EMAIL SIGN UP - Week 2 Bealls Dec 22
So as I started to interact with my three test sites, I realized when I signed up for the email newsletter with Bealls, like with Pulte, that I hadn't really created an account. So, I went in and did so for both my personas. At this point, they did include the email opt-in with an "opt-out" option in case I don't want them talking to me.
Now is where things will get interesting. In the account creation, Bealls is starting to learn more about me. In addition to asking for my address and phone number, they are asking my birthday, gender, if I am a full time resident and how I like to shop with them - online versus in store or both. I'm going to alter this a bit between the personas to see what happens:
Gmail - Dec 19x7, female, seasonal and online
Yahoo - Feb 19x4, male, full time and both
Having fun now!
Since signing up with Bealls, I have also been looking at different content under my two personas and based on what I originally input. For my gmail persona, I have visited deals and pajamas as well as capris. In Yahoo, I'm looking at men's Columbia gear and shorts. I even added some camo size 34 shorts to my cart. One thing that happened on my initial click is they prompted me to enter a ZIP code and attach my account to a store which I did. They then presented me with circular deals for that store including holiday items.
All my home screens are exactly the same regardless if I am signed in or not at this point, so it appears Bealls is not using any web personalization to change my experience based on what they know about me and my browsing behavior.
I have also been receiving emails from them since I signed up last week. In my Yahoo account, after that initial sign in, I've received 13 emails (since 12/13), about 1-2 a day. I know it is the holiday season, but as I've said in previous posts, how much is too much and what impact will that have on unsubscribes?
Sadly, in my gmail account, all the emails from Bealls are landing in my spam folder - I had to go look for them. I also have received only 3 emails in this account since the sign in. So my question here is did Bealls purposefully send me fewer to that persona or is there some problem with deliverability. Given that the three I did find landing in my spam folder, I suspect there is a deliverability issue.
Good news is some the emails are recognizing my browsing behavior and presenting me with relevant content when I open the email after I have browsed particular content on the website. I went in and opened my special offer email that I received the day after I created each account and under the offer, each email presented me different product content based on what I looked at: capris for Google and men's shorts for Yahoo! NOT SOUR email - good job Bealls.
Another good thing Bealls is trying to do is to get to know me more, so a week after that initial email, they offer an email thanking me for being a part of their "list" - could be better wording, how about "the Bealls shopping family" instead? They also offer me a discount on my next order for answering.
Bad news and a really simple fix - neither subject lines or body copy are using my first name or recognizing me personally in some way.
So here we go - my answers for both personas below:
Yahoo:
Departments of interest: mens, deals (remember they already know I am a guy - should they have pre-checked that?)
Subjects of interest: new arrivals and offers
More complete contact information - I'm using my Orlando area information, but not providing my phone number which they want for text messages. Now I'm wondering if they asked this because I didn't provide it on my initial sign up, but given they also ask below about my residence status, which I know I did provide, I'm wondering why they are asking the same thing again.
They also asked for my residence status, a piece of information I already provided -SOUR - doesn't look like they have systems fully integrated. They should only ask for additional new information unless they want to re-verify it in which case, they should pre-populate this field.
Gmail:
Departments of interest: women's, markdowns and shoes
Subjects of interest: style, comfort and offers
More complete contact information - I'm using my Tampa area information, but not providing my phone number which they want for text messages.
Now I'm also making things a little interesting and seeing if I can confuse them, so I am looking at shoes under my Yahoo account (even though my preferences don't ask for that and I have told them I am a guy). I will at least look at guys shoes to see where that goes.
Next week we will look at the other emailers I am watching, but some lessons so far:
- Use the information you have and don't be repetitive
- Extend your presonalization to the web experience
- Deliver-ability is a big issue that needs to be watched and addressed and is clearly a missed opportunity if you aren't careful. Bealls needs to go talk to Google and see why their emails are getting lost as well as tell their customers what to do to make sure the emails come through
- Use browsing history to impact what is in emails. Good practice here from Bealls, although some of the sale emails don't appear to be using this
- Create an ongoing dialogue with your prospects and customers and use that to offer even more personalization as you get to know them better
- Use members first name in subject line and body - a simple best practice that way too many emailers fail to do with regularity.
