eMarketer’s recently published report, “Email Marketing Benchmarks: Key Data, Trends and Metrics,” concludes that email is still one of the most effective marketing tools, despite all the other channels now competing for the attention of consumers.

The report cites three trends:

1. The increasing use of mobile devices for checking email
2. The use of personalized and triggered emails
3. The use of “Big Data” for creating more targeted email marketing

Most interesting to me were the finding applicable to B2B marketers, particularly in regards to mobile and triggered emails.

In the past, those of us who write about email marketing separated out B2C and B2B issues because they differed. One would typically read an email marketing newsletter or post assuming it addressed B2C only unless stated otherwise. Any advice specific to B2B email marketing would be labeled as such. In our own email marketing blog, we strived to ensure we were offering enough B2B specific content.

These days, many of the challenges apply across the board. This makes sense because businesses are consumers too—real people, whether at home or at work. As consumers’ behaviors and expectations change, so do those of the buyers behind a business. If you’re a consumer who signed up to receive emails from Land’s End because you like their clothing, and you’re also a systems analyst responsible for recommending a new ERP platform for your company, your consumer experiences and preferences would naturally affect your expectations.

Look at the B2B adaption of social media for marketing purposes. If we were so good at keeping our personal/consumer and professional/work mindsets separate, businesses probably wouldn’t have ventured into the social media arena. However, people are people, and as our behaviors and expectations change in one part of our lives (the personal part), that can’t help but affect the other (the professional part).

Having said that, some aspects of B2B email marketing still require a different approach, as this report makes clear, especially in the case of mobile and automated email marketing.

What B2B marketers need to know about mobile email
Obviously, mobile usage continues to grow at a rapid pace. We can see evidence of this everyday both at work and at home, but research also proves it to be true. The eMarketer report states direct digital marketing solutions provider Knotice found in the last quarter of 2010, only 13.36% of communications were opened on mobile devices, but by the second half of 2011 that number had climbed to 27.39%. Now, according to this report, more than one third of emails are opened on a mobile device. According to a BlueHornet study, about two-thirds of US email users had used their mobile device to sort through email before reading it on the desktop.

However, there’s another caveat to this: an open doesn’t guarantee a click, whether it’s an open on a smartphone or a desktop. Although email open rates have gone up, click-through rates (CTRs) have gone down and now average below 5%, according to research from Epsilon and the Email Experience Council (EEC). This decline in open rates might be the result of the increasing the number of emails hitting inboxes. Mobile design has an effect on CTR, too. The BlueHornet study pointed out that 69.7% who received a non-optimized mobile email deleted it.

What B2B marketers need to know about automated email
Despite the overall decline in CTRs, one type of email continues to do well, generating noticeably higher than average click throughs: automated emails (also known as triggered emails). According to the eMarketer report, triggered emails generated a click-through rate of 10.4% (more than twice the average) in the first quarter of 2012. Some businesses have seen conversion rates as high as 50% with these automated messages.

That’s a very compelling argument for making automated emails part of your mix, especially as a B2B marketer today. Research cited in the report indicates the number of B2B emails will increase significantly. “Email research firm The Radicati Group estimates the total number of business emails sent and received daily worldwide will climb from 89 billion in 2012 to 143.8 billion in 2016.”

As a result, B2B marketers will see a lot more competition in the inbox. That’s on top of the competition from other channels—work-related and not. Keep in mind that just because someone is at work or at a desk, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still distracted by attention grabbers like Facebook and Pinterest. And that distraction can happen on any screen too, be it a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone.

The best email marketing continues to evolve and change, whether we’re entrenched in B2C or B2B or both. Take note of the trends called out in reports such as this one. Be relevant and test religiously, whether your audience is at home or on the job.

Marco Marini, CEO
ClickMail Marketing

If your direct email marketing program is intended to drive traffic to a landing page or website, chances are you have abandonment issues. Not because you’re doing anything inherently wrong, mind you. It’s just the nature of the online world. Some people will show up at your website and simply not buy. Even the best email marketing will have people abandon their shopping after following through on a call to action. In fact, 88% of online shoppers abandon, according to a 2009 Forrester Research estimate.

It might be the prospect lands at a page then clicks away without buying (called up funnel abandonment) or it might be the prospect goes as far as starting to buy from you--or register with you--then clicks away (called down funnel abandonment).

Either way, they’re clicking away. And every click on the Back button is a lost revenue opportunity for you.

Is that it? Are you done? Must you stand idly by and let them go? Not if you use a strategic email abandonment campaign to re-engage those who clicked away.

At ClickMail Marketing, we’ve been partnering with Smarter Remarketer, helping clients use re-engagement campaigns that kick in when a prospect abandons a landing page or website. During that time, we’ve realized there are two vital reasons for implementing an abandonment campaign: relevance and ROI.

