Do your emails have the X-factor? Part 2

In the last eTips I talked about injecting the 'X-factor' into emails - giving them personality, making them more readable, building a rapport with the reader over time.

For example, a common technique is to feature the name and photo of the editor or writer, and have them introduce the content or comment on it. You could include feedback from readers or answer a commonly-asked question, as this can strengthen the dialogue.

Make references to the real world, anchoring the exchange in time and place - it's more evidence that the email has come from a real person, who understands the lives and concerns of its readers.

Of course, an email newsletter shouldn't consist purely of promotional content. But when you do want to sell something, how you say it makes all the difference.

Here are a couple of examples. The first is from a promotional email for a US audience. It illustrates the importance of empathy and relevance, both email marketing essentials.

BEFORE
XYZ is the leading manufacturer of free online games. We offer you great games to play, including:

• Classic titles
• Sports games
• Action titles
• Children's games

Make the most of your game time with XYZ -- check out our newest games now!

AFTER
Excited about March Madness? Stage your own online tournaments playing family and friends with Basketball Fever, free online from XYZ.

Even if you don't have hoop dreams, you'll love the games we offer:

• Tetris, the classic
• Rally Race, for action
• Match-It! , for children 3 and up

And much more!

WHAT HAPPENED?
The 'before' copy was factual but just a tad boring. Also, although you may think in terms of categories like 'classic games' and 'sports games' that doesn't mean your audience thinks that way too. Since it was due to go out in March, the 'after' version focuses on a specific game and hooks it onto a topical event ('March Madness' refers to the season ending baskbetball tournaments played each year in the USA.)

(thanks to Jeanne Jennings for this example.)

The following copy extract, introducing a new product, shows how re-ordering the information and presenting it in a more conversational way creates a more readable and compelling 'story'.

BEFORE:
Why use Screenblock?

Time spent with TV is time not spent:

• talking to the family
• taking exercise
• playing
• pretending
• creating
• learning.

Too much TV can bring:

• Overweight
• Tiredness
• Problems at school
• Shyness
• Aggression.

Screenblock protects your developing child from these dangers.

AFTER:
Do your kids watch too much TV?

You want your children to be happy and to have the best possible chances in life.

Nobody wants their kids to miss out on playing sport, making friends, having fun or doing well at whatever they're interested in And nobody imagines their kids are going to be overweight, have problems at school or be lacking in confidence.

But that's exactly what research tells us can happen to young people whose TV watching isn't regulated.

You might think you can’t do anything about it.
But now you can – with Screenblock.

WHAT HAPPENED?
Yes, bullet points are good - brief, easy to scan and read on screen. But too many bullets can induce a kind of 'bullet blindness' where some of the points are skipped entirely. Not only that, but sometimes a more conversational tone is required.

In this example, the first draft is factual, but somewhat cold and blunt. The second version talks more sympathetically to the reader, empathising with her as a parent who naturally wants the best for her child and presenting her with the solution to the problem.

Good, readable email newsletters with personality are a breed apart. But they're the ones that get read, enjoyed and acted on, month after month. From time to time I'll be commenting on the best ones I know of in my blog, so please add it to your RSS reader if you'd like to be kept updated. Also, I'm always interested to hear about any great examples you've come across.

Thank you for reading in 2006 - Happy New Year and here's to a fantastic 2007!

Do your emails have the X-factor? (part 1)

Now that email has become a standard tool for customer communications it becomes more essential than ever to make yours stand out from the same old stuff. One of the key ways to make email communications more memorable is to make them more enjoyable to read. Sounds a bit basic, doesn't it? But I wonder if sometimes we get so bogged down with making sure we've got enough calls to action, or avoiding spam filters and so forth, that we forget this simple fact.

Email newsletters need personality, the 'X-factor' that makes them compulsive reading and gets them forwarded. And for it to seem genuine, the tone of voice needs to be consistent across all email communications with the customer. It may be the personality of the brand, of your organisation, of yourself, of the editor or even of a fictional editor.

