No man is an iland

September 29, 2008

My never-ending search for email marketing insights sent me to Lehigh University and their study of deceptive behavior online.

The link has the details, but MBA students were much more willing to lie (about small amounts of money) when communicating via email than when using pen and paper.

Email seemingly makes people feel less accountable for what they write.

If we take the study at face value (people lie more when using email), what lessons are there for email marketing?

1. Does the transient nature of email lull you into stretching the truth more than you should? Making commitments you won't keep? Neither help build trust: accountability is the New Email Marketing.

2. Does this concept work in reverse? Are people less trusting of email than the same message in direct mail or other media? What can you do to enhance trust in your messages?

3. Is an additional benefit of sending a combined email/direct mail campaign a trust boost for the email?

4. Whether you think the survey is fascinating insight, self-evident or misguided, it's a reminder that trust matters. (Spammers and phishers have already made this an issue for email marketers.)

5. If MBA students are so willing to lie over what were trivial dollar amounts, is it any wonder the financial system is FUBAR? In email marketing, good ethics is a practical and industry must.

September 25, 2008

Facing a few days of travel, I jotted down twelve honest questions to ask myself about my own email marketing efforts while away.

You may find value in tackling these yourself. And perhaps you have others to help keep us all away from the black hole of mediocrity (if you do, let me know in the comments).

So...

1. Are you sending out email just because it's scheduled or because it makes sense to do so (for both recipient and sender)?

2. Can you still explain why you send out the emails you do? When was the last time you reviewed your email strategy? How else could you use email to your advantage?

3. Is your email marketing budget based on how much you (don't) want to spend or on how much you want to make?

4. We all agree that you need to do something about inactive addresses on your list. How do you define "inactive"? Have you looked for patterns in the data suggesting critical timeframes or triggers that turn people into inactives? Can you use that insight to develop a preemptive "reactivation" program?

5. What about "actives"? Have you considered rewarding those who have stayed loyal and responsive over a long period of time?

6. Do you worry more about what ISPs think about your email than what subscribers think about your email? If you take care of the latter, won't the former take care of itself?

7. Why are you not testing more? And is the reason a valid one or an excuse? Is it because you're worried you might discover you've left money on the table? Are you afraid to change something just in case it temporarily makes things worse?

8. Are you doing things because it best serves your objectives or because it's what everyone else in your market does?

9. Are you evaluating your program using the numbers produced by your ESP or software? Or are you using this data to produce other numbers that are more meaningful in terms of what you're actually trying to achieve?

10. Why are you happy with your "open" and clickthrough rates? What are you doing about the majority who aren't "opening" or clicking?

11. When was the last time you actively solicited feedback from subscribers? Are you afraid of what they might tell you? Don't you see feedback as valuable intelligence and a conversation starter?

12. Is each email you send out really the best you can do?

September 24, 2008

In her post on beginner mistakes, Anna Billstrom suggests that owners of small lists might apply advanced tactics "by hand": personalizing marketing email with individual notes, etc.

It's a concept that deserves expansion to a wider context.

A lot of winning email tactics are effectively an attempt to automate and reproduce a traditional human exchange of communication.

If you go into a small store and buy a product, you (should) get a kind word and acknowledgment of your purchase.

So we set up order confirmations and thank you emails to reproduce that "real life" process automatically and digitally.

If we hand someone a business card at a meeting asking them to send more details about their product, we expect an immediate response.

The supplier won't take the card wordlessly and walk away: they'll likely express thanks for our interest and maybe talk a little about what we can expect to receive.

So whenever someone signs up to a list, we reproduce that offline experience by triggering a welcome message, about which much has been written (most recently by Dylan Boyd and Justin Premick).

But in the rush to automate, have we forgotten the opportunity to connect the old-fashioned way? With an email "handwritten" by someone?

Now, writing individual notes to each of your 2 million subscribers might be a little resource intensive and raise some ROI issues. That's not what I mean.

There are also clever tools out there that pull content together from different sources to create unique emails based on what you know about the subscriber. So it looks like a "just for you" email. I don't mean that either.