1. Relevance: Emails that follow up on a specific prospect action, such as clicking through to a landing page or adding an item to a shopping cart, are by default highly relevant to that prospect. We can’t know the reason for not following through and purchasing. For all we know, the cart was abandoned because company showed up unexpectedly or the boss called the prospect into her office. It might not be a decision not to buy. It might be real life got in the way. So imagine the relevancy of an email sent to a prospect who was that close to purchasing? The email could remind them of the selected items or even offer a discount if purchase is made within a certain time.
2. Return on Investment: The same logic we apply to factoring the real cost of email deliverability issues applies when computing the real cost of losing a customer because they’ve abandoned your website. Simply look at your abandonment rate and multiply that by your average sales amount to get an idea of the money you’ve left on the table. Chances are, you’ll see a potential ROI that makes the time and cost of implementing an abandonment campaign make both dollars and sense.

In addition to the immediate benefits of higher ROI, consider the longer term benefits of brand and customer relations, plus having a bona fide reason to send that prospect an email. And not just any email, but a very targeted and relevant email, one very likely to get opened, which in turn will help your email deliverability by showing the ISP a high level of engagement.

Getting started
Due to the importance of adding a re-engagement element to your email marketing program, you want to be sure you’re using the best email service provider you can, one that maximizes deliverability and helps automate or simplify abandonment and other triggered emails. Make sure your current vendor (or any ESP you are considering) has a proven record of actual, real life successes too. Ask about measuring and tracking results, and how the vendor will be held accountable for helping you to implement such a campaign. You can learn more about abandonment emails and get advice on choosing a vendor here.

There’s more to reaching out to abandoners than a simple, “Hey, what happened?” email. Adding an abandonment and reengagement email program into your mix makes sense, not only because abandonment emails are perfectly relevant, but because they make an essential tool for ROI, thanks to their ability to reclaim what would have been a lost sale.

Marco Marini, CEO
ClickMail Marketing

While we were updating our ESP selection guide last year, “integration” was the recurring theme. Email is no longer a standalone marketing channel. Integrating email with social media marketing, web analytics and more has become a necessary capability for many email marketers.

And integrating email with content marketing is part of that holistic approach.

Content and email are ideally suited for a symbiotic marketing relationship. Content marketing can both inform and draw from email marketing.

Create Once, Use Repeatedly
As you’re planning your content pieces, whether that content consists of words, video, photos, podcasts, webinars, infographics, or a slideshow, consider also how you can promote that content to your in-house email list. Maybe it’s a B2B webinar, a tradeshow video or a cookbook offer. Whatever the content and your method of lead generation, consider making that same content available to appropriate people on your email list too.

As long as your content marketing program is healthy and strong, you’ll always have relevant reasons to email your audience or at least some segment thereof.

We call that creating once, using repeatedly. And that’s how your content marketing can give your email marketing a boost.

You can also use your email marketing to improve your content offerings by testing to see which type of content gets the best response rate. Maybe you thought your audience would prefer video but email marketing A/B testing shows a preference for whitepapers. Or perhaps your case study offer falls flat but your archived webinar does wonders when they go head to head while testing your offer. No matter the winner, you can use that information to refine your content marketing program, offering more of the types of content your audience seems to want. 

Use Email, Get Content
Content marketing can inform your email marketing program…and it can draw from it too, when you use your email platform for generating more content.

Your email newsletter should be considered part of your content marketing strategy and probably already is. Less obvious, however, is the messaging created specifically for your email marketing campaigns, and even the one-off emails sent by your sales or service teams. Review the messages created as part of your email marketing program to find nuggets or even gems you can repurpose elsewhere as part of your content marketing strategy. Also keep tabs on the information your employees send out in response to email inquiries. These can be very targeted and readable pieces of content you can repurpose in your blog, newsletter, case studies or elsewhere.

Also consider using email to conduct surveys and solicit customer feedback. These can be sought after via email and the content provided by your customers can then be repurposed and used in online marketing, your blog or in your social media. Ask subscribers to submit photos, videos or even drawings, and you’ll open up a whole new avenue for content generation that can’t help but be relevant, since it’s your customers who created it.

Email is the multi-purpose marketing channel that can be integrated with pretty much every other marketing channel, whether that’s a technical integration or a tactical one. Make sure your content and email marketing strategies are working together to maximize your results from both.

Marco Marini, CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Unsubscribes. The dreaded rejection by someone who was once a willing recipient of your email marketing. Ouch.

Unsubscribes are often viewed as a necessary evil in the life of every email marketer, with emphasis on the word “necessary.” We not only offer unsubscribe links because people want them. We do so because the law requires them!

Rather than treat the unsubscribe like a freeloading, undesirable distant cousin we’d rather ignore, however, email marketers are better off making the most of the situation to be subscriber-centric and keep people happy by following best practices.

If you search for examples of unsubscribe worst practices, you’ll find plenty. I wish I could tell you all the worst examples come from small mom-and-pop operations that don’t know any better, but I can’t. Plenty of unsubscribe sins are committed by big, well-known brands that really should know better.