Overall so far, we will give Bealls a "C" for their email programs, mainly for the deliverability issue with Google. While they are doing some good things, there is definitely opportunity for improvement and when the email doesn't even reach the inbox, all those good things have no impact.
Showing posts with label email deliverability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email deliverability. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
DELIVERABILITY - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Nov 22, 2016
Last week I talked about email metrics overall and some of the things to think about and how to decide what to measure and what it tells you. I've been doing some fall cleaning lately and came upon some old printed reports in my files and thus my post today.
The report I happened upon was titled "The State of Email Metrics and Bounce Management" dated Mar 5, 2007 and published by the Email Experience Council. What I thought was interesting is how little has changed in the industry. One of the main tenants of the article was a need for industry standards around email metrics and the disconnect between email providers and e-mailers themselves. While there have been attempts to create some standards, there is still no enforceable and commonly used set of definitions.
I took a look at the conversations going on around the topic of deliverability to see if we can gain more insights beyond what we discussed last week.
Last week, we provided a simple definition as the total number of emails that actually land in someone's inbox. We also mentioned the issue of where in the inbox an email lands and the need to have a send figure to understand the rate of deliverability.
From the 2007 article, there were several points made that are important and that are still an issue today. Back in 2007 there was inconsistency in how ESPs measure deliverability with 80% using the definition of delivered as total mailed less "all failures" while 20% defined this as only deducting "hard bounces" from mailed. Even more distressing is that 67% of eMailers themselves were uncertain on how deliverability was calculated.
Here's some of what I found:
- The Digital Marketing Glossary defines "classic" deliverability as "the percent of messages delivered to an inbox relative to total mailed." Not too specific, but consistent with the general historic definition.
- The Email Measurement Accuracy Coalition (EMAC) defines it as the total of e-mail deployed divided into the total amount of successfully delivered messages. The amount successfully delivered is then the total amount attempted minus all registered failures, including hard bounce. A bit more specific, but doesn't say what "all registered failures" means.
- Bronto defines this as total sent minus number bounced but do not specify if that includes hard and soft bounces, errors or where the message is delivered to. In fact, they state in their blog that there is "no clear cut method to track every single email and where it landed." SOUR email in my mind.
- MailChimp takes a whole page to not define deliverability: https://mailchimp.com/about/deliverability/. They also refer to the multitude of "standards" organizations just to stay on top of it.
- Comm100 does a good job of covering all the reasons why something might not be counted as delivered: "emails that are not delivered may be email addresses that do not exist and were entered into your system improperly, email addresses that have been cancelled or deactivated since your last send, email addresses where the email service provider is experiencing technical difficulties at the time of your email send, or email addresses where the recipient's email account was full and could not receive further messages. Essentially, any email for which a viable destination account was not found is listed as an undeliverable email."
When I did a Google Search on "email deliverability definition," I received 22,800 responses. As an email marketer, it is no wonder there is confusion.
Today's Tips for Understanding Email Deliverability
- Be sure you have a specific definition from YOUR ESP including what is part of the delivered figure and what is not
- Attempt to understand and obtain metrics on where in the inbox your email lands
- Practice good email list hygiene including using forms that force correct formatting of emails, multi step validation of emails on sign up and ongoing clean up of emails removing hard bounces from your database and fixing of emails with typos or other problems that may invalidate them for delivery
- If you compare your metrics to industry standards, be sure you understand that definition
- Review deliverability by ISP and understand differences in how they allow emails into their members inbox and where they potentially land
- Track and monitor deliverability over time and watch for anomalies
- Track by ISP uniquely as the mix by ISP can affect your overall rate
- Stay on top of ISP practices and changes to help you diagnose changes in these rates
- Take some time to delve into specific send and look at each email and it's delivery statistic to see if you can identify some trends on where your issues are
Deliverability is and will continue to be a real issue for mailers, some of which you can control and some you can't. Avoid SOUR deliverability to insure the highest ROI on all your email campaigns.
