6 key tactics for aSmarter Email Programme

Presented at e-Dialog Aspire 2011 London 03/11/2011

Dave Chaffey, SmartInsights.com

About Dave Chaffey

Books

About Dave Chaffey

Best-practice advice & consultingwww.smartinsights.com

Search & conversion consultingwww.clickthrough-marketing.com

Qualifications: Cert DigM & Dip DigM

Best practice guides

Your email marketing journey:Assessing your email marketing capability

Email marketing maturity stage

A. Goal setting & evaluation

B. Contact strategy and policy

C. Segmentation, targeting & personalisation

D. Email marketing integration & governance

E. Test & learn

Stage 1. Initial‘Pray and Spray’

None None; Enewsletter / Solus emails

0 Segments Limited integration of broadcasts and data

Limited

Stage 2. ManagedImproving relevance

List growth Segmented response

Basic contact strategy and rules

2-6 SegmentsBasic contact strategy

Campaign integration (DM or phone)

Subject line Offer testing

Stage 3. DefinedSegmented relevance

Marketing outcomes “Beyond the click”

Basic lifecycle communications

Simple event-triggeredWelcome reactivate

ESP, web analytics & social media integration

Template layouts

Stage 4. QuantitativeContextual relevance

Subscriber engagement

Individualised contact strategy

Recency, Frequency, Value

Auto-triggers based on web behaviour

Individual / segment testing

Stage 5. OptimisingOptimised relevance

Integrated web and multichannel

Integrated online & offline contacts

Multi-layeredDynamic content insertion

Right-channeling based on value & preference

Real-time and multivariate

The main barriers to effective email marketing in 2011?

6 © e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Agenda

6 Tactics that will matter most in 2012

1 Engagement

2 Mobile Email

3 Email contact strategies

4 Channel integration

5 Social-email marketing

6 Email marketing optimisation

7 © e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Tactic 1: Engagement strategies

Key questions:

Q. How do you measure engagement?

Q. Are you getting the sell-inform-entertain balance right?

Q. Do you have the publishing resources to create engaging content?

8

3 more advanced ways of measuring email engagement

How do you measure engagement with email?

Open/clicks/CTOR is NOT good enough, instead…

Opens/clicks/CTOR/revenue:

1. At position in lifecycle

2. By segment

3. By offer / email type

4. Aggregated over a longer time period

9

Measuring list activity – email engagement/disengagement

These “hurdle rates” are for whole list. Repeat:

By segment

By product categories purchased

TIP: Measure the overall health of your list through activity / inactivity levels over

time

Measure Period Number of Subscribers

% of list total

Never Open All time 48,000 16.0%

Last 6 Months 168,000 56.0%

Never Click All time 96,000 32.0%

Last 6 Months 144,000 48.0%

Never Bought All time 48,000 16.0%

Last 6 Months 192,000 64.0%

Never Bought Online All time 96,000 32.0%

Last 6 Months 216,000 72.0%

Start with the customer!Getting the sell-inform-entertain balance right

http://www.ruderfinn.com/rfrelate/intent/intent-index.html

Every business is a multi-channel

publisher now

13

Email Engagement:What motivates Consumers to Opt In (UK)

Source: e-Dialog research August 2011

Email Engagement:Where do Consumers Opt In (UK)

Source: e-Dialog research August 2011

Creating a content “hub”

1. Be relevant. Understand the content that will appeal to different audiences.

2. Create an editorial calendar. Your social media marketing will be more effective if you produce content on a regular, consistent schedule.

3. Offer distribution choices, but keep a focus. Offer choice to alert subscribers to content using different types of channels since they will have different preferences. 5 rules SMO – Rohit Bharaava

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/

Creating a content “hub”

4. Syndicate through partners. Identify partner sites and networks who may publish your content, either in it’s original form or tailored for their audiences.

5. Make communications two-way. Don’t just treat the channels as an alert or update service. Engage!

5 rules SMO – Rohit Bharaavahttp://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/

Missed potential?

Tactic 2: mobile marketing

Key questions:

Q. How important is mobile email use for your audience?

Q. Is user mobile email experience satisfactory?

Q. Is mobile driving commercial outcomes?

The rise and rise of mobile marketing

Source: Campaign Monitor, 3 billion emails, 2011

The desktop in decline…?Share of device page traffic for News category (weekday)

Source: comScore Custom Analytics, U.S., August 2011

An early mobile adopter!

British Airways

We helped BA launch a new suite of mobile applications in late July/early August. The campaign was prompted by an increasing penetration of smartphones, and an analysis of the devices most commonly used by members to access standard Executive Club emails.

Innovation in Email MarketingWinner: e-Dialog and British Airways

About the winning entry: To promote the launch and maximise downloads of the Executive Club mobile application, BA and e-Dialog developed a unique strategy, using historical customer data to target smartphone users in a highly targeted email-to-mobile campaign.

Judge’s comments: A smart and progressive email marketing campaign that – as well as being innovative in its scope – generated some great results. 

Still variable by country…

Mobile share of non-computer traffic for select market

Source: comScore Device Essentials, August 2011

Targeting customer by Device

After launching in 2010, the Skype App on Android & iPhone grew fast, becoming number 6 in Apple’s most popular app list in 2010.

e-Dialog recognised that an analysis of the devices used to view emails would allow Skype to target owners of specific devices

Email campaign CTA drove straight to iTunes for app download

Skype’s Mobile App Downloads

Targeting customer by Device

ResultsClick through Target = 5%, Achieved 9%

Open rates were as high as the mid 40s (%)

The average across all markets was up from 31% to 38%, for the volumes

sent this is a significant increase

Skype’s Mobile App Downloads

Mobile Email Design Best Practices

A narrow email width

Single column layout

Super subject line

Large headlines & CTAs

Bullet proof buttons

Graceful Degradation

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

iPad Optimised Video in Email

e-Dialog planned, designed and executed a campaign that specifically targets iPad owners to drive digital subscriptions to the Times websites and iPad editions.

