Mobilize Mail Opinion

Ever gone to the website of a company you’ve had previous dealings with and requested some product or information only to be confronted with yet another form asking for the same information you’ve already given them? What about an e-commerce site where you lose the order screen somehow and when you get back to it the data you painstakingly entered is lost and you have to start again? Grrrrrrr

Make forms easy – don’t frustrate people and drive them away

When designing forms, we need to minimise ‘friction’ or ‘red tape’ making it no harder than necessary for customers to give us the information we really need, so we don’t put them off.

As we said previously, getting customers to tell us their interests and preferences gives them a sense of power of choice and enables us to target our marketing via our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

But once you have the information, don’t ask for it again, e.g. if you send out an email with a link to some new product or information, don’t thrust a form in front of them asking for their email address or other information they’ve already given you!

Pre-populate your forms to make it easy

The answer is to ‘close the information loop’ so that when they arrive at the form, it already has their email address and other relevant data pre-entered so they only have to enter new information. How does this work? Well, Mobilizemail have a system you can use where email links have a customer-specific code embedded in them so when they click through to your landing page, the Web server recognises them and pre-populates the form with relevant information, making it user-friendly for them.

Profit from un-subscribes – they can actually help you!

People un-subscribe from email newsletters for various reasons but sometimes it’s because of disappointment or annoyance over some failure in your services. So you’ve lost a customer – but what’s more, disgruntled customers can often tell a lot more people than a happy one does, so let’s find out the problem before we get disillusioned customers multiplying. They talk about viral marketing that spreads the good word and attracts heaps of business, but it can also work against you, so there’s a lot at stake here.

The answer? Have a user-friendly unsubscribe form asking departing customers to leave you valuable information on why they’re leaving, but don’t force them as this could frustrate them if they’re not already. This tells you about problems you can fix before you lose more customers. Why pay for market research consultants when you can get free marketing intelligence from your customers – absolute gold! Make sure you provide a large text box to make it easy for them to tell you as much as possible, and thank them for it – leaving them with a last impression of a courteous company who cares about their satisfaction. Ever had this kind of positive experience that makes you feel almost sorry to unsubscribe? This leaves the door open to returning later if things change for them.

CTOR (Click to Open Rate) = the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens (unique views).

Are you reviewing your CTOR each time you mail out? If not we recommend you do. The CTOR statistic is presented on your ADMIN Homepage (the page you see after you have logged into your account). This primary statistic is a key gauge for measuring how successful your email message content has been in achieving clicks on web page links.

A key goal of email marketing is to drive traffic to websites and specific web pages that may have a marketing message, promotion, product or service for sale and this activity is called ‘push‘ marketing – where you push information to the Inbox and then attempt to ‘pull‘ the recipient to your website or webpage.

‘Push’ to the Inbox to ‘Pull’ to your website

The CTOR is therefore a valuable measurement for gauging the successful of your email marketing and over time there will be upwards and downwards movement witnessed when you compare the CTOR of your regular email marketing activity.

Compare Email Campaign CTOR Statistics

When comparing the CTOR if the rate has been for example 45%, 40%, 49%, 55% per campaign then its dropped to a much lower rate e.g. 20%, 15% it is worth analyzing what has changed in your email content to cause the drop.

What to review in your email message content:

1. Has the amount of links within your email content dropped suddenly? Maybe you are not providing enough “Call to Action” links that motivate the subscriber to click through.
2. Have you changed the relevancy of your content? You may have removed content or sections that your subscribers enjoyed. If so it may be time to consider a Survey.
3. Have you changed your subject heading or FROM address? Sometimes subscribers rely on a specific format for the subject line to spark recognition. If you have changed the subject line to a degree that it does not resemble the same format as the last email campaigns then this could be a reason for the low click through as subscribers have not recognized your email.
4. Have you altered the frequency of your messages or the date/time of your email delivery? Subscriber/recipient response to your messages may change as a result changes in frequency of your messages or changing the delivery.
5. Consider when there has been an influx of new subscribers. The bulk of your ‘new’ subscribers may have joined your mailing list within one or two months hence a higher than average CTOR. New subscribers will interact more with your messages during the ‘honeymoon’ period – because it’s new and exciting.

Too Much Content in Your Email Message?

Another reason for low CTOR is the provision of lengthy content within your email e.g. more than 5 pages displayed within the email message.

Presenting all your news within the message rather than short paragraphs per topic and a click thru link to read the entire article on a web page results in a low CTOR. A higher un-subscribe rate may also be evident in messages that are too lengthy and lack "call to action" links.

Not Enough Links?

A lack of “Call to Action” links within the email content can result in a low CTOR.