Sources:
http://digitalmarketing-glossary.com/What-is-Email-deliverability-rate-definition
http://content.bronto.com/stats/delivery-performance/
https://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-ebook/email-deliverability.aspx
Last week I talked about email metrics overall and some of the things to think about and how to decide what to measure and what it tells you. I've been doing some fall cleaning lately and came upon some old printed reports in my files and thus my post today.
The report I happened upon was titled "The State of Email Metrics and Bounce Management" dated Mar 5, 2007 and published by the Email Experience Council. What I thought was interesting is how little has changed in the industry. One of the main tenants of the article was a need for industry standards around email metrics and the disconnect between email providers and e-mailers themselves. While there have been attempts to create some standards, there is still no enforceable and commonly used set of definitions.
I took a look at the conversations going on around the topic of deliverability to see if we can gain more insights beyond what we discussed last week.
Last week, we provided a simple definition as the total number of emails that actually land in someone's inbox. We also mentioned the issue of where in the inbox an email lands and the need to have a send figure to understand the rate of deliverability.
From the 2007 article, there were several points made that are important and that are still an issue today. Back in 2007 there was inconsistency in how ESPs measure deliverability with 80% using the definition of delivered as total mailed less "all failures" while 20% defined this as only deducting "hard bounces" from mailed. Even more distressing is that 67% of eMailers themselves were uncertain on how deliverability was calculated.
Here's some of what I found:
- The Digital Marketing Glossary defines "classic" deliverability as "the percent of messages delivered to an inbox relative to total mailed." Not too specific, but consistent with the general historic definition.
- The Email Measurement Accuracy Coalition (EMAC) defines it as the total of e-mail deployed divided into the total amount of successfully delivered messages. The amount successfully delivered is then the total amount attempted minus all registered failures, including hard bounce. A bit more specific, but doesn't say what "all registered failures" means.
- Bronto defines this as total sent minus number bounced but do not specify if that includes hard and soft bounces, errors or where the message is delivered to. In fact, they state in their blog that there is "no clear cut method to track every single email and where it landed." SOUR email in my mind.
- MailChimp takes a whole page to not define deliverability: https://mailchimp.com/about/deliverability/. They also refer to the multitude of "standards" organizations just to stay on top of it.
- Comm100 does a good job of covering all the reasons why something might not be counted as delivered: "emails that are not delivered may be email addresses that do not exist and were entered into your system improperly, email addresses that have been cancelled or deactivated since your last send, email addresses where the email service provider is experiencing technical difficulties at the time of your email send, or email addresses where the recipient's email account was full and could not receive further messages. Essentially, any email for which a viable destination account was not found is listed as an undeliverable email."
When I did a Google Search on "email deliverability definition," I received 22,800 responses. As an email marketer, it is no wonder there is confusion.
Today's Tips for Understanding Email Deliverability
- Be sure you have a specific definition from YOUR ESP including what is part of the delivered figure and what is not
- Attempt to understand and obtain metrics on where in the inbox your email lands
- Practice good email list hygiene including using forms that force correct formatting of emails, multi step validation of emails on sign up and ongoing clean up of emails removing hard bounces from your database and fixing of emails with typos or other problems that may invalidate them for delivery
- If you compare your metrics to industry standards, be sure you understand that definition
- Review deliverability by ISP and understand differences in how they allow emails into their members inbox and where they potentially land
- Track and monitor deliverability over time and watch for anomalies
- Track by ISP uniquely as the mix by ISP can affect your overall rate
- Stay on top of ISP practices and changes to help you diagnose changes in these rates
- Take some time to delve into specific send and look at each email and it's delivery statistic to see if you can identify some trends on where your issues are
Deliverability is and will continue to be a real issue for mailers, some of which you can control and some you can't. Avoid SOUR deliverability to insure the highest ROI on all your email campaigns.
Sources:
http://digitalmarketing-glossary.com/What-is-Email-deliverability-rate-definition
http://content.bronto.com/stats/delivery-performance/
https://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-ebook/email-deliverability.aspx
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