Two Big Reasons to Be Unsubscribe-able
The unsubscribe is required by law, yes, but beyond that, we suggest knowing and implementing unsubscribe best practices for two very important reasons:

1. When people can’t easily unsubscribe, they are more likely to simply report your email as spam which negatively impacts your email deliverability rate. And without the highest possible email delivery, you can’t have the highest possible ROI.
2. When people opt out, you want to leave them with good feelings about your brand. They might be unsubscribing now, but that doesn’t mean you have to lose them as a customer forever…unless you annoy them.

With those two reasons in mind, consider the following unsubscribe best practices and how well you are—or aren’t—adhering to them.

Make It Overtly Obvious
Make the unsubscribe obvious. This best practice probably seems obvious, yet you’d be surprised how many companies bury the unsubscribe link in an email. Look in your own inbox. Open a few random emails from companies and see.

How does it get hidden? It can be included in a list of links making it hard to spot among the clutter. It can be overshadowed by graphics or in teeny tiny font that’s hard too find. The unsubscribe link should appear at the bottom, where people expect to find it, without any clutter hiding it and big enough to be found a.s.a.p. when someone wants it.

Even when found in plain sight, sometimes it’s in obscure language, so it doesn’t look like an unsubscribe and is overlooked as a result. Words like “manage,” “delete” and “edit” aren’t clear enough. State it plainly, using words like “unsubscribe from these emails” or better yet, “stop getting these emails.” Don’t make people guess. They likely won’t. They’ll opt for the spam button instead.

Make It Easy as Can Be
Once it’s easy to find, make it easy to do. Are you making people log in to unsubscribe, really? It happens! Don’t ask for captchas, either. When they click the unsubscribe link, send them directly to that page, not to a page with a lot of other options. Or make them confirm their email address for you.

Your best practice is a one-click unsubscribe. That is all. They click a link, you take them to a page, they click on a button…done!

Give Them Another Chance
Now, this doesn’t mean you’ve lost them forever. If you have a preference center, direct them there to change the options. It could be they still want to hear from you, just not as often or with different content. This is after letting them unsubscribing easily, however.

If you don’t, you can let them know you are sorry to see them go and give them a chance to change their mind with the click of another button to resubscribe. You can follow up with an email confirming the unsubscribe and thanking them for being a subscriber. In that email, give them a resubscribe link. Whichever route you choose, remember that this is your last chance to leave them with good feelings about your company and word your message accordingly, in a friendly, helpful way. Avoid being apologetic or groveling. I’ve seen this in an unsubscribe confirmation. It’s not pretty.

Leave Them With a Loving Feeling
An unsubscribe doesn’t have to hurt. It can be a pleasant, even humorous, experience. My favorite unsubscribe experience had me laughing out loud: After clicking on the unsubscribe link, I was taken to a webpage and asked, “Are you sure?” To answer yes to that question didn’t mean clicking on a “yes” button. Rather the words on the button were “I’m out of here.” That was funny enough, but then a popup box appeared asking, “For the love of god, are you sure??” I laughed out loud at that. I still unsubscribed, but I enjoyed the experience. They made me go through two clicks for the unsubscribe, but I didn’t mind because it was playful and unusual.

You don’t have to be a comedian to be good at unsubscribes. I share this story because it illustrates how to leave them with warm fuzzies for your brand. Just because they don’t want your emails doesn’t mean they’re boycotting your brand altogether. And wouldn’t you rather leave them smiling?

Reduce the Urge to Unsubscribe
Unsubscribe best practices are smart marketing, but even smarter marketing is having fewer unsubscribes. You can decrease the number of unsubscribes you get by proactively managing and meeting expectations:

• Manage expectations by being clear from the very beginning what types of emails you will send and how often.
• Send a welcome email to reiterate these expectations.
• Deliver relevant, targeted and timely email messages that meet expectations.
• If it’s within your capabilities, offer a preference center on your website to give recipients more control over the content and timing of your emails.

Unsubscribes might not be fun for you as the email marketer, but you can lessen the pain for both you and the subscriber by following best practices and making the most of every situation.

Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

We exist in a best-practices driven industry. Email marketing has many variables and it's a constantly changing landscape with ISPs and regulations changing rules on us on a consistent basis. We crave the tried-and-true rule, the best practice known to deliver the best result, the sure thing.

We have plenty to learn and use, to be sure! Search for "email marketing best practices" in Google, and you’ll find far more than you could ever digest among the search results.

Best practices for using social tools in email, however, are yet to be clearly defined. In fact, given the pace of change in social media, with constant Facebook updates and new technologies like Google+, these so-called best practices might forever elude us.

Those proven techniques we can turn to with confidence, however, are common sense and come from the email marketing world. Today I offer you four common-sense tips for using social tools that will help you maximize your results: 1) Offer great content. 2) Be very, very clear. 3) Test everything. 4) Go both ways.