But suppose we think for a moment about how we might react if a particular online interaction took place offline. And use that to decide whether that interaction might justify a more personal email intervention.

Here's what that might mean in practice...

1. Can your system or staff flag customers who make an online purchase that is more than X times the average?

The CEO / sales manager / customer service rep can then send a personal email to that buyer. One that goes beyond the standard platitudes you find in the automated order confirmation that "normal" buyers get.

If you owned a jewelry store, you wouldn't go out front when people buy the $40 friendship ring. But when someone wants the $10,000 diamond engagement ring, wouldn't you be out like a flash to give some personal attention?

2. What about flagging those who buy X times more often than the average customer? Or have been on your list for X years and are still responding?

3. What if someone on your database is blogging about your products and sending you heaps of prospects? Would they deserve a personal email?

4. If sign-ups come from an offline source, how about a field in the welcome message for the "owner" of that source to insert a personal message up top?

"Hi Tom, here's the official welcome to our newsletter. Thanks for signing up for it at the store. If you ever need anything, just call in or you can reach me on jim@bigretailer.com"
- Jim Smith, Manager, Vienna branch.

"Hi Jane, thanks for stopping by our booth at the ACME show last week. Here's the official welcome to the newsletter you asked for. If I can help in any other way, drop me an email at susan@bigb2bsupplier.com"
- Susan Johnson, Sales Manager, NW division.

I'm sure you can come up with more and better examples.

One of my favorite authors on email newsletter issues is Michael Katz. In his latest newsletter, he put it best when he wrote:


Indeed.

(P.S. This kind of personal intervention needn't always be an email, either. A real letter or a phone call might substitute. Remember letters?)

Tags: email marketing, personalization, trigger emails, welcome messages, customer service

An A, N, K and S.

Time to publicly thank the companies whose sponsorship support keeps this blog a free, independent, productive and public resource.

Campaigner, who are running a series of 100 daily tips to ensure your retail email program is ready and optimized for the critical sales period from Labor day to the New Year.

VerticalResponse, who have added surveys to their existing email and postcard marketing solutions.

StreamSend Email Marketing, whose deliverability webinar is now open to the public, not just to existing customers.

Listrak, who recently added a Geo Tracking Map feature to their email marketing solution.

EmailReach, who have a free trial of their delivery audit.

mobileStorm, who just released a new white paper on email deliverability.

Topica, who have a 14-day free trial of their email marketing and sales solution.

sendcube, who let you tag your email links to identify broader trends beyond per-link clickthrough data.

September 23, 2008

Time for another introductory article for those learning the jargon of email marketing.

This one covers the call to action or CTA. What does it mean? What does a CTA look like? Why is it important? Where can you find more advice on the topic*?

So, um, CLICK HERE to learn more. (Or should that be "continue reading" or "Get it now, you've not a moment to lose!")

*Suggestions always welcome.

Tags: email marketing, call to action, CTA

September 22, 2008

At its heart, email is simply communicating with people.

I know that. You know that.

Which is why the new email marketing, for example, focuses on relationships and the subscriber as empowered individual.

All the super new tools and technologies developed by email marketing services help make that communication more effective.

Technology enables targeting, trigger emails, tailored content and lots of other tremendous things we'd be hard pressed to implement with Outlook and an abacus.

Technology helps us send more relevant email...but we need to take care how we "present" this relevancy.

If that concept seems a little strange or unclear, consider this example:

Suppose a funky integrated web/email system knows that I visited the digital camera section at your website several times, but never got as far as placing an order.

Technology whips into action, sending me an email with some featured offers from exactly that product group. Relevancy in action. Brilliant.

But is the email made more relevant if you add the words, "We noticed you were browsing the digital camera section, so thought you might like..."?

That approach works for a human-human interaction in a store, where an attentive sales person can helpfully point the bemused browser to the right product.

But when transferred to a digital (email) environment, does this "we noticed" approach come across the same way? I suspect not.

It doesn't add anything to the relevancy of the email, which is self-evident from the offers included. But it does encourage the Uncanny Valley effect. Or as Seth Godin puts it:

"When you get too good at faking it, people freak out."

