Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Old Email Addresses

I was talking with a client yesterday that had a common problem. They have a large database of email addresses that they have not used in more than a year (300,000) and were not sure how to use them now.

Their first thought was to simply blast out and see what happens. Obviously, we all know what would happen if they did this. Blacklists, Blocks, Spam Complaints, and who-knows-what damage to the reputation of the company.

A Better approach is to test (I mean TEST!) re-opting these people. This is simple and not too time consuming. It may cost a little more from your ESP, and you have to accept the inevitable that this list is going to shrink significantly anyway.

Just remember, the goal here is people who want to hear from you. The goal is never just how many emails you can send.

Saying that; there are three things to do to revive an old database.

1) Look for any other data you can get about these subscribers. Where did they come from? Did they ever actually opt-in? Are they customers? What did they buy? Anything that you can do to remind the subscriber of the past relationship will go a long way towards encouraging them to continue the relationship.

2) Make it very clear in the communication why you are emailing them now and what you would like them to do. “Dear Bob, I’m sending you this because you asked to receive our email offers when you ordered the GI Joe for Bobby last Christmas.” “We are finally getting our email program off the ground and it’s going to be fantastic….lost of great toy specials for Bobby and your other 5 kids.” Please indicate that you would still like to hear from us at Baggott-o-Toys.com by checking the appropriate box.”

3) Send tiny segments. Your ESP can help you here, but if you are following the rules of permission they can help you optimize the volume you send so that you can determine if you are triggering inordinate Spam complaints, bounces or any other deliverability problems before you have the wrath of the ISP’s down on you.

Bottom line is be smart. As I say till I’m blue in the face: this is not a one-time relationship. We are looking for those subscribers that are willing to last a lifetime.

More on Postal Mail

The Blog on Going Postal and the longer version in my email OnTarget (sign up here) generated a lot of comment. Several were along the line of this one:

Chris, Your dm to e-mail acquisition advice is not very good. The cost to do an effective direct mail campaign is in the $100K+++ range because response is so low and paper, printing and postage are so expensive

I thought today that I would post my reply:

....Thanks for the feedback. I worry when
everyone agrees with me :-)

Let me make my case.

First of all it is true that you can spend tons of money on DM acquisition. I came out of the catalog business and trust me we spent many times that amount.

That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad investment however. Remember, we are direct marketers. We can’t look only at the short term transaction, but live by the Lifetime Value. That is why email is such an effective and growing tool in marketing.

Historically companies have paid thousands on customer acquisition with one choice: Buy or Don’t Buy. If you didn’t buy (or even if you did) that was the end of the relationship. With email of course you now have an inexpensive and relevant way to keep the relationship going…even if the prospect is not ready to buy today.

But first you have to get the prospect. That is where you need to employ other ‘non-email’ tactics. For most businesses and organizations this can be very cost effective with Direct Mail.

The key is that in needs to be very targeted and have a specific, measurable, conversion goal.

For example; we use large postcards ourselves. Our sales organization is responsible to develop a top 25 prospect list for various client categories. The result is a total mailing that is <1,000 perhaps. We can send up to three DM pieces with the call to action to visit a specific site and download a whitepaper or register for a webinar. We only need about 10 responses to make this a home run. The reality is that the last one of these we did we actually had about 70 visit the site and 35 attend the webinar. We know that 10 to 12% of webinar attendees will become clients. So in this case frankly I could spend 10 to 20 times more than I do now on DM and still be showing a fantastic ROI.

The key to success in DM rests on two things: Good Targeting and an easy call to action. Like all marketing…it’s up to us to make the offers relevant to the audience and compelling enough that we get a good response.

Finally, let me be clear. I am in now way advocating abandoning online efforts for acquisition. I am absolutely opposed to using email as a prospecting tool with out specific opt in permission but I’m a giant fan (and use every day) of Search, Banners, Partnerships and affiliates. Online is the greatest thing that has ever happened for marketers, I’m just saying some of the old fashioned methods work very well too. Heck, having people with clipboards walking around events works great for some organizations like sports teams and bars….and that’s a technique from the 19th century.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Jupiter Email Report

First of all, I want to thank the great folks at JupiterResearch for their terrific E-mail Marketing Buyers Guide. They ranked ExactTarget number one in Business Suitability in the report that was released last Friday. To all of you who might have spoken to Jupiter analysts doing this research, a sincere “Thank You" from everyone here at ExactTarget. Please feel free to see the Yahoo Story by clicking here.

Today I want to stay on the testing theme and answer this question that was submitted based on my Blog on Friday:

…another good article. I'm curious about how you actually capture this explicit knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Also - how do you eliminate confounding factors like date and time the optin was run. Was it the fact that I changed from red to blue or the fact that we are now a week closer to Christmas that shifted the opt in % ?

