• You need to build an interested base of fans/subscribers.
• You need to interact with those fans/subscribers.
• You need to publish quality, targeted, relevant content to your fans/subscribers.
• You build your fan/subscriber base though natural and incentive-based growth tactics.
• You need to show the ROI for the marketing dollars spent – those who say social isn’t about the ROI are dreaming.  Eventually the C-suite will want numbers that aren’t a guess.
• You need to identify the uber-fans/subscribers and reward them.
• Both can (and should) be an avenue for customer service.
• Both can (and should) drive traffic to your website/ecommerce/blog.
• Both can help and hurt your reputation, though Social in a more public way.
• Both can (and should) increase revenues. (Again, social tracking for revenues can be a little tricky.)
• Both can (and should) start conversations and keep them going.

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

Sometimes it sounds very "broken-recordish."

Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who have asked for them.

It's my go-to message - my mantra of sorts - when it comes to email marketing. It's one of those things I recommend printing out and pasting to your desk. It's a phrase you should repeat when you're getting ready to hit the send button on that next email marketing campaign. It's the question to ask your team all of the time, but especially if you see your metrics on the fritz (declining open and/or click through rates, increasing complaints, poor deliverability, etc).

What Poor (Or No) Segmentation Looks Like

On December 20, 2009, I received these 3 emails within a 33-minute span (6:09AM, 6:29AM, and 6:42AM).

1. Inbox View: Before even opening the emails, what do you notice about them? Pretty easy one, right? While the from names are all different, the subject lines are identical. As it turns out, Multichannel Merchant, DIRECT, and Chief Marketer are all divisions of Penton Media (see email footer).

Why this matters: I feel like I just got spammed. Why? Penton Media just asked (errr...told) me 3 times to fill out their survey. Poor brand impression not only from Penton, but also from the 3 divisions who sent me that survey. I deleted all three.

2. Opened View: You'll quickly see if you open all three emails (see Multichannel Merchant below) that, with the exception of the header image, a few words here and there, and the signatures, the email copy is identical.

Why this matters: Again, I've just been sent the same survey 3 times. The response rates on surveys already tend to be low. Sending it to me 3 times under 3 different from names does not increase my chances of completing.

So, who cares?

4 Reasons Why Email Segmentation Matters

I'm an email snob. It's easy for me to sit up in my ivory email tower and tell everyone what they are doing wrong. I can't argue that fact. But I do think segmentation matters - not only for me, but for the average email consumer as well. Here's why:

1. Reduces inbox clutter: Assuming the emails were the same, would you rather receive 3 or just 1?

2. Increases relevancy: The more relevant an email, the more likely I am to take action (open, click, convert)

3. Earns trust: If I believe that you - the email marketer - have my best interests in mind, I'll trust you more. More trust ultimately leads to more action (see #2).

4. Gain credibility: Good segmentation proves to me that you know what you are doing. It shows that you are not blasting off emails. Instead, you are putting thought behind each send.

Segmentation is not hard. Time to add it to your email marketing new year's resolution list.

*After a conversation over IM with Andrew Kordek, it was pointed out that this post is lacking in concrete examples (case studies) of "segmentation success stories." If you have some, please share in the comments below as I'd like to do a follow up post.

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

So we are deep in a recession economy, marketing budgets and headcounts are being cut, yet we are seeing an increase in requests for the outsourcing of email production and campaigns. Why is this?

Well let's take a little time to explore the variables in play here.  As marketers turn to more cost effective channels, email is becoming more popular than ever – according to a recent Forrester study the number of marketing messages for the average email user is predicted to double by 2014.  This makes the email channel even more competitive and crowded, causing a dilution of open, click and conversion rates.

The only way to genuinely attract attention and boost performance is to send more relevant and personalized mails.  To experienced email marketers this will not be news, and it is common wisdom nowadays to absolutely progress beyond broadcast (or blast) mailing tactics to attain any kind of click thru and conversion response.

