Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

More Airline Database Marketing Ideas

Ok, I fly a lot. You probably know this already. Flying gives me a lot of time to think about database marketing….. and of course a lot of time to think about flying.

Right now I’m flying (finally got my drink) and am wondering about the ‘last-mile’ in the plane. A big problem is the people who actually act as my customer service representative have no way of knowing who I am.

My main airline is ATA. They just came out with this new Elite program. The main benefit I’ve recognized so far is that I get to get on the plane first…right up there with the parents with strollers.

This is no small benefit. Those that travel recognize the huge value of getting first shot at the overhead storage bin. I like to fly towards the front to get off quickly, but that of course carries the penalty of having no storage left. Sincerely, “Thank you ATA”.

Now what are some other ways you could make my life easier? You could offer me a drink (pretend we are talking about Diet Coke) as soon as I sit down or at least before they start with the whole cart. I’m not even saying you have to give me the drink free…I’ll pay. Just sometimes I want it NOW. (still talking about diet coke)

And how about a paper or magazine? “Mr. Baggott, have you seen the Wall Street Journal today? I don’t necessarily need a bigger seat, or a screen keeping the riff-raff at bay…just some respect and acknowledgement that they care about me…that I’m valuable to them.

The problem of course is that they don’t know who I am. Once they scan that ticket before the jet bridge, I’m invisible as an individual.

Why don’t flight attendants have handhelds? Simple seating chart with a little star next to the ‘Elites’…tap on the star and they instantly know that Chris Baggott likes the WSJ and “Diet Coke” That he flies this same plane three times a month….what ever.

Oh, and the email part? How about a quick survey after every flight? How was it? Any preference changes? Remember, the biggest crime in Database Marketing is not using the data…I’ll give you data all day long if it makes my life better!

Email Deliverability and You

How do you measure deliverability? This issue has been the subject of some debate lately.

Some vendors deduct hard bounces from their calculations which can skew the numbers according to Jupiter.

The problem with bounces in general is that they are dependent on many factors including the most important; list hygiene. If someone has a high bounce rate, that is probably something that can be fixed a lot faster than poor deliverability.

In my mind, the only way to test deliverability is to subject your mailing to a third party. We use Pivotal Veracity for our clients.

They are completely objective in that they supply ‘seed’ addresses that are mixed in with the clients normal mailing. These addresses (up to thousands of them) are targeting designated inboxes from all the major ISP’s

From there it is a simple extrapolation. What percentage of your mail hits the inbox?

This doesn’t have to be rocket science, but you should make sure you require it from your ESP. We tested with a client this week in the direct retail space. Their old way: 57% got to the inbox. We were able to show them nearly 40% improvement. What’s that mean?

Imagine 40% more success for the same effort.

Where's My Pizza?!!

What is the right frequency for your email program?

How often does someone order a pizza?

How often does someone wish they had ordered a Pizza when it is too late??

My theory is that there are lots of people who get home, the kids are back from sports and homework is done…. And there is no dinner. At this point, 45 minutes is too long so they eat peanut butter sandwiches.

Why didn’t my Pizza Guy anticipate this?

What I want someone to test is sending an email every day. Think how great it would be to have an offer every day in my inbox. Maybe 3:30 in the afternoon. I’m just doing my mental inventory of everything I’ve got to do after work….dreading the drive home…wondering how I’m going to make the kickball game and Violin lessons at the same time….. When Suddenly:

Up pops my daily Pizza Missive with convenient drop downs allowing me to choose what I want and the EXACT time of delivery tonight. Thank you Pizza Guy! You are my hero!

Do you not think I would order at least 20% more pizzas a year??? Of course I would.

Outbound Email Marketing

Seventy-five percent of companies with revenue of more than $1 billion have invested in anti-spam software, according to the Society for Information Management, which released the findings of a new survey at its SIMposium 2004 Conference. read entire article here...

...Ok, good article but: What about the other side of the coin? How many of these companies are investing anything in preventing from sending SPAM?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Organizations need to consolidate all of their outbound email...including their marketing.

List Building

We had a great case study this week in our online newsletter OnTarget (register here) this week that I wanted to share here on my blog as well.
The Cincinnati Museum Center is a nationally recognized educational and research resource and one of the top cultural attractions in the Midwest. Over the span of a year, more than one million people visit the museum, and over 700 events are held in its facilities.

