Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Loyalty Programs: Do they work?

Reward points, discounts, free shipping and gifts--it's all there for the taking, as the big players in the hypercompetitive retail industry fight to outdo each other to buy off the loyalty of customers "blessed with more choices than ever. Many stores now fear that customers not formally rewarded for their patronage will walk out the door."

"Shoppers are spoiled," says Mark Goldstein, president of Loyalty Lab, a company that helps retailers build rewards programs for their online businesses. "People have come to automatically ask, 'If I give you my business, what will you give me?'"

But with so many in the industry caught up in the arms race of who can give out more rewards, no one has stopped to notice that most of them aren't particularly effective at building customer loyalty or returning profits. That's according to a recent Jupiter Research study.

The above are a couple of highlights from an article in Forbes this week.  You can read it here...

Email Marketing For Handheld Devices (a simple solution)

One of the easiest ways for you to optimize your html email for Handheld devices like Treo or Blackberry is to add an ALT Tag.

Without an ALT, the PDA has no choice but to view the image:

<img src="images/someimage.gif width="500" height="30" border="0"></a>

But with an ALT, the PDA can just put "My Link Description", with the link:

<img src="images/someimage.gif width="500" height="30" border="0" alt="My Link Description"></a>

By giving the PDA an alternative, the reader will get right to the text of your message on your handheld, but the version on a 'real' computer will look normal.

Email Marketing For Handheld Devices (part two)

So how do you optimize email for handheld devices?  Yesterday we talked about how people might engage email marketing and newsletters on handhelds.   If you buy that, then the goal of email going to handhelds is to convince the reader not to delete the email and save it until he can engage with it later in a more traditional manner.  Of course the challenge is that you have no control over what I’m going to be reading this email on.

So a couple of simple rules to give your self a better shot. 

1) Multi Part MIME won’t help you.  My PDA thinks it can display html so when the email is sniffing to decide what to deliver it delivers html.  So you have to test your html on a handheld before you deliver.  Publishers that send me email like eMarketer and San Jose Mercury News deliver to me in an html format that renders NOTHING on my handheld.   You know what happens to them?  DELETE.

2)  Ads.   Anybody ever seen a ClickZ email on a handheld?   Two pages of their own header crap and then long link after long link until I finally get to something.   Guess what?  On my handheld:  DELETE.

I pick on these two Pubs because I love them.  I like the writers and I learn a lot from them.   But I don’t have time for the format. 

They key I think is that you have got to get me to the point quickly in a text format.  Put text copy as close to the top of your email as you possibly can.   If you are top loading with Ads like clickZ does…well you know what happens. 

And if you are still in the dark ages and doing complete html paste vs. a templated system, you are just making more work for yourself and your readers.

Take the time to review your opening text.  Pull the ads lower or at least do some editing and put some interesting copy above all the html & links.   Ask the handheld readers point blank not to delete and tell them it will be worth it to see it in it’s full glory.   A little text line above the Ads & the header might go unnoticed in the full rendering of the desktop view but stand out  strongly on what I see on my handheld device.

Another thing to consider; a lot of email marketers take up space extolling me to add them to their address book.   Good practice, but once I’ve done this, please stop asking me.   You can see that I’ve clicked, that data should become an attribute and use dynamic content to only send that note to people who have not clicked.

This message takes up the entire content area on a handheld.

Email Marketing on Handheld Devices

Ok so I was thinking about the way I use my Treo 650.  I love it for the email functionality.  We use Goodlink to sync up in real time with all of my outlook stuff so an email deleted on my phone also deletes it on my laptop.

This brings me to this epiphany… I use my handheld device two ways for email:

1. I use it for email exchanges with people I know as a substitute for phone calls. 

I hate talking on the phone…esp in public places.  Handheld email is perfect for this exchange…along with text messaging for those not yet fortunate enough to have a email enabled phone.

     2.   I use my handheld device to screen email and clean up my inbox.   This is important for we email marketers to note.   

Like you, every day there are over 100 emails coming into my inbox.   Most of these I’ve opted into:  Jupiter, San Jose Mercury News, eMarketer, DM News, B2B Online…not to mention the Airlines, Home Depots and all the retail email I’ve opted into. 

You can see how it adds up   

My point is that I’m using my Handheld to screen all these emails for later consumption.   I use the “D” key to clean out my mailbox.  If I’ve got some downtime riding in a car (not driving) or waiting for a plane I can clear out 100’s of emails in minutes.   The ones I want to engage with, I save for when I can boot up my laptop.

Your job as an email marketer?  Make the cut.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about how I evaluate which email I keep and which I discard and offer some advice to email marketers looking to engage a rapidly growing handheld audience.

