EMAIL SIGN UP - Week 3 Update Jan 3
Happy New Year to all. Hope the holidays treated you well and all the gifts and new year cheer are in order (or at least returned for something you want!).
We are now in about week 3 of my email sign up tracking. I'm working my personas with Bealls to see what is happening. More on that below.
Pulte
Pulte still hasn't sent me anything since my original sign up for my Yahoo account, so I guess they don't want to sell any houses to that person or they have some deliverability issues with Yahoo that aren''t being addressed - SOUR email either way! Although I did see a sponsored ad - more SOUR email. Not only are they not using the information they have, they are paying even more to put ads in front of me when they could be talking to me personally!
They have sent me two emails to my Gmail account, but both are generic with no personalization. One was for a design center open house. It was mailed 12/14 for the event on 12/15. They probably could have provided a bit more notice. Wonder how that open house did. The second was for new homes in Fish Hawk Ranch. I believe I did look at this community, but not sure and my profile doesn't capture the information I provided them (which was homes in the $300k range not a specific community). This community starts at the $200s, so I'm not sure if they just didn't listen or if this is just a generic community email that everyone received. I did go look at the community again and even clicked on the email to see if I can influence their future emails to me.
Bealls
Under my Yahoo account which is a Millennial male, I've been looking at hoodies and water shoes.
My Gmail persona is looking for sexy nightgowns and sheets for the bed.
Bealls continues to send me at least one email a day, mostly promotional with limited personalization. I think this is excessive. I'd suggest some testing of timing and frequency to see if reducing frequency can impact performance in terms of unsubscribes, click throughs and ultimately revenue. Check out this test from July 2015 where the overall winner was a promotional email sent once a week versus twice. The learnings:
- always test
- know your customers and prospects
- segment for differing behaviors
They are sending abandon cart emails, so that is good. They also are using some level of site behavior in emails, but it is not working properly as when I clicked on an email within my Yahoo account, it showed me the nightgowns I looked at when logged in under my gmail account. I also looked at the sheets after the nightgowns, so not sure why it defaulted to the first thing rather than the last, or better yet, how about showing me all the items I looked at. It appears the system is using cookies rather than a CRM that knows more about me specifically (at that email address) rather than just watching the computer clicks.
WFLA
Still no emails at all to my Yahoo account - boo for you!
Gmail is receiving emails, also delivered to my promotional folder. Funny thing is that I am getting the weather alerts - two per day. I can't tell why I am getting two and the headlines seem to be different in each. Didn't think weather would change that much and that I needed to be updated twice a day. Not sure what is up with that.
Also, couldn't they just add "Sharon, here's your forecast?" Wonder what impact that would have on their open rates? I know I would feel better that they are addressing me personally.
It is also problematic to manage my content from their website. Unlike most sites that you can log into, the "manage newsletters" link is in the middle of the page by the sign up instead of a universal log in at the top. When I click on that, however it only shows me the newsletter I'm signed up for and doesn't allow me to edit it. I can edit it from the emails I receive, but since I am not getting them in my Yahoo account, I don't have any way to see that. Definitely SOUR email!
We should be MUCH smarter about how we run our email programs! I'm just amazed that these companies aren't doing the simple things that are equating to lost revenue and opportunities. These are not small, unsophisticated organizations either and have the resources to do better. Is it organizational structure, focus or lack of management vision and direction or some of all. As a marketing leader, how much time and focus are you putting into the details of these programs?
Showing posts with label email metrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email metrics. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
EMAIL METRICS - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Nov 15 2016
I am a metrics person. I believe that if you don't know where you are going you won't get there and if you don't measure your successes you can't win. Email marketing is one of those areas of marketing that you would think would be easy to create metrics for. However, I believe we generally do a SOUR job of this based on my experience.
Since these are internal measures, my commentary will be around what these are and should be, what we all should care about and how to set up some good dashboards and metrics to allow for understanding and continual improvement.
First, what are some of the standard metrics that are bandied about in email marketing?
Sent Emails
Delivered Emails
Open Rates
Click Through Rates
Unsubscribe Rates
Bounce Rates (hard and soft)
Other less used metrics include:
Inbox Placement
Earnings Per Email (click or open)
Conversion Rate
Complaint or Abuse Rate
Forward Rate (sharing rate)
Churn Rate (or list growth rate)
ROI
Seems like a lot and some of these are not very well understood and are treated differently in the ESPs. Let's take a brief look at each.
