Five simple ideas to make your marketing emails more valuable

Approaches to increase the value of your email messages Part 2 When resources are scarce

When we try to make email more valuable for subscribers, we tend to focus on technical and transactional optimization. Which means we focus on making the actual offer/content more targeted, mainly using tools like segmentation, dynamic content personalization etc.

That's a good thing.

But there are two limitations to this approach.

First, we forget that value doesn't just lie in the relevancy of content and offers.

Second, the required tools, data and/or resources for technical and transactional optimization aren't always available to marketers with budgets to care about.

Part 1 of this article explored how you might use personality, human voice etc. to address the idea of emotional value: building an emotional connection that keeps people engaged even when the content or offer misses its mark.

In Part 2 I suggest five relatively simple concepts you can use to build more value into your emails without breaking the resource or tool bank...

1. Preference information is already out there

It's easy to get the impression that identifying what subscribers want is only possible with clever databases or preference centers.

But the humble click is itself a clear expression of interest, so any half-decent email campaign report can tell you what kind of links (offers/topics) attract the most response from your audience.

Even where you can't build segments using click data (to, for example, send a follow-up to all those who clicked on the blue widget link), comparing broad response rates offers guidance on the topics and offers that work best.

Care is needed though.

You can't always assume an unusually low or high response is just down to the nature of the offer or content. As we saw in a previous post, it's important to account for all the other factors (like timing, seasonality, etc.) that can impact response, too, before drawing conclusions.

Even without decent response data, you can simply ask subscribers what they'd like from you, through polls and surveys which (yay!) you can send out through...email.

2. Content marketing for promotional emails

In an article on balance in enewsletter marketing, Dave Chaffey said:

"I have subscribed to the Dell e-update for over ten years now I think in the vain hope they might go beyond pushing the latest promotions and voucher codes at me every week."

The promo-only approach does have many benefits. When serendipity strikes and you do actually want to buy a new PC, they might just get your order.

But the effectiveness of such an approach has its limits, especially where there's not enough offer/product variety available to keep people interested.

This is where content could play a role.

Dell could, as Dave mentions:

"...help me learn about the latest developments, discussions or how I could use my PC more productively."

Such content lifts results indirectly by building loyalty, awareness etc. And directly if related promotions are mixed into or featured alongside the valuable content.

A common complaint here is the time and costs incurred by content production. But they need not be prohibitive: you'll find six simple content sourcing ideas here and 31 newsletter content development tips here.

3. Build value through service emails

In a sense, delivering useful or entertaining content is providing a kind of service. And a broader switch to a service mentality can also increase email value and email response.

[Of course, what we may think of as marketing mails may be perceived as service mails by recipients: they did after all voluntary sign-up to get these messages because they, well, actually want them!]

Transactional and trigger emails are, by definition, more service oriented and more valuable for recipients: they go out in response to a specific cue from the recipient (a purchase, browsing history etc.).

Transactional emails (like order confirmations) are a vital part of a process the recipient is going through and much is made of their marketing potential.

Other trigger emails are also likely to be more valuable than broadcast email because they arrive as a direct result of a specified action, as with a shopping cart abandonment email. A study by Experian CheetahMail revealed that emails designed to get people to return to an abandoned shopping cart and finish the purchase yield 20x the transaction rates and revenue of standard campaigns.

But wait, don't these messages need exactly the kind of clever technology we said not everyone has access too?

Not always.

Consider these examples:

• Insert a generic offer or promotional message into footers/sidebars of your order confirmation template. Swap out the offer/message at regular intervals.
• Set up simple autoresponders soliciting feedback, product reviews etc. post-purchase.
• Convert boring old system messages written by engineers into well-written, engaging communications, like this welcome message from Localiter.

4. Relate to external events

The same offer comes across differently when placed in a relevant context. 10% off socks is a lot more interesting (unfortunately for Dads like me) during the December gift-giving season than in late summer.

We recognize this implicitly with seasonal messaging and designs, but can easily expand the concept to include a range of holidays, events...even weather.

It's not just about finding offers or content that fit logically to the wider context. It's also about creating connections to that wider context in copy, editorial, subject lines etc.

To work, this connection shouldn't feel too contrived and you should be sure the connection makes sense. UK snow makes a great editorial theme for your UK subscribers, a poor one when mailing to residents of Florida.

Here some examples of emails that use this principle to improve relevance:

• Amy Garland highlights four campaigns that exploit prevailing weather conditions in their messaging.
• Amanda Gagnon reviews promotional emails that exploit current news and events.
• VerticalResponse posts about one that exploits an obscure holiday.

5. Give people more choice

A big challenge with delivering value is that sending out a single offer or article gives you one chance of hitting the relevancy mark. And you usually miss (check your click rates if you don't believe me).

There is an argument for putting several offers or articles in one email, to give yourself a better chance of having something relevant in there. But bigger emails can also dilute your core message or offer, or put people off from reading at all.

One compromise is to keep your main offer(s) or article(s), and then tag on additional opportunities to click for those who are not interested in the main call-to-action. For example:

• Sidebar/footer links to other promotions or content
• Website navigation bar linking to popular site areas
• Website search form link

P.S. Try the technology after all

The premise behind this post was to identify some options for those who don't have the technology, data or resources to undertake conventional improvements like significant segmentation.

If that's you, be sure to take a second look at what's available to you.

Many value priced email marketing services or software have a surprisingly large number of sophisticated features. If you dig a little deeper into the FAQs and help files, you might just find that you do, in fact, have access to "advanced" tools that make it easier to lift the value of your emails.

OK...any other suggestions for the resource-poor marketer looking to build email value?