No man is an iland

August 31, 2006

The folks at Seattlest report on how a free drink coupon allegedly intended for local and limited distribution got out of hand because Starbucks sent it round via email.

Needless to say, the forward button came into play and before you know it, the company is issuing apologetic press releases (they stopped honoring the coupon) and getting the kind of word of mouth they probably didn't want.

Although in this day and age, you wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't all an elaborate plot to get media coverage of their iced coffee. What cynical times we live in.

(Update: Seth Godin comments on the tale and draws out some business lessons. His Rule#1 is particularly key for email marketers to note.)

August 30, 2006

Whether by accident or design, here are nine things the marketing media tends to overlook about email marketing. Designed to make you smile. And reflect.

1. Send button stress

There's something unique about that moment of disquiet, hesitation and even fear as your cursor hovers over the "send" or "confirm schedule" button.

And it doesn't matter how many email newsletters or promotions you have under your belt, you'll still feel it. I'm up to four figures on lifetime e-newsletter issues, and my publication timeframe looks like this...

Friday: write and schedule newsletter for Monday.
Monday morning: panic, cancel the send, preview the email (again)...change nothing...set up the original schedule again.

Is there a solution to send button stress? There's no getting round diligence and attention to detail when setting up the outgoing email. It won't reduce the pain, but at least nothing bad will happen to you later.

2. Conflict in bars and at parties

If you do so much email marketing that you define yourself as an email marketer, you may have to turn down party invites. When people find out what you do, some will hold you personally responsible for spam. All of it. No amount of explaining about permission-based confirmed opt-in house lists will help.

Expect to field inquiries about stockmarket tips, cheap watches and purple pills.

3. You will "spam" at some point

No matter how careful you are to ensure your list of addresses is pure and clean and opt-in, you will always have readers who think you are a spammer.

Few people on the other end of email marketing (the recipients of the emails) give due thought to the differences between UCE and legitimate commercial email.

For some, the two are the same. For many (most), spam isn't stuff they didn't sign-up for. It's simply stuff they don't want. You can have all the permission in the world, but if you don't keep on pleasing the recipients, you end up in the junk folder.

4. Annoying questions are inevitable

Once you're up to speed on key email marketing tactics and issues, remember other coworkers and bosses aren't. Prepare for questions like...

>> If we send one email a week and make $X, we should send one email a day and make seven times that amount?

>> I picked up this list of email addresses off eBay: can you please send them an email about our new product?

>> Email marketing? How hard can that be?

5. Some targets are out of reach

Occasionally you'll see case studies where some e-newsletter gets obscenely high open rates, clicks and orders. They are the exception. They do a lot of things right (which we can learn from) but they usually have a head start in terms of a hugely loyal customer base and an engaging subject area.

Most of us do not have the customer loyalty of a Harley Davidson to work with. We are never going to be an integral part of our readers' lives and they will not lose the will to live if they stop getting our emails.

Obviously we need to optimize and do all we can to build and sustain our impact and influence through email. But there are upper limits. Don't be disheartened. You can do very well without beating the best.

6. Your delivery rates are lower than you think

Your real delivery rates are lower than your reports suggest. After you send out an email, your service or software produces some nice numbers telling you how you've done: number of emails sent, bounces, opens, clicks generated etc.

Many people assume the number delivered is the number sent minus the bounces. Bounces are messages from a destination saying the email can't be delivered. For reasons like a mailbox is too full or the address doesn't exist anymore.

But you don't get a bounce, for example, when an email is delivered and filtered into the junk file for automatic deletion.

You rarely, for example, get a bounce when an ISP decides to send your email to a blackhole, never to be seen again by man or computer.

So your "true" delivery rate is lower than the number you see on your report screen.

7. Vendors give you a skewed view (and not just the way you think)

A rough guess says 95% of articles on email marketing are written by vendors. On the one hand that's a good thing. These are professional folk who sit at the sharp end of the industry. They deal with email marketing all day and every day. Their expertise and experience is enormous.

On the other hand, there's the issue of bias, where you'll need to use your common sense and intuition. And there's the zealot factor.

People (including me) who spend a lot of time with email marketing tend to forget that most others don't. They focus on cutting-edge techniques and may even cast scorn on those not yet availing themselves of the latest and greatest tools and methods.

Do not be disheartened if you're sending out a small customer newsletter and are not yet running a multi-channel, integrated, segmented, personalized, customized, dynamic email marketing program. You can still make email marketing work for you.

Many best practices or funky tactics are not realistic for most people marketing with email. They demand resources, skills or time that just aren't available. In the rush to keep ahead, we sometimes forget to make sure we've got the basics right, first. Walk, then think about running.