Offer Great Content

No matter how much the email marketing industry changes, this common-sense tip will always be. And when you're seeking sharing to social, your content has to be so great that people want to and willingly share it. That idea isn't new. We've strived for "share worthy" content in the past. We had another name for it was all, because what we want back then was a forward. Now we want a share. Great content leads to greater use of your social media links by your subscribers who want to tell their network about your email.

Be Very, Very Clear

When you include social media buttons, be sure to ask for the action you want and let the person know why they should click. A plain, standalone Facebook button will garner only so many clicks compared to a Facebook button with words that ask for action and offer a benefit: "Like us on Facebook for fabulous fan pricing." Everybody knows what a Facebook button is, but not why they should click on it. Ditto for Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media buttons.

In addition, words help you to be clear on the purpose of a button. A button for sharing is not the same as a button for liking, after all.  

Also be sure to put the buttons where they make the most sense...for your subscribers. Figure out when/where in your email your subscribers are ready to take action. This you might only be able to determine by testing, which takes us to...

Test Everything

Is there a magic spot for your "like" button that will generate the highest number of new Facebook fans? Probably. Can I tell you where that is within your email? No. As far as best practices on technical details when using social media tools, these can only be determined by you. If I could sit here and tell you placing the Facebook icon in the lower right corner will drive the most "likes" on your Facebook wall, I would. But I can't. It all depends. Testing is the only way to optimize placement of social media tools like a Facebook button for your particular business and audience. In fact, testing is the only way to optimize every aspect of your social media tools, from where you put the links to which links you offer. So test. Everything.

Go Both Ways

Yes, using email to drive subscribers to your social media sites or to share is smart marketing. Also be sure your email to social works as your social to email, as well. Your social sites can promote your email subscriptions and offer email signup forms.

And One Last Note...

Even when integrated as part of your marketing matrix and going both ways, email and social differ. And taking a customer relationship into the social realm can certainly alter customer expectations. Once you’ve crossed the social media line, you might need to revisit the tone and personality of your email communications. You've taken the relationship to a new level of intimacy via social channels, and using a corporate or more formal tone in your email marketing might run counter to the warm fuzzies a subscriber now feels for you.

Following these four tips should help you determine your own best practices for using social tools in email...meaning those practices which work best for you and your goals.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

In email marketing, relevance continues to drive success. No matter what happens in the marketing space or technology space, successful email starts with relevance.

But true relevance means being relevant to every subscriber, and that's a tall order! With 5,000 or 50,000 or even 500,000 names in your database, how can you be relevant to all of them, all of the time?

By tapping into your data sources. You have the data needed—or can gather it. Then put it to use to be relevant. That data can shape your communications with each subscriber, making relevant one-to-one communications possible. And that means you’re going to have database infrastructure needs that you may not have set up today: a relational database or data mart. 

Relational databases are necessary when you have one-to-many type relationships, which most email marketing is. The days of one message to many recipients are over. To be relevant when you're communicating as one company or brand to many subscribers, you must get different types of data into one common view so you can segment and target those communications. That’s what a relational database can allow you to do. 

A relational database is useful for the segmentation and targeting required to be relevant. You want database segmentation and targeting because smaller, more targeted email lists consistently perform better in terms of opens, click-throughs and conversions. Using a relational database, you should be able to search and select based on date ranges, values and value ranges. This enables you to send the right message at the right time to the right audience.

Unless you have an extremely small database with not many fields, you simply can't manage this with a regular database. For example, if you have a flat database file with one record per person, but for each person you have three actions to keep track of, you have to have three records for each person. In a relational database, you can have a table with one record per person, tied to another table containing the actions. Without this, you'd have to merge that data and each instance would have a unique record. One subscriber record could easily turn into many, and you wouldn't necessarily know the relationships between them. 

If you decide a relational database is the way to go, make sure your ESP is part of your conversation from the get go. There are some pieces you'll need from them to make it all work. You’ll want to know what kind of data management tools the ESP offers, and if they support relational databases. You'll also want to know if they can create a data mart or offer integration to a data mart solution, if that makes more sense for you. 

You'll also want to ask your ESP about subscriber keys. How do you—if you have different lists and you different databases—keep track of subscribers? How do you know that the person in database A is same as person in database B? There needs to be one field for that person that ties it all together. That’s what we call a subscriber key. 

A subscriber key is a field that contains a value to uniquely identify each subscriber in your system. It enables you to associate different values to that one subscriber. It's the "key" to making separate relational databases work. If you’re going to use a relational database, make sure your ESP supports a subscriber key other than email address for uniquely identifying a record. 

Triggered emails are getting plenty of attention these days. If you’re a B2B email marketer, don’t skip over those blogs and articles on triggered email. You can use them too.

Typically B2C sales cycles are short while B2B sales cycles are much longer. The consumer purchase is less expensive and time consuming, while the business purchase is costly and requires research and buy in. Often a B2B sales cycle is three or more months, with several people involved in the decision, while a B2C purchase can take place online in just a few clicks.

For all of those reasons, some B2B marketers think triggered emails don’t fit in their email marketing strategy.