There are a number of campaign types that increase relevance beyond broadcast, such as 'life cycle', 'clickstream' and 'targeted'. JupiterResearch states that these types of campaigns are up to 18 times more profitable than broadcast.  Each of these types leverage known intelligence about the recipient, whether based on a user triggered event, online behavior, or persona driven.  BUT in order to actually create a highly relevant campaign, each mail needs to be customized to each identified audience segment and ideally personalized for each recipient - both of which increase the number of steps and effort in the overall process of producing a campaign from start to finish. 

You have a choice here: do you create individual email templates for each audience segment, or minimize the number of actual email templates and leverage conditional email content for a more dynamic 'data driven' approach.  More email templates means more production effort to create, optimize and test each and every template – whereas the data driven approach needs more advanced skills/technology to design and test more complex templates. 

Are we at a tipping point?  Has the amount of extra effort, technology and skills required to execute more advanced email campaigns pushed email campaign production to a point where outsourcing makes more strategic and tactical sense?  Perhaps.  Organizations need to be competitive and need to consider ways to execute these types of campaigns.  The tremendous ROI (as stated by Jupiter) more than outweighs the additional operating cost, so each and every marketing department who takes the email channel seriously will need to formulate a strategy here.

With headcounts diminishing, outsourcing is an obvious path forward.  Having a tried and tested production team getting your mails out of the door in good time, with great quality (...under SLA), allows you to not only benefit from advanced campaign performance, but to focus your time on higher value marketing initiatives!

- Andy McCartney, Vice President of Strategic & Account Services, Premiere Global Services

Andy runs a team of email marketing gurus and specialists who help clients of all shapes and sizes with their emarketing initiatives.  Advice and service engagements are delivered in areas such as strategy, campaign production, list health and deliverability.  Andy has over 20 years of experience in marketing and services with hi-tech companies, including 10 years in business intelligence and analytics and 12 years in interactive marketing leadership roles.

Inbox advertising has long been considered an effective direct marketing vehicle. Sending relevant offers to receptive segments has been a recipe for success since the channel emerged. Most emarketers also realize that indiscriminately blasting potentially non-relevant messaging to large segments can negatively impact list size, deliverability and ultimately, brand equity. Fewer marketers, however, fully realize the tremendous role email advertising can play in positively stewarding a brand—driving brand awareness and brand favorability.

I must admit that as a novice email marketer I highly discounted email as a branding vehicle. In fact, I remember telling a colleague once that branding [through email] was just an excuse for not generating conversions. I have since learned that inbox advertising can be an excellent vehicle for driving brand equity and awareness, and believe that those of us who view the channel exclusively through the direct marketing lens, may be interested in the following.

In August, Datran Media and Dynamic Logic researched the impact of an eHarmony email campaign from a branding perspective. The study revealed that inbox advertising provides significant branding benefits:

• Inbox advertising made 37.7% of people aware of one of the tested eHarmony campaigns.
• Unaided brand awareness increased 11.5 percentage points.
• Brand favorability increased 7.3 percentage points.
• Brand awareness and favorability both improved when those researched were exposed to the campaign more than once.

I found the research quite interesting. To learn more, check out the Datran Media brand study here.

Have you done any research to test the impact of your campaigns on brand awareness and favorability? If so, please share.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

We asked the Voices of Email to look into their crystal balls and foretell what 2008 had in store for the email marketing industry. Here are their predictions:

Stephanie Miller of Return Path:
#1 - Email Marketers, if you want to keep your job, segment your file. I was hoping that last year would be the year that we'd see more targeted, tailored, relevant campaigns and less batch and blast. Not sure that happened, although I was half right in that we certainly saw MORE segmentation and targeting than in 2006.

Why will email marketers lose their job if they don't do it now? Because the email channel is more expensive than ever, and there are too many risks to brand and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Unhappy email subscribers—all that dead wood on your file—is not just a missed opportunity, it's a liability. Engaging with those folks is going to take more time and effort in creative and list hygiene and segmentation than ever before. To get those budgets, the email marketer has to prove the channel. To prove the channel, the email messages have to be a lot more relevant. To be relevant, they must be segmented. Thankfully, the technology and best practices are already in place and proven. We just need to set our minds to it.