You can make emails relevant by using what you observe about the recipient (their previous click behavior, their website browsing habits etc.).

You can make emails scary by telling people that you're observing them. Even when your privacy and communication practices are as ethical as they should be.

If you doubt the likelihood of negative reactions to email copy that essentially says "we're watching you," here are two real-world examples:

1. Mathew Patterson discusses the startled reactions of one Dell subscriber to a "You haven't opened our email" message.

2. And Sundeep Kapur describes the Big Brother reaction he felt when a sales rep called and told him what email links he'd clicked on.

It's OK to be pleased about the subscriber insights gained through technology. But it's probably best to be a little circumspect about communicating this fact directly. Agree?

September 18, 2008

Many marketing emails begin with a large image. Usually a delightful piece of creative art designed to engage, excite and drive response.

Thanks to image blocking, this visual feast often looks like this when viewed in a preview pane (this is a real example):


A minimalistic work of art commenting on the emptiness of an online existence? Certainly not an "engaging email experience."

So what are your alternatives?

The obvious one is to redesign the email so you do away with the big header image. Use smaller images, throw in some HTML text and effects, etc.. And that's probably your best choice.

But what if you want to keep that big image? What if you want to retain that big visual impact? How do you tackle the blocked image problem illustrated above?

Here are some approaches I've seen...

Alt text

Of course, the first thing you need to do is put in some alt text (see yesterday's article). Since there's plenty of space for it, you can be fairly creative in writing something that encourages people to pay closer attention, scroll down, click, activate images, etc.

Use a preheader

The impact of that beautiful image will not be lost on those who see it if it's preceded by a line or two of preheader text. And those who don't see the image have something to read in their preview pane.

Most preheaders are limited to links to web versions of the email and a plea to get added to an address book. Be more inventive and add in some teaser text that encourages people to pay attention, much like the alt text seeks to do.

Get some inspiration from Chad White's RetailEmail blog, which often features examples of innovative (pre)headers.

Send it to the image-friendly list segment

When I highlighted this idea a while back it got a mixed response. But I've seen it recommended elsewhere since.

How about sending the big image header just to those recipients who opened your last X emails. If they recorded, say, three opens recently, then they must have had images enabled (otherwise the tracking image would not have been triggered.)

This solves the image blocking problem by bypassing it.

Don't specify alt, height or width attributes

A bit experimental this one: you'll need to test it.

If you leave out the alt text and don't specify the height or width of the image, then a small icon-size block or square gets displayed by most clients and webmail services when images are blocked.

(Even Outlook, with its security warning text, will still give you a long thin box.)

This has the effect of lifting the text below the image up into view in the preview pane.

So if images are suppressed, the recipient gets to see what's below the image, rather than just the big blocked image. (Assuming you have some sensible copy, headlines or links below the image, too.)

Ignoring those image attributes is counterintuitive to normal best practices, but might make sense in this specialist case.

Thoughts? Other solutions that let you keep the big image?

September 17, 2008

We have many truisms in email marketing that seem simple at first, but get more complicated as you dig deeper.

Alt attributes (alt text / alt tags) are a good example. Everyone knows you should use them as part of your strategy for coping with image blocking.

I played around with alt attributes and various email clients and webmail services this week. With some surprising results.

Alt attributes can sometimes hurt your design more than they help. See the test results for details. Get ready to raise your eyebrows.

Tags: email design, alt attributes, image blocking, image suppression

September 16, 2008

Part 15 of an ongoing series...

[We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer. See the New Email Marketing index page to access the rest of the series.]

Bullied into attending an exhibition of French [something]ism, the "aha!" moment came when a canvas full of apparently random blobs of paint morphed into a Provence garden when seen at a distance.

(Art lovers have permission to roll their eyes and go "duh!")

Many email marketers are like the myopic gallery visitor: they get too close to the canvas. They only focus on the detail. The next email. The individual blob of paint.

But the recipient of those emails also views the canvas from a distance, where each blob of paint...each email...is part of a bigger picture: the image, experience or brand projected by your organization.