Examples of common B2C triggered email messages are shopping cart abandonment, asking for feedback, reminder emails, welcome emails, and emails based on past purchases or behaviors. If you’ve been involved in email marketing for any length of time, you are probably familiar with some or all of those kinds of triggered emails. They are all intended to drive action.

B2B email marketing, on the other hand, is typically more about providing information on a solution without selling, and thought leadership. It’s a little tricky too, because if you have sales reps nurturing relationships with specific potential customers,  you don’t want your automated emails to interfere in some way with the relationship building the sales rep is doing. Finally, the goal of the B2B email is different. While the consumer counterpart is striving for the sale, the business messaging is usually striving to engage. An email recipient isn’t going to click on a call to action and invest $20,000 in a software system simply because your email was so compelling. But she might pick up the phone, download a whitepaper or register for a webinar.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use triggered emails! It means you use them in light of the different environment you’re selling in. Also consider that many types of triggered emails would be appropriate if sent “from” the sales rep, not the company. Below are some examples of triggered emails and how they could be used in B2B email marketing:

The welcome email
The welcome email is welcome in any industry! When a business customer signs up for your newsletter, webinar or some other offer, a well-written welcome email is a must. And I stipulate well-written because you don’t need a dry, boring, we’re-just-sending-this-because-we-have-to type message. Your welcome email should thank the recipient, remind them what they’re getting, and do a little to build your brand and relationship.

The “you might also like” confirmation email
Yes, this is typically a B2C email and a marketing technique made famous by Amazon, but why not use it after a whitepaper download or webinar registration? Surely you have papers or webcasts that are similar. It could even be that someone joins a group that makes them a likely candidate for something like a paper. Your confirmation email can tell the recipient about these other offers too. 

The post purchase email
OK, it’s not really post purchase, it’s more a follow-up. While the B2C world sends out post-purchase emails, the B2B marketer can do similar emails as a follow-up to a download, registration or event. You can set it up so these emails come from a sales rep.

The soliciting feedback email
Unlike the email you might send soliciting feedback from consumers who’ve made a purchase, you can solicit feedback after some other action a prospect has taken, like a download. There’s no reason not to ask if they found the case study helpful or what they learned from the webcast.

Triggered emails are an effective way to increase reach, relevance and conversion no matter your industry. Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, there are rules you can and should set up to automate these communications.

Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Email marketing and blogging share one core feature that neither can exist without: content.

Creating content takes time and effort. For email, you have offers to formulate, copywriters to hire, drafts to review, words to tweak, calls to action to polish. For blogs, you have keywords to use, writers to manage, and frequency to maintain.

You can save yourself time and effort by repurposing content between your email marketing program and your blog program. 

When you create something once and use multiple times, you’re getting more bang for your buck. You can also get more out of user-generated content, and other types of content like video and photos this way.  Since blogs require a lot of content to be effective, you want to tap into every source possible, including your promotional emails and your informative, newsletter-style ones.

At ClickMail, we archive every email newsletter on our website, write a follow up blog summarizing the article and provide a link on our blog to the archived issue. We’ve served our list by providing valuable content with the newsletter, we get the SEO benefits of the additional content by posting the newsletter on our website, and we get the blog content, additional SEO benefits, and a link back by posting a blog. We’ve accomplished all this by simply repurposing one newsletter article.

You can also save money while generating blogs and emails by tapping into your customers for free content. For this user-generated content—which tends to be more relevant to your audience, as well as objective—solicit feedback post-purchase using email. Use any testimonials in your blog, email newsletters, and promotional emails; or let customers contribute to your blog and draw from that content to repurpose it for email content, too.

To save even more time and money by repurposing content, think beyond posts and articles to announcements, webinars, podcasts, video, photos, press releases, customer testimonials and reviews. Consider all content potentially email and blog-worthy with edits to make it appropriate to the channel. If it works in your blog, it can probably be repurposed in your email. If it works in your email, it can probably be repurposed for your blog.

Also remember that your blog works as an SEO tool, helping people who don’t know about you to find you. This may lead them to sign up for your emails when they see your blog on the search results page, click through to it and then your website, and like what they see. So repurposing email content in your blog might just help you grow your in-house email list, too.
 

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing


 

When do fewer emails mean higher ROI? When your emails are hyper-targeted and truly one-to-one. That doesn’t mean you need a huge team of people contacting customers one at a time, like the telemarketers of old.  It only requires you to tap into existing technology and know-how to make it happen.

I like to say “happy birthdays mean happy profits” because birthday emails are a perfect example of this concept. When someone subscribes to get your emails, you get their birth date along with the other data you gathered about them upon signup. That date goes into your system and on or near the customer’s birthday, depending on how you have it configured; an email is automatically triggered offering a birthday bonus of some kind, like a free ice cream cone if you work for a chain of sweet shops, or a free movie rental if you’re marketing your video stores.

These emails get a remarkably high response rate because they are so targeted…and therefore, welcome.