#2 - The Data Capture form goes multichannel. We'll see more and more email marketers open up their data capture form to include permission to contact via SMS and mobile marketing. Building up the database with these contact touch points will be increasingly important as more marketers start to test the efficacy of those channels.

#3 - Transactions will become touchpoints sometimes too hot to handle. More email marketers are going to push the envelope on turning transactional messages into marketing opportunities. The receivers and FTC will get stricter on standards, potentially causing trouble for some senders. With the need to dynamically create, message and track these messages, ESPs will aggressively go after the transactional email market to build their base and capture higher share of wallet.

Chip House of ExactTarget: Increasing focus on subscriber engagement. When emphasizing the importance of list hygiene, David Daniels of Jupiter Research often compares mailing the portion of your list that hasn't opened or clicked on your emails in several months to "flying an advertisement over a ghost town." Many marketers are realizing the benefits to their success potential via email by truly understanding which segments of their list are responding, and which aren't. The non-responsive segments drag down your deliverability and ROI, and waste your time. This is something that I like to call the "ignore rate." Marketers that ignore the needs of their subscribers, send irrelevant communications, or make other blunders leading to dissatisfied subscribers, drive a higher ignore rate.

Most sophisticated email marketers now closely track their open and click rates, and more are even tracking subscriber spam complaints by ISP. However, it is often what you don't see that can be most harmful to your deliverability and campaign ROI. More marketers are beginning to see the benefits of closely analyzing the portion of their customer base that IS NOT paying attention. By doing so they can better reactivate them, opt them in again, or discard them—all to the benefit of their response rates and ROI.

2008 is about flying hundreds of planes, towing just the right message, over hundreds of small cities.

Amy Bills of Bulldog Solutions: I think we will see some shaking out in the use of social media for lead generation. Right now, a lot of companies are really struggling to understand what works and what can be integrated into their existing strategies. Is a blog, a podcast, RSS, an online community, a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. going to be worth the effort and resources? How can you even measure their effect on your objectives? And of course, what works for one company is not going to be the same formula for another. Some have the impulse to try everything. Others want to bury their heads in the sand and deny the landscape is changing at all. A third group is experimenting and trying to be smart about making good choices, thinking about what their prospects will respond to and how to make social media enhance what they are already doing.

After Paul Dunay joined Bulldog in November for a webinar on making sense of social media for BtoB marketing, he made a comment that really stuck with me. "[The question isn't] if social media is right for your company, but which social media is right for your company. And at this point in time and state of your company, you need to determine which social media is right for your company for next year. A year from now, the picture may look very different. And the answer to which social media is right for your company will be different for each company. My advice is look into next year with an eye toward experimenting with a few tactics to begin to get yourself and your team up to speed."

So, I predict that more marketers will ease into that third group, and start to get smarter about social media. And by "smarter" I mean more creative and experienced about how to make tactics work and measure their results, and brave enough to admit when a particular tactic might not work.

Tricia Robinson of StrongMail Systems: The email space gets larger and faster daily. With this growth comes change, and I predict we'll experience much change in 2008.

Automation Becomes The New Buzzword. We've lived through closing-the-loop, 1to1 digi-dialogues, and deliverability. Look for campaign automation to catch-on in 2008. We're seeing more clients rapidly move in this direction. Those that already have are realizing the time/cost benefits of auto-generated programs.

The Final Sunset for the Old Homegrowns. The replacement of the original homegrown system has been a trend since 2006. However, this year we'll see the last of the first homegrown systems built by Web 1.0 companies and those that thought "email is easy, we'll make our own." Some organizations will always custom-build, but most have done it on top of something more sophisticated than generic MTAs.