Tactic 3: Channel integration

Key questions:

Q. How does email work with other channels to drive results?

Q. Have we reviewed attribution?

Q. Are we using email to drive offline outcomes?

Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research

Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-business-case/

Case studyUnderstanding multichannel behaviour – implications?

http://www.smartinsights.com/analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/multichannel-customer-journeys-ropo/

Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO)

Mobile Buyer

Mobile Buyer

Mobile Buyer

http://www.smartinsights.com/analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/qr-codes-location-demographic-statistics/

Is Blippar relevant?

Tactic 4: Contact strategies

Key questions:

Q. Is our layered segmentation effective?

Q. Have we optimised our triggered emails?

Q. How do we grow value?

Relevance!

39

Common Email targeting options

Targeting approaches Method

1. Classic profile-based demographic segmentation

Target customer groupings according to their characteristics & motivations

2. Customer value Assess customers by current and future value potential

3. Web design personas Target 2-10 typical customer journeys

4. Customer lifecycle Target messages according to length of time using online services

5. Purchase and response behaviour

Use “sense and respond” behavioual targeting based on RFM

6. Channel preference Communicate with customer in their preferred media (and according to value)

7. Tone and style preference Communicate with customers according to their tastes inferred from demographics or behaviour.

Tip – create a layered segmentationAn example from eBay

Static

Recent

Beh

avio

ura

l D

eri

ved

D

em

og

rap

hic

Gender, Geography

Consumer/Business

Transactional Value Segmentation

Propensity Models

Kids

Last purchase

Tech Fashion Cars & Parts

Last category

KeywordKeyword personas

Category clusters

Recent Activity

Do you send out emails based on the following triggers?

Retargeting– do Amazon get it right?

Purchase Dispatched

+7d

+14d +21d

Recognition ofprevious purchase

RCI Monthly Account StatementThe RCI Monthly Account Statement mails to 30 regions across Europe and Asia, in over 25 languages.

Integrating SMS into email campaigns

Confused.com is the UK’s comparison site of choice for car, home, travel, life, and more.

Keeps its customers up-to-date with guides, tips and information and renewal advice

To extend email’s impact they followed it with an SMS using our platform to send both email and SMS messages.

Contains two custom published fields: first name and the lowest price offer

for insurance.

Confused.com Renewal Reminder

Summary: targeting options

Purchase behaviour:Buyer vs non-buyer

One-time vs multiple

Email activityActive vs inactive clicker

Number of clicks on email

Web activityVisited, never visited

Browsed, not bought

Channel activityWeb vs Store vs Catalogue

RFMProportional

Hard-coded

Category purchased

Appending lifestyle data

Value

Tactic 5: social-email

Key questions:

Q. Are social sharing links and social content effective?

Q. Do you cross-promote social channel OVPs?

Q. Do you have a plan for social sign-on / email integration?

Social email marketing is much more than SWYN…

SYWN prominent above fold

In this May 1, 2011 email, Macy’s places the share call-to-action in the same

content block as the “Friends & Family” promotion. This positioning is much more prominent and compelling than the usual

placement in the header or footer.

In this Feb. 2, 2011 email, Kohl’s asks their customers to nominate a kid in the

community to receive a scholarship. There’s a prominent secondary call-to-action to “Share this on Facebook” to

try to broaden the reach of the campaign.

Social channel OVP

TIP: Recruit to Twitter

or Facebook via Email

Integrated campaign example

Integrating social into Enews

Source: http://www.retailemailblog.com/2011/09/am-inbox-pulling-social-content-into.html

Social sign-on The new preference centre

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/why-social-sign-on-matters/

53 © e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Tactic 6: Email optimisation

Key questions:

Q. How advanced is our incentive optimisation?

Q. How structured is our creative optimisation?

Q. Mobile optimisation?

Offer optimisation

Summary

A simple, generic (branded-only)

retargeting email achieved a 10

percent uplift in online conversions

A bespoke retargeting email that

offered a 5% discount via a time-

limited promotional code of 72 hours,

more than doubled this conversion

rate

A bespoke retargeting email with the

same discount, but this time with a

time-limited code of 48 hours

quadrupled the original conversion

ratehttp://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-remarketing-an-example-of-how-to-test/

Creative optimisation

Test version A

Send Volume: 10,000

Sample criteria: Random

Click through rate: 6.1%

Test version B

Send Volume: 10,000

Sample criteria: Random

Click through rate: 4.5%

Main Broadcast

Send Volume: 180,000

Click through rate: 5.8%

Source: Craig Sullivan @OptimiseorDie http://www.slideshare.net/sullivac/http://www.smartinsights./analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/dell-international-web-analytics-case-study/

Timing optimisation

May sound simplistic, but finding the right day to send to our customers has significantly improved our revenue and engagement rates

To find the right time, we undertook significant day of the week testing, with some interesting results

Subject line optimisation

Subject line testing has been one of our most powerful ways of

increasing channel engagement

Every eBay DM is tested against at least three different subject lines

with test cells sent 4-8 hours before main cells are sent

Subject line optimisation can increase response rates by up to 20-

40%

Let’s Connect!

Questions & discussion welcome

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davechaffey

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