Sent Emails - When you hit the "send" button, the number of attempts or the number of emails in your list. While this metric is important, it is of limited value in understanding the performance of your campaigns and can be problematic if you have poor list hygiene or sign up processes. For example, if you have invalid formats or old email addresses in your list, this metric could be misleading. However, it is needed to calculate a delivery rate and warn you of any problems in that area.
Delivered Emails - This is the total number of emails that actually land in someone's inbox. It does not tell you where in the inbox and without the "send" figure to calculate a rate of deliverability, it is of limited value. It should be tracked and trended however to insure you are not getting caught in spam filters or black listed. Be sure to dive deep and look at this metric by ISP as it can help you diagnose if and where you might have deliverability problems and how to fix them.
Open Rates - While important to measure and trend, this metric can be misleading mostly because quite a few people read emails in preview pane and never open them. Different ESPs may also measure open rate differently, for example based on images downloaded, but if these are done automatically, it may record an open even if the reader didn't look at the email. Text emails may be excluded from open rates also. It is a good directional indicator of engagement and awareness of your communications however. Be aware and be sure you understand exactly how your ESP measures and reports this.
Click Through Rates - This metric is often spoken of as a highly important one, however, it is totally in the marketers control and without context really tells you nothing. If you measure click through rates, be sure to include a metric on click through opportunities. Any one email could have no click through opportunities or ten. If you do not have an understanding of that, you won't have a true measure of success. When creating reporting templates, be sure to include a field for the click opportunities in each email and then you can categorize click through rates based on that percentage versus just an overall percentage that does not speak to if the reader could have clicked. Also look at where the click through was - did they click on your logo, on a particular piece of content, or on more than one occasion.
Unsubscribe Rates - This is a must have metric that does a good job confirming you are not a SOUR emailer. ESPs typically do a good job of capturing this as it is triggered by a direct action from the email recipient. This can be manipulated as well by you based on how you handle the unsubscribe process. If you make it difficult for people to unsubscribe (as I have addressed in an earlier post), you may be under representing the sentiment. Also, if you have failed processes, you may be over counting. For example, my favorite SOUR emailer Younkers, as I mentioned in a previous post, has received numerous unsubscribe requests from me as it didn't appear to be working and I continued to receive their emails even though I asked them not to send. I will report that I have finally quit receiving their emails (for now). I wonder if they saw my post and finally did something about it!
Bounce Rates (hard and soft) - This is another metric that could be different based on how your ESP handles it. Some will count a hard bounce after a send has failed three times, but some may allow you to control how often the fail has to happen to count as a hard bounce. Soft bounce means the delivery was temporarily not available, but again can be altered. Be sure you understand exactly how your ESP handles these and measure appropriately. If you have a high hard bounce rate, you can also put yourself in a position of having your emails blocked by ISPs as being SOUR and on the verge of SPAM, so be sure to watch these rates closely to stay on those white lists and not be a SOUR emailer.
Secondary Metrics:
Inbox Placement - This is a lesser used metric, but as the ISPs get more aggressive at filtering and automatically moving incoming emails (especially Gmail), your well crafted message may never even receive the opportunity for the recipient to see if it is placed into a sub-folder without the email owners knowledge. It is difficult to combat this as well since like SEM algorithms, it can be ever changing and different based on the ISPs practices. At least be aware of this and attempt to understand if you are doing things that are making your emails more likely to land in the wrong place.
Earnings Per Email (click, open, delivered) - Getting to the heart of why we email, we should be measuring what we get out of these programs. While for some, this may be difficult, if you can, try to tie your actual revenue creation to the email function. Use the base metric that works for you (delivered, opened or clicked), but do attempt to do so. This may require extra work in Google Analytics and your CRM system to properly tag and add parameters to your campaigns, but it will be well worth it. Also consider what role emails play in the customer journey and how to tap into that. One thing I saw in my last role is that Google Analytics was showing us huge numbers of "direct" traffic to our website. We knew we didn't have that high brand recognition to warrant this and after digging in realized that we were not fully capturing the impact of our email programs to reactivate and engage our prospects in our products and ultimately purchase. Having the proper attribution allowed us to better prioritize our overall efforts and leverage our resources more effectively to the highest return activities.
Conversion Rate - Like earnings rate, this is another good metric that attempts to tie your end goals to the email function. It can be measured in several ways, but the goal is to understand of those receiving your emails, who is taking the revenue generating action you desire, be it an e-commerce transaction, an appointment or some other metric. It is different from the earning metric as it measures against people or recipients rather than a volume figure such as earnings. Pick the measures that mean the most to your business results.