Great Question……

When you are testing you want to make sure that everything is the same except for one element. In Email this is pretty simple. The challenge for the marketer is to determine what factors ‘might’ be worthy of testing. Of course every business or organization is different.

Testing on the web is more difficult. You can drive to different landing pages which is what we do. The ideal is to be able to dynamically serve different pages randomly. We tested some software that enabled us to serve pages based on total traffic. For example: Show every 5th visitor a different page or element. The concept is fantastic, but the software we evaluated had some problems primarily with slowness. If anyone has suggestions for alternatives please let me know.

The seasonality question is a good one. How can you test for season or date? Obviously, year to year is an easy place to start but not very timely. Hmmmm…?

You run a side by side test of red forms vs. blue forms and the red form wins: How do you know that the deciding factor was really that we are a week from Christmas and everyone was ‘thinking red’ and therefore were more inclined to fill out that form….I guess there still is some room for intuition as well 

Testing

Do you know what the greatest thing about internet marketing is?

It is measurable.

Gone forever is the ambiguity of what ‘looks’ right or what a focus group might tell you. Now all emotion is gone from marketing decisions. The only thing that matters is what works and what doesn’t work.

Why haven’t we always thought this way? Simple. It was too hard and too expensive.

When you are planning a TV commercial or running print, testing is tough. With internet marketing you know right away what is working and what’s not.

So throw away everything you think, and just test. When your marketing objective is to grow your database, first consider your constants.

Usually site visits are relatively constant: so what does impact people signing up for your email??

I DON’T KNOW!

Guess what? You don’t know either. That is why you test.

A form with six spaces vs. three?

A green form vs. a blue form?

Rounded corners vs. square?

Top right corner or bottom left?

Free whitepaper or cents off coupon?

Nobody knows! The only way to figure it out is to test, test and test. Never stop. The best strategy is to determine the most consistent days and times on your site and push different content. If Friday is your biggest sign up day, make it a rule that every Friday you are going to change an element of your opt in process.

Ask Me!

What do you want me to do?

Here are three quick things you can do to increase the number of folks opting in to your email database:

1) Ask. Are you really being clear at your touch points (web, point of sale, direct mail, sales call)? I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll explain it again. If you want me to do something, usually all you have to do is ask. You might think you are asking…but if your database isn’t growing this is the first place you should look.

2) Why? Why should I sign up? Don’t tell me to receive your newsletter. Tell me specifically the benefits that affect ME. The only reason I’m going to do this is if it benefits me…so make sure you are clear.

3) Privacy! One simple sentence will do it, but make sure that your subscriber is clear that you will never share or abuse their name. The decision for me to opt in or not opt in is made in a second…make sure that there is not even a shadow of a doubt about how my name will be used.

Tomorrow: Testing.

Say NO to lists

Building your database.

Let’s just suppose for a minute that you are doing everything right with your email.

You are using dynamic content and sending relevant messages, your current list is fully permission based and your subscribers are thrilled with the content they are receiving….

So now you are ready to start building your database again. I talk to a lot of folks that want to focus on the database size more than the actual emails….hopefully by now you realize how WRONG this is. Get the program right, then work on expanding the size of your database.

Over the next few days we will talk about several different techniques to build your database….do you notice how I refuse to call it a “list”?

A list implies that it has no personality, that there is nothing unique, that all the members of that list are the same. The term list implies that the list itself is one entity. The fact is that we are talking about building a database. A database is a compilation of hundreds or even millions of actual real live attributes. Data lives, breathes and most importantly evolves.

Change your mindset from lists to databases, and tomorrow we will start learning how to build one.

Challange Response Email

AOL Acquires MailBlocks

Interesting news....America Online has acquired anti-spam Web-based e-mail company Mailblocks, in a deal that will bring challenge/response technology to the giant ISP.

What is a challenge response filter? It was pioneered by MailBlocks, and copied by Spamarrest, Earthlink and others. It sends an email back to all email senders asking them to verify that they are a live person and asks them to perform a "test" (such as count the snowman in the picture) in order to be added to the recipients "safe sender" list. There is no automated way to manage these filters. Clients must respond to each challenge individually.

ExactTarget handles this manually for our clients through reply mail management. To date, the population using challenge response is very low --- less than 1%. But...with the right promotion the expectation is that this will really take off among the clients of big ISP's. (AOL isn't doing this for their health)

This should finally drive home the idea that it is no longer feasible for individual companies to continue managing email from their own servers. The most likely outcome is that only senders with SPF and pristine whitelisting relationships in place will be exempt from challenge response filters.