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

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.

Test, test and test again.
- Spencer Kollas, StrongMail

View your campaigns through the eyes of your recipients. Test out your from name, subject line, creative, call-to-action, etc on subscribers who are *not* in your office or affiliated directly with your product/brand.
- DJ Waldow, Bronto Software

"Focus on reducing opt-in friction by testing and optimizing preference centers and other points of data collection – new signups will be especially critical to your business in 2009."
- Nicholas Einstein, Datran Media

Predictions for 2009:
1. Preheader text will be used by the majority of email marketers.
2. More email marketers will launch preference centers, giving subscribers more control of the content and frequency of the emails they receive.
3. Marketers will experiment with videos embedded in emails.
- Chad White, Smith-Harmon

Ben Bernanke delivered another gloomy assessment of the American economy to congress yesterday during which he pointed out that the seemingly antithetical dual risks we currently face—slow growth and rising prices (due in large part to energy costs and the credit crunch/housing collapse)—are likely to plague us for some time to come. A "perfect storm" of macroeconomic forces is currently ravaging us, and it seems as if we may not even have seen the worst of it.

Could this be good news for email marketers?

While I believe it's probably not great news for anybody—especially for those of us who may own a house, have investments in the market, drive gasoline-powered cars, consume goods and services, or eat food—I do believe the current economic downturn we're facing represents an opportunity for email to shine.

Marketing budgets across the board are shrinking, but in my recent experience, email is being allocated an increasingly larger percentage of that budget. As a highly measurable channel, we are immediately at an advantage. The fact that the average return on investment for a dollar spent on email marketing was an estimated $48.29 in 2007 according to the DMA doesn't hurt either. When budgets shrink, it makes good sense to invest a greater percentage in email, and I am already seeing it happen.

So with an increasingly large share of budget, many of us are now charged with selling goods and services to segments that are increasingly price sensitive due to the $4.89 per gallon they are paying at the pump (I just paid that much). Many segments are looking for deals right now, and while we obviously still need to send the right ones to their inboxes, it seems as if consumers are now taking more time to review the offers they receive, which may be good news for good senders. I've seen evidence of this in the KPIs and test results of many of my clients' programs, primarily in the form of higher than expected open rates for certain segments.

HERE ARE FOUR EMAIL MARKETING TIPS FOR THE DOWNTURN:

1. Now is a good time to test that reactivation program you've been thinking about.
Those inactive customers could be brought back into the fold with a juicy offer, and in these rough times, each win-back is more valuable than ever.

2. If you don't already, leverage automated campaigns to the hilt.
Internal marketing resources at many companies hit hardest by the downturn are getting scarcer, but don't let this inhibit the growth of your program. Focus on high-value, highly relevant, triggered and serialized campaigns that run without needing daily attention.

3. Think about creative ways to monetize your data.
Do you send targeted third-party offers to your list? Do you include banner ads in your newsletter? If you don't, now would be a good time to test it.

4. Make a strong business case for more budget.
Few in your organization boast the ROI numbers you do. Build a cogent business case and get the additional budget you need to take your program to the next level—your business needs you now more than ever!

So while inflation drives prices higher and the credit markets seize, drop the Wall Street Journal, erase your E*Trade bookmark, and focus on messaging that appeals to your increasingly price-sensitive consumer. With any luck you'll be able to uncover some rational exuberance in your email program.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

Type the phrase "centralizing email marketing" into a search engine and you'll be served up an impressive number of results (at this writing, about 247,000). And it's no wonder—email marketing continues to rank among the most popular tactics that marketers use to reach their audiences.

The arguments for centralizing are compelling: Managing emails through a single platform enables companies to not only more effectively manage their brand and good sender reputation, but it's also much easier to manage the frequency of communication—no one wants to frustrate their audience to the point of unsubscribing. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Not so fast. According to JupiterResearch, only 38% of companies have a single department handling email communication—while 24% have six or more. With all the benefits of centralizing email marketing, why aren't more companies taking this approach?

For some companies, it may come down to resources and priorities. For example, within very large organizations, email is used to communicate with many different audiences—employees, partners, end user customers, and prospects—among others. Each of these audiences has different expectations for how they should be communicated with and likely, a different group managing that communication stream.

Because email marketing was often developed as a grassroots effort within each group, it's not unusual for larger organizations to be actively using several different email platforms to manage their campaigns. In these instances, transitioning to a completely centralized approach requires almost Herculean effort.

