Connect 2010 email marketing conference summary
"It's all about the conversation" was a key message from Connect2010 email marketing conference which I attended in October.
Organised by eCircle, and now in its 5th year, the event included a rich mixture of clients and guest speakers notably Halfords, eSpares, Webtrends, RichRelevance and Stephen O'Brien (Customer Insight Partnership).
The day ended with a resonating presentation from Gianfranco Cuzziol, Planning Consultant eCircle, which was an alternative look at how fundamentally it all comes back to the conversation, and key thing you need to be asking is not necessarily which channel but do I have something to say?
Some key principles for all email marketers
Watch and listen before even speaking "You can learn by just listening to web behavior, click-stream activity, social engagement, offline activity. Digital body language is an important source of information
Find the incentive for…
Benchmark your email marketing against these 10 trends
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary : A new ten page whitepaper from Lyris to help review your email strategy into 2011. If you haven't seen it, my 10 factor email marketing audit may also be useful to benchmark your approach.
Marketing implications : These are the 10 strategy issues covered in the Lyris report:
1. Email Remains the Cornerstone
2. Email Automation as an Essential
3. Web Analytics Enhances Email
4. Social Media Maximizes Email
5. Mobile Marketing Goes Mainstream
6. Search Marketing Extends Email Marketing Intelligence
7. Global Reach Equals Opportunity
8. Relevance Builds Engagement
9. Integration Reinforces Online Marketing
10. Marketing Technologies Provide Competitive Advantage
Recommended link: 10 email strategies whitepaper from Lyris (PDF requires registration)…
10 email strategy factors to audit your email marketing effectiveness
Update: Dec 2014. See this post for our latest guidance on benchmarking email effectiveness where you can review your email capabilities using our new chart.
Despite the growth in popularity of social media marketing, email marketing remains the best customer communications tool for most companies since:
More personally relevant emails can be delivered as subscribers are targeted by:
Demographics like age, gender, geography
Previous purchase or download categories
Time since previous interaction
Position in lifecycle - new customers are sent different messages from old
Following up on a website interaction like a search, category browse or an abandoned shopping cart - if your systems are joined up
Offers and content can be inserted dynamically into the email to target with these techniques
Cut-through and overall response is greater with response occurring over 12-48 hours rather than 1-2 hours more typical of Twitter and Facebook
Response measurable at individual level offering better…
7 questions to review your email strategy
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary : Our recommendation of the best email marketing advice this week is a checklist to help think through how you can get more from your email marketing communications. I really enjoyed reading this since it's about the BIG email strategy questions that should be asked to make email marketing effective.
It's particularly applied to transactional sites, but some of the advice applies to brand and relationship building needed by all companies.
Marketing implications:
1. Transactional emails rule! I agree, but I would expand this to all event-triggered emails to develo a complete email communications strategy through the lifecycle including welcome, research, reactivation and post-site behaviour follow-up.
2. Get the frequency and offers right according to customer activity levels. Don't overmail or undermail your best subscribers.
3. Use social media as a profit generator. This was the most interesting one for me. Facebook followers are great,…
A whitepaper on good practice
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary : Best practice for Enewsletters and promotional emails are discussed a lot; See, for example, our posts on Enewsletter Best Practice.
But how to make the most of emails accompany sales and service transactions are covered less often, eventhough these are important by volume and context - they probably get more attention from recipients than other types of emails (75% are opened according to the report)
This whitepaper by Sally Lowery of ESP Bronto does a fine job of summarising the issues to be reviewed.
Marketing implications : It's important to remember the main aim of transactional emails is as a service email, but there other opportunities for brand-building and increasing awareness about available product categories. It's also worth noting that from a data protection point of view service emails are classed differently.
Good…
2010 DMA National Client Email Marketing Report
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary : I recently wrote the conclusion for the 2010 Annual Client Email report for the UK Direct Marketing Association.
Here I share what I took from the report and highlight some of the key findings through charts (click twice to read) which show the importance of email marketing and the most popular techniques. You can see that despite some of the mispronouncements that Email Marketing is Dead, Email is a key part of communications strategy for many organisations but given the competition in the inbox from rise of social media and prioritised inboxes it needs to evolve to continue to cut-through.
Marketing implications :
For me, the rate of innovation within digital marketing is one of its greatest appeals. Whether it"€™s the introduction of new technologies, marketing approaches or resulting changes in consumer behaviour, change is a constant challenge. The annual UK…
Towards a strategy for integrating email marketing with social media
Value : [rating=4]
Our commentary : The article explains that many email service providers have introduced "share to social" features enabling email marketers to include buttons to share email content through Facebook, Twitter or Linked In. While these can be useful, it's much more important to think through the overall strategy of integration between email and social and how they fit.
Marketing implications : For me, the strategy implications prompted are:
1. Prioritisation. You need to prioritise your many social channel choices, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Blog, Community and Enewsletter to focus on the ones that works best for your audience and marketplace. E.G. Perhaps Email, Twitter and Linked-In for professional B2B marketing. It's not about providing infinite choice in most cases, it's about using the best approaches.
2. Value proposition You need to define a clear differentiated value proposition for each channel to offer…
9 Tips to engage your email subscribers
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: This 12 page whitepaper download from Selligent (registration required) advises brands on how to tackle the ongoing challenge of the best way to engage customers with email marketing.
Marketing implications: I think these guidelines are the most useful part of the report, so I'm sharing them here with my commentary.
1. Offer a choice of communications. This is a preference centre to enable customers to receive the type of emails they want.
2. Respect permission. Double opt-in is suggested. I don't agree with this in all markets, all cases. It's essential if you're selling a list, but in a customer relationship which starts with an on-site enewsletter signup or during the checkout I think it's unecessary because the relationship is already developed.
3. Analyse, automate, segment and target. I like this call to action! But these are each individually major challenges to refine your email…
Email marketers were all-a-flutter recently when Google announced the Priority Inbox feature for Gmail. And for good reason.
Not because the Priority Inbox is a big deal in itself, but because of what it represents: the era of the intelligent inbox. This intelligent (and social) inbox was one of the four trends we identified earlier this year as crucial to future email marketing, so Gmail's announcement is a timely reminder to explore that topic in more depth.
In this post I'll briefly review the implications for email marketers and then suggest three approaches to help your email marketing achieve cut-through.
(more…)…
Minimising Email marketing mistakes
Value/importance: [rating=3]
Our commentary: This post from Dela Quist at Alchemy Worx reminds us of the potential mistakes we can make with our email marketing based on the many campaigns he reviews.
Marketing implications: Review the 6 mistakes and check how good your processes and tools are for avoiding them
Recommended link: Avoiding the most common email marketing mistakes…