They use email very well to promote new events and programming to targeted audiences, as well as education and other activities. Their problem was they only had 600 names in their database.

Read the article and see how they grew their list by 1,300% over 16 months.

Make Every Email Count

Forgive the plug, but I wanted to make sure that you were aware of our upcoming event.

ExactTarget’s first annual user conference, ExactExcellence, is the opportunity to stay abreast of email marketing trends, learn about the latest products and services, and share ideas and experiences with the entire user community.

The highlight of the conference is keynote speaker, Seth Godin, who Promo Magazine calls "The Prime Minister of Permission Marketing". We are delighted that he will be joining us to share his unique industry insights. If you have never met Seth, we guarantee it will be a memorable presentation and will change the way you think about marketing your business.

The event reinforces our commitment to ongoing education and successful use of the simple, smart, and powerful ExactTarget software suite. Please join us in Indianapolis, October 4-6! Learn more here, or send me an email. The event is open to all.

Are you afraid of your customers?

I’ve been getting a lot of
questions about a comment I made somewhere about how most companies
(and people) are afraid of their customers. It’s easy to deny, but unfortunately true.

There are two facts about customers:

1) They are people (some even think of them as ‘individuals’)
2) You know more than they do.

Point one is obvious, but ignored. We know they are people, but we don’t want to communicate to them on that level. We are afraid they will ask a question we can’t answer or afraid they might not like us or who knows what…..

The evidence is all around us. Even in email, my chosen media, most of us choose to hide from our individual customers by both hitting them as a unit and hiding behind some façade like info@ or Cust_Serv@ instead of bringing forth our true selves.

Point two really gets to how afraid we are of customers. We are afraid to TELL them anything. We don’t want to step on any toes by making a suggestion or telling them when they are wrong.

The fact is your customer is loyal to you because there is some perception of expertise. If I could program an enterprise CRM system or make a delicious Pizza, I would. The fact is the customer is hiring us to be the experts. They take confidence in our confidence. If all we are doing is taking orders from customers we don’t build much value do we? Where is the loyalty?

Customers are loyal to people they can’t do without: not organizations that just take orders.

Airlines & Email

On my way to Atlanta on AirTran.
Got a seat up front :-) Thanks Airtran…
although I wish I had a coffee in my hand…
I guess a bigger seat doesn’t mean First Class any more.

Airlines are such easy whipping boys when it comes to database marketing that it almost doesn’t seem fair to pick on them any more. Like a lot of compaines they are afraid of a human relationship with their customers.

The frustration for all of us is that there is so much unrealized potential to do Airline Marketing Better. This is especially true with frequent flyers. Of course I see email opportunities all over the place. The fact is that people who fly frequently want more communication but they want it relevant. The following is a list of the top 10 things airlines could be doing with email to make the frequent flyer experience better:

1) Stop sending me an email with a list of ‘weekend getaways’ or ‘Thursday Specials’ that I can’t use. You know where I live (Indianapolis) so why do you send me an email with great trips from LA to Cancun? Or worse, El Paso to Kansas City? This is a no brainier and in fact would probably drive me to take more spontaneous trips.

2) Apologize for Delays. It is simple human decency or good relationship marketing. You know what flights I’m on and you know if I’ve been inconvenienced or not. Apologize. Simple and appreciated.

3) Thank me with sincerity. One on one, “Hey Chris I notice that you have flown our airline 5 times this month; thanks man”

4) Ask me questions. Get to know me better. The database is going to tell you that the majority of my frequent flights are short one or two day trips. Ask me some questions to learn about my vacation habits; you might get some cross sell opportunities.

5) My main airline (ATA) offers free companion tickets. This has got to be a great deal for them and I’ve racked up enough points to have a bunch stacked up. Why not make suggestions for opportunities for my wife or children at a specific destination where I’ve already booked a flight. I often take one of my kids on trips as they know. Why not drive this high value activity even more?

Well, Seth Godin says I need to make my blog stories shorter so I better stop at 5. We all know I could go on indefinitely.

The frustration is that so many businesses struggle and invest mightily in programs to collect the kind of data that airlines waste every day…….