Pro-active marketing to combat recession, vs defensive cost cutting

Businesses often react to recession by retreating into their caves and cutting costs everywhere, but cost cutting alone will not usually put them in good stead. Profits also depend on finding new ways to increase sales. Marketing is a key for this, but what forms of marketing will give that precious ROI when companies are so tight for funds?

Email marketing is top choice

A recent survey has shown more than half of businesses are planning to increase their marketing budgets in 2009, and the top area by far is email marketing at 73% followed by search engine marketing at 44%. Many will decrease spending on costly, less targeted marketing like advertising and trade shows.

Email is favoured because it’s a cost-effective channel, allowing companies to deliver highly personalised, one-to-one messages. In this economic climate, delivering relevant offers and information will be critical for connecting with budget-strapped consumers and getting them to spend.

Best ROI, ahead of other Internet marketing forms

Another compelling statistic comes from the Direct Marketing Association, which estimates that email currently generates around $46 for every dollar spent, contrasted with around $23 for search engine optimisation & adverts and $7 for catalogues.

Relevance and personalised content critical, harnessing your customer database

The survey highlights personalised marketing like email and search, showing that 81% of businesses plan to use information in customer databases (CRMs), analytic tools, and other resources to send more relevant email to consumers in 2009, or are looking at investing in tools that will enable them to do this.

The right strategy is critical to make your investment effective. The answer is not to send more email, but make emails more effective through relevance, testing and optimisation. Harnessing customer databases and other backend systems will provide you with the information you need to send targeted messages, and testing tools will help you find the optimum way to present those messages. As companies begin to put more marketing dollars into email, and consumer inboxes fill up, you can’t afford to send broadcast messages that get lost in the clutter.

Companies that invest in the right strategy, technology, and tools now will be able to weather the storm and come out ahead when the economy picks up.

We have updated this blog article (published Jan 08) as we believe your email marketing objective in 2009 should be – to grow your mailing list.

Do you know how many ‘confirmed opt in‘ subscribers are on your mailing list?

Is it less or more subscribers than a month ago, or six months ago? Unless you have key strategies in place to continually grow your mailing lists more than likely your mailing list is shrinking!

While it may not appear to be a huge concern seeing one or two ‘unsubscribes’ per mail out – over time collectively the ‘unsubscribe number becomes harder to replace so we suggest you put strategies in place now to ensure your email marketing database remains a key asset of your business.

Key Techniques for Growing Your Mailing Lists:

1. Website home page ‘sign up’ subscribe facility – and thoughout website
2. Signature Link in emails
3. Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages
4. Lineage in all marketing campaigns
5. Run regular subscription promotions

Website Subscribe Facility

A high percentage of website visitors never go beyond your homepage so put the ‘call to action’ on your homepage to capture these visitors on your mailing list. Once they are on your mailing list you can communicate with them (compliantly) on a regular basis with relevant information. Two very effective methods of capturing your website visitors onto your mailing list are:

1. An animated banner as seen in figure 1. The animated banner is hyperlinked to the subscription page so the visitor can self subscribe to your email communication.

(figure 1)

2. A text link – as seen in figure 2. The text is hyperlinked to the subscription page for self subscription.

(figure 2)

Ensure you have the subscribe facility also on other key web pages throughout your website. Repetition is good! (contact us at [business:Mobilize Mail] to discuss your options)

Signature Link in Emails

Ensure you have a hyperlink to your subscription page in your email signature and your signature is attached to your email replies as well as your new messages. An example of a hyperlink subscribe email for our own mailing list is:

Email marketing tips and news

The actual URL link to the subscription page is hidden behind the “email marketing tips and news” so it is more attractive and in theory/practice results in more clicks to view the webpage.

All members of your team can be driving your key message and increasing your mailing lists by adding a link in their email signatures e.g. 5 members of your team sending out 50 messages a day = 250 emails with your mailing list subscription link.

Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages

All mail outs should contain a link to your mailing list subscription page. You may send ‘text only’ or non-template messages occasionally – we suggest you ensure there is a link to your mailing list subscription page so these messages enable new subscriptions.

Lineage in Marketing Campaigns

In your print, tv or radio marketing campaigns put in a few words about your newsletter subscription. E.g . “Visit our website and sign up to our finance tips and latest news”

Run Regular Subscription Promotions

Once or twice a year a promotion to grow your mailing list can drive the numbers upwards. Consider providing a discount or free gift for subscription. I know a business that provides a free e-book to every people subscribing to his newsletter and he now has over 15,000 relevant subscribers.

Five easy steps for you to take immediately to replace the unsubscribed subscribers and grow your mailing list in 2009 and beyond.