It's said that people buy from people, not from companies. Unfortunately, too many email newsletters seem to be computer-generated: consisting purely of press release copy, cut-and-paste news headlines or content resembling an internal memo or instruction manual.

It doesn't have to be this way, but getting it right is tricky. Here are a few examples of what can happen:

Being informal vs being over-familiar
WOW!! Can u believe its nearly 2007??
By all means inject some fun into your writing - after all, email is closer to a spoken conversation than to a written letter. But an overly jokey or informal style needs careful handling. It can backfire, especially if it looks like you're trying too hard. There's nothing worse than feeling talked-down-to.

Being polite vs being overly formal
Further to the last email requesting confirmation of your details on our company directory, our records show that you have not yet done so.
OK, this is a system email, not a newsletter, but the principle is the same. Read your copy out loud. How does it sound? An overly formal style can come across as pompous or even rude. The golden rule is, if you wouldn't say it, don't write it in an email.

Talking to the masses
Once again, we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the annual British Birdwatching Fair ....
Email is not a broadcast medium, it is read by one person at a time. Address the individual reader, not an audience, if you want to connect with him or her. In a way it's similar to giving a presentation: make eye contact with individuals and they will feel included, look over the top of their heads and they'll turn off.

Sloppy writing
Do you want more sales from you website. Reduce Website abandonment's
We know it's good to be concise - bullets win over long paragraphs any day. But accurate spelling, punctuation and sentence structure aren't just niceties - get it wrong and and readers stumble. Chances are they won't bother to re-read if they didn't understand it the first time.

Coming up in part 2 - copy makeovers and emails with the X-factor.

How Googlemail cramps your style

We're onto a slightly technical subject this week, but it's one to be aware of, even if you're not personally responsible for coding your emails.

The growth of Gmail, or Googlemail as it's called in the UK, throws up some interesting challenges for the email marketer. I've done an assessment of all my B2C clients' lists and Googlemail/Gmail addresses still only account for a tiny percentage, but it's growing.

There are several issues. Firstly, when a message is displayed in the recipient's inbox, Google very smartly presents a series of contextual adverts next to it. So, for example if you are a niche kitchenware company, you may find your newsletter presented alongside ads for Steamer Trading and Lakeland Limited. Nice!

Something else which tends to scare email marketers is the prospect of image blocking. This has been a problem for some time, however, and doesn't just apply to Googlemail. As I've mentioned in a previous eTip it's best not to rely too heavily on images to communicate your message. Here's a handy chart from Email Tools showing how the major email clients handle image blocking.

But it gets worse. Googlemail ignores styles. In an email, it's unwise to use styles for layout anyway. But now we're talking fonts, padding, margins and backgrounds - all potentially messed up. What's the answer? Well, I'm waiting for a talented email designer to come up with one, but for now I can see two options.

Either you turn back time to pre-1999 HTML and all the design limitations that implies, or you send your Googlemail recipients the plain text version with an invitation to view the HTML version online should they wish. Personally I'm in favour of the latter. What's worse, for your recipients to see a plain text (but readable) email, or an HTML version that looks wrong (and possibly no images displaying either)?

With email, there are no guarantees about how your message will render, and sometimes it's simply a question of settling for good old plain text.

The Worst Kind of Spam

This morning I wrote another letter to the Data Protection Commissioner in Jersey to complain about unsolicited email from Play.com, a Jersey-based online retailer.

As you might expect, I get a lot of spam. My various email addresses have been out there in the public domain for so long that I see it as an occupational hazard. I get asked 'don't you get fed up with having to delete all those hundreds of 'cheap meds' emails every morning?' The answer is no, not really. But when I get non-compliant email from legitimate EU companies who should know better it's a different story.

OK, the email directive of 2003 is a bit grey in places. When is an email address a business address, and when is it private? The distinction, in the UK at least, is down to the legal status of the business - limited companies are businesses, whereas sole traders or partnerships are regarded as private individuals.