8. The other emails are (more?) important

The focus in email marketing is always on broadcast newsletters and promotional emails. But the other emails your readers get from your business play a key marketing role. Why? Because...

A. They arrive at a time when the recipient is most engaged with your business or website (think list welcome messages), or...

B. They contain information the recipient really, really cares about (think customer service emails and order dispatch confirmation emails).

Make sure you pay attention to those, too.

9. I'm not a number, I'm a human being

As part of our obsession with numbers and technology, the human aspect of email marketing often goes missing in action. Our emails get read by individuals. People who aren't concerned about our conversion rates and whether the third link down got the most clicks. They just want a good reason to get your emails. Give them that reason, and the right numbers will follow.

McAfee try very hard (but unsuccessfully) to upsell me on various products and free tools. But this attempt might be the best so far.

The McAfee SiteAdvisor - Spam Quiz presents you with eight pairs of real websites. For each pair, you have to guess which one would send you spam if you submitted your email address to them.

It's an intriguing challenge!

Assuming you don't make the right choices, the incentive is of course to download McAfee's safe browsing tool. Nice idea. Might get plenty of word of mouth (like this blog post).

From an email marketing viewpoint, the quiz is rather frightening. In one case, picking the wrong site would have netted you "1075 spammy e-mails per week."

1075!

Is it any wonder we have problems with email fatigue and mistrust of commercial email?

You can never get enough advice on subject lines, given how they influence whether people decide to read your email or not.

Janine Popick has five tips in this pragmatic post.

She also has some real-world examples of subject lines from big companies, with her thoughts on how she'd rewrite them for more impact.

August 29, 2006

It's all very well getting someone to click on a link in your email. But what happens at the other end?

The destination (landing) page needs to pick up where the email left off, and carry the visitor through to the end goal (a download, a sale, a phone call, whatever).

Jeanne Jennings has seven tips for making those landing pages tango nicely with your email marketing.

There's a lot of crossover here with search marketing. If you do pay-per-click advertising on search engines, then don't forget to apply relevant lessons to your email efforts, too (and vice versa).

You might be forgiven a wry smile when I tell you that this article examining the choice between managing email delivery in-house or outsourcing was written by an email service provider. No prizes for guessing which option sounds best.

But it would be wrong to assume the advice isn't useful. On the contrary, Spencer Kollas has, for example, a list of 14 excellent deliverability-oriented questions to ask of a potential service.

And, frankly, in these complex days, it's hard to find an argument justifying doing it yourself.

If you find yourself struggling to get emails delivered to hotmail.com addresses, you are not alone.

Melinda Krueger tapped the brains of Habeas's JF Sullivan to come up with some suggestions on where to start looking for solutions.

The mysteries of deliverability aren't everyone's cup of tea, so this is where your email marketing service provider might help.

August 28, 2006

I'm putting together an extensive feature article for a major US-based marketing publisher. The topic is how to make better marketing use of emailed account updates and transactional emails (like order confirmations).

If you're a marketer who has made improvements to your own emails in this field, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please get in touch.

(If you're not familiar with the problems associated with recipients using "this is junk" buttons to delete your email, read my background article on spam and unsubscribe buttons.)

Rebecca Lieb has some more details on how a major web-based email address service is replacing the "spam" button with an "unsubscribe" button...for selected emails.

The good news: it's happening and likely to spread.

The bad news: it's not that easy to ensure that your emails qualify for this preferential treatment. And there are other downsides, as Lieb explains.

(Update: this article by Ken Magill has more info, too)

August 25, 2006

A comprehensive guide to everything to do with email open rates, including how to improve them, interpreting rates, measurement issues, and finding averages.

It's written for both newcomers and those with long experience, taking you through from basic issues to advanced considerations in a 4000 word free guide.

And if that's not enough, it includes many links to other articles on the same topic.

Next time anyone has a question about open rates, point them here.

Hmmm...that reads rather too glowing. Perhaps I should point out that I'm the author? I couldn't find a resource that answered every question people ask about open rates, so decided to write it myself.

August 24, 2006

Most of us don't have the time or need to spend all day on email marketing. But if your email operations are big business, then proper analysis is critical.

And those analytical skills need applying to unsubscribes as much as to campaign reports and sign-up data.

In this article, Andy Goldman suggests how you might identify needed changes to tactics and strategy through an evaluation of where and when people are leaving your lists.

The concept of blocks in email marketing tends to refer to problems with getting email delivered.