So the new email marketing sees each email in three contexts.

First, it must work as a standalone message, achieving whatever goals are set for that message (driving an immediate sale, confirming an order, etc.).

This is what most of the email marketing literature focuses on.

Second, it must work as part of the total email experience you impose on recipients.

While each email is indeed an isolated experience, it's also part of a sequence of emails that gets delivered to the recipient. (And that sequence includes all the emails from your organization: marketing, transactional, personal...)

So the new email marketing considers how the design and impact of each new email is affected by what went out before. And considers how this design and impact affects what goes out in the future.

Which leads to such questions as:

• Is your email output coordinated across the organization?
• Are you accounting for all emails when you search for the optimal contact frequency?
• Do you think only in terms of immediate response or can you use email to build towards other goals: nurturing prospects, creating long-term loyalty, building expectation, building a brand?

Third, each email must work as part of the wider brand or business. As a point of communication, interaction or information, each email influences how people regard your organization as a whole.

What good is a multi-million branding program when your email's administrative functions are a letdown?

What good is a multi-million branding program when the sender isn't clear?

What good is a multi-million branding program when your order confirmations are banal and uninspiring?

What good is a multi-million branding program when you don't transfer this brand and personality into your emails?

What good is a multi-million branding program when you only use email to offer coupons and discounts?

What good is a multi-million branding program when your local stores or offices are sending email without any guidance?

So...are you applying random blobs of paint or are you building a masterpiece?

In the words of Vincent Van Gogh, himself a dab hand with the paintbrush:

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

Part 16 coming soon...

September 15, 2008

Got a cold, it's raining, it's late, so not a time for serious posts or articles...


More email marketing cartoons here.

September 12, 2008

MailChimp just published a report demonstrating how segmentation affects email marketing results.

In short, yep, segmentation boosts responses. But there was an exception...campaigns using list segmentation led to slightly higher unsubscribe rates.

Why do you think that might be?

One theory from MailChimp is "perhaps the segmented campaigns were sent in addition to normal batch-and-blast campaigns, which resulted in annoying duplicate messages."

Or possibly just email fatigue per se?

I wonder if more targeted email might lead to more trust in the sender. So people would be willing to use the unsubscribe link rather than set up a filter or repeatedly delete future emails. (Spam reports didn't increase with segmentation, just unsubscribes.)

Any other ideas?

Offering sacrificial cups of tea to the Goddess of Creativity is my preferred option when staring at the blank piece of paper that is destined to be the next email or blog post.

If her absence, many experts would advise reviewing past content or previous sales offers, noting what got the best response, then using that as a guide for future content and new offers.

It makes intuitive sense: through their past clicking behavior, you let your audience self-select topics and offer types. Hurrah! More relevant emails!

Yes...and no.

The problem is that your audience may share certain characteristics, but not all. Allowing self-selection skews content and offers in favor of the group with the loudest voice, potentially alienating the rest and causing knock-on damage to your deliverability and brand.

Let's explore and explain the point...

The audience for my own newsletter consists of people with a shared interest in email marketing. But within that list are groups with different priorities. Some are focused on deliverability. Others on providing email marketing services. Others have a keen interest in design issues.

In fact, I know that I get the best open and clickthrough rates when I feature articles on email design. The temptation, then, is to put more and more design articles in the newsletter to keep response rates up.

But what that means is that the nature of the email newsletter drifts. It morphs from an email marketing newsletter into an email design newsletter.

The result?

Those folk not focused on design become increasingly alienated. They open less, respond less, delete more, unsubscribe more.

But the design folk are thrilled...they open more, respond more, delete less, unsubscribe less.

The average results spat out by the ESP could mask the fact that we now have list apartheid.

First, we've lost influence on a significant portion of the list.

Second, we've changed the list audience to one that no longer matches the brand or target audience of the associated website or business. (Kevin Hillstrom cites a real-world example in this post.)

Third, we may now have a disconnect between the promises made on sign-up pages and what we actually send. So new subscribers will have false expectations. Which in turn leads to disappointment (bad for the brand), and potentially more spam reports (bad for deliverability).

