Why Email Marketing is Still King by Mike Biscotti

Editor's Notes

1. Today’s agenda will define what Email is King of and give any skeptics out there some good evidence of why they should do it.Even though email marketing in of itself is inexpensive, the inherent “cost” for obtaining an email is significant.Next we’ll talk about what everybody talks about, how email converts compared to other marketing methods and how it’s still winning that battleNext I’ll show you some benchmarks that need to be taken into account especially when you are reviewing the data for your email campaigns so you know when you need to make an adjustmentThe majority of this presentation will focus on strategy and will also provide some insight on what works the best. I don’t have time to get deep into everyone’s specific industry but I need to emphasize that strategy varies a lot by industry but these all have a strong base in eCommerce.After that I’ll talk about some changes to email marketing you should be aware of for 2014 and show some real world examples of some successful email campaigns that should spark some ideas about what you can try in your own campaignsFollowed by my personal conclusions, which of course you are welcome to comment on along with any questions you may have when it comes to what you may be experiencing in your present campaigns
2. When it comes to new customer acquisition, Google Search wins, followed by Email then social media. If you didn’t know, it costs 5X more to gain a new customer than to keep a current customer so this shouldn’t be a huge surprise. You’ll find over time you will spend much more in your PPC and SEO campaigns than you will in your Email and Social Media Campaigns. But this chart doesn’t mention conversions, which I’ll talk about in a later slideEmail clearly crushes Social Media when it comes to generating new customers, 40 times more customers through email.94% of all online activity revolves around sending and reading email. After that is using a search engine (83%) Social media comes in at about 61%And if you ask someone how they prefer to be marketed to, 3 out of 4 people say they prefer email. Give them what they want!
3. Treat every email like gold! Because like digging for gold, you gotta work hard for it.You need a great product, a great user experience, trust from the consumer, Brand Awareness, if you are a small business you need Referrals, sometimes you need to offer an incentive to get an email, a free offer perhaps, you need to collect the email at the right time and let the customer have access to sign up when they want to…This is a long journey and the treasure at the end of your quest is that precious email where you have direct contact with your audience. You have the opportunity to have an exclusive conversation with each person. So what do you do with that? Just blast them with the same old newsletter over and over? That’s not what your competition is doing and you shouldn’t do it either
4. Across all incomes Email Converts the best from a recent study in 2013 by AW Pro Tools. And for those that earn over 100K a year it’s an overwhelming majority that convert through eMail. “The winning strategy for entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike is to attract a base of raving fans that open, read, and click on the emails you send.”- Jack Born, CEO of AW Pro Tools
5. If you don’t know what your industry average is for Open Rate, Bounce Rate, Click Through Rate, and Opt Out Rate, you need to know to determine the success of your campaign. Just like you use Google Analytics to determine which pages are performing poorly, you need to track the data from your campaigns to understand what needs improvement. These numbers represent ranges from all industries on the left. On the right hand side you will see the retail average for comparison.
6. Most experts agree that 1 percent to 5 percent is a realistic conversion goal, but looking at the numbers in a vacuum can be misleading. Make sure you define what your conversion is. Most of you will consider a purchase of a product a conversion, but I would not advise that you do not make that the goal of every single campaign that you run. Sometimes it’s about awareness, or getting people to talk about your site. Plenty of time your conversion is just measuring your click through rate, getting a customer to see a new feature or new product starts the decision making process with the consumerAlso measure against ROI whenever you are measuring against purchases.
7. For those of you who are struggling to even get a list going, consider trying to offer an incentive for signing up. Giving away something for free always works or at least a discount off their next purchase. Make it easy to find a way to sign up – don’t forget to have an option to sign up on your facebook page! And make sure your pages optimized for conversion on your website are also optimized for collecting an email at the right time. Make sure it’s visible on your home page, at the very least. Make sure at the subscription and purchase touch points you offer the option of signing up for the newsletter with some sort of incentive. Let them know what you will send them and make it enticing! “Sign up for our newsletter” is boring and understated. “Receive special discounts and information about new products” is better. Make is easy to sign up and don’t ask for information you don’t need. If you use an ESP that requires this or you are looking for a double opt in experience, make this a time to collect relevant data. You do NOT need my physical address…please. You might want to ask me what I’m shopping for today or something that would profile me in your data base. This information can be of great use when it comes to segmentation which I’ll discuss later
8. Subject lines should be as short as possible.Asking a question is a great way to get an openPut promo messaging at start of message.Up to 25% off all necklaces rather than All Necklaces for 25% offMake this an urgent call to action, let them know if they wait they will miss outPick the right time of day and the right time of week.Qualify your list, as in make sure someone who signed up for weight loss information is not getting information about some random unrelated topic than weight lossESP’s help you determine spam words, or you can do a quick google search to determine this.Don’t use all caps, that’s also a spam indicator
9. 23.8% of all email opens occur during the first hour after delivery.24 hours after the send, chance of open drops below 1%Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to send2-5 pm is optimal time
10. A/B testing is inexpensive when it comes to email.Test length of copy, number of images, their placement. How is the call to action displayed? Is it in a certain color, a button, a ribbon? Rich text might be your ticket over html, you might be surprised!And even though the numbers say you should email on Tuesdays at 2pm PST, mix it up. Maybe your audience happens to be bored on Sunday afternoon and in the mood to buy. Those folks may have less competition in their inbox and then yours shows up!