Complaint or Abuse Rate - Similar to unsubscribe rates, these rates are more problematic to your future as they are signals sent to your ISP about you that can cause you to become black listed. Obviously if someone is at the point of angst that they are communicating to someone other than you about your SOUR email, it spells trouble. ISPs also facilitate this differently, so look at it by provider to see differences and identify opportunities for improvement.
Forward Rate (sharing rate) - Another metric totally in your control as if you don't provide the opportunity for the forward, there is nothing to measure. Ask yourself how you can use email, like you use social media, to engage your best advocates in continuing your message. While this is another topic and subject for marketing improvement, if you do this, measure and trend to find easy wins.
Churn Rate (or list growth rate) - Are you adding new net prospects or is your list stale? This metric will help you understand where you sit and what you need to do to continue to grow your opportunities and fill the top of the marketing funnel. If you have a product with a long sales cycle time, this can be an especially important metric for long term forecasting and growth. Measure how many new email addresses are added to your prospect list after you remove unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces.
ROI - The ultimate goal of all businesses and marketers - how much did you put in and how much did you get out. Email marketing has been proven to have one of the highest return on investments of all marketing tactics. Are you measuring this and trending to insure you improve and grow with this valuable tool? Again, dependent on your business, attempt to tie directly created revenue to costs which include ESP fees, expenses of content and list development and team costs.
Today's Tips for Better Email Metrics:
- Be thoughtful and insure you fully understand the nuances of the metrics you choose to use
- Select the metrics that will insure ongoing success (unsubscribes, ROI, etc.) and allow for insights and actions and relentlessly track
- Be sure to trend metrics over time; watch for seasonality (retailers especially) and other market conditions that can impact these; most ESPs publish standards and averages at least for things like open and click through rates, so reference those to benchmark how you are doing.
- Sub-segment emails by types and categories and understand what the trends are. It is entirely reasonable to expect 90%+ open rates from certain transnational emails, but far less from others. If you aren't creating segments of emails by type and tracking you will miss problems and opportunities to improve.
- When looking at your statistics in totality, think about the blend of types of emails and take that into account. You may pat yourself on the back for a big improvement in open rates in a month where perhaps your volume of promotional emails was lower as a percentage of total emails. It may be that you actually had a problem that was masked because your data wasn't granular enough to obtain a complete understanding.
- Consider a deliverability audit for a deep dive into where and how your emails are being delivered to unmask any issues.
- Watch for any red flags that can get you on a black list. Once you are on, it is very difficult to get off, so make this a top metric.
Overall, email metrics can insure you invest wisely, learn as you execute, continue to improve and drive notable revenue from this valuable channel. Take the time to build a strategy for you email metrics just like you do for marketing and email overall and put the tools and resources in place to support the channel. Don't have SOUR email metrics and missed revenue!
Since these are internal measures, my commentary will be around what these are and should be, what we all should care about and how to set up some good dashboards and metrics to allow for understanding and continual improvement.
First, what are some of the standard metrics that are bandied about in email marketing?
Sent Emails
Delivered Emails
Open Rates
Click Through Rates
Unsubscribe Rates
Bounce Rates (hard and soft)
Other less used metrics include:
Inbox Placement
Earnings Per Email (click or open)
Conversion Rate
Complaint or Abuse Rate
Forward Rate (sharing rate)
Churn Rate (or list growth rate)
ROI
Seems like a lot and some of these are not very well understood and are treated differently in the ESPs. Let's take a brief look at each.
Sent Emails - When you hit the "send" button, the number of attempts or the number of emails in your list. While this metric is important, it is of limited value in understanding the performance of your campaigns and can be problematic if you have poor list hygiene or sign up processes. For example, if you have invalid formats or old email addresses in your list, this metric could be misleading. However, it is needed to calculate a delivery rate and warn you of any problems in that area.
Delivered Emails - This is the total number of emails that actually land in someone's inbox. It does not tell you where in the inbox and without the "send" figure to calculate a rate of deliverability, it is of limited value. It should be tracked and trended however to insure you are not getting caught in spam filters or black listed. Be sure to dive deep and look at this metric by ISP as it can help you diagnose if and where you might have deliverability problems and how to fix them.
Open Rates - While important to measure and trend, this metric can be misleading mostly because quite a few people read emails in preview pane and never open them. Different ESPs may also measure open rate differently, for example based on images downloaded, but if these are done automatically, it may record an open even if the reader didn't look at the email. Text emails may be excluded from open rates also. It is a good directional indicator of engagement and awareness of your communications however. Be aware and be sure you understand exactly how your ESP measures and reports this.
