs. 26 percent). And that's a bona fide trend. In 2002 the "from" line was important to 60 percent of respondents, while the "subject" line was important to 35 percent. What this means is that consumers are now much more concerned with who is sending them a message than the content of the message itself. That points to the critical importance of branding and trust-building with your audience, and again points to relevance. Once a user gets accustomed to receiving relevant messages from your brand, they are much more likely to open your next message. Before even considering the content they know it contains value to them.

However, this is not to say the subject line is irrelevant. In fact, marketers can find great success when the subject line correlates to the sender. For example, a message from "jdoe@johndoeshoes.com" with a subject line of "20 percent off your next shoe purchase" reinforces not only that the sender is relevant to their needs but the message has a clear, valuable offer. It's also important that new e-mail subscribers see your brand associated with relevant subjects from the start.

Finally, Epsilon asked what type of subject lines compel users to actually open the message. The most popular response was a discount offer (66 percent) followed by a free product offer (63 percent) and "contains familiar brand name" (60 percent).

The rest of the report is available through Epsilon and is worth a look before your next e-mail campaign.

E-Mail Encryption Service

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Emailing confidential or sensitive information unencrypted is just asking for trouble.

While large corporate and governmental email users have various means of sending secure email messages and attachments at their disposal (usually through a server side software), individuals and small/mid-size businesses do not and are forced to either use slower and less convenient alternatives or risk information security by using common, unprotected Internet email.

That might all change with the Send Technology announcement that a new Web-based service is available today that enables any email user to securely exchange confidential messages and attachments via the Internet without any special technical expertise. The service, dubbed Send., works in the following manner: Senders open their favorite Internet browser, complete a first-time registration, enter their email address, the recipient's address, message and any attachments, and then press the send button. Recipients receive a regular email message from the sendinc.com site with an attached notification message. Following simple instructions in the email, they complete a similar first-time registration and then access the secure message and any attachments. Any subsequent exchange of messages between registered users occurs without the need to reenter any user information.

Send. is different in that it does not require that senders use encryption keys and is compatible with all email solutions including Web mail (though requires no software downloads or system configuration. Right now, users are only able to send twenty messages per day, and message attachments can only contain files up to 10MB.

"Talking with email users and reading various research reports, we learned that there was a huge pent-up demand for a truly secure means of exchanging email messages and attachments for either regulatory or other individual reasons, but that there was an equally high resistance to the limited number of secure methodologies available at the time," said Daniel Stevens, Send Technology's chief executive officer. "We developed Send. as a service that could be readily used without installing any sort of software or making any changes to individual computer settings."