MindComet

Don’t Confuse Your Customers

Several months back I signed up to receive email communications from Eyes Lips Face (E.L.F).  Not being a big makeup wearing person, I never paid much attention to their emails but always like to see what brands are up to being an email marketer.  When I started noticing the poor subject lines I began to pay more attention however it was to their overall email marketing campaigns opposed to what they were trying to sell within the emails. 

The main subject lines that caught my attention were subject lines with the words ‘OOPs’ or ‘We’re Sorry’ in them.  There’s something about those emails that makes me want to immediately open them to see what they did wrong and how they apologized to their customers.  However this time, it wasn’t a mistake, that was the subject line followed by something like ‘Sorry Loreal, e.l.f.‘s got you covered’ which still doesn’t make much sense to me but I get it - e.l.f. can offer the same products but less cost than what Loreal can.

I received another email today with ‘We Are Sorry’.  I opened it expecting it to be about a competitor but found out this time, they actually did make a mistake.  However I don’t know what mistake they are referring to because their explanation does not support any previous email I got from them. Subscribers like to have their expectations set, how often they are going to be communicated with, what type of content they can expect and so forth.  To e.l.f, if you are going to use ‘we’re sorry’ and ‘oops’ as part of your overall campaign messages and do end up making a mistake later on down the road, consider using a new subject line that does not include those words or adding a keyword to the email subject line that you goofed up on such as ‘We’re Sorry: Update’.

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 31, 2009

Video within email is finally becoming a reality

The holy grail of email marketing is finally becoming a reality, and the geniuses at Gmail are the proverbial Indiana Jones’ who’ve discovered it.  As far as I know, Gmail is the first browser-based email client to allow videos to display within their emails. In order to turn this feature on, enable YouTube previews under “Settings” > “Labs”.

Yes, yes, I know this was blogged about everywhere last week, but I haven’t had the chance to test it myself until today. And I don’t mean to sound exaggerated, but this has the potential to be pretty ground-breaking in the world of email marketing if you think about it.

If you’re an email marketer you have to turn off click-tracking within your ESP in order for the video to work.  The video will only display if the YouTube URL is in your HTML… not the unique URL your ESP creates in its place for click-tracking purposes.

I only have one other criticism with this: The video displays separated from the email—below it. You have to “unhide” the video for it to actually play. See below:

This is all well and good right now… But once they allow emails to include EMBEDDED YouTube video, then that my friends, will be Gmail’s overarching killer app.

With all things considered, I can’t wait until I get the opportunity to segment all of my Gmail users and send them an email with a YouTube video.  I suggest first sending out an email asking your Gmail subscribers if they’d like to receive videos in their emails. Provide them with the simple directions on how to enable the videos in their account.  A week later, start sending them videos relevant to their interests. I’m guessing your response rate will spike significantly.

If anyone has incorporated a video into any of their email campaigns, comment below.  I’d love to hear about the results!

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 27, 2009

Email Summit Wrap Up

Where do I begin? Well first let me say that Tabbatha Marcus at MarketingSherpa really pulled through by hooking us up with admission to the event. Thank you Tabbatha!  Secondly, the entire event was a blur… but a good kind of blur.  I’ve never in my life been surrounded by individuals who are as passionate about email marketing as I am.  Heck, this was the first time that I’ve actually ever talked to someone face-to-face who can relate to me when I talked about “deliverability” issues. Seeing the booths set up and meeting their reps was a total joy. There were about 50 booths or so, and I tried to make the rounds the best I could. It was a little overwhelming, to be honest. But with all the craziness going on around me, I still took away a lot of useful information, particularly panels moderated by Stefan Tornquist and Flint McGlaughlin. 

Tornquist’s speech was a very affecting one, as it focused mainly on the current state of email and how the economy has been effecting it.  Some of the most engaging wisdom came from his speech.  One of his statements being “email is solace in this difficult economic turn” was really comforting to hear.  Another point he made was that since every company under the sun sends emails nowadays, subscribers inboxes are flooded and benchmark metrics are slipping in response. People aren’t necessarily overwhelmed by the amount, but they’re underwhelmed by the mediocrity of their inboxes, so they’ll just “mark all as read”.  Marketers need to keep in mind that your email addresses are extremely valuable and you should treat them as such.  Deliver the promise of relevance. Furthermore, give your users a reason to stay engaged… give them a reason to TRUST you. Also, give them complete access to adjust their preferences. This is absolutely crucial for segmenting your database for relevant and timely messages. And one of the most important things I took away was that just because email is cheap, it doesn’t mean you should settle for a small budget. Fight for it… get the money to do it better.