Microsoft Blogger Notices ExactTarget

It was fun to see Sam Raji a Microsoft blogger on the Emerging Business Team take notice of ExactTarget today. (read post)

Most companies are growing their e-mail marketing lists

Hats off to Morgan Stewart for another great study of what is really going on in the email marketing world.  As posted today on DMNews:

Most companies are growing their e-mail lists -- at a clip of 38 percent annually on average -- according to a study released yesterday by e-mail software firm ExactTarget. "Some recent articles are saying that list growth is getting more difficult as the medium matures. We agree with that, but the study shows it is getting harder but is still healthy," said Morgan Stewart, director of strategic services at ExactTarget, Indianapolis.

After studying 142 companies across five industries in the second quarter of this year, ExactTarget found that the firms' lists grew an average of 5.2 percent a month. With list shrinkage at 2 percent a month, marketers had a net increase of 3.2 percent monthly, or 38 percent annually.   

You can read the DMN Version, or a more detailed version on the ExactTarget site.

The point here is that the rules of successful email marketing have not changed: tell subscribers the value proposition for opting in….and then deliver exactly what they are expecting

Email Open Rates as a Measure of Success

I was reminded of a comment I made a while ago regarding this subject from a fellow blogger:

Chris Baggot, founding partner of ExactTarget, highlighted the fact that open rates typically fall into more of a branding-type measure:

If you can double the number of people who hit “reply,” even if your overall open-rate goes down, what is the better metric? Part of the problem is with industry measures as well as the kind of email that people are sending. Gigantic retailers dominate by overall volume of email, but typically, they are not very good emailers.

Looking at a total pie that is predominantly influenced by people who are doing weekly blasts of coupons or of special offers that aren’t very relevant, we need to drop back and say: “Okay, now tell me what happens when I add more data. Tell me what happens when I decrease my frequency for a certain segment of individuals and things like that,” and measure what you are really trying to accomplish — not measure open rates or clickthroughs as the total goal of success. Again, that’s an impression model left over from television, which, in our business, reeks of the dark ages.

Agency Email Marketing Case Study

People ask me all the time for cases of how people are actually using email marketing in their businesses.  This article from Chief Marketer highlights the Atlanta agency, Definition 6 and their use of email as part of their nurturing process and how they compare email to blogging.  click here...

Email is not an Aquistion Tool

I wrote this email today in a passionate debate.  I thought I'd share my thoughts with you as well....

The issue here is that people have a finite capacity to engage
with email.   On a daily basis that might be 6 - 10
(a guess...don't ask me for a study: although Shar at Forrester has some thoughts around
this)

So when I get 100 in my inbox I've got to make a choice about which ones I'm going to get engaged with.

The problem with acquisition thinking for email is that what you measure is ROI.  ("I can send a million of these things and the whole program only costs $500 and I sell 1,000 coffee pots")  hoo boy!  Lets send 10mm next time! 

The ROI works great, but that doesn't make it great marketing.  What it
does is kill the golden goose.   Email is the greatest thing that has
ever happened to a true database marketer.   When used with data driving
everything from content to frequency to timing it's fantastic...and
relevant.   Harvard Business Review has a great story this month called
"The Perfect Message at the Perfect Moment"  www.hbr.com

But when email is used as a substitution for a direct mail program that I might normally do with paper....well we see the results;  Legislation, ISP blocking, declining open and clickthroughs and disengaged cynical recipients.

Anyone else see the clickz today:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/opt/print.php/3560656

It all comes down to the perception of the recipient.   Treat me like a
human being and I'll be a loyal & engaged customer for a long time.
Put more value in my email address than my relationship and I'll turn on you.

Are you (or your email marketing efforts) fun?

Another concept I’ve been considering when it relates to our own email marketing efforts at ExactTarget is the concept of fun.  I’ll ask you the same question.  Are you fun?

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks to us about a very telling case involving speed dating.  Mary said she wanted someone intelligent & sincere….but was actually hooked up with someone who was attractive & funny. 

Fun is attractive, fun is sincere and fun is intelligent.

The fear we all have about being funny in our marketing, and email marketing, is that we might be perceived as unprofessional.   Most B2B marketers specifically are very much trying to build credibility and fear that humor will undermine that.

What we forget, is the number one rule of marketing as taught to us 50 years ago by Zig Zigler;  People buy from people.   More importantly they buy from people they like!

We like people who are fun.   We tolerate people who are responsible or reliable.   When your goal for lead nurturing email is to get engaged with a prospect…..well it might be a good idea to be fun.