'Net Features : e-mail marketing

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.)

Top E-Commerce Merchants Could Be More Welcoming

Linc Wonham — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:30:00 GMT

A study of e-mail marketing practices in the e-commerce industry has revealed that 99 percent of the top 500 retailers are missing out on a critical opportunity to engage customers and drive revenue. The survey, conducted by e-mail marketing firm Listrak, shows that only seven of the 500 companies are sending a series of welcome messages to new e-mail subscribers.

A welcome series consists of two or more messages designed to educate customers on the benefits of subscribing, while also providing additional opportunities for interaction and engagement. Welcome messages have the highest open rates of all e-mail campaigns, and using a series of messages rather than just one increases a merchant’s ability to nurture the relationship and turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.

Of the seven welcome series campaigns among the top 500 retailers, six of them contained two messages and one was made up of three messages. Six also contained special offers, five were received immediately upon subscription and two began the following day.

The survey is the latest in a series of reports from Listrak that examines the interactive marketing industry, and is included in the free white paper entitled Creating an e-Commerce Welcome Series to Increase Subscriber Engagement and Email ROI.

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

Infusionsoft Offers Free Outlook Plug-in for Small Businesses

Linc Wonham — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:45:00 GMT

Small-business CRM and e-mail marketing leader Infusionsoft has just introduced a free plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. The add-on enables users to access their contacts’ information and add them to automated marketing campaigns and follow-up sequences quickly and seamlessly without ever leaving Outlook.

Active subscribers can download the plug-in from their Infusionsoft application and start using the new features immediately, while non-subscribers can visit Infusionsoft.com/trial to sample the service for 15 days. The new Infusionsoft for Outlook plug-in allows small-business Web professionals to perform the following tasks:

•    Add new contacts to their Infusionsoft databases from within the Outlook application, or find existing contacts with a single click
•    E-mail Infusionsoft contacts directly through Outlook
•    Segment or “tag” all contacts and create new tags on demand
•    Engage and disengage automated marketing campaigns
•    View all messages, saved notes, completed tasks and saved files associated to each contact
•    Set reminders within Outlook and in the Infusionsoft web-based application
•    Add and manage all attachment types in Infusionsoft
•    Automatically record follow-up tasks and reminders from Outlook to Infusionsoft

ExactTarget and StrongMail Deliver Engagement for Clients

Linc Wonham — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:00:00 GMT

E-mail marketing solutions providers ExactTarget and StrongMail Systems have each recently produced winning results for blue-chip clients. American Greetings Interactive saw a 13-percent increase in customer engagement during its six-month campaign powered by ExactTarget, and Hayneedle.com has experienced a 10.4-percent year-over-year increase in customer-bound e-mails since switching its services to StrongMail.

ExactTarget’s campaign for American Greetings boosted e-mail clicks and opens by using more than 15 unique attributes to segment the online greeting card giant's customer database. ExactTarget’s automation tools and Web analytics data allowed its client to send highly targeted e-mails to specific segments of a membership that exceeds five million subscribers.

By switching to StrongMail’s software license model, Top 100 e-tailer Hayneedle cut its costs in half while increasing its delivery rate from 93.9 percent to 97.5 percent, helping the company double its sales since adopting the new service. StrongMail has also yielded a 10 percent year-over-year increase in Hayneedle’s open rate via improved inbox delivery and testing features.

Delivra, Cantaloupe, Combine for a First for E-mail Marketers

Linc Wonham — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Two Indianapolis-based digital marketing solutions firms, Delivra and Cantaloupe.tv, have integrated services to provide the first E-mail marketing platform with video tracking.

Delivra, one of the original E-mail software and services providers, announced that it has added Cantaloupe.tv’s new VideoHere online video platform to its suite of E-mail marketing solutions, giving customers an easy way to add and manage videos within their E-mail marketing campaigns. The platform also closely tracks which members viewed the videos and for how long.

“VideoHere is the kind of plug-and-play video integration tool that our clients have been asking for,” said Neil Berman, president of Delivra. He adds that the system is affordable (starting at $50/month), easy to use, feature rich, and provides insight into the success of each video.

The integration with VideoHere enables Delivra’s clients to insert videos into their E-mail campaigns with a single click and without the need for programming. They can link video play buttons to a pre-built landing page developed by VideoHere, or to a custom-built landing page.

Online marketers can measure video performance with detailed tracking of video impressions, views, times completed, times shared, days viewed and drop-off rate. The video player allows advanced sharing of videos via E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, and by embedded links on Websites or blogs.

Listrak Provides E-mail Marketers With Expanded CRM and Analytics

Linc Wonham — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:30:00 GMT

E-mail service provider Listrak has released a new version of its Web-based E-mail marketing platform that includes expanded integration with Salesforce, Omniture and Google Analytics. A leading E-mail marketing solutions provider, Listrak’s new v4.8 will provide advanced profiling and conversion metrics for clients such as Wolfgang Puck, Waterford and Movies Unlimited.

The expanded Web analytics and CRM integration are designed to increase customer engagement through more directly targeted E-mails and greater tracking capabilities.

“A paradigm shift has taken place,” said Ross Kramer, Listrak CEO. “It’s no longer enough just to reach the inbox. E-mail marketers must use data to create targeted, relevant messaging that reaches customers when they’re most engaged and likely to respond. The new features in this release will help marketers do just that by providing more data and a greater insight into customer behavior online.”

Listrak 4.8 includes the following advances from the previous version:

•    The integration with Salesforce, a leader in CRM, will allow clients to import data such as contact E-mail addresses and profile information directly from Salesforce to Listrak

•    The integration with Omniture, a leader in online business optimization, will pass E-mail analytics such as subject lines, campaign titles, sent messages, delivery metrics, open and click data, unsubscribes, bounces and user complaints from Listrak to Omniture SiteCatalyst

•    The integration with Google Analytics will improve the overall metrics collected across multiple E-mail campaigns

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.