New report advises on Enewsletter best practice
Value: [rating=3]
Our commentary : An enewsletter is still a key customer communication for many companies. Given this, it's always struck me as curious that usability advice for Emails and enewsletters doesn't get as much attention as that for websites.
You may not now that Jakob Nielsen, well-known for his usability advice has produced an enewsletter usability report for many years - I've downloaded them in the past. If you're not aware, you could find the tips on increasing subscription and engagement with the enewsletter useful.
Alternatively, learn through our Enewsletter examples or 24 point enewsletter best practice list.
Marketing implications Here are some of the key findings I took from this report.
1. Make your email signup slick. I'm surprised the signup period took around 3 miniutes on average - but this is an improvement from over 5 minutes on previous studies.
2. Remember the increasingly cluttered inbox.…
A case study of a Virgin Atlantic campaign showing the factors that matter
When marketers discuss email marketing we naturally tend to talk a lot about the creative and certainly it's a great way to learn. I love the inspiring examples at the Retail Email Blog and the Campaign Monitor Gallery. But is it the creative or copy that matters most? Other factors are equally or more important.
To help as a reminder of the email success factors I created the CRITICAL mnemonic which you can apply to just about any digital tactic.
To illustrate CRITICAL, I'm going to use this example of what I think is great email creative. It's not new, in fact I've used it in training for years and it features in the first edition of my Email Marketing book, but not the second. But I thought I'd dust it off for this…
Success seems such an easy thing to measure in email marketing.
Even the lowliest of campaign software should report "opens" and clicks. And many marketers have access to more-important post-click metrics, like sales, downloads, page impressions, donations etc.
Most arguments around email metrics concern which numbers are best suited to campaign analysis. But there are two less-discussed issues which are equally important.
First, when an email performs particularly well (or badly), we attribute that success (or failure) to far fewer factors than might actually be the case. Which means we risk drawing the wrong conclusions and making inappropriate changes in future campaigns.
Second, we forget that the typical measures of success we use aren't actually that good at measuring the true impacts of our emails.
In this article, I'll explain each problem in more depth and suggest solutions that will improve the usefulness of your email marketing analysis.
Attributing success
Assuming the audience is relatively unchanged, peaks…
How should marketers respond to the new Facebook webmail service?
Marketing impact: [rating=5]
Our commentary : Wow, we should have seen this one coming! This is a very logical and very sound move from Facebook.
It's no surprise really since reports from other webmail providers like Hotmail showing that around 20% of emails from webmail providers like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are updates from social networks - that's a massive opportunity for Facebook to increase engagement with their brand.
Although Facebook are saying this is "not an email service". They're looking looking to differentiate. There's a danger here for email marketers since Friends will have a separate social inbox, making it more difficult for email marketers to get their message through?
I'm sure that this service will become as popular as the other webmail providers and it will be optimised for phone access which…
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…
The overhaul required to add a few percent to your results can easily leave you wide-eyed and intimidated. And casting worried glances at your budget.
Fortunately, there is such a thing as a quick fix in email marketing. Sort of.
Quick in the sense that very simple changes to words or design elements can have a huge impact.
Not so quick in that you'll need to tweak, test, explore and experiment to find the right change that brings the dramatic improvement.
Here are three areas where minor modifications can bring a quick result boost, each backed with real world examples illustrating the potential.
1. Sign-up, subscribe or join?
There it sits on your sign-up form, waiting to accept the click after someone filled out their email address. But does the wording on the button affect whether people choose to press it?
Of course it does. The "wrong" wording drove down sign-up conversions by 22.9% for one newsletter publisher.
The…
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,…
What are the options for embedding video in email?
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary : With video becoming more widespread across the web and test showing it's effective for conversion, I'm being asked increasingly whether there are any good technologies for embed video in email. While there have been claims to do this in the past, none of the solutions I've seen are reliable enough. This review by Campaign Monitor explains the options well.
Please let me know if you know of any other tools.
Marketing implications : The evaluation shows that since Javascript is disabled in most email clients, embedding Flash, QuickTime or Windows Media really isn't an option. So you have to fall back on animated gifs if you want a reliable approach and these are becoming more popular. This report from Smith Harmon has some good examples of Animated Gifs in email.
Recommended link: Tools to embed video in email -…