11. Some examples of A/B testing.Note the change in placement and button colors. Focus on your main banner if nothing else. Typically major retailers focus on their A spot or “hero” banner when doing A/B tests
12. Click through rate usually improves when you have good visual anchors in the form of images and contextual text in combinationDon’t forget to include pre header text, this shows the content of the emails before the images get loaded and is the preview of the message next to subject lines in the email.
13. Try sending emails only when it’s relevant and valuable. Don’t just blast your list weekly with the same old story, wait until you have something truly enticing to tell them or sell themThere should be a clear value proposition statement as a disclaimer in the email
14. In case you didn’t know, half the world checks their email on their phones. If you are not optimizing for mobile on both your webstore and your emails you are seriously missing out.
15. If you want to get deeper into email marketing, and I strongly suggest that you do if you have the budget, you should invest in an automated response system. Miva has a few out of the box, and with services like Listrak and Bronto you can really expand these for a triggered response for every worthy touchpoint on your site. Note how much higher the open rates and CTR are, because the email is targeted more accurately based on user behavior. Sending follow up emails for purchases and abandon cart messages can be repeated and some marketers are getting upwards of 8 to 10 follow up messages for every trigger campaign. However you should now that the initial messages perform the best and after a while you can get down right annoying, so beware of how heavy handed you get with your follow ups
16. Miva has triggers set up for Backorder Notice                                Customer Created                                                               Order Confirmation: Customer                                Order Confirmation: Merchant                                                           Shipment ShippedListrak is a great tool to use to set up intuitive triggers based on customer behavior. Consider every touch point as an opportunity for a marketing message via email. 18 types of ETM CampaignsMarketers can respond easily to customers’ profiled characteristics, provide information, make offers, and drive them in whatever direction they choose (say, a specific page on a Web site, or to a local bricks and mortar location).Event triggered messages range from very simple, one step autoresponder messages such as a welcome message that is triggered by a new signup, through a birthday or anniversary triggered message that contains a timing component linked to an actual date, to a more complex triggered message series or conversation that uses profiling and dynamic content to create highly specific multi-path messages to different segments of a list, or an advanced ETM campaign to re-engage customers or prospects who have abandoned a shopping cart or a form for example.See Kiyonna for example
17. Simple Auto Responder:• Recipient subscribes to restaurant list online and enters birthday info•One week before the birthday, the system sends out a “happy birthday” email and a coupon for a free appetizer •Conversation cycles back into a wait step as no other actions are needed•Next year, one week before the birthday, the restaurant sends another “happy birthday” email with a coupon for 20% off the entire bill•Conversation cycles back into wait step to wait for the following year•Conversation is terminated when the person unsubscribes from the lists or chooses to stop receiving birthday emailsAdvanced Multi Path Conversation:•The organization sends out an email to its entire list announcing a sale on DVDs in the comedy, western, and Sci-Fi categories.•Recipients have one week to click on one of the links in the message. If no action is taken, the recipients are terminated from the conversation.•If the recipient clicks one of the links (comedy, western, or Sci-Fi), another email is sent with more information on DVDs in that genre. •Because no further action is needed, the conversation is terminated.
18. Example, eventful sign up is a long process, but very relevantImagine having a captive audience of 1 with every email you send. Obviously that goal is probably never reached, but if you’ve ever had a shopping experience with a great automated response campaign, you feel like every message is tailored specifically for you. It sticks with you and you remember it.
19. So I wanted to show how you could segment your user base in Miva. This is accomplished through setting up a batch report in the Manage Orders Screen.Once you are in Manage Orders you select the date range or even product code. Select all then hit Batch Report. From here some more filtering results will appear according to your products.I’m sure most of you are saying, “this is not in my admin.” Correct, this is something that one of our developers can set up for you. If you decide that you like my ideas about segmenting your users when conducting email campaigns, think about the kinds of parameters you would like to set up a batch report for. Some common ones are by product, the quantity of orders or the price of orders, but we can set up a report according to your specifications so you can easily manage lists in your Email Service Provider and really target specific folks in your subscriber list.
