Mobilize Mail Opinion

Have your recent email campaigns been effective? What measure do you apply to work out how successful a campaign has been? Most of us stick like glue to our email statistics reports for days after an email campaign is sent, watching the open and click rates climb.

If you’ve noticed a decline in the open and click rates in your campaigns, don’t automatically assume it’s because more and more people are deleting emails without opening them.

Sure, that’s definitely the case some of the time. As email marketers, we face an increasing battle to cut through the “clutter” in someone’s inbox to ensure our message gets through. There are a number of clever techniques you can employ to combat that issue. But it’s not the only reason for a decline in the statistics.

More tangible reasons for low click and open rates is the dramatic increase in the use of iPhones and PDAs to access emails, and the fact that people have turned off their images on incoming emails – both of which can disable the ‘open rate’ trigger within the code. Here’s some interesting statistics just out of the US:

Open rates

Recent research based on worldwide statistics shows that open rates are steadily declining, from 12% in the first half of 2009 down to 11.2% by the second half of 2009. And it seems that the reasons we’ve outlined above are top of the list as the culprits for this decline.
Source

Click rates

The statistics for click rates aren’t any better, dropping from 2.6% in the first half of 2009 to 1.5% in the second half of 2009.

Again, this can be explained by the reasons set out above, but there is one more contributing factor that you may not have thought of – the increase in anti-phishing security measures.

If you’re not sure what ‘phishing’ is, you’ve almost certainly seen an example of it. Ever received an email telling you you’ve “won” a major international lottery? Or received an email that’s allegedly from your bank, asking you to visit a specific link to reconfirm your account details?

That’s phishing.

Phishing has been described as bait used to obtain financial information and passwords. It’s not surprising that emails, social media websites and shopping websites have been targeted.

When anti-phishing measures have been installed, the email recipient is asked to click more than once to open the email (firstly to enable the links and secondly to click on the links) and this puts them off straight away and leads to instant deletion of the email in most cases.

Don’t expect heaps of opens and clicks immediately

Although it’s very tempting to sit and watch the stats click over as soon as you’ve hit the sent button on a campaign, you could be there for a while.

“Statistics show that most of the ‘action’ takes place within the first 72 hours (three days) after a message is sent – at a rate of about 90% of all potential opens and 93% of potential clicks.

If you were to check your statistics seven days later, the open and click rates would be up to around 98% of the expected total.”
Source

Make your emails relevant to the recipient

You can’t control the end user, but you can get their attention making your email personally relevant to them. Try including a field that populates with their first name and repeat it throughout the email (but not too much!) or go even one step further and use segmentation data to really get their attention.

Segmentation is driven by a database that holds key information about your clients like, age, gender, recent purchases and interests and this information can be linked to the content of your email so that the recipient only receives information that is relevant to them. For example, imagine how a 45 year old confirmed bachelor would feel when he receives an email offering him a cheap deal on a 36 pack of nappies from a supermarket?

Cheap nappies from a supermarket when you’re a confirmed 45 year old bachelor? That would probably result in an un-subscribe! Thankfully our Mobilize Mail system allows for unique personalisation in your email marketing messages.

In Asia Pacific 65% said they were more likely to buy a product after receiving a marketing email.

Wow! That is a huge result for the advocates of email marketing, and a reminder to anyone not on board to get started with email marketing immediately.

Globally the result was also impressive with nearly 6 out of 10 saying they are more likely to purchase a product as a result of receiving a marketing email message.

Businesses everywhere should be delighted with these results.

With millions of people spending hours online in social media, and networking sites the opportunity to grow your email lists is enormous and even if you are a small business you can market effectively without putting a huge dent in your back pocket or purse.

We encourage our clients to use social media to get more targeted people on their email marketing lists. Then we recommend our automated systems to make light work of marketing, providing feedback and converting prospects into customers.

Capturing email addresses can also be achieved on the shop floor. Another survey suggested there is a willingness by shoppers to give out their email address when asked by a shop assistant, so it’s good news for businesses everywhere and here are a couple of easy to follow email marketing tips.

Mobilize Mail Email Marketing Tips:

1. Keep growing your email database with online and offline initiatives
(complying with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007)
2. Commit to delivering a professional marketing message once a month.

Sources used for this post were: emarketer; Light Speed Research

Contact Us to get your email marketing account set up today

So far you have defined the reasons why you want to contact your subscribers and the frequency with which you will contact them via email.