Another kind of block is the writer's sort. Sometimes it can help to have a few suggestions on hand to kick start a newsletter article, subject line or editorial.

So it's nice that Karen Gedney has assembled a few useful content and copy ideas for you here.

The only one that has me puzzled is the idea of using personal business phrases like "FYI" and "Per your request" as subject lines.

Given that spammers often use that technique to get opens, it seems a little risky to do the same.

August 23, 2006

Data coming out of MarketingSherpa's Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide suggests co-registration is a popular way for B2B marketers to get sign-ups to their email lists.

Sherpa's Anne Holland goes with the flow and outlines a number of different types of co-registration techniques and address sources. She also has some practical tips about how to go about the co-reg process.

Kudos to Ken Magill for getting Al Gadbut to explain the dark matter* in email marketing.

This dark matter is the influence exerted by your emails on recipients, but which is not reflected in clicks or immediate online purchases.

That invisible influence results in more responses or purchases elsewhere. Example: the reader gets your email and goes down the local store to buy the actual product.

Gadbut suggests how you might measure the effect (which can be astonishingly large and is often ignored by marketers evaluating their email efforts).

His control group approach is aimed at direct response emails where you're trying to make immediate sales. But the technique is very suited to spotting the real influence of relationship emails (e-newsletters), which is notoriously difficult to measure.

*Dark Matter is a term from astrophysics and refers to matter that cannot be observed directly, but whose existence can be inferred from its effects on other measurable things. See here for an explanation, if (like me) you happen to be bored today.

August 21, 2006

If you want to create an email marketing masterpiece, you need a decent frame and canvas to paint on.

So while we all can't wait to get out the paint and brushes, it's a wise marketer who takes the time to ensure the email has all the basic bits in place first.

So remove your berets and take a look at this list of key elements for your headers and footers. It's a checklist of content "musts" from the pen of Simms Jenkins.

If you're lucky enough to have products that users are really into then this case study might include some campaign ideas for you.

The article reviews how agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere gets farmers all excited and engaged by giving them a sneak preview of the company's new products.

The preview link comes via email, and arrives before the press embargo is lifted. So farmers get to see their new toys before word breaks out in the media.

Apart from the relationship aspect of the campaign, it offers plenty of opportunities for getting sign-ups and similar. And anything that gets farmers excited without involving subsidies is always worth a look.

Email marketing is a curious mix of art and science. There are lots of things to measure and evaluate, but email design still retains an element of intangible creativity that you can't (yet) mimic with computer software.

Which is not to say there aren't rules and guidelines when it comes to designing emails that get people to respond with a click, tick or credit card. David Baker has a number of relevant suggestions.

August 10, 2006

Just a quick note that this blog will take a little "summer break" until August 21st while I go and fight my way through the holiday crowds down near Venice, Italy for a week. It's a tough job, but some poor fool has to do it.

See you again in a few days time!

Mark

August 09, 2006

Good news in this article from Ken Magill.

Microsoft have started displaying an "unsubscribe" button for some emails viewed through its Windows Live service.

Most web-based email clients have a "report this as spam" button, which we know is constantly used by recipients as a surrogate unsubscribe button. The problem is the spam complaint can count against the sender and end up seeing them blacklisted.

So an unsubscribe button is a big improvement and let's hope it catches on. For it to work, you need to have a decent sender reputation and a line of code in your email header with a valid unsubscribe link that the MS computers can interpret for the button.

There's more info in Ken's article.

A seemingly innocuous news report here about the challenges faced by IT folk when it comes to managing their company's email system.

But buried in there is a bit of thought fodder for email marketers.

Spam is ranked as the second biggest challenge, in particular because image-based spam (where there is no text) is growing and difficult to filter out.

You can't latch onto particular words that indicate a spam message because these words are bundled in the form of an undecipherable (for a machine) image.

If you can't judge spam by the content, then inevitably the people who guard inboxes will turn to other criteria. And that means issues like authentication, reputation and certification.

So whatever you might think of those things now, I'd place a large sum of money on those factors eventually becoming absolutely critical to getting your marketing email through to recipients. We have been warned.

August 08, 2006

The hardest questions I get from visitors usually begin with "Is it OK to send an email to these folk?"

To understand the importance of permission (if you don't already), see the introduction to email marketing article or read a Creed for Email Marketing.

As a rule of thumb, if you have to ask whether or not you have permission to send to a list, then you probably don't. What you're really asking is, "I don't have permission, but can I get away with sending an email to these folk?"

Given the complexities, it's rare to find anyone offering really clear advice on what is or isn't "allowable" under different scenarios. So it's refreshing to see one vendor give it a go.

