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A cautionary tale (in rhyme)

Guess what - it's National Poetry Day here in the UK, so
there's only one thing for it ...

............

Freddy Bull the marketer
Just loved his direct mail,
He used to send out tons of stuff
And knew it couldn’t fail.
He didn't know if it arrived,
Nor whether it got read,
But just a 1% return
Was good enough for Fred

Then one day Freddy realised
That there was something better:
An email can be sent for free –
Much cheaper than a letter!
And so he scoured his database
For every email in it,
CC’d them all, and then hit 'send'
And hoped they wouldn’t bin it.

Poor Fred, he had a lot to learn
Before he got it right
Permission, relevance, subject lines ...
I could go on all night.
He started reading eTips and
He soon cleaned up his act
So now his ROI is up
Instead of clients' backs.

:)

Do I know you? Why the 'from' field counts

Does your inbox groan under the weight of email, both wanted and unwanted?

For most people, it's a split-second decision whether to open an email or not. If your recipents are using a preview pane, they can see a small section of the email. Otherwise, they only have two pieces of information to go on. The subject line, and who it's from. I've talked about subject lines in a previous eTip, and there'll be an update on that very soon. But what about the 'from' field?

According to research by Return Path*, 'knowing and trusting the sender' is still the number one factor influencing opens. Overall, people are opening less - so becoming a 'trusted sender' is more important than ever. It doesn't happen overnight, but here are a few simple things you can do for starters:

- Make the 'from' field a recognisable name, and keep it consistent. The most obvious choice is your company name, or a version of it that people are familiar with. For some businesses, having the email appear to come from a named person may be appropriate, for example Boden's newsletters come from 'Johnny Boden'. Or you could use the actual email address, such as 'Dina@wordfeeder.com'.

- Monitor the return address. There's nothing more discouraging than hitting 'reply' only to get zero response. It amazes me how many companies forget that email is essentially a two-way communication medium. It's like calling someone on the phone, talking for five minutes, then hanging up without giving them a chance to say anything. Plain rude!

- Ask recipients to add your 'from' address to their address book or contacts. It gets you special treatment in some email clients and will help make sure your emails arrive in the inbox rather than the junk folder.

*January 2007, Return Path Third Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey

Interpret the stats to improve results

When it comes to email marketing everyone's looking for definitive answers.

You know the kinds of questions I'm talking about. What sort of open rate should we get? What's an average click-through rate? If our unsubscribe rate is 2%, is that good?

Unfortunately, there are no absolutes. The answers are dependent on so many factors. Firstly you can seek out industry benchmarks from firms such as Marketin Sherpa or e-consultancy, which is a good starting point. You can even try carrying out your own research, either formally or just by asking around.

Next, look at your own campaign statistics over a period of time and establishing your own benchmarks. Then you can get down to interpreting what the numbers mean and using that information to improve results next time.

For example, if a campaign achieves a lower than average open rate, this probably means that:

1. either the subject line was poor, or
   
2. the email got filtered as spam and went to the junk folder, or
   
3. the average age of the email addresses is going up

If a campaign achieves a lower than average click-through rate, this probably means that:

1. either the offer wasn't enticing enough, or
   
2. the creative (copy, design or both) wasn't strong enough, or
   
3. (if combined with a high open rate) the subject line was misleading

You might then decide to go back to the testing stage, remembering to test one factor at a time in order to find out just what makes a difference.

Of course, there are many more stats on an typical report than just open and click through rates, and the principle applies to all. Establish your own benchmarks, interpret what the numbers actually mean, identify areas for improvement, tweak and test.

List Fatigue: Time for a cull?

List fatigue is something all email marketers have to face. It's a familiar scenario: your first newsletter is a wow. Good open rate, nice comments, everyone is happy. But over time, open rates tend to decline, and, even though your CTRs may be strong there's still the nagging feeling that the majority of people just aren't bothering to open any more.

This body of emails can be a dead weight, skewing your stats and even affecting your sender reputation in the eyes of ISPs. Not only that, but if your email hosting service charges per address, it's costing you money.

Instinctively, no-one likes to reduce their list, but a cull might be in order.