However, in the absence of a completely centralized approach, there are still things you can do to streamline email communications and ensure a positive experience for your audience. Here are three specific tips that are reasonably quick and easy to implement:

1. Develop and share an email marketing calendar.

Wherever there's a risk of message crossover, establish a marketing calendar to track these campaigns and assign a calendar owner. Although the owner is ultimately responsible for keeping the calendar updated, all groups should participate in the calendar development and notify the owner if campaign dates shift.

My team uses a web-based calendar hosted on our intranet site; however, tools such as Google Calendar or even an Excel spreadsheet are simple, no/low-cost alternatives.

2. Ensure that all stakeholders are on all campaign seed lists.

Whether you're sending a campaign to a house or rented list, be sure and add the appropriate people to your seed lists. You may want to send test seeds to a smaller group for review and feedback, and then to a larger group for live campaign drops. This is additional insurance that everyone is aware of what messages are leaving the building.

3. Share examples of campaigns and results at cross-functional monthly or quarterly reviews.

At least once a quarter, get together and share examples of campaign creative and results. Even if you're mailing to completely different audiences, best practices are sure to emerge that you'll want to apply to your line of business.

If you work for a large organization, the idea of centralizing your email marketing may seem difficult, if not impossible. But by doing a little detective work and implementing some quick fixes that don't require a lot of administrative overhead, you can do a lot to improve the quality of your email communications and set yourself up for more formal centralization in the future.

—Cheryle Ross, the eCommerce Marketing Manager of Xerox Corp.

*Cheryle was invited to be a blogger for a day after sharing her thoughts in our Voices from the Email Evolution Conference post.

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

Synchronicity Marketing: The Four Essential R's of Email Marketing
These terms serve as guideposts to ensure your campaign s not only optimized for delivery, but also maximum response.

Silverpop: Unlocking the Secret World of White Listing
Insight for Enterprise Email Marketers

Premiere Global Services: 8 Thursdays 5.0
Cutting edge tips and tricks to help you and your email program reach its maximum potential.

LSoft: Stop Guessing and Start Knowing
Using A/B-Split Testing to Increase Your Email Campaign Effectiveness

ExactTarget: Email Marketing Design and Rendering
The New Essentials

Listrak: Email Frequency
How Relevancy Tactics Changed the Rules

Constant Contact: The What, Why, and How of Email Authentication
What it is, why it's important, and what you need to do to authenticate your email.

*Have a whitepaper you'd like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

We are engaged in email in New Zealand, where due to relatively low internet usage, and recent law changes, list growth is quite a challenge. We do have one particular challenge which I would welcome any input on, as follows:

We publish an email newsletter for the police. They aim to reach community stakeholders, but are unwilling to allocate budget to traditional media to spread awareness and generate additional sign-ups. Their website drip feeds a certain number of new recipients —approx 1% increase per month, although half of that is eliminated by those who opt out each month —so growth is slow. They believe that using the existing list, a viral campaign can help. Does anyone have any inspirational input? —Jerry Flay, managing director of Inbox

The Voices of Email had this advice:

Stephanie Miller: Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. It's difficult to predict what sort of viral campaign will have a meaningful impact. Without knowing anything about the program I'm hesitant to offer a specific idea, but consider a simple trivia quiz about the community like "how many miles of roads are there" and "how long does the chief of police serve in office." If the quiz is challenging but also surprising, it will get forwarded. Even without some special content, certainly test just asking every current subscriber to forward an invite to two friends. Perhaps offer some recognition in the community for doing so. But at the end of the day, the program has to be worth signing up for—if the goal is to build awareness and support, then the messages must be interesting and relevant. If they are, then subscribers will engage with them and share them.

Chad White: Sounds like you should communicate how the police and community stakeholders have been working together with great results. Some inspiring success stories may cause folks to forward the email along and spur greater involvement. So tout your greatest successes and undertakings. Also, how about providing tips and advice that would be useful to the community? Or doing a survey or fundraising activity that would leverage your email program? If you provide the right kind of information and clearly prompt your subscribers to share the information with friends, you should be able to exceed the average 1% to 2% pass-along rate.

Jeanniey Mullen: Viral marketing can be one option, but only if you have something to say that your readers will "bond" with and share with others. In other words, if you want something to be passed along, ask your current readers to help you determine the content.