20. In 2014, expect to see new marketplaces for email that copy the advances that have been made on display and search. It will become much easier to buy email inventory at scale, with reporting becoming far more transparent.  With advances in attribution modeling, media buyers will start to include email in their plans, particularly if it can be made as simple as display and search to buy. PerformanceIn.comVideo in email is a growing trend. Right now, only 25% of marketers include video in their email campaigns but by the end of the year we believe that the percentage of those that embrace video will increase. MarketingProfsEvent-triggered emails-Previous customer behavior triggers a targeted and relevant email campaign which results in what the marketer has predicted (and hoped for): converting in any way, like purchasing a product or revisiting an abandoned shopping basket.Ever wonder why most e-mail clients hide images by default? The reason for the "display images" button is because images in an e-mail must be loaded from a third-party server. So when you load these images, you aren't just receiving an image—you're also sending a ton of data about yourself to the e-mail marketer. (IP address, HTTP referrer, email client, device) But google shut most of these tactics down – it will cache all images for Gmail users. Embedded images will now be saved by Google, and the e-mail content will be modified to display those images from Google's cache, instead of from a third-party server. E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen.There's also a bonus side effect for Google: e-mail marketing is advertising. Google exists because of advertising dollars, but they don't do e-mail marketing. They've just made a competitive form of advertising much less appealing and informative to advertisers. No doubt Google hopes this move pushes marketers to spend less on e-mail and more on Adsense
21. Squishable sell these plump stuffed animals. This is what their website looks like. I figured their emails might have this same fun feel but it doesn’t.
22. This is what their email looks like. Boring I thought. I called them up and I said, you guys must be clueless, do you want my help? I can design a way better email for you.They said, “we’re fine, we A/B tested and this one wins every time”If people see their product, they are less likely to click through to the website. Here, with descriptive text, this entices them to click through to see the product on the website. It gets them one step to buying by withholding the image!This is a great story of how you can employ A/B tests and you may even come out more fortunate than you think…think of how much of their design budget was saved because they don’t have to style their emails!
23. 1.    Sending Too Many EmailsIf you send a zillion emails to the audience, they will definitely get annoyed and unsubscribe. Focus on quality rather than quantity.2.    Sending Without PermissionIt is highly unlikely that sending marketing emails without permission of people will persuade them – it will only upset them.3.    No Call to ActionAdding visible links like “Shop Now” or “Click Here to Read the Blog” is a good idea for call to action.4.    No Segmentation of Target AudienceOne-size-fits-all email strategy doesn’t work. Marketing emails should feel like one-to-one communication – don’t treat every individual the same. Segment you list in specific categories and send tailor messages to them.5.    No Optimization for Mobile EmailsAn email not optimized for the mobile will look like mess and fail to grab the attention of the audience.6.    Content ErrorsGrammar, Spelling, Length of copy7.    Landing in Junk MailDon’t get blacklistedDon’t include too many images – they lower quality scores on the email firewall check list.Have a text only option of your emailDon’t include an attachment or anything that looks like a virus8.    Not Gauging the Effectives of Your CampaignEmail marketing analytics should help you keep track of how effective your email marketing strategy has been and how you can improve in your future for better results.9.    Over-Promising Subject LinesIf your email subject line says “Open this and all your birthday/holiday wishes will come true”, it’s only going to put off the reader.10.    Not Sending Emails at the Right TimeIf you are introducing a new product in the market or special rewards or discounts, it is an email-worthy announcement. Don’t bury the offer in your website – create a multi-email campaign around it.
24. So if you take away anything from this, you should know that what works for some may not work for you. You need to test and test and test again to get the results that you want. Event triggered messaging is highly recommended, but if you don’t have the budget you can compensate for this by segmenting your user base to target your audience more specifically than ever before. Don’t have the time and money to A/B test at all? Check out your competitors and copy what they are doing! I guarantee if you have a major retailer you are chasing, they have an email marketing department and they are A/B testing. Take a queue from their elements and follow along and just slap your brand on it! Just make sure you stick to your data as a roadmap for making future decisions. Just like you need to constantly make updates to your website to guarantee success, so it goes with your email campaign. Watch your click throughs and conversion rates closely and stay focused on trying to do a little better each time.Miva can help you design an email that you can easily use for A/B testing and assist in developing a strategy around it.
25. Design Examples
26. Q&A