Newer addresses are generally more responsive, but then again some long-standing subscribers may still be your best customers or advocates. So what to do? First, try to identify:

1) all those who joined the list prior to a specific date, say, 6 months ago
2) all those who haven't opened your emails in the last 6 months

Now, consider removing any addresses which fall into both groups. For more recent subscribers in group (2), try sending them a one-off email to re-engage them (hint: the subject line will need some thinking about!) For those subscribers in group (1) but not in group (2), send them a note thanking them for their continued readership and an incentive to refer a friend.

The result: a trimmed-down list, some appreciative readers and with any luck an injection of new blood too.

The 4 ingredients of email marketing success

Sometimes we can get bogged down with the details of email marketing and lose sight of the guiding principles. So, as something to to think about over the summer, here's a quick recap of the four factors that can make or break an email marketing campaign.

1. WHO? The quality of your list, segmentation and targeting. Relevance is king.
   
   
2. WHAT? Your message, your offer, your proposition. Whatever you call it, it has to answer the 'what's in it for me?' for your audience.
   
   
3. HOW? Whether its beautiful design, witty copy or pull-no-punches plain text - present your message in a way that grabs your target audience.
   
   
4. WHEN? Hit your audience when they're most receptive and response rates will improve.

Sounds familiar? It should - direct marketers have lived by these principles for decades. There's no need to re-invent the wheel for email, just remember its roots lie in direct mail. No-one can be expected to get it all right straight away - for best results, test and tweak each of the four factors, one at a time.

HOLIDAY BREAK: The next e-Tips will be in 4 weeks' time, with the normal fortnightly schedule returning in September.

Have a great summer, whatever the weather!

There's gold in that click-through data

It's no secret that the reliability of open rates is not what it was, thanks mainly to the growing prevalence of image blocking. In a way this is good: it means we have to look beyond simple opens to statistics that are far more telling. I'm talking of course about the click-through rate.

Click-throughs are unequivocal proof that you've got someone's attention. You can look at an email without taking it in, but I can't imagine anyone clicking on a link in an email without having some reason.

A click is a statement of interest – that's powerful information you can use to improve the targeting and relevancy of future campaigns. But the value of this data depends upon the skill of the email creative: what is the context of the link?

Let's say you're a veterinary practice. Your list contains a mix of cat, dog and other pet owners. An article in your newsletter talks about a particular condition that affects cats, and a link to a relevant product or service. Gather the click-through data on this link and you have a tailor-made list of customers for cat-related products and services. If on the other hand the newsletter only contains general links such as 'click here to find out more about our services' and sending readers to the home page, your click-through data tells you very little.

By increasing targeting and relevancy you'll improve the results of your email marketing efforts, and thereby the return on your investment. And it all starts with the humble click.

Is plain text just plain best?

I have a colleague who regularly uses email to prospect for consulting work. She sends out plain text emails, and swears by the results.

Every now and then the 'text vs HTML' debate is re-kindled. Just when is it best to send in plain text?

Let's consider the benefits:

• no worries about rendering or image blocking
  
• good delivery rate: less likely to fall foul of filters
  
• may be more likely to get read, doesn't look like a 'marketing email'
  
• the 'low tech' approach may be better received by some target audiences

But what are the cons? Here's what comes to mind:

• no way of tracking opens
  
• trackable links can be very long and in some email clients this will cause them to break
  
• with no graphical content the copy has to be excellent
  
• for some businesses the images are crucial (eg mail order clothing)
  
• lack of visual branding may make the message unmemorable

My consultant colleague only sends out small numbers of highly targeted emails, and I would guess her high success rate is down to relevance and timing, two of the most important factors in any email campaign.

For the majority of clients I still recommend HTML, but with the usual caveats: don't rely too heavily on images, include a link to a web version, offer a plain text version for those who prefer it and send your campaigns in multipart format, so that the text version is delivered if HTML can't be displayed.

Image blocking: what you can do

The other day I received an email which illustrates perfectly the problem of image blocking. Here's how it looked before and after I turned on images:

Default view - click to enlarge

With images turned on - click to enlarge

To make matters worse there was no ALT text for the images, and the link to the web version actually wasn't a live link.