Flint McGlaughlin was a very interesting speaker.  He reminded me of a thespian of sorts… He definitely demanded the audience’s attention for the time he was on stage. His speech covered landing page optimization—definitely a factor that we as email marketers tend to overlook.

Some key points he touched on:
- Privacy is key in converting a visitor of your site into a subscriber.
- Stop using the word “SUBMIT”; it causes subconscious anxiety. A phrase like “access now” is a bit easier for users swallow.
- Try to minimize and counter any and all elements that cause psychological resistance or concern.
- Initiate a conversation with your landing page

He also declared that the main point of a landing page—other than the obvious—is to optimize a sequence of thoughts for your customers. It was very eye-opening and it definitely made me think of landing pages in a different light. They should not be overlooked.

Rok Hrastnik’s case study about Targeting and Messaging strategies was excellent. Since I interviewed him, I (and whoever read my three-part interview) had a bit more insight to his findings than most people did. His case study was on a mattress brand. Now mattresses are unique when compared to say, a DVD. There’s a lengthy buyer lifecycle.  Their purchase process jumps all over the place from email, to Google (research), to a print catalog, to a physical store. This process is never linear, but it gets them closer to actually buying something. The way he narrowed down his customer base was by taking his email analytics and comparing them to other analytics such as web traffic and search… He checked the click-throughs from his email against how much time they spent on the site. He checked his database for gender specific names (conveniently most Eurpoean names are inherently gender-specific) and marked them accordingly.  He also stated that “the subject line picks the right reader” as a reference to subject line A/B testing. With this wealth of research and knowledge, you’re better prepared to send emails per segment, as you’re speaking to each segment specifically. It was a great case study, probably the best I attended from the entire event.

So much information was delivered throughout the summit… so much information that it deserves more than one massive post. Instead of inundating this one post with everything I took away from the event, I think I’ll stop here and continue on with more details on the Email Summit tomorrow.

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 18, 2009

RIP: Open Rates

The way open rates are measured is dead. The logic simply isn’t accurate anymore. And the reason why it doesn’t work in 2009 is that most ISPs prevent images from rendering by default.

For those who are unaware, an “open” for an email send is marked as such when a small 1x1 transparent image is displayed by the end user.  The problem is that now most people don’t change their email preferences to allow images to display. This was an accurate way to represent an open years ago—before spammers inundated inboxes with embedded images in their emails.  And because of spammers, ISPs cracked down and began blocking images by default.  At this point, the open rate as we knew it became obsolete and out-dated.

The EEC has an on-going discussion on what to do about this issue for email marketers.  They believe that a standardization between ESPs and marketers alike is the first step in clarify the issue, and I couldn’t agree more.  Sure, someone can open an email, click a link, go to a landing page and buy something—all the while never displaying an image—and it still won’t count as an “open”.  The old-school logic of an “open rate” will now be called a “render rate”—which is a much more accurate description of what’s actually happening.

But how long will it take for all of this to be digested and adopted across the board?  Well, I for one hope it happens sooner than later.  The EEC wants your feedback on this issue. Read more about it by downloading the “Email Render Rate” whitepaper here.

Stay tuned for further developments on render rates and their industry-wide adoptions.

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 13, 2009

Rok Hrastnik Interview - Part 3

In this, the last part of our interview with Rok Hrastnik, we discover rules he lives by in the world of email marketing and what we can expect from his session at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit.

What is the most important thing you’ve discovered from a previous campaign you’ve managed?
Use best practices only as recommendations, not as something written in stone. Test, test and then test again, and come up with your own set of best practices that work for your industry, your marketing strategy and your audiences. I can’t stress this simple rule enough. And as you can imagine managing online for 18 countries with 18 local teams isn’t exactly stress-free, especially when you’re trying to keep a unified look & feel throughout your communications. But eventually you come to realize that having some diversity is a good thing, as you can continuously learn and improve, sometimes based on completely out-of-the-ordinary campaigns produced in countries that like to play a little too much.