(Yes, we could change the sign-up copy. But when was the last time you looked at yours? And the process of drift is often a subconscious and subtle one that you're not aware of until it's too late.)

The problem is a kind of negative segmentation. We did the right thing by "targeting" our emails, but we're only targeting one segment of the audience. We forgot to address the targeting needs of the other segments.

So what's the solution?

The cheap and easy one (so mine) is to continue to send a mix of content and offers. Enough variety to keep a majority of the audience happy and engaged in the long-term. (My open rates are not falling.)

The better solution is positive segmentation, where you identify these audience segments and then treat each as their own list, with their own stream of emails.

So I could pick out those subscribers who only click on design articles and send them "design" emails. And the rest of the list gets a more balanced mix of articles. Then everyone's happy.

Segmentation works, but needs thought.

Tags: email segmentation, targeting, email marketing

September 10, 2008

The natural state of the universe is to gravitate toward chaos. The natural state of an email program is to gravitate toward mediocrity. It has a seductive pull.

One of the jobs of the email marketer is to avoid this mediocrity.

Through an awareness that production ruts are easy to get into, hard to get out of.

Through creativity.

Through a willingness to innovate.

Through quality.

And through inspiration from others.

Those who get the basics right are set fair for the future. But once you've established a quality program, what's next? Is being better than mediocre enough?

What keeps you top?

What's to stop someone else producing "quality content" and stealing your audience?

What makes your emails unique and irreplaceable? (Particularly if you don't have a unique niche or an irreplaceable brand behind you.)

What gives you the edge, so that subscribers would stick with you when they clean up their subscription list?

Developing unique content is a strong option. And Gary Levitt has some ideas on that. (The article inspired this post.)

What about personality?

Personality is how you say it (voice and style) and present it (creative design), rather than what you say and present (content).

Personality can make generic content unique. Personality can turn words and pictures into communication. And personality helps you avoid the natural drift to mediocrity that affects us all.

Quality content, permission, creative design, value, relevancy, timing, personalization, customization etc. are important factors that take your email marketing amplifier all the way up to 10.

But it may be personality that takes you up to 11.

What makes your emails irreplaceable?

Tags: email newsletters

September 09, 2008

Every now and then, I put up an article with detailed, but clear and jargon-free, explanations of some basic email marketing concepts. For those who don't live and breathe this stuff (which is most people).

The latest appeared today and covers the issue of image blocking. What is it? Why does it matter? What can you do about it?

Other articles in this occasional series include:

• What is a landing page?
• Email deliverability for newcomers
• RSS and web feeds
• Bulk email lists: to buy or not to buy
• Subject lines

September 08, 2008

There are three alternatives when it comes to putting videos in email: the embedded code, image and embedded file approaches.

Embedded code

In this approach, the email includes a few lines of HTML which calls or fetches the video file to display and run in the email itself. Much as you might embed a YouTube video in a blog post or web page.

Pros: People can view the video directly in the email. But since the video file is stored elsewhere, the email itself is still a small file: it downloads quickly and takes up no space.

Cons: Well, nearly all the major email clients and webmail services will typically block videos from playing this way. See, for example, these images showing how a Flash movie displays (or not) in Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail etc.

Image

The image approach is the current best practice:

• You put the video up on a website.
• Then you take a screenshot of the video player in action.
• Then you code your HTML to fetch and display this screenshot image when the email is opened, and link it to the web page where the actual video is available.

Pros: This is much safer than the embedded code approach, since images are much more likely to be displayed than video files. You can also be fairly imaginative in how you present the video and encourage people to click on through.

Cons: Images get blocked, too. However, there are tried and trusted solutions to the image blocking problem, most notably adding a text link below the image and using alt attributes in the HTML. See here for more details.

[It's not clear if these two techniques can be applied in the case of "blocked videos," since blocked video content does not degrade gracefully or relatively uniformly in the same way that blocked images do.]

Embedded file

The third approach is to send the entire video file along with the email.

A while back, I reported skeptically on a case study which suggested that embedded video worked. Unfortunately, we didn't know what the author meant by "embedded." Embedded code or embedded file?