The reading of the EU directive in Jersey may be different. But the issue I have with Play.com, is that they make it impossible to opt out of their emailings. I've had several email exchanges with the company over the last two years but they are unable or unwilling to action my request. That makes their sales emails, for me, more pernicious than any amount of bot-generated spam selling dodgy pharmaceuticals.

The moral of the tale? If someone complains that your email is spam, it doesn't matter whether you agree. Don't defend yourself and don't force the recipient to jump through hoops in order to get off the list. DO apologise, DO suppress their address and do it right away. Remember the old adage about how people are quick to tell others if they've bad experience. It's the kind of negative word of mouth no-one wants, especially on the internet.

Getting your email delivered (part 2)

Deliverability is one of the toughest nuts to crack in email marketing. Time and again I get asked 'how can I make sure my emailshot gets past the spam filters?' It's a bit like the perennial question 'How can I make sure my site is number one on Google?' - the short answer is, you will never be 100% in control of this.

Rather than seeing spam filters as a challenge to be beaten, a more effective use of resources is to make sure your legitimate email is not spam, and that you're not using spammers' techniques, even inadvertently. Not only that, but don't forget the one spam filter you can't fool is the final one - the recipient.

So what can you do to prevent your email being filtered out as spam?

1. Follow ISP guidelines. Monitoring the spam filtering policy of every ISP is a mammoth task. There are services you can subscribe to who will do this for you, although you may find that most are focused on the main US ISPs. However, there are steps you can take. For example, if your list is B2C it's likely to include a high proportion of Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL addresses, so at the very least it's worth keeping up with their policies on spam and deliverability. Test different variables, monitor results and stay up to date - as with search engines, the parameters are continuously changing as spammers find ways around them. I recently changed all the calls to action in a customer email so that there wasn't a single 'click here' and the soft bounce rate went down by a third. Coincidence? To get an idea of how the HTML of a message can affect its deliverability, see this article at Clickz.
2. Try not to look like spam. For example, make sure your subject line is meaningful or at least recognisable - there's a fine line between 'creative and intriguing' and 'nonsensical and spammy'. The decision to open or delete typically takes less than a second. Obviously spammy words in the subject line may not prevent it entering the inbox, but the email may still end up in a recipient's trash quicker than you can say 'get your free meds here.'
3. Adopt email authentication. ISPs are trying to block the professional spammers by only allowing through email that's from who it says it's from. This is something that is only just starting to impact in the UK, but will become increasingly important. It's a whole subject in itself though - to be covered in a future eTip!

Getting your email delivered (part 1)

One of the most important stats for any long term email marketing programme is the bounce rate. Deliverability is now the hot issue in email marketing, with much of the teeth-gnashing focused on spam filters and how to 'get around them' (a phrase I'm not wild about - I'll explain why in the next eTips.) However, there are other reasons why your email may not arrive. It's worth tackling them before sweating the big stuff. Here are three for starters:

1. 
   Check your data entry for accuracy. A number of my clients gather email signups in house, for example, a restaurant invites customers to fill in a signup slip when they pay their bill. Trouble is, they have to be entered onto a spreadsheet for upload. Interpreting people's handwriting and then typing addresses accurately means recognising, for example, that anything without an @ isn't a valid address, nor is file:///D:/Robin or joebloggs@btinernt.com
2. 
   Have a double entry system on a webpage signup. Yes, I know it's a pain to type one's address twice (or even cut and paste it) but if you're able to do this then it's worth considering. If nothing else it does mean the registrant takes longer over the email address and may be more likely to pick up on a typo. If the email service or software you are using makes it possible to validate email addresses at the point of signup, even better
3. 
   Provide a choice of ways for people to update their address. Some people will happily click on a customised link which says 'change your preferences' or 'update your details' whereas others will prefer to send an email. Processing the latter may seem like hard work but think of it as an opportunity to engage one-to-one with your subscribers! (Just make sure you can fulfil this before offering it)

Let's begin!

It's now nearly a year since I started my fortnightly email newsletter about email newsletters, eTips. I've been meaning to move it to blog format for some time, so here it is.