MailChimp have a long list of typical "I want to send an email" scenarios, accompanied by advice on whether you can, can't, should or shouldn't. Intended for their clients, it's equally valuable for everyone else. The advice is spot on, combining a strong permission-orientation with pragmatism.

Best practice is always to reassure potential subscribers that their privacy is safe if they hand over their precious (for it *is* precious) email address. See 10 tips for better sign-up forms for more on that.

In this article, Christopher Knight discusses how you express yourself in that reassuring statement on privacy. He suggests how you align yourself in terms of language has an impact on how that statement is perceived (and thus a knock-on effect on the decision to subscribe).

Since privacy statements usually go in the category "do it once and forget about it," perhaps it's time to take another look at the wording?

Melinda Krueger takes a look at the efforts of SheFinds.com to turn visitors into email subscribers and has a host of pertinent suggestions which might apply to your own website.

August 04, 2006

If you want to spruce up your blog or website with amusing cartoons about email marketing, blogging and other online topics, here's a free offer for you...

In a wild moment of unprovoked generosity, I decided to let people reprint my marketing cartoons for free. With one or two minor conditions.

The Intevation Report has an excellent overview of how you should approach the emotionally-charged issue of email marketing metrics.

Author Loren McDonald distinguishes between "process" and "output" metrics, and explains why that classification is important.

He then outlines the key metrics you might track and puts forward an 8-step approach to getting your monitoring and evaluation program in order.

And if that wasn't enough to gladden your hearts on a Friday, he also has some suggestions on the typical problems that might be depressing your results.

According to Morgan Stewart, the answer is one. But he's not being facetious. He's merely emphasising the importance of targeting.

Tucked away in this short article in praise of segmentation and such like are a few admirably simple little tips on how to think about slicing and dicing your list appropriately.

The folks at EmailLabs have long preached the importance of designing for preview panes (see an earlier post), but it seems marketers are reluctant to take on board the message.

In this article, MarketingSherpa revisit the topic, clarifying why you really do need to take preview panes seriously.

They also offer a mix of advice on exactly how you can adjust your email design so it encourages interaction and responses, even when brutally massacred by the preview whims of Outlook and other clients / email services.

The biggest limitation in email marketing is seldom our knowledge, but often our (un)willingness to turn knowledge into practical action. Hopefully this polite nudge from MarketingSherpa will spur us into giving preview panes more scrutiny.

August 03, 2006

Very thoughtful article by Chris Marriott addressing the broader picture of how email marketing fits into your wider online marketing approach.

He suggests toning down the excitement about the latest and greatest ways to market online and invites the reader to take a more measured approach to their overall strategy.

Along the way, he has some practical suggestions on how you might better integrate email into the marketing mix.

If you have a largish online budget and a marketing team, you probably want to read this for a little thought food with your coffee.

Top 10 mistake lists always go down well and this is no different. Messrs Popov and Pollard detail a number of email marketing practices that get you a black mark, especially when it comes to deliverability.

It's always worth perusing such a checklist just to make sure you're "clean."

August 02, 2006

Lifecycle marketing sounds quite fancy, but in essence it's about timing your communications to match the recipient's position on the sales cycle.

This can get quite complicated but works especially well when that sales cycle is clear or predictable. Like for a honeymoon: the timing is pretty fixed on that one (hopefully).

In this case study, you'll find details of a series of autoresponder email messages that go out to brides in the months before (and after) their wedding date in order to get them to purchase related travel services.

Should prompt a few thoughts about how you can take this approach with your own customers and prospects.

Ken Magill gets some expert views on just how big the Gmail problem is.

The "Gmail problem" is the fact that Google runs text ads next to emails being read by users of its popular Gmail webmail service.

The actual ads shown depend on the textual content of the email. So your marketing message can cause ads for your competitors to appear alongside.

One way to avoid this is to put your content in a graphic. But Gmail blocks images by default, unless the reader requests them to do otherwise.

You might consider writing copy in such a way as to avoid the words that will likely trigger competitive ads.

I don't mean cryptic or silly copy that takes a term like "lipstick" and turns it into "fashion device for enhancing lip presentation."

But consider Gmail-specific emails that are not upfront "here's the product name, here's the offer" in style. It'll take a little more imagination, but might ensure the recipient focuses on your message and not on the ads next to it.

Back in June, DIRECT Magazine ran a sponsored webinar on the topic of email marketing and multivariate testing. The premise is that this approach saves you a lot of time in picking out the key factors affecting response.

Anyway, you can now access the archived webinar for free (well, inevitably in return for your contact details) here.

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