What do you hope your audience will take away from your session at the Email Summit?
Hopefully a lot. Somewhere in the corner of my mind I’m even hoping that at least some of them will come back home with actionable plans or at least ideas on how to transform their existing email marketing strategies and bring them to an entirely new level.

If you’ll be attending the Email Summit next week, here’s a shortlist of what to expect from Rok’s session:
• Understand and measure the multi-channel impact of email marketing that goes far beyond the direct email sale
• Learn how email supports complex purchase processes that cross multiple channels
• See how to upgrade your standard set of email metrics with behavioral based and multi-channel measurements
• Learn how subject-lines influence recipient behavior and how to use them for user segmentation and targeting
• See why & how to go beyond brand in your email communications
• Understand how to segment your email communications using a variety of different data sources
• Upgrade your email lead generation efforts by going beyond the low-hanging fruit (prospects ready to buy now), extending your reach also to different levels of less qualified prospects and then profitably converting them to customers on the long-term using a heavily content focused email strategy 

For a recap of this interview, check out parts 1 & 2 below:
Part 1
Part 2

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 11, 2009

Rok Hrastnik Interview - Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday’s initial installment, here’s part two of my interview with Rok:

What were the initial expectations for some of your campaigns?  Were the results surprising or unpredictable?
The entire email program development process was full of surprises. You have to keep your mind open and accept that consumers react differently than what marketers expect, and then adjust your communications accordingly.

There were a lot of things that went according to plan… follow-ups always increase total sales. In most of our campaigns the follow-ups actually generate more sales than the initial e-mail. Last-minute text-only reminders tend to work best. Being able to read the core message of the email is more important than the email looking good. It’s another simple one ... and one that many marketers still tend to ignore. It’s so simple. Just replace all of your text in graphics with standard HTML text. In 99% of our tests HTML text outperformed text in graphics.

Some of the bigger surprises I touched on earlier... First, you can’t sell mattresses by focusing your email communications primarily on sleeping related content. Only when you start going beyond your brand do things really start moving.
Secondly, email generates more sales indirectly than directly. In a multi-channel world no single channel can hold the line. Consequently your analytics also need to adapt. Men and women exhibit completely different email interaction patterns. Your email campaigns should reflect that, catering differently to different audiences.

Have you had the opportunity to apply your predictive behavior model to other interactive mediums besides email?
We’re using this approach in a variety of media, although not always the exactly same models. The insights we have on our email users are used also for direct mail and catalog campaigns, and occasionally also for mobile.
We are using the same logic (although not the same models) for our paid and organic search. We are right now working on a project to take this model and also apply it for dynamic website content targeting and also integrate it with our external display advertising.

Sounds like Rok and his team at Studio Moderna have some incredibly clever things up their collective sleeves.

Stay tuned for the concluding, part three post tomorrow!

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 10, 2009

Rok Hrastnik Interview - Part 1

Leading up to the Email Summit taking place next week, we’ll be posting a string of interview questions from Rok Hrastnik. Rok has been involved with interactive marketing / media in one form or another for nearly a decade.  He works for Studio Moderna, which is primarily a DRTV & multi-channel retailer which operates in 19 European countries.  He’s primarily responsible for digital business development, in which he leverages multiple channels and mediums to expose his client’ brands.

Rok is probably best known for authoring “Unleash the Marketing Power of RSS”, which has garnered such praises as being “the best and more comprehensive” guide on RSS for marketers. He’s been active as a speaker at such events as DMA Annual and ACCM. His reputation for being incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to interactive marketing certainly didn’t precede him with the interview questions I emailed him last week. He’ll be speaking at the Email Summit on “ Targeting and Messaging Strategies that Effect Behavior”.  Below is the first in the interview series with Rok.

What was it like for you when you first started dabbling in email marketing, specifically targeted messaging? 
For me personally the story starts way back in 2001 when I first started doing email marketing for a financial consulting company. That first experience was a real eye-opener in terms of the real marketing capabilities of email when it’s done right. Even back then we realized that relevant prospect and customer communications aren’t about sending out a new sales message every second day (as we still see many US online retailers doing today), but rather about educating/entertaining your audience, gradually building their trust and preparing them for their first purchase. Sure, we could get a higher short-term purchase response if we focused only on the immediate sale, but that would alienate all the readers who aren’t in their “shopping” mode just yet, eventually destroying the long-term potential of our email lists and lead generation efforts.