Reader Anna Yeaman from graphic design and photography studio Style Campaign kindly took the trouble to find out and report back. The answer was "embedded file."

In this post, she goes into detail describing how you might embed a video file directly in an outgoing email, and she catalogs the results.

As you might expect, some (but not all) important email clients and webmail providers don't support the embedded video Anna used. But when they don't, they still display an associated image and link.

Which suggests this approach offers the best of both worlds: in-email video, but a backup solution if the file won't play.

However, while this looks intriguing from a technical viewpoint, there are practical considerations to worry about. Anna draws out the many pros and cons of the approach herself in the above post. Some additional thoughts...

• Sending huge video files might entail significant bandwidth costs for senders
• Not to mention how recipients might react, especially when not on fast, desktop office connections
• It's not clear how this might affect deliverability
• If you're going to send massive emails, they have to be worth the wait for the recipient: there's a bigger onus to provide value with the video
• Might this have most value for small B2B lists or more personal B2B messages?
• There is some indication that embedded code will work more often in future for certain types of certified emails. In which case embedded files would lose their attraction.

But I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts on the whole concept...

Tags: video emails

September 04, 2008

Collecting data in the sign-up form is a challenge (see Part 1).

Which means many marketers now focus on other opportunities to gather the kind of subscriber information that lets them send more relevant emails.

Here a few examples...

Tactical tracking

Most specialist email marketing software and services allow you to track who is clicking on what links in your emails. And many now integrate with website analytics so you can continue this tracking through the subsequent website visit.

The information gleaned from email and website tracking is the meat behind many advanced tactics such as segmentation and trigger messages.

However, the use of click data for planning future emails tends to be a secondary benefit. After all, those links are primarily there to facilitate a desired response (like a sale).

Consider, then, making innovative use of email links specifically to gain more information about subscribers.

For example, many marketing emails contain navigational menus or headers in addition to the main email message. These menus/headers allow recipients to click through to different parts of the website, even if the main call to action in the email isn't relevant.

You can design these navigational elements so they reveal more about the clicker.

For example, eROI describe how one t-shirt retailer's email presented a series of gender/size combinations as navigational links.

Not only does this let the recipient click through to relevant products (those that match their size and gender), but the resultant click gives the sender important information: this particular email address is likely a male, size L.

The two-stage sign-up process

A common tactic is to require just an email address and perhaps first name on the sign-up form, but the page displayed after the "submit" button is clicked (the sign-up confirmation page) gives people the opportunity to provide yet more information about themselves.

Since the sign-up is already complete, this does not dampen subscription rates. And since the information is entirely voluntary, people are much less likely to bother putting in false data.

The advice on data collection in sign-up forms regarding trust, value and subscriber benefits applies equally here.

Preference center updates

Subscriber preference centers are online web pages where a subscriber can go and update their information: change email address, manage their list subscriptions, change content preferences, modify sending frequencies etc.

These are often the pages that appear in the two-stage sign-up process outlined above.

Preference centers reflect modern thinking about returning control to subscribers and are widely considered a good thing, at least in part because of the information they give you on (surprise!) subscriber preferences.

Those email programs that use such preference centers tend to link to them unobtrusively in the footers of their emails.

But most subscribers will never bother to visit the link...unless you give them good reason.

Consider, for example...

• making the link more prominent
• sending entire emails reminding people of the value of using their preference center (see "Demonstrate the Connection" in Part 1), or
• give them a special incentive to pay it a visit

Selective opt-outs

Subscribers often want to selectively opt-out from an email list. Which means they want to stop some kinds of email, but keep on receiving others.

A common example is when online media sites send article summaries and standalone ads out to their subscribers. The latter might want to stop the ads, but keep the summaries.

Selective opt-outs let people stay on your list but unsubscribe from "these kinds of emails."

A sports retailer sending out tennis and golf promotions to their main list could put two unsubscribe links in each email.

One takes the recipient off the list.

The other puts a stop to "tennis-related messages" (appears only in tennis-related emails) or "golf-related messages" (appears only in the golf promotions).