You’re not limited to birthday emails, however, nor are triggered emails only appropriate for B2C marketing. Triggered emails come in three types—recurring, transactional and threshold—and can be used in a variety of circumstances:

• A recurring email can be a birthday email like we’ve described above, or could happen a certain period after a purchase, to remind a customer that it’s time to renew
  
• A transactional email can be one email, like a follow up to a purchase or download, soliciting feedback, or even a drip campaign following a purchase, giving tips on how to use the product (and also up-selling)
  
• As a threshold email can occur when a customer’s behavior has gotten to a certain point, say if they’ve purchased three songs from one album, you offer a discount on the album

In the past, marketers resisted moving from batch-and-blast to this kind of targeted, triggered approach because the cost seemed prohibitive. Between building the API and the software to handle the emails the technological cost made any chance of an ROI a slim one. Today, however, all top-tier ESPs and many secondary ones offer triggered messaging capabilities. That means you can make your email marketing program even more relevant without increasing your staff or IT costs.

Before we dive into the benefits and how-to’s of triggered emails, let’s review the terminology:

• Triggered means triggered by an event: A trigger based message is one sent out in response to a certain action within an email or on a website
  
• Targeted means segmented, with dynamic content, so different recipients get different email content and even colors and graphics
• Drip marketing is a series of messages triggered by an event, such as a purchase or whitepaper download (also known as lifecycle messaging)

You’ll also need to define the event or events that trigger the website. The event might be a click on a website, time spent on a page with no shopping cart activity, a coupon download, or a link clicked in an email. Or, to return to our earlier example, it might be date driven like a birthday or anniversary.

One-to-one triggered emails have a much higher ROI so even though you’re sending out fewer emails, you’re making more money off the targeted ones. But what do you need to do to be set up for that kind of triggered email?

1.    An ESP or in-house solution that enables triggered messaging

2.    An API to automate the flow of data from your CRM or in-house database to your ESP or internal ESP

3.    A content library, so your system can take from it to place the appropriate message in each email

Also consider that these types of emails typically use a transactional delivery engine vs. a marketing delivery engine, i.e. point-to-point transmission vs. one-to-many broadcast.

The one caveat happens when you start to collect the data upon which to define your rules. Do not ask for too much. You can ask for up to four pieces of information upon sign up, but any more than that, and your abandonment rate will soar. Instead, be very clear what information you want to start out with and only ask for that (based on what you can really use). Then over time you can ask for more information, and append that information to that subscriber later.

The idea of this kind of targeted email marketing might be daunting, but it’s really not difficult given today’s technology and pre-existing services. As a result, your triggered email messaging can be as sophisticated as you want to make it, to get the most ROI from your highest value customers. For example, your system can score a customer based on behavior, such as purchasing a higher-priced item, and offer an exclusive and limited price on another item as a reward.

Marketers have to start automating their email campaigns based on customer behaviors, such as shopping cart abandonment. Companies who’ve done this have experienced higher click through rates and conversion rates, without increasing staff costs. Alternatively, automating email programs around customer behaviors with hyper-targeted messages will result in a higher email marketing ROI.

And it leads to a higher engagement index, which means more of your subscribers are engaging with your email, which in turn will give you a better standing in the eyes of the ISPs…which in turn will improve your email deliverability and get you into more inboxes…and so on and so on and so on.

Sounds pretty happy to me!


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Choosing a top tier email service provider (ESP) can be tough. With so many ESPs to choose from, each with their strengths, it can be challenging to make head-to-head comparisons.

That's why last year we published a seminal whitepaper on how to rate ESPs, to help email marketers make an ESP choice based on the factors most important to their own organization and their unique requirements…not on any one ESP's selling points. The whitepaper was immediately popular. Apparently marketers were hungry for that kind of objective information.

This year we updated the whitepaper and turned it into an annual guide, to stay current with the ever-changing world of email and ESPs. This new free, vendor-neutral guide to ESPs offers an unbiased yet exhaustive list of criteria complete with explanations about the significance of each factor.

It's so impartial, it doesn't even mention a single ESP by name. Rather than focus on telling you what this or that ESP can or can't do, we've focused on your needs. We have 19 different things to consider when choosing an ESP based on what you need, not on what a particular ESP offers. It's unlike any other ESP selection guide you've seen and its based on our 10 years of reselling and implementing the industry's top-tier solutions.

To revise the whitepaper and make it new and improved as an annual guide, we:

• Re-evaluated all 20 factors in light of email marketing in 2010. Based on that assessment, we significantly beefed up the integration information throughout
• Removed four factors and added three:

1. Data management tools
2. Integration with add-on services
3. Social media integration

• Reorganized the factors alphabetically for better usability and objectivity

The guide now covers 19 of the most important considerations involved with ESP selection. For each of the factors, we've included details about why it matters and what to look for. The significance of each will vary from organization to organization. That's why we've also kept the scoring sheet that was included with the original whitepaper. It will help you compare ESPs based on what's important to your organization and your goals.

