a deep dive into email programs: what's working now to engage customers

Welcome to the 2010

Digital Marketing World

Virtual Conference Series

A Deep Dive into Email Programs:

What's Working Now to Engage Customers

Bill Leming, Vice President, Strategic Services, SubscriberMail

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY

©2010 SubscriberMail. All rights reserved.

A Deep Dive into

e-Newsletters

Bill Leming

VP Strategic Services

SubscriberMail



Agenda

• Email Strategic Evolution

• Strategy

• Perception

• Human Connection

• SPAM

• Relevancy/Engagement

• Integration

• Social

• Testing/Analytics

• Mobile



Email marketing has evolved into a

sophisticated medium



Email Marketing: Old vs. New

Build a mailing list, anyway you can

Fool the ISPs to boost delivery

Avoid “spam words” that trigger filters

How many people opened?

Image-focused messages

Cute subject lines

The Old Way

Quality vs. quantity

Authentication and reputation

Engagement and content

Conversions/ROI

Smart layouts, pre-headers

Engaging, non-teaser formats

The New Way



How do I evolve my email

marketing?



Start Thinking Strategically

• The blueprint or foundation of an effective email marketing

program

• Sets the goals and program objectives for an overall email

initiative

• Analyze results and optimize for sustained success



Key Areas of Email Strategy



Objectives: What business objectives are we trying to achieve?



Audience Segments: How will audiences be segmented?



Data Opportunities: What data should be collected and used?



Message Types: What types of messages will be sent to segments?



Message Frequencies: How often should messages be sent?



Key Metrics: What defines success, and how should it be measured?



Technology: What technology integration is required?



Changing perceptions of email



=



The Necessity of the Human

Connection



You’re not sending to this…



You’re sending to this…

Broadcast has given way to

narrowcast



The recipient definition of SPAM

has changed…So should yours



The First SPAM Message Ever:

DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST

MEMBERS OF THEDECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THEDECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEMAND THE DECSYSTEM-10 <PDP-10> COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060TAND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM.THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THEDECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHERDECSYSTEM-20 MODELS.WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILYAT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA

THISMONTH. THE LOCATIONS WILL BE:TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1978 - 2 PMHYATT HOUSE (NEAR THE L.A. AIRPORT)LOS ANGELES, CATHURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 - 2 PMDUNFEY'S ROYAL COACHSAN MATEO, CA(4 MILES SOUTH OF S.F. AIRPORT AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92)A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHERDECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND,PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICEFOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXCITING DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY.



Perception vs. Reality

• The definition of SPAM has changed

• “Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems

(including most broadcast media, digital delivery

systems) to send unsolicited bulk emails

indiscriminately”



SPAM is in the Eye of the Beholder

• If a message looks like spam to a recipient, they will

report it even if it is legitimate and/or they’ve previously

opted in

• Avoid ALL CAPS in your subject lines

• Spelling, grammar, punctuation

• Ambiguous subject lines

• Awkward personalization

• The level of recipient engagement far outweighs “SPAM

verbiage” in the eyes of ISP filters

• A legitimate message with major display errors can be

misconstrued as SPAM




• Today we are dealing with more savvy/impatient email

recipients

• Compliance with the legal definition is no longer

enough

• Recipients define SPAM as “any email they do not

wish to receive”



Optimizing for SPAM Filters

• Tools to help

• Run messages through a SPAM check to

analyze content prior to deployment

• Automatic bounce and unsubscribe

processing



Optimizing for SPAM Filters

• Best Practices

• Make sure you are authenticated

• Utilize delivery monitoring whether in-house or

through an ESP

• Ensure everyone sending on behalf of your

organization is utilizing best practices (digital

reputation)



If engagement is king, how do you

increase it?