Click Through Rates - This metric is often spoken of as a highly important one, however, it is totally in the marketers control and without context really tells you nothing. If you measure click through rates, be sure to include a metric on click through opportunities. Any one email could have no click through opportunities or ten. If you do not have an understanding of that, you won't have a true measure of success. When creating reporting templates, be sure to include a field for the click opportunities in each email and then you can categorize click through rates based on that percentage versus just an overall percentage that does not speak to if the reader could have clicked. Also look at where the click through was - did they click on your logo, on a particular piece of content, or on more than one occasion.
Unsubscribe Rates - This is a must have metric that does a good job confirming you are not a SOUR emailer. ESPs typically do a good job of capturing this as it is triggered by a direct action from the email recipient. This can be manipulated as well by you based on how you handle the unsubscribe process. If you make it difficult for people to unsubscribe (as I have addressed in an earlier post), you may be under representing the sentiment. Also, if you have failed processes, you may be over counting. For example, my favorite SOUR emailer Younkers, as I mentioned in a previous post, has received numerous unsubscribe requests from me as it didn't appear to be working and I continued to receive their emails even though I asked them not to send. I will report that I have finally quit receiving their emails (for now). I wonder if they saw my post and finally did something about it!
Bounce Rates (hard and soft) - This is another metric that could be different based on how your ESP handles it. Some will count a hard bounce after a send has failed three times, but some may allow you to control how often the fail has to happen to count as a hard bounce. Soft bounce means the delivery was temporarily not available, but again can be altered. Be sure you understand exactly how your ESP handles these and measure appropriately. If you have a high hard bounce rate, you can also put yourself in a position of having your emails blocked by ISPs as being SOUR and on the verge of SPAM, so be sure to watch these rates closely to stay on those white lists and not be a SOUR emailer.
Secondary Metrics:
Inbox Placement - This is a lesser used metric, but as the ISPs get more aggressive at filtering and automatically moving incoming emails (especially Gmail), your well crafted message may never even receive the opportunity for the recipient to see if it is placed into a sub-folder without the email owners knowledge. It is difficult to combat this as well since like SEM algorithms, it can be ever changing and different based on the ISPs practices. At least be aware of this and attempt to understand if you are doing things that are making your emails more likely to land in the wrong place.
Earnings Per Email (click, open, delivered) - Getting to the heart of why we email, we should be measuring what we get out of these programs. While for some, this may be difficult, if you can, try to tie your actual revenue creation to the email function. Use the base metric that works for you (delivered, opened or clicked), but do attempt to do so. This may require extra work in Google Analytics and your CRM system to properly tag and add parameters to your campaigns, but it will be well worth it. Also consider what role emails play in the customer journey and how to tap into that. One thing I saw in my last role is that Google Analytics was showing us huge numbers of "direct" traffic to our website. We knew we didn't have that high brand recognition to warrant this and after digging in realized that we were not fully capturing the impact of our email programs to reactivate and engage our prospects in our products and ultimately purchase. Having the proper attribution allowed us to better prioritize our overall efforts and leverage our resources more effectively to the highest return activities.
Conversion Rate - Like earnings rate, this is another good metric that attempts to tie your end goals to the email function. It can be measured in several ways, but the goal is to understand of those receiving your emails, who is taking the revenue generating action you desire, be it an e-commerce transaction, an appointment or some other metric. It is different from the earning metric as it measures against people or recipients rather than a volume figure such as earnings. Pick the measures that mean the most to your business results.
Complaint or Abuse Rate - Similar to unsubscribe rates, these rates are more problematic to your future as they are signals sent to your ISP about you that can cause you to become black listed. Obviously if someone is at the point of angst that they are communicating to someone other than you about your SOUR email, it spells trouble. ISPs also facilitate this differently, so look at it by provider to see differences and identify opportunities for improvement.
Forward Rate (sharing rate) - Another metric totally in your control as if you don't provide the opportunity for the forward, there is nothing to measure. Ask yourself how you can use email, like you use social media, to engage your best advocates in continuing your message. While this is another topic and subject for marketing improvement, if you do this, measure and trend to find easy wins.
Churn Rate (or list growth rate) - Are you adding new net prospects or is your list stale? This metric will help you understand where you sit and what you need to do to continue to grow your opportunities and fill the top of the marketing funnel. If you have a product with a long sales cycle time, this can be an especially important metric for long term forecasting and growth. Measure how many new email addresses are added to your prospect list after you remove unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces.
ROI - The ultimate goal of all businesses and marketers - how much did you put in and how much did you get out. Email marketing has been proven to have one of the highest return on investments of all marketing tactics. Are you measuring this and trending to insure you improve and grow with this valuable tool? Again, dependent on your business, attempt to tie directly created revenue to