A number of significant email clients now have images turned off by default: AOL, Googlemail/Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Outlook 2007 and some versions of Outlook Express, to name just a few. In most cases, the recipient is in control and can enable images if he or she wishes to - either on an email-by-email basis or by changing the setting.

So what can you do? As usual, it's damage limitation:

• Test how your HTML email appears with images turned off
  
• Add a text-based link to a web version, at the top of the email
  
• Use ALT text for all images
  
• Do not use images for important content like headlines and links
  
• Ask recipients to add you to their address book

Regarding the last point, don't assume people know how to do this. Usability research suggests that if you give people instructions on how to add addresses to their address book or trusted sender list, it greatly increases uptake (Marketing Sherpa email Benchmark Guide 2007). This might mean setting up a page on your website with basic instructions and screenshots of the major email clients.

B2B email - no permission required?

When it comes to emailing private individuals, as opposed to
businesses, the law in the UK is pretty clear. You have to have
permission. There are a number of good factsheets available
which explain what 'permission' means in this context - for
example this one from Scottish Enterprise.


But what about business-to-business? Is it really true that
anything goes? According to the law, yes. With one or two
caveats, however.

The other day I was at a business networking meeting, and
during the free exchange of business cards somebody asked
me if they could add me to their mailing list. It was a
polite request so I said yes. Then I thought about how
infrequently this happens - the courtesy of requesting
permission where none is legally required.

When a new B2B client asks about emailing to a 'grey' list
(addresses acquired from business cards, brochures or websites,
for example) I advise them to tread carefully. Firstly, if
any of those businesses are sole traders or partnerships,
then legally speaking they are treated as private individuals
and B2C regulations apply. Secondly, business relationships
are generally about more than just a quick sale. So it's
important that the tone of an email approach doesn't annoy,
and that the message really is relevant to these people.

At the moment, B2B email marketers have it easy, but it's
not always so great when you're on the receiving end. And
if enough people complain, who knows, we may end up with
an email version of corporate TPS.

Reactive email: 'I wish I'd thought of that!'

Whether or not you have a marketing plan, what do you do when other, unforeseen opportunities arise? I don't mean all those ad sales calls offering you a fantastic price on a quarter page display in the next XYZ supplement. I mean the genuine moments when you see someone else jump in and you say to yourself 'I wish I'd thought of that!'

One of the beauties of new media tools such as email, pay per click advertising and SMS messaging is its immediacy. It allows you to react to the unforeseen, to take advantage of the moment. But with the limited resources most of us have, this means planning ahead. How?

First of all, identify the relevant things that could happen, or will happen, but you don't know when. That's the principle behind obituary writing, for example. Then prepare. Emails can be designed, written and loaded into your distribution system. When the time comes, add the relevant details and send. Google Adwords can be prepared ahead of time and a mere click will send them live.

Some events are predictable and already well exploited: florists, restaurants and chocolate retailers all have Mother's Day, Easter and Christmas firmly on their calendars.

Others need a bit of forethought.

Consider the case of an arthritis charity promoting a natural, drug-free treatment. When are people going to be searching for this on the web? As soon as the next drug scare breaks. The charity could prepare for this ahead of time with pay per click ads to attract searchers to its website and a 'ten top tips' paper ready to email. The plan would be to insert the name of the drug into the ads before sending them live, and to temporarily alter the wording on the homepage email sign-up box to say 'Concerned about (drug name)? Sign up for our top ten tips on how to manage your arthritis naturally'. These two simple actions could take place within minutes and lead to hundreds of new members.

You will be able to come up with your own list of relevant events and the interest angle based on what it is you sell or promote. But here are a few examples to get you going:

Event: The first rain appears after an extended dry period. Interests/angles: umbrellas, waterproof clothing, gardening/planting seedlings, staying in with a DVD, global warming, drought aid for third world countries etc
Event: A hot summer is predicted. Interests/angles: sunscreen, holidays, room fans, barbecue equipment, car servicing, losing weight, summer clothes, global warming etc
Event: England wins the World Cup. Interests/angles: replica shirt sales, pubs, beer, footballing personalities, sports channels, football coaching & places to play, WAG fashions, escape from the footie etc

Have fun!