Publishing an updated ESP guide annually—rather than one whitepaper once—will enable us to keep the guide up-to-date with shifting trends and technologies, so no matter the year, you'll have a vendor-neutral guide to, well, guide you.

Your ESP choice is critical to your success. Choose wisely. Choose well. And choose to start your selection process with this guide in hand.

Download the 2010 guide to choosing a top tier ESP.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Are you struggling to increase your in-house email list in order to extend your marketing reach? There is a growing percentage of the online population that does not sign up for emails or newsletters. Instead they get their information predominately through social networking sites and portals. To reach them, one has to get to them either through their contacts, the groups they belong to, or those they follow. But email can be the vehicle to do just that.

Email can enable and even encourage content to be shared with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. This then allows for an extended reach to those people who haven't opted in to receive emails from you. Plus the marketer retains some control over what specifically can be shared. For example, it might be a video, particular imagery, or a special offer. You as the marketer get to decide.

In addition to getting your content exposed to a much broader audience, sharing email content gives those doing the sharing the opportunity to add value to their respective networks. This is a huge motivator for many social networkers because it puts them in the role of trusted advisor. (Consider how often a tweet from someone in your network is simply a retweet.) This also allows a marketer to enable their audiences to evangelize on your behalf. 

This opportunity to reach the previously unreachable, and to simultaneously empower your audience to demonstrate value to their network, can lead to very high conversion rates, especially if your goal is to not only reach new prospects but also to add new subscribers to your in-house list.

The latest statistics indicate that the number of people seeing content increases approximately 24% with social networking/email integration compared to relying on email alone. That's a massive increase for virtually no cost. FTF (forward to a friend) has been considered an email best practice for years, and it's one marketers should keep doing. But social forwarding features blow it away when you look at the extended reach enabled by social networking vs. FTF email.

The typical social networker has approximately 160 connections. When they share something in their network, the message they are sharing is exposed to their whole network. Compare that quantity to the person who forwards an email using FTF: Typically 1 in 1,000 email recipients actually forwards via FTF, and of those that do, the vast majority forward to 3 people or less. And hardly any of them subscribe as the result of getting the forward. It's easy to see that when you provide interesting, valuable and relevant content into a socially networked environment (i.e. content people will want to share), some of the new people you've just reached will sign up with your company directly for future news or shareworthy information.

When you add social networking integration via a tool like Share-to-Social or Social Forward, be sure to provide instructions to your audience about how to share specific offers or content, and help them understand why they should. Language such as "Click the Facebook icon to the right to share these recipes with your network" tells the user the action to take (click to share) and implies the benefit (you'll delight your friends).

All of this, however, is predicated on having information worth sharing. Your content has to have value. It must be relevant, interesting and appealing. Period.

The organic list growth opportunity is staggering too, as the latest research from MarketingSherpa and authors David Daniels and Jeanniey Mullen* show that the typical lifetime value of a new email address is between $120 and $180 each! Growing your list by just 100 recipients would play out to something like a $15,000 lift to the bottom line. Cha-ching.

Email marketing still offers the highest ROI. Imagine what you can achieve when you multiply its reach by integrating social networking features into your email campaigns!

*In their book, Email Marketing: An Hour a Day

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

As CEO of ClickMail Marketing, part of my job is keeping up with, and even ahead of, trends and changes in the email marketing industry. In a world like ours, technology and tastes can change in a flash, leaving the unsuspecting email marketer playing catch-up once he or she finally does catch on. Spotting email marketing trends becomes, therefore, less of a fun guessing game and more of a critical strategic process.

The common theme in 2010 as I see it is integration. To me, this indicates email's lasting power, as it becomes more and more entrenched in the marketing framework. No longer is email a standalone messaging medium or marketing tool. Now more than ever, email is becoming the backbone of marketing, enduring and evolving…and proving its worth one message at a time.

Below are the trends we at ClickMail Marketing see as the most important for this coming year. You won't find any rocket science-level complexity in this list, because by now you've at least been exposed to all of these trends even if you haven't yet acted on them. But this coming year will be the time to take the next step: start implementing now, or be left behind. Far behind. 

Integration with social networking sites and tools
Email still reigns supreme as a marketing tool, but to keep pace with the rapidly changing world of technology and cultural expectations, it must integrate with social networking tools. That's the only way you can hope to communicate with all audiences, as some stay with email for communication and others move to social media. Integration with social media extends your reach, as people share your content and therefore expand your exposure. (And sharing is what social media is all about, so make sure your content is worthy of sharing!)

Integration with add-on services like CertifiedEmail
Email is still the strongest messaging platform out there, despite cries of its demise. One characteristic that makes it so strong is the ubiquity of email. It is everywhere, truly. And as technologies are developed, it integrates more and more with add-on services, services like video in your email marketing and Goodmail's CertifiedEmail.

Integration with the new data management tools
Major ISPs are making decisions about which emails are spam based on if and how recipients interact with an email. That means their interaction is directly influencing your deliverability. You have to have the tools to manage your data to meet these new standards, tools that move you beyond open rates to data that really matters, like Pivotal Veracity's Mailbox IQ that helps you measure audience engagement. But these new tools must integrate with your existing email platform.