All Outbound Customer Email Includes Marketing. Even if it's the inclusion of a logo, all outbound customer email (transactional, customer service, promotional, etc.) will include a touch of marketing. According to MarketingSherpa in mid-2007, 90% of email marketers planned to overhaul their transactional email in the next 12 months. Not sure if they will meet their own deadline by June, but look for an improvement in the look of all outbound email. I'm not crazy enough to predict the death of the text email, but maybe next year.

Still More Acquisitions. 2004-2006 were large vendor consolidation years in our space. I argue that 2007 was the year of the IPO. Now with more cash and CNBC viewers to consider, look for Constant Contact and ExactTarget to make purchases that round out their offerings or extend their reach into new markets.

Unlike many, I like change. It's good to shake things up as long as the goal is always towards improvement. Happy New Year!

Chad White of the eec: 2008 will be the year that retailers and other B2C marketers increase the transparency of their email programs and relinquish more control to subscribers. In 2007 we saw more retailers allow potential subscribers to view a sample email before signing up. More also offered emails on different topics or allowed some level of content preference selection—which is key to elevating relevancy. Consumers are getting very used to having more control over how they're marketed to, and email will be forced to fall in line over time. On the upside, giving consumers more control over content and frequency, and being more upfront about those aspects of their email programs, should generate more lifetime value from subscribers. Although eventually we'll see this kind of control move to the front end, during 2008 we'll start to see it more and more on the tail end of the relationship when subscribers are fed up and trying to opt out. Rather than lose subscribers, more marketers will give up control over frequency and other elements to boost retention.

During 2008 we'll also see retailers pay more attention to content—product reviews, videos of product demonstrations and fashion shows, blogs, articles, podcasts, etc.—and do a better job of leveraging it in their email channels.

In a multichannel retail business, using email to drive traffic to brick-and-mortar stores can be an interesting task. Chief challenges include:
(1) Internally, online and retail departments are often not only separate but also competitive;
(2) Generally, retail-focused campaigns don't drive as many immediate web sales, causing email crack-cocaine withdrawal; and
(3) Actual store traffic and resulting sales can be difficult to track, yielding performance metrics that sound like this: "Wow! Tons more people came into the store that day!"

Despite the hurdles, as retailers experience at least anecdotally positive results and simultaneously improve their geo-targeting capabilities, they also grow more sophisticated in store-specific creative execution. While in-store discounts, coupons and incentives will always remain a favorite tactic, I've seen more brands experiment with two of my favorite C's: content and cachet.

Below, Pottery Barn Kids, Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma serve up varying degrees of virtual and physical content with Pottery Barn Kids heavy on virtual, get-psyched pre-visit tips and Williams-Sonoma listing a truly impressive breadth of in-store cooking classes and demonstrations. (This is one of the rare cases in which the events seem to exist for reasons other than to justify an email blast.) I do appreciate that Crate & Barrel has contextualized their store events by giving them a name. How cute is "Crate Ideas"?

From: Pottery Barn Kids
Subject Line: In stores now: Everything you need to celebrate the holidays.
Date: Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007

From: Crate & Barrel
Subject Line: Crate Ideas store events this weekend
Date: Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007

From: Williams-Sonoma
Subject Line: Join us for Culinary Demonstrations
Date: Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007

Pottery Barn, PUMA Women and Ann Taylor play the cachet card, peppering their subject lines and designs with words like "exclusive," "most-valued," "private" and "after-hours" in the hopes that making subscribers feel special will also make them feel like getting into a car. (Did I mention "exclusive"? "Exclusive" is clearly the new "luxury.")

Pottery Barn upped the ante by offering wine, which has been proven to increase spending by 20% per glass. Just kidding. But probably not! SPG—spend per glass. Is that a new KPI?

From: Pottery Barn
Subject Line: You're invited to an exclusive wine and cheese event
Date: Monday, Oct. 29, 2007

From: PUMA Women
Subject Line: You're invited to our After Hours Party!
Date: Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007

From: Ann Taylor
Subject Line: Hurry! Private Sale Today, Only for You
Date: Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007

As ever,
Lisa Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.