Get to the point: writing for skimmers (part 2)

In the last eTip I talked about how much we are influenced by the subject lines and 'from' fields when choosing to either delete or open an email.

But once your email has been opened, what then? Readers will typically give you seconds rather than minutes of their time. You need to ensure even the flightiest of skimmers gets your message. For example:

Use brief subheads

Subheadings or emboldened key words focus the reader's attention. They and can be used to either

• intrigue them into reading more, or
  
• summarise in a couple of words what that paragraph is about

Use bullet points

• bullets or numbered lists are easier to skim than long paragraphs of prose
  
• three is the magic number but certainly no more than seven

Make calls to action prominent

If there's one thing you want people to do, put it somewhere prominent in the top two inches (for those who won't scroll down) and again at the end (for those who read it all before they decide to act).

Some research I've seen suggests that graphic buttons are more likely to be clicked on than hypertext links, but that's something you should test as audiences vary.

Keep sentences & paragraphs short

Think bite-sized. Bonsai. Haiku. This needn't be an excuse for poor writing though. It's actually harder to write less - something you'll know if you've ever sweated over a subject line for half an hour!

Don't get deleted, write for skimmers

Are your emails written for skimmers?

Skimming isn't about reading quickly. Being a skimmer means you're just looking for the key points and ignoring the rest. Skimmers love a good contents page, a short abstract and quick-fire humour. They struggle with ring-bound reports, jokes that take ten minutes to get to the punchline, and novels by Henry James.

So what's my point...? The first thing email recipients skim is the inbox.

In a survey of US email users conducted by the ESPC, 80% said they report spam or delete emails without opening. 73% make that decision based on the 'from' name and 69% based on the 'subject' line.

In other words, a quick skim of the inbox is enough for most people to decide whether to delete or open.

Which means your 'from' name should be transparent, consistent and meaningful outside of your organisation. I still see plenty of genuine emails coming from 'Customer Service' or 'Sales Office' which sadly makes them indistinguishable from spam.

As for subject lines - the best practice advice is to test, test, test. Different audiences respond to different subject line strategies. And it sounds obvious, but keep an eye on subject lines currently being used by spammers and try not to look like them.

In the next eTips: making the body of your email skimmer-friendly.

What do readers look at in your email?

Did you know that people don't just click on links in an email, they click all over the page, even on blank spaces? Or that only about half the people who view an email actually make it to the end?

These are among the findings of a 2006 email Eyetracking Study carried out by Marketing Sherpa as part of its 2007 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. Just as it sounds, eyetracking measures both how the eyes move around the screen and what they fix on. This information, together with the monitoring of mouse movements, can highlight a number of interesting issues for email marketers. This study revealed some fascinating insights, for example:

- Images are important. An email with a relevant image got double the attention than the same email without: people actually spent longer looking at the words, too.

- Although people tend to click all over the place on at HTML email, text emails focus the reader more and only the links are clicked on

- People don't read whole sentences or headlines. They read the first few words and the brain 'fills in' the rest. The same is true for paragraphs: the first is the most read. So it's worth getting to the point sooner, rather than later

The samples involved in this study were small: eyetracking is still quite a high tech, labour intensive process. And the conclusions are predictably non-committal: yes, the positioning of elements on the page affects how people interact with email. But it all comes down to trialling and testing to see what works best.

Tried and tested content ideas

In the last eTip I argued that an email newsletter should be seen as a long term marketing tool, not just a vehicle for sales messages.

That means including a good proportion of non-promotional content - some would say as much as 60%.

Which is all very well, but what if you're just selling something less than glamorous, like spare parts for washing machines, or tax advice, or plastic cups? How do you find the inspiration for engaging, interesting, valuable non-sales-related content, month after month?
Here are a few tried and tested content ideas:

• Behind the scenes: how a product is made, where it comes from, how it's transported, who's involved.
  
• Did you know: a (genuinely) interesting or useful fact
  
• Insider tip: give away your expertise for free
  
• Other readers: an example, issue or success story that readers can empathise with
  
• People & animals: recurring characters, putting faces to names, shaggy dog tales
  
• Backgrounder: putting your products or services in a wider context, how the business started
  
• Jargon buster: de-mystifying things, letting the reader into an 'inner circle', self-deprecating humour
  
• Simple competition/giveaway: something that involves people going to your website or reading your brochure can work well!