Speaking of trends and staying current with changes in the email marketing industry, stay tuned for our soon-to-be-released 2010 guide to choosing a top tier ESP.

Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Lots of marketers use preheader text, meaning those words that appear at the very top of the email, above any banner or heading. But that text is typically dull and dry, asking to be added to the recipient's address book. Or they link to a web-based version of the email. Bleh. That won't make anyone open your email.

Clever email marketers fit a lot into their preheader text. In a way, it's like multitasking. They ask to be added to the Safe Senders list. They offer a link to a web-based version with images. They have a Forward-to-a-Friend link. And they sell.

There are best practices for preheader text. But before we get into how, here are four reasons why preheader text matters in email marketing:

• Preview panes: Remember that people look first at the From line, then the Subject line, then at the Preview Pane when deciding whether to open your email
• Image blocking: Your preheader text might be all they see in the Preview Pane
• Mobile devices: On that tiny screen, your preheader text has a huge job!
• Snippet text: In Outlook 2007, Gmail and the iPhone, the beginning of your preheader text is displayed following the Subject Line

But the number one reason is you must do everything you can to convince someone to open your email and discover the gems it contains, gems they'll want to act on.

Before you start writing it, first, determine the goal of your preheader text. Your goal might be forwards, getting added to the safe senders list, encouraging opens by picking up where the subject line left off, getting them to a web page so the recipient can see the images, or to a version optimized for mobile. You can do more than one in your preheader area, but you want to prioritize to make sure your most important text is emphasized.

If you thought writing a short enough subject line was hard, now you get to tackle your preheader text, where you face the temptation of just one more word because you have just a little more space. Although your text is small, you don't want to cram too much into your preheader text, or that jumble will get missed rather than noticed. Try to limit it to one or two lines, and make sure you check to see how it's rendering in different email clients.

Formatting becomes crucial with preheader text. You'll want to make sure to maximize your use of that little tiny space, so play with the formatting and check to see how the email renders in different clients. What allows you the most text while keeping the text readable? Chances are it's not centered text. And don't waste precious real estate with spacing between the lines of text.

Successful email marketing ROI is achieved by refining and testing, then refining and testing more. Preheader text is one more piece of the email marketing puzzle that you can continue to improve to improve your overall results.

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

It's time to shift your focus, folks, investment to interaction.

In the continually shifting world of email marketing, where nothing stays static for long, we're giving a new meaning to the ROI acronym. That's because the deliverability of your email is now being determined by the ISP based on the recipient's interaction with that email.

Goodbye, Return on Investment. Hello, Return on Interaction.

Or maybe it's more an evolution, of the term and of the email marketing industry. Before, you invested in the best ESP to ensure the highest deliverability. You invested in email designers who would make cleanly coded templates that would get past spam filters. You invested in organically growing your in-house, opt in list. You've protected your online sending reputation and kept your lists clean.

Now the bar is raised and your emails must rise above, too.

I think it will really boil down to relevance certainly, but in specific ways:

1) Content — Now more than ever you'd better be sending out emails that your recipients want to receive.
2) Frequency — And now more than ever, you'd better not be over messaging your list!

Some of the major ISPs are zeroing in on the inbox to decide whether or not your emails are to be considered worthy of being delivered in the future. How your recipients interact with your emails—and if they do at all—will now be taken into account. If you keep sending emails a certain someone never opens, the ISP is going to decide that in the eyes of that certain someone, you are in fact spam and should be blocked.

You are truly now at the mercy of the recipient, but don't worry: you have more power than you may realize. You are in complete control of your relevance, regardless of the size of your email list. You are in control because you can:

• Segment your list and target your messages to make them more relevant.
• Set up a profile page where subscribers can choose how often to hear from you and the type of information they want to get from you.
• Put your subscribers first, offering them the content they want, not the content you want to feed them.

Your goal has suddenly shifted from making money off your investment in an email campaign (the old ROI) to making sure you're relevant so you keep getting your emails delivered (the new ROI) but in the end – with a focus on relevance, you'll achieve both.


Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

If you're still managing your own email marketing campaigns without any outsourced expertise, you might want to take a look at the benefits of outsourcing. Here are just a few of the many benefits of outsourcing for better managed email marketing:

• Increase your deliverability rate
• Improve your email design and email rendering
• Gain a deeper and more actionable understanding of your reporting and metrics · Protect your online sending reputation with expert advice
• Have more staff time for other initiatives
• Add the highest caliber email marketing expertise to your team without increasing your payroll
• Draw on more and broader email marketing experience with seasoned professionals guiding you
• Spend more time on strategy and planning, less on implementation
• Enjoy a solution that automatically scales with your growth
• Know you're working with the best email service provider for your business
• And ultimately, improve your email marketing ROI!

If you want to learn about better managed email marketing via outsourcing, reach out to ClickMail Marketing for more information.