This simple point became even clearer when I started managing online for a business daily newspaper a couple of years later, where targeted and timely messaging were the absolute norm. Sure, you still have thousands of email subscribers that only want your overall daily business news recap message. But you only start providing real value when you let your subscribers decide exactly what business news they’re interested in and exactly when they want to receive it. Some only want to be notified of their ticker changes. Others only care about the latest business news in their specific industry. Yet again others only care about news involving their company or their competitors. Giving your audiences this sort of choice in the online media world is crucial.

What were some of the most beneficial things you learned early on?
When I joined Studio Moderna back in 2004 we were focused on one thing when it came to email , and that was sales, sales, sales ... and more sales, immediately. I followed suit, but all of that time my previous email experience kept nagging at me at the back of my head, reasoning that in its essence online retail really isn’t that much different from selling business services or from the online media world. People are still people. And people want real value. The thing is, different things are valuable to different people. There is no real cookie-cutter model for “value” that works for everyone.

Having that in mind, we started transforming our email program step-by-step, ultimately going through 5 distinct development phases, shifting from a total focus on direct immediate sales to putting readership & engagement before everything else. Studio Moderna owns several brands, but let’s focus the discovery process on Dormeo, which is our mattress & sleeping brand.

The first step, as you can imagine, was total focus on sales campaigns. The metrics used to measure results were your standard mix of open-rates, clickthrough rates and conversions, as well as basic business data, such as revenue per email address and similar. Early results were certainly encouraging, but not enough.

The next logical step was starting an email newsletter on… yes, you guessed it, sleeping. Newsletter after newsletter with tips on improving the quality of your sleep, selecting the right mattress, mattress materials, subscribers’ dream interpretations, the consequences of poor sleeping and so on. The logic was simple: support the purchase process for those already in the consideration phase and educate all others that they need to get into that consideration phase right now. As we started focusing more on content we also added churn as one of the regular metrics we looked at.

But then a funny thing happened. After a couple of issues readership started going down and churn started increasing dramatically. We found out the hard way that for some reason people just aren’t interested in reading about sleeping every week. Figure that.

That brought us to our third development phase, changing our newsletter from being strictly sleeping oriented into a more general lifestyle newsletter. We still kept some of the sleeping oriented content, but started focusing more on general interest high-readership articles such as diets, sexuality, relationships, home decoration, personal growth and more. That’s when things really started moving. And yes, you really can sell mattress with articles on diets and sex.

We updated our email database with gender information, which turned out to be another big eye-opener. As we quickly saw, men and women care about completely different topics. What’s more, they also show different email interaction patterns.

This new information brought us to our next email development stage: gender based lifestyle newsletters and email campaigns. From that point on we started segmenting all email communications based on gender. Not only the content selection, but even implementing structural template changes to the campaigns based on gender interaction patters. One of the many differences, for example, is that female newsletters are made for reading and men newsletters are made for browsing. While the table of contents in the female newsletter would focus on “selling” the article and getting the clickthrough, the men version would already give the meat of the article up front.

So what other targets do you now focus on?
Targeting based on different lead generation models. An email address that entered our program via a viral sweepstakes game will, for example, be treated completely differently than an email address acquired through a catalog subscription campaign or a sleeping tips whitepaper campaign.

Targeting based on user engagement. We look at a variety of metrics that tell us what an individual is interested in at a specific time, using that data to determine the right messaging strategy based on that person’s interests and stage in the purchase cycle. If you spend 10 minutes browsing our mattresses that’s a clear sign you’re in the market to buy a mattress now. Our email communications to you will usually reflect that, as well as other behavior patterns that we look for and detect.

How do you get a better feel for your customers through email?
Using subscriber surveys to get an even better idea of the content and products individual groups of users are interested in. We also use transactional data for follow-up sales. Analyzing responses to different subject-lines to see what matters most to individual user groups and then focusing our communications based on this data. For example, someone that responds to a subject line on allergies will be treated differently that someone who responds to a subject line on neck pain.

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Posted by MindComet on Mar. 09, 2009