This keeps people on the list and lets them self-select the content they want.

Surveys

Another option is simply to ask, a data collection tactic Stefan Pollard highlighted in a recent article on building better segments.

Like preference centers, it can take some effort to get people to respond to surveys. Jeanne Jennings has some tips, but you can use the link tracking tactic explained above here, too.

Instead of hoping people clickthrough to a formal survey page, ask a single question and get people to indicate their opinion by clicking on the most relevant answer in a list.

Each answer is a link taking you to a "thank you for your feedback" page. Track the links to match answers to email addresses.

Nick Usborne includes a one question survey in each issue of his plain text Excess Voice newsletter.

Survey participation is part of a broader and better email experience for subscribers. And the answers can make good content for future issues. But I bet Nick's also using the results to plan future newsletter content, too.

Cross-referencing

The obvious one saved for last...don't forget that email marketing does not take place in isolation. An email address may be associated with an existing customer or website visitor account which already contains data you might use to send more relevant, valuable emails.

So, your turn...any other ideas for getting accurate subscriber information?

Tags: subscriber preference centers, email marketing, email tracking, list building, selective opt-outs, surveys, database management

September 03, 2008

One of the longstanding debates in email marketing is how much information you ask for when someone signs up to your email list.

You obviously want an email address, but what other data should you require?

You might, for example, want a first name, so you can personalize the email. Or a zipcode, so you can send targeted announcements about in-store events. Or you might get people to select specific topic categories they're interested in, so you can send them content that reflects these interests.

The problem is there are conflicting objectives in play.

The more information you have about a subscriber, the better you can target and personalize your emails. Which is a good thing for both sender and subscriber.

But...as you ask for more information before accepting a subscription request, so you get fewer people completing the process. You also get more people entering fake data, a topic that has stimulated much debate in the blog world of late.

So, do you focus on list growth and clean data and ask for no more than an email address? Or do you focus on targeting and insist on getting more data, knowing this means a smaller list and some bad data, too?

The answer is neither.

Because of this very conflict, marketers have developed tactics and strategies to improve sign-up rates and ensure you have the kind of subscriber information that lets you send more relevant email.

Today's post looks at what you can do before you get the sign-up. Tomorrow's Part 2 looks at what you can do after the sign-up...

If you insist on would-be subscribers handing over personal data before you accept the sign-up, you have quite a challenge on your hands. But not an insurmountable one.

The golden rule is not to ask for any information you don't really need in order to send people better (for them) and more effective (for you) emails.

In a marketing world obsessed with data, it's easy to collect all sorts of information just for the sake of it. Resist the temptation.

Demonstrate value

You can see a sign-up as a transaction. I lend you my email address and in return you send me emails I want.

The more information you want from me, the more you're asking me to "pay" for those emails. And the more value I expect in return. Equally, the more value you offer, the more likely I am to "pay" in data.

It's another reason to be explicit about the benefits of being on your email list. Don't expect people to sign-up to "our email list" just out of curiosity: we've all been burned too much for that to happen. Tell people what they will get and how they can benefit.

(Not to mention that setting the right expectations is part and parcel of good email list management.)

Demonstrate trust

There's also a correlation between a willingness to submit (accurate) data and the degree of trust in the company behind the emails.

Unfortunately, the base level of trust when it comes to giving marketers an email address is, um, not high...to say the least. So establishing that trust before the sign-up is difficult, even if you have a nice, "trustworthy" brand.

Privacy and email certification program seals, memberships of relevant business or standards organizations, explicit privacy policies, reassuring privacy statements etc. can all play a potential role here.

But while such visual clues may have value, you establish trust with today's empowered subscriber by showing, not telling.

It's not enough to say you're trustworthy, you have to live it. Your actions as an email marketer will give you an email reputation which might reach prospective subscribers, too.

Which means respecting permission, accepting accountability and all the other things listed in the New Email Marketing series. This, in turn, will also affect how existing subscribers respond to your emails and future sign-up opportunities.

Demonstrate the connection

The easiest way to encourage submission of accurate data is to make it clear how the submitter benefits from doing so.

I'm not giving you my zipcode and date of birth to sign-up for your email newsletter. But I might if I know this means you'll tell me about special offers in stores close to my home and send me a special birthday coupon: two examples cited by Janine Popick.

Sometimes, the connection between the required data and the value of the emails is clear without explanation (e.g. everyone understands why you need to submit a valid email address to get future messages). If it's not clear, make it so.

Get the data post sign-up

None of these techniques are a foolproof panacea to the sign-up abandonment and false data problem. So many marketers prefer to get the sign-up and then use various tactics to draw information from subscribers further down the road.

We'll explore some examples tomorrow...

Tags: email marketing, list building, database management

September 02, 2008

There's a huge disconnect between what marketers do and what experts say they should do.

[There's also a huge disconnect between what experts do and what experts say you should do, but that's another story.]

Now there are understandable reasons for ignoring best practices, the most common being a lack of knowledge or a lack of executive/financial support for improvements.

But the cynic in me suspects there are two other reasons which are less understandable. If they apply to you, consider a rethink. Because you're just holding your program back.

The 100-year old uncle excuse

"My uncle smoked 40-a-day and lived to be a hundred. Clearly smoking isn't bad for you."

You're not following best practices, yet your email marketing program is successful. So why change?

This attitude often accompanies a belief that experts are pursuing their own agenda (vendors) or living in a fantasy world (academics) or stirring the pot for their own promotional purposes (bloggers).

While healthy skepticism is good and proper, the "I'm doing fine as I am" approach is flawed...

1. The benefits you are measuring may be hiding costs you're not measuring: image and brand problems that only show up further down the road, suppressing future sales and slowing list growth. These are the hidden costs of lazy email marketing practices.

2. You may just be lucky or be doing something particularly well that is -- for the moment -- compensating for the odd bad practice or three. But your luck could run out soon.

There are, for example, those who refuse to believe that continuing to email inactive subscribers can have any negative impact. A sent email is another brand impression, right? Which is a good thing, no?

Unlike publicity, however, any impression is not a good impression...thanks to the report spam button.

For those who need hard evidence, Michelle Eichner describes here how mailing to old, inactive subscribers did do clear, serious damage to an email program.

3. All the trends, especially in the deliverability world, point to receivers of email (ISPs) and recipients of email (your subscribers) getting choosier and choosier in terms of what they will accept in inboxes.

4. Best practices aren't just about protecting you from disaster, they're also about improving results. Get the basics right and move on from there to start getting more from your email investment.

It's too difficult, expensive or time consuming

Yes, some of the more advanced techniques and tactics rely on access to tools or expertise that, frankly, the majority of us don't have or can't find the required investment for.

But there are so many ignored best practices that involve minor tweaks requiring a few minutes of your time. No exaggeration...just a few minutes to make small changes that can make big improvements to your success.

Examples:

• Adding alt-tags to your images
• Adding a pre-header to your template
• Replacing the ESP's template welcome message with one of your own.
• Putting your email through a design and spam testing tool (at a cost as low as $5 per email)
• Ensuring your from and/or subject line includes a brand, business or personal name your recipients will recognize
• Reviewing and tweaking the chain of communication a subscriber sees when they sign-up for your list, like these guys did.

Any other quick fixes you can recommend?

[Hat tip to Loren McDonald for sparking this riff with his article on email industry disagreements.]

Tags: email marketing best practice, email deliverability

If you're looking for some solid reading/listening to get up-to-speed quickly on the basics of a solid email marketing program, try these nuggets...

1. Email marketing for bloggers
A six-part series which covers the basics of list building, testing, tracking and copywriting.

2. Broken Graphics and the 40/40/20 Rule
Short, but poignant, reminder that email marketing can still learn from the basic understanding of direct response marketing that was developed years before anyone started using the @ symbol.

3. InformIT OnBizTech
Browse down the page for about 40 minutes across three podcasts, reviewing many of the key principles that go into a successful email marketing strategy and program.

4. Sweating the details
A collection of advice aimed at retailers on developing winning email marketing campaigns.

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