Increasing Relevancy/Engagement

• Gather

• Test

• Analyze

• Optimize



Integration is Key

• A way for clients to connect

their email programs with

other existing sales and

marketing tools

• Creates a way for different

technologies to be used in

tandem



Gathering Data

• Get recipients involved in

choosing what they want

from you

• Email preference centers

• Surveys

• Personalized offers



Gathering Data



Data Through Integration

• Email & CRM

• Send email based on online/offline purchase activity

• Enhance segmentation efforts

• Lifecycle messaging

• Data synchronization



Behavior Driven Messaging



Email testing is about leveraging

the medium’s unique ability to

provide fast and accurate results to

incrementally improve your email

marketing efforts



• Testing is about creating a user scenario or behavior

– not just creating a specific element in your message

• Determine objectives for short term and long term goals,

formulating tests that can help incorporate each of those

aspects

• Go further than just splitting your list into two equal

groups:

• Test within main segments and sub-segments

• Test new subscribers vs. old subscribers

Beyond the A/B Split Test



Define Your Goals

• To optimize engagement, test:

• Day/time to send

• From name

• Subject lines

• Creative/layout

• Copy

• Calls to action



Learn and Refine

Newsletter deployed each day of the week to a different group of 50K recipients.

Test objective:

Which day of the week yields the best results?

An alternative method:

Historical data should already make a strong case for the days of the week that typically

perform best. Segment your most active subscribers and conduct an Nth sample test over the

days in question.

* Depend on your most loyal, engaged subscribers to provide the type of

data you can act on with confidence.

M T W Th F



Methods – N-th Level Splits

4th

3rd

2nd 1st In this example, every 4th

subscriber is added to the

sample audience.



Methods – Multivariate Testing

Group A Subject Line 1 1-Column Layout Offer 1

Group B Subject Line 1 1-Column Layout Offer 2

Group C Subject Line 1 2-Column Layout Offer 1

Group D Subject Line 1 2-Column Layout Offer 2

Group E Subject Line 2 1-Column Layout Offer 1

Group F Subject Line 2 1-Column Layout Offer 2

Group G Subject Line 2 2-Column Layout Offer 1

Group H Subject Line 2 2-Column Layout Offer 2



Advanced Testing

• Heat-mapping to track eye movements of email recipients

Source: 3M Visual Attention Service



Test Against Recent Trends

• Stock photos vs. real photos



Test Against Recent Trends

• Stock photos vs. real photos

• New study shows that “big, feel-good images that

are largely decorative” are mainly ignored online

• Stock photos or generic people are also disregarded

• People engage more with a photo if they know the

image or the person in the photo is real



Analytics Integrations:

Closing the Loop



Analytics Integration

• Email & Analytics

• Data “beyond the click”

• Web funnel analysis and optimization

• Cross/Upsell opportunities based on

behaviors



Analytics Today: S.A.M.E Project

• eec S.A.M.E. (Support Adoption of

Metrics for Email) Project

• Combating lack of consistent email

metrics standardization by creating a

standardized metrics for industry

adoption

• Creating new definitions for email

metrics



Practical Applications



Engaging Through Other Channels



Engaging Through Social Media

• Broaden reach by

allowing subscribers to

share content online




• Build your social

media following

through email



• Use social media to acquire engaged subscribers




Engaging Through Mobile

• More than 1 billion consumers will be accessing email on

their mobile phones by the year 2013, compared to fewer

than 200 million in 2009

• 21% of mobile marketing responders indicated that they

respond to three or more offers per month




• Simple changes to your normal messages can ensure that mobile users can

clearly see your messages

• Include a link to a plain text version in your HTML message

• Use descriptive alt text for images to display on phones where images

are blocked

• Use the subject line and pre-header to promote your main call to

action

• Subject lines should be around 35 characters

• Think vertical – some mobile displays are as small as 320 pixels

wide

• Give links enough space to be clickable




• Email & SMS

• Dual acquisition

• Cross-channel communication

and follow-up

• Message-by-medium optimization

(long vs short, time-sensitive vs

at-your-convenience)




SMS

Message

Landing Page

Email



Text “SMail” to 639227

Visit http://tinyurl.com/3586shqCONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY


Summary

• Always be evolving

• Think strategically – long-term how do you achieve

your goals?

• Engage with your subscribers as individuals not just a

number in a statistic

• Always be testing and analyzing

• Look for new ways to integrate your email: mobile/social



Never stop progressing, testing,

exploring



Questions?

Bill Leming

VP Strategic Services

[email protected]

630.303.5000



mailto:[email protected]

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Moderated Q&A with Bill Leming

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a deep dive into email programs: what's working now to engage customers

Documents

proprietary2010 subscribermail

email programs

program objectives

business objectives

new way

old way

technology integration

types of messages