Even at that though, the pass along rate will be relatively low, so you should look for ways to integrate email with, for example, a blog or social network in order to assure success.

Have some good advice that we missed? Please add a comment and take part in the conversation.

Have a question for the Voices of Email? Email Chad your question at chad@emailexperience.org and we'll REPLY TO ALL by posting the answers so everyone can benefit.

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Aside from testing, are there any minimal requirements that any email marketer can follow that will improve display on a Macs, PCs, and/or mobile devices? Or are there completely separate standards for each email client? —K.G.

The Voices of Email had this advice:

Deirdre Baird: First, ensure the HTML is valid according to either W3C or WDG standards. This is the single best protection for universal rendering.

Second, try to ensure the integrity of the message (branding, calls-to-action, etc.) are communicated even if images do not display. While alt tags are useful, they do not display universally in all email clients, so do not rely exclusively on alt tags as an alternative to image display.

And third—and this is more of an FYI—some mobile readers display the HTML version as text instead of displaying the Text part of a multi-part message (as many assume). If a significant percentage of recipients are assumed to be using mobile devices to read emails, then consider not only the text part of your multi-part but also what the HTML part will look like when rendered as text. If possible, ask customers at sign-up if they'd like a "mobile version" of the email and/or create a mobile version that folks can subscribe to.

Chip House: The goal is properly recognizing the differing needs of your subscribers and customizing the content and format to best meet their stated or observed needs. The first way to do this is to ask their preferences (HTML or text) at the time you capture the opt-in. If you don't get that information, then you have to try to optimize for how you want your subscribers to use and/or respond to your communication.

Let's look at mobile first. The challenge appears bigger than it actually is. For example, when you look at the total possible number of rendering combinations for mobile devices, which vary by mobile phone manufacturer, top ISPs, mobile data providers and mobile operating systems, you get 3,780 unique rendering possibilities. However, what we've found via our research is that 56% of users are less likely to read commercial email and/or newsletters on their mobile phone as they are on their laptop or desktop. The message there is you need to optimize the email for both the mobile and laptop/desktop computer environment. In fact, our testing showed that commercial email sent using multi-part MIME (includes both text and HTML parts) was the most versatile format. By this I mean it is most likely to render as HTML only for those systems that can display HTML well, and render as text elsewhere—such as on many mobile devices. However, the advantage of multi-part MIME over text here is that when a user saves or flags your email to look at it on their desktop/laptop, they'll get the graphic-rich HTML version you'd love them to see—which is also likely to deliver a higher click rate.

Testing the rendering of your email campaigns across a number of email clients and ISPs is the best way to overcome the difference in those systems. We use Pivotal Veracity's eDesign Optimizer heavily for this purpose, which allows for preview in a number of different mail clients (including Mac). Each has its own unique page break and image rendering rules, for example, which need to be optimized around. With a little testing, however, you'll be able to get your HTML in tip-top shape for nearly all recipients.

Stephanie Miller: Let me focus on optimizing for mobile. What actually renders on a PDA or Smartphone is determined by four factors:
1. The operating system and software (e.g., Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile)
2. The service provider (e.g., Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile, etc.)
3. The device itself (e.g.: Treo, Blackberry, HP IPaq, iPhone, etc.)
4. The user's settings

Yes, it's messy. And totally different than reading email on a PC. There is a temptation to just deliver text to mobile users, but I don't recommend this. First, because it's hard to know who is a mobile user (there is unfortunately no "sniffer" that tells the sender what device is being used (PC vs. mobile). Second, because mobile users are not just mobile users. They also read email in their PC-based email clients, where a nicely formatted HTML email still yields higher responses in most cases.

The best bet is to rely on Marketing 101—Know Thy Customer. Ask subscribers if they regularly read your newsletter or promotions on their PDA. Many mobile device users sync their device back to the PC and read newsletters there rather than on the road. If you believe that many of your subscribers read your email on their mobile device, then offer a mobile-friendly format (simple HTML with text) that can be selected at sign up or in your preference center. If you believe that many of your subscribers are sometimes mobile readers but often PC readers, then format your HTML (particularly the masthead and preview pane) to minimize the number of image links and other code that readers must scroll past to see the actual content.

Have some good advice that we missed? Please add a comment and take part in the conversation.

Have a question for the Voices of Email? Email Chad your question at chad@emailexperience.org and we'll REPLY TO ALL by posting the answers so everyone can benefit.

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