There has to be a point to your non promotional content, of course. It must have some relevance to your readers and to your products/services. (Sounds obvious, but it is possible to lose sight of this!)

You want people to read it and think 'that's interesting / enjoyable / useful enough for me to want to open and read the next newsletter.' Over a period of time you also want them to think 'these are people I respect /trust /could do business with.'

A newsletter is for life, not just for sales

Some years ago, one of my first email newsletter clients was
a mail order company selling clothing made from ethically
traded materials. I was delighted to have the chance to work
with these people as I admired their approach. There was a
genuine enthusiasm and sense of commitment about what they
were doing.

My mind was buzzing straight away about their email newsletter.
There was just so much material we could include: profiles
of the cotton farmers, features about fair trade, about the
production process, about fabric care, about the staff who
fulfilled the orders ... I knew we would never be short of
good content.

However, the business owner was only interested in one type
of content, which was basically 'buy our T-shirts:
long-sleeved £12, short-sleeved £8, new in this month:
sweats just £15...' For him, the object of the newsletter
was simply to deliver clickthroughs and thereby sales.

I felt that this was a mistake. Of course, the newsletter
should feature the products, and sales was the overall
objective. But a big part of the products' appeal was about
being made from fairly traded, natural fabrics and sold
by a small, actively involved company. An email newsletter
was the perfect vehicle to talk up those aspects of the
business, enthuse customers and encourage loyalty and advocacy.

The most successful email newsletters are the electronic
equivalent of the old days when people used to go into shops,
have a chat with the person behind the counter about their
kids, the weather, the price of fish, the new fridge he'd
had installed ... and then buy stuff. It's not just about
your products and services. It's about showcasing what's
different about your business, building a relationship,
establishing trust - altogether a solid base for sales and
referrals.

After just one newsletter, the ethical clothing client and
I parted company, and I learned an important lesson about
managing client expectations. Undoubtedly, to reap the best
returns from an email newsletter you need to commit to a
long term plan - failure to see the big picture is a wasted
opportunity.

Finding out what customers want ... and more

Each email is an opportunity to find out about your customers.

Sometimes, market research is seen as something you do when prospecting for customers. Or it's a boring section on the marketing plan or business proposal that has to be filled in.

But in fact, as any marketer will tell you, gathering 'customer insights' is a job that never ends. Don't stop finding out about people when they become a customer - that's when you have the chance to really open up a dialogue. The world's most successful brands are obsessed with finding out what makes customers tick. It's about knowing what they want, but there's more to it than that. Remember the famous quote from Henry Ford: 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse.'

The marketer's job is to know what customers want now, and anticipate what they'll want next. Finding out what they want now is the easy bit! You can, for example:

• ask questions at the point of sign up. This doesn't have to be on the signup form itself (too many questions up front can put people off) but you could, for example, request a bit more information in the confirmation email. Or it might be useful to know whereabouts in the purchasing cycle they are, or their area of interest.
• ask directly for feedback. Even if people are reluctant to email their comments, periodic surveys, if kept short, can generate useful ongoing feedback.
• include links in the body of the email, then measure the popularity of those links. The email might include, for example, the first few lines of an article, or an invitation to download a coupon or more information, or even a link to an external website. You'll soon see which items are popular and which are not, and sometimes it's not what you're expecting.
• monitor the unsubscribe and forwarding activity. Did a particular issue generate more unsubs than usual? Perhaps the proportion of promotional content was higher than usual, or perhaps there was too much irrelevant content. A good number of forward-to-a-friends this month? Analyse what might have been the reason and look to replicate it.

The customer insights you can glean from email marketing should inform the rest of the marketing mix, although that doesn't aways happen of course, since email is too often seen as some sort of add-on to the 'real' business of marketing. But don't get me started on that!

HTML email - it's web design, but not as we know it

An HTML email is just like a web page. Except in some ways it's not. It's worth understanding the differences, even if you're not the person responsible for the design and coding of your email messages. Let me rephrase that - if you're overseeing the business of email marketing then it's essential to have a handle on the potential design issues.