Now its time to work out what type of content you will be sending them that will not only stop them from unsubscribing but create a perception that encourages the subscriber to react the way you want them to.

The best approach we can recommend in order to provide great content to your subscribers is ask yourself the following two questions:

“What would I be interested in receiving?” and “What would I not be interested in receiving?”

Common sense in this area is fundamental to success. For example would your subscribers be really interested in an email that only contained the following:

1. How fantastic your product/service is.
2. How many awards your product has won.
3. How fantastic you are.
4. How bad your competitors are.
5. How fantastic you and your products/services are together.

Would you like to receive an email from a business that just contained sales talk?

We wouldn’t and we know most of your subscribers wouldn’t either.

What they would like however is:

1. Interesting and helpful information about the product/service they are interested in hearing about.
2. Great deals on your products/services.
3. Other news or information covering the topic of interest. For example if you are providing information about computers then a good idea is to supply information about topics that would be of interest such as the latest virus or the latest gadget.

A Word on Personalisation

Personalisation can be very powerful when used within email content. For example using “Hello Marc” instead of just plain “Hello” gives a perception of intimacy with the subscriber and makes the subscriber feel that the message is purely for them.

However you can quickly go over the top with personalisation and in fact scare the subscriber off! For example if you are a mortgage broker and through legitimate means you knew if your subscribers had mortgages with the top banks:

“Hello Marc,
Since you live in Wellington, New Zealand and have a mortgage with BNZ we would like to offer…”

Now as a subscriber would you be worried about what the mortgage broker is doing with your private data?

Research conducted by the College of Business at the University of Illinois on the subject of personalisation within emails further enforces our recommendation.

1. Displaying a recipient’s personal information just for the sake of it can backfire: recipients may feel threatened.
2. If you do display personal data, only do so where there is an explicit connection between this data and the email’s content. Like this:
   “As a resident of Wellington, we’d like to invite you to the opening of our new store in town.”
3. The more useful your emails, the more recipients tolerate sub-optimal practices.
4. Most important:Personalisation is more about tailoring your email’s content based on what you know about the recipient (demographics, past clickthrough behavior, purchase records etc.) and less about showing off to recipients how much you know about them.

Placement of Important Information within Your Email

When thinking about the content for your email campaign we suggest you prioritise the different topics in order of their importance. The more important the topic the closer to the top of the email it should be.

Research has found that information “above the fold” will have higher clickthrough rate than information at the bottom of the email. It makes sense but not many people put it into practice.

“Above the Fold” is a term used to define the part of the email that appears in the preview pane of an email client (see image above for an example).

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.

Great news – according to Adotas and Emarketer – email & interactive marketing is increasing in popularity and getting more of the spend than other channels.

EMarketer notes that budgets were more likely to be cut than increased for traditional media such as TV, radio and direct mail, but more respondents said they would up their investments in e-mail marketing, search and interactive than said spending would be reduced

With confidence running high and spending up for email and interactive marketing – I’d like to introduce you to our new ‘Interactive” marketing channel – BusinessBlogs. We have created this NEW marketing channel for you!

“Click to read our Story” and learn more about the progressive move from Outbound to Inbound Marketing.

While currently print media still has the largest slice of the pie, email marketing is increasing in popularity and will continue to erode the large segments of the pie held by print, and the other traditional media channel for advertising.

Check out our new Interactive Marketing Solution for you – “Reach more quality NZ Eyeballs” click here

We have ranted on about treating your subscribers with respect a few times now.

One of our recommendations is to always send your subscribers content that they subscribed to receive and nothing else. If you subscribed to receive information on the latest wine specials from New Zealand wineries you would not expect to receive special deals on trips to Fiji.

Well, one company did send their subscribers content that a subscriber thought was not relevant and found out that sometimes this can massively backfire especially if one of the subscribers is a very influential blogger.

David Meerman Scott was so incensed at receiving what he believed to be unrelated content that he wrote about the experience in a blog post titled “Sleazy opt-in email tactics from otherwise reputable organizations”.

The word spread so fast that the company in question removed the entire email campaign for review and attempted to clean things up by commenting in David’s post.

Don’t let this happen to you. The fact that we are now commenting and linking to the post has increased the readership of the mentioned company even more and we are just one blog of over 100+ million blogs around the world.

As a refresh we recommend you read our “How being a bit smarter with your email marketing can bring great returns” here.

David’s post can be read here.