The From Line

The one size fits all mentality simply doesn't work anymore especially when it comes to selling online.  Just when you think you're aiming your marketing and creative efforts at the right target market, think again and think smaller.  Segmentation is the key to generating higher conversion rates from your website and email marketing efforts.  From displaying the right product using geo physical data to creating the perfect offer based on previous email click patterns, segmentation will help to ensure the right offer gets in front of the right person at the right time.  Mass customization is here to stay and you better have the right tools to make it happen with your website and email campaigns. 

Almost all websites are categorized based on product or service type however segmentation is the magic step that results from understanding consumer behavior.  By digging deep into your web analytics, you should be able to tell who buys what from where and how.  For example, if you're a sports apparel retailer just imagine how much more your chances of sale increase if you're able to display a Clinton Portis jersey to a Washington Redskins fan on the front page of your website.  You might be thinking how would this fictitious sports apparel retailer know if a website visitor is a Washington Redskins fan?  Well, since online retailers know their website visitor's IP address they can use geo targeting to display the jersey of an NFL team with the closest proximity.

The same principle applies to email as well.  Every online retailer sends a weekly email campaign hocking their latest wares.  But just because someone bought from an email campaign displaying digital cameras doesn't necessarily mean they are interested in upgrading the camera's memory card as a result of receiving subsequent email campaigns.  When you integrate your email campaigns with your web analytics you get a clearer picture of customers click paths so you send customized follow up messages based on products they actually viewed or maybe have placed in their shopping cart rather than what you think they might purchase.

For all the marketing rules you follow, breaking a few can wreak havoc on the results of your campaign. Review these pitfalls you can't afford to make (or repeat).

1. Ignoring the “reply-to” address -- Most ESPs offer a Web mail program and email address to collect responses to a message. The goal is to keep your inbox clean (and not inundated with out of the office replies) after sending a message. It also serves as another layer of protection against spammers. The problem is that most people forget the “reply to” address isn’t coming to their inbox and don’t check the Web mail account.  While you instruct your recipients to contact you at a specific address, it doesn’t mean they won’t just hit the “reply” button.

2. Don’t slack on testing – We can’t say it enough. Always, always, always test the message.  Even if you tested last week or last month, test it again.

3. The trap of complacency – Whether you use the same old HTML template or ignore updating your list, complacency can leave you behind the curve with stale campaigns.   

Do you have a mistake that you want to share? Send your worst email marketing mistakes to Gold Lasso or share them on our Dot Email forum. 

If the email component of your marketing plan is in a rut, it’s time to rejuvenate your campaigns. Here are four ways to bring some life back into your messages.

Engage readers by asking them to respond to a poll or survey. Every once in awhile, it’s important to give your readers a way to participate in the message and the organization by including a survey or poll question.  It’s also a beneficial tactic to give a snippet of information to readers. It’s not a scientific study, but you’re not claiming it is.

Design a new template. It’s important to stay consistent with the visual brand of your organization, but don’t shy away from altering the HTML template to attract the readers’ attention.

Add some personality, don’t just personalize.  Personalizing a message with the first name is pretty standard in this day and age, now it’s time to add some personality. Professional, compelling messages don’t have to be devoid of humor, voice, and a unique tone.

Split campaigns – if you’re not doing them, it’s time to try now. If reporting metrics are okay, but not great, try creating split campaigns for you next message and break outside your marketing mold with creative content and a strong call for action.  The results may surprise you.

Analyzing the results of an email campaign is an essential step of the marketing process. (We like to say that it closes the “loop” in the eLoop system.) Without looking at the number of successful transmissions, open rates, conversion rates, click-through rates, and other available metrics, it’s impossible to know what works and what doesn’t. 

The mark of a successful campaign is the number of recipients that completed the action the message requested of them. The point of the message is to persuade them to buy a product or service, register for an event, or download an article. Linking the action requested to the number of people that completed gives the marketer a tangible result to measure.  

The best place to start when evaluating a campaign is to look at a summary of metrics provided by the email service provider (ESP).  These often include the metrics listed above. But, don’t rely only on these to give you a clear picture of the results because they can be misleading.  Open rates, for example, don’t always translate into transactions.  If the reader uses a preview pane, it will count as an “open” even though they may just delete the message.  

One suggestion to analyze what readers respond to is to use the split campaigns feature available in eLoop. This feature allows marketers to split their audience and create different messages with unique subject lines, images, and content, but the same call to action.  The results can help guide the development of future messages based on which message created the most significant results. 

Another tip is to be wary of industry averages for metrics.  The data may not come from a representative sample of industries and may only be a snapshot of one ESP’s client base.  With that being said, here are some different statistics on email metrics from The EmailStatCenter (www.emailstatecenter.com).  Please keep in mind that these stats are assuming a clean opt-in list.

Email marketing consultants consider an open rate of about 20% and a click-through rate of 4% to 5% to be a highly effective email campaign according to Internet Retailer (2006).

Nearly one-fifth of respondents reported that they do not know how their email marketing performs. (Internet Retailer, 2006)

18.7% don't know their open rates. (Internet Retailer, 2006)

16.7% don't know their click-through rates. (Internet Retailer, 2006)

23.3% don't know their conversion rates. (Internet Retailer, 2006)

29.6% don't know if their conversion rate has changed in the past year. (Internet Retailer, 2006)

Utilizing a professional company and/or their tools to test your image rendering across multiple email clients often helps to increase response up to as much as 87%. (Email Experience Council - Email Rendering Report, 2007)

I was manning the EEC booth at the OMMA conference in New York last week when I met an academic looking fellow named David Blumenstein.  After I pitched him about the EEC and all the cool things the group was working on he grabbed a seat next to me and started to rant about how gray listing is the secret to fighting spam.  Naturally the subject piqued my interest so I prodded him to go into detail.  He said that spammers don't like to receive bounces because it overwhelms their servers.  As a result spammers turn off bounce mechanisms.  Therefore pinging a legitimate mail server will yield a mailer demon and pinging a spammer's server will yield nothing.  He concluded that putting all unknown senders in email purgatory until a mailer demon is received helps to eliminate most spam.  The biggest drawback is that his email is delayed for 12 minutes or so. 

Pretty interesting!  Thanks Dave!  I'll have to try it out.