The thing to always bear in mind is that the sender is never 100% in control of how the email appears to all recipients. So how can you find out how your emails will look? Some email service providers offer the ability to test how your email will render in a selection of email clients. That sort of service isn't cheap, however. There's also generally an emphasis on US-based ISPs which isn't much help to the UK email marketer. You could just as well open accounts with each of the major webmail providers and recruit a small group of testers using AOL, Entourage, Apple Mail and other common email clients.

Backgrounds and fonts
With HTML email it pays to be simple. Background images often won't get seen, and dark backgrounds can be a disaster if your pale font colour defaults to a standard black or blue, making the copy unreadable.

As with web pages, the viewer can only see specific fonts if they are installed on his or her computer. So if you use something exotic for your subheads, just be aware that it may well default to Arial or Times New Roman for many recipients.

As I've mentioned in a previous eTip, in Googlemail (or Gmail), images are turned off by default - but at least the recipient can elect to see them, whereas styles are ignored.

Layout
For a web page designer it's easy to create a fluid page that adjusts to the screen size. Some 'cool' sites even require the viewer to scroll sideways to see content. By contrast to all this design flexibility, the optimum width for an email is 600 pixels, but anything within 500 - 700 will probably be fine. This is based on the default message box width for the most common email and webmail clients when viewed on average screen sizes and resolutions.

When it comes to laying out content within your email, again I'm afraid the old ways can't be beat, and that means using tables. Although tables are no longer in favour with web designers, using styles to layout an HTML email is the proverbial recipe for disaster. Be aware that fonts can display larger than you'd like when styles are ignored, and that could break your layout with over-long rows and shifted columns.

Rich Media
It's certainly possible to add video, animations, forms and other interactive content into an HTML email. But this will inevitably attract the attention of spam filters and network administrators. Is it necessary? How about a teaser to the interactive content, accompanied by a clickthrough to see it on your website - not only is this simpler, but you can then track who clicks and thereby the popularity of the item.

The bottom line: HTML emails may not be as sophisticated as their web page cousins, but plain is the new interesting! Stick to pale backgrounds and dark fonts, and check how your email looks without styles and without images. It may not be perfect, but is it still readable? Stay within the optimum width, avoid Javascript, Flash and other fancy stuff. And test in as many different email clients as possible.

Your recipients will thank you for it, and your messages will have the very best chance of arriving intact.

How to stay out of the 'junk' folder

Bring up the subject of email in any conversation and the topic
almost always turns to spam - how much we're getting, what to do
about it, which spam filtering software is worth using, and so on.

But talk to a potential email marketer and one of the first
questions is 'how can we stop our email from being filtered
out as spam?'

The war against spam is being fought on many different levels,
from ISPs and email service providers, to network administrators
and, of course, individuals themselves. What they all have in
common is that they are trying to filter out irrelevant, unsolicited
email from disreputable sources.

So your first priority should be to ensure the domain you are
sending from hasn't been blacklisted for any reason, and that
the content of your email is relevant to the audience you're
targeting. It always irritates me to read things like 'email is
just a numbers game - the more people you send to, the more
responses you'll get', and then use that to justify a mass mailing
with the promise of a 0.1% return (or less). Only spammers think
that way - short term gains, inbox misery all round and screw the
customer!

Notice that I haven't mentioned permission. Permission is important
in both marketing and legal terms, but we're not talking about that
here. Spam filtering has little to do with marketing concepts or
even what is or isn't legal, it is simply rules-based.

In a previous eTip I talked about how you can reduce the chance of your emails being blocked. But there is something else you can do, and according to Marketing Sherpa's 2007 Benchmark Guide only 22% of email marketers actually do this: ask recipients to whitelist your 'from' address.

Better still, tell them what that means or how to do it - many people won't know, and providing instructions greatly increases uptake. Detailed information about this is freely available on the web - for example, here at SiteSell.com.

Or you could simply say 'Please add ourcompany@emaildomain.com
to your address book or contacts list, or ensure you add
emaildomain.com to your 'safe senders list', in order to receive
our emails.'

Asking people to whitelist you is a simple thing to do. It can
increase the chances of your emails getting through to those who
want to read them, reducing the 'false positives' generated by
clunky spam filtering.