No man is an iland

In an online world reduced to 140 characters and 2 minute video clips, nobody (allegedly) has time to deal in anything but absolutes.

Yet it’s the nuances…the gray areas…the edges…that contain much insight into what works, what doesn’t and, most importantly, what might work better in the right circumstances.

Here are four email marketing concepts that seem wrong but might be right. Let me know what you think.

1. HTML outperforms text, so use plain text emails

The superiority of HTML email to plain text email for driving response has become an accepted truth in email marketing. And not without justification.

Alchemy Worx, for example, recently demonstrated the power of images: adding a small, relevant icon to an email boosted total clicks by over 50%.

Now that nearly all marketing email is HTML email, might you try the occasional plain text message as an alternative?

Why?

First, plain text is now so rare that it could actually stand out more among the plethora of multi-colored HTML missives. Like a blank canvas in a Picasso exhibition.

Second, the success of HTML for one-to-many marketing communications means it’s associated with exactly that: one-to-many marketing communications.

Plain text still says “personal” (all my personal email is plain text) and/or “important” (much transactional email is still text-based).

This might work well where the message itself:

• needs to do something different to stand out…such as in a reactivation campaign (see this Firebox example)
• is specifically “human”…such as a message from the CEO or some other personality (see the Crutchfield email in the middle of this post)
• tackles a serious or emotional issue, such as a charitable cause, politics, or the economic crisis (see this example from the Obama Presidential campaign)

A good compromise for such emails might be a rich text approach, with a subdued HTML masthead (so logos etc. ensure recognition in the preview pane) and then plain text in the main message?

2. Send a sign-up link to people who are already signed up

Now why would we waste valuable email space with a sign-up link, when the people getting our emails (obviously) have already signed up?

Most senders don’t bother: Chad White recently reviewed unsubscribe practices among top retailers and found only 18% included a “subscribe” link in their emails.

There are two main reasons for adding such a link to your email template.

First, people forward and share your emails with others. Others who are not on your list.

Seeing your wonderful offer or content, they want to sign-up themselves. Seize the moment by including an appropriate link in the very email they’re viewing.

Second, people may unsubscribe from your list, then want to resubscribe later when their circumstances or interests change appropriately. They may dig out an old copy of your newsletter to find out where to sign-up.

This is how MarketingSherpa does it:

Now, the skeptical among you will ask why they can’t simply go to your website and find a sign-up form themselves. Well…

1. The more you make people work to find something, the less likely they are to do so.

2. Not every homepage has an obvious sign-up form or link (another issue).

3. Add a prominent unsubscribe link to the top of your email

That’s right: encourage people to unsubscribe by putting a second unsubscribe link up the top of your email. Like I do:

I first argued for this option two years ago (though it wasn’t my original idea) and others have since explored the issues, notably Loren McDonald and Chad White.

Spam reports are a big contributor to your reputation as a sender of email and thus your ability to get delivered.

The theory is that an unsubscribe link at the top of your email encourages people to use it who might otherwise use the “report spam” button to achieve the same aim.

And it works for some:

• Groupon revealed that adding an extra unsubscribe link like this did in fact reduce spam complaints by 30%.
• ESP StreamSend reported complaint drops of up to 75% for clients using this practice.
• Conversion Voodoo added the link up top and noted, “we’ve seen slightly higher unsubscribe rates, but substantially lower instances of spam complaints”
• The University of Pittsburgh took this step as well and said that “…since moving it, we’ve seen our number of “Mark as Spam” complaints drop significantly.”

Others are less positive. Commenting on Loren’s article, Jason Henderson noted, “I tested putting the unsubscribe link at the very top a few years ago for one company, and it was a nightmare. Many people actually started clicking on it by accident…”

So is it really a good idea?

I believe it works much like a guarantee. But the majority of other commentators take a more circumspect view.

The consensus seems to be that it’s worth doing whenever you stray from the best practice path. For example, when you’ve had a longish break between email sends or your email’s relevancy isn’t as good as it could be.

Of course, if you’re worried about spam complaints, then you need to address the cause. In such cases, the top unsubscribe link just tackles the symptoms of sub-optimal email practices.

4. Think about mobile email design although nobody is using your mobile-friendly link

One approach to the mobile email challenge is to put in a link to a “mobile version” of your email and then see if anybody clicks it.

If nobody does, then there’s no need to make your emails mobile-friendly.

Or is there?

It’s not unusual to get very few clicks on that link. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. For example:

1. I’ve yet to see a “mobile link” format that displays sensibly and is easily clicked in every mobile operating system, device and email client. Your mobile link may simply be unintelligible or unclickable for many mobile users.

2. Many email designs may display “adequately” on mobile devices (particularly on newer smartphones like the iPhone) so there is no pressing need for the user to fall back on the “mobile-friendly” link.

This is especially likely if you have one-column, image-lite emails.

3. Many people use their mobile devices to triage their emails. They are viewing your email on their mobile device, but saving it to view in full later on a desktop when back in the office/home.

As a result, mobile link use can vastly underestimate your mobile readership.

More evidence supporting that statement comes from studies of email client market shares.

The iPhone’s share, for example is reported as 7.3% and 4% by Campaign Monitor and Fingerprint respectively. And Pivotal Veracity found that “…nearly 10% of B2C marketers’ mail was opened on a mobile device”.

Rather than rely on mobile link clicks to estimate your mobile audience, use the tools provided by the above to gain a better idea. Or look at your website analytics to get a handle on the mobile habits of your target audience.

How do you then make your design more mobile-friendly? Start here.

Watch out for some more “illogical ideas” in a couple of days time…

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• Channel: Email marketing tactics

“There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”

So spoke the philosopher Francis Bacon.

“Lost” sales through abandoned shopping carts or order forms can be recovered by sending the customer one or more emails reminding them to complete the transaction.

The devil is in the detail of course.

If you’re any experiences or opinions to share on this, I’d love your comment.

Do cart abandonment emails work?

According to a study by Experian CheetahMail, abandoned cart mails produce 20 times the transaction rates and revenue of standard email campaigns.

Others also report success with the tactic. For example…

• Diapers.com said that abandonment emails generated over 10% of total email marketing revenue, but accounted for less than 3% of their outgoing email volume.
• S&S Worldwide revealed “…a 25% conversion rate on personalized transactional messages focused on items left in carts.”
• And SeeWhy’s Charles Nicholls is quoted as saying that Disney produces “…$2 for every remarketing email they send.”

This post highlights the main issues surrounding this special kind of remarketing email. It also links to reports and articles that will help you find further insight and examples of such campaigns.

1. Content strategy

There is no “one size fits all” approach to the shopping cart or order form abandonment email. And the strategy behind the tactic has follow-through implications for other issues, notably timing and privacy.

One common strategy is to see the abandonment of a shopping cart as an opportunity to immediately win-back the customer with a promotional, salesy approach…intercepting the customer as they “exit the store”.

Proponents of this strategy favor emails sent out immediately after the end of the relevant website session (or within 24 hours or less).

The email reiterates the benefits of the abandoned products or services. It may also include an incentive (coupon, discount, free shipping) related to the purchase and/or upsell/cross-sell opportunities.

For example…

“Complete your order and we’ll give you an additional 10% off the already low price”

The other common strategy is to approach abandonment with a more customer service orientation, pitching the message as a helpful reminder of an unfinished transaction.

The email offers customer service contact details and information related to potential problems with the mechanics of the ordering process. For example…

“You recently placed the Liverpool FC 2008-2009 season review DVD in your Acme Retailer shopping cart. This is to let you know we only have one copy of the item left in stock. Complete your order soon to avoid disappointment.”

At a more sophisticated level, content can be tailored to the stage at which a cart or order form was abandoned.

For example, if the session ends after requesting credit card details, an abandonment email might include information on alternative ways to pay for items.

Hybrids of the promotional and service approaches are, of course, possible.

Where experts agree is on the following content points:

• Use a service pitch as much as possible, even if the email itself is essentially a marketing message.
• Where possible, include direct references to (and images of) the products left in the cart.
• Where possible, link back to the individual’s actual shopping cart at the stage they abandoned, rather than to a generic home page link. The more work required to complete the transaction, the less likely it is to happen.

2. Timing

The issue of when to send out the email is another one that divides experts.

The earlier you send an email, the more likely you are to capture the transaction before the customer has bought elsewhere or changed needs.

Equally, the earlier you send an email, the more likely you are to capture a transaction that might have happened anyway…when any incentive you offered is lost money.

And the more likely you are to raise Big Brother issues (“are you watching me?”).

If you take a purely service perspective, then timing can be adjusted to service opportunities. For example, you can send out an email when:

• a cart is about to expire
• when a product in the shopping cart is about to go out of stock (or becomes available again)
• when a product is about to go up/down in price

Another timing issue is whether you want to send out a sequence of emails, rather than just the one.

A MarketingExperiments study, for example, found the greatest conversions for one online service came from the third email in a 3-mail cart recovery campaign.

3. Permission, privacy and legal issues

As so often with email marketing, there is a difference between what you can do and what you should do.

To send this kind of remarketing emails, you need the right permission and legal framework. Which normally means an appropriate opt-in from existing customers, or getting the email address and opt-in as part of the early shopping cart transaction process.

Some marketers will send remarketing email without an explicit opt-in to do so. This is a grey area, whose legitimacy (from a legal and permission perspective) usually depends on how transactional (rather than promotional) the emails are.

Above and beyond this is the privacy issue.

One woman’s targeted helpful email reminder is another’s evidence of a Big Brother society. Again, this is why many choose to approach these emails from a customer service, rather than purely promotional perspective.

The positive implications of remarketing emails are easily seen in terms of opens, clicks and conversions. The negatives are not.

It’s hard to tell whether emails to those who do not convert are having a negative impact on their attitude to the sender, particular if you’ve drifted further and further away from the permission ideal.

One possibility I’ve not yet seen is to monitor how cart abandonment emails impact the future purchase behavior of recipients.

Are they more or less likely to purchase from you in the future? And are they more or less likely to abandon their carts again in the future?

That kind of analysis gives you a proper overview of the long-term benefits of your efforts.

4. Success measurement

Vendors are quick to report increased response rates and revenues from remarketing emails, but those aren’t the only factors you need to account for when evaluating this tactic’s success. Others are:

Costs: while the variable cost per sent email is likely to be tiny, there may be wider costs involved in building the capability to send the messages.

Examples include the costs of integrating web analytics with your email system, or service charges from your ESP. However, once setup, this kind of campaign usually runs on automatic.

Incentives: additional incentives to complete a transaction commonly produce higher response rates. But, of course, you need to test the use of incentives carefully, to ensure any response lift justifies the cost.

You also need to ensure you’re not training buyers to abandon their cart deliberately in the hope of getting a discount by email a few minutes later.

Control group: not all the responses are incremental. At least some of those customers would have returned and completed the transaction anyway.

The only way to truly calculate the incremental benefits is to compare results with a control group of customers who abandon carts, but don’t receive the follow-up emails.

As remarketing technology becomes more sophisticated, you may even be able to adjust the timing of reminders to known abandonment patterns of individual customers.

If someone regularly abandons, but always completes the transaction within a week, you don’t need to send them a reminder after 24 hours. If someone never abandons, maybe you would.

Where to find more detailed insight, answers and examples

Useful reports:

1. The remarketing report
14 page Experian CheetahMail report reviewing the concrete results of abandonment emails and the impact of different elements within those emails.

2. “Shop and Abandon” Cart Study
Statistics from a Listrak analysis of how top retailers actually implement abandonment messages, with more advice in an associated white paper.

3. More Merchants Rely on Email to Minimize Cart Abandonment
Six-page report from the e-tailing group based on a survey of 20 merchant cart recovery email efforts. Includes examples and recommendations.

4. Shopping cart recovery tested
MarketingExperiments report on two tests to see if email follow-ups can rescue sales lost through order form abandonment. The study also includes general advice on templates and best practices.

Useful articles:

1. Marketing to the abandoned cart
Broader article which includes advice on different email approaches and some examples.

2. Mitigate Shopping-Cart Abandonment
Includes seven best practices.

3. Basket abandonment: what is industry best practice?
Suggests timing and content should depend on the stage at which the cart is abandoned and the customer’s past cart abandonment history.

4. Are you being served?
Explores the fine line between helpful customer service and customer stalking, in the context of remarketing.

5. Driving your web conversion with retargeting
Interview with SeeWhy’s Charles Nicholls. Read through the comments too.

6. Bird Watching: Shopping cart abandonment emails
Retailers and commentators weigh in via Twitter with their opinions on (particularly) timing.

7. Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts with Email
Review of relevant stats and key areas to think about.

8. Leverage Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails
Bronto’s strategists take my post and offer a heap of additional insight.

Find related articles:

• Channel: Trigger and automated emails

Marketers concerned about the effect of inbox clutter on email response rates will not like news emerging from Marshalsea Mail, which represents some 153 million email accounts across North America and Europe.

According to Arthur Clennam, the company’s Director of Public Relations, the ISP is increasingly concerned by the IT processing resources consumed by growing spam volumes.

As a result, Marshalsea has announced that it plans to stop spam filtering for one hour a day in order to cut costs.

Spam tying up too many resources

Clennam notes:

“The long-term effects of the economic downturn have forced us to search for innovative ways to reduce costs and email filtering is one of the largest cost factors in running a provider service”

The current plan is to shut down spam filters for one hour during the night, when, says Clennam…

“…spam volumes are highest, but legitimate email messages are relatively infrequent.”

The actual hour of the stop will vary day-to-day to prevent spammers adjusting their send times to take advantage of the filter-free window.

What about the user experience?

Clennam dismisses concerns about the impacts for customers:

“Many users have desktop clients that will assume spam filtering responsibilities for that hour. In essence, we are simply transferring the processing burden from the ISP level to the desktop level.”

But what about people using Marshalsea’s webmail interface?

“Since the spam filter stop will always be when legitimate email traffic is at its lowest, bulk deleting spam emails will be relatively simple for the end user.”

Clennam also notes that some of the money saved (which he estimates at some $7.5 million a year) will be reinvested in better and faster services for clients, which will more than compensate for the small inconvenience caused by the filter stop.

New feedback mechanism for marketers

With a typical user getting pre-filter spam at an average rate of some 742 mails every 24 hours, it still means many inboxes will fill with an additional 62 emails per day.

As well as the inevitable impact on user attention, mailers sending to Marshalsea’s customers during the actual filter stop will inevitably see response rates crippled.

Recognizing the potential impacts for legitimate bulk email senders, the ISP plans to offer a twin solution.

1. Senders subscribed to the existing Marshalsea feedback loop will automatically be added to their filter feedback service, which provides seven days advance notice of the exact hour when spam filters are lifted.

2. Senders can apply for Marshalsea certification. Mail from certified senders that arrives during the filter stop will be automatically held and delivered only after spam filters are returned to operation.

The immediate response from marketers was less than positive. In his blog, William Dorritt, VP Marketing at Merdle Enterprises, described the proposed move as “penny wise, pound foolish”.

To learn more about Marshalsea, click here and check the date of this post.

Related posts:
Webmail services trial “send more like this” button
New “report subscriber” button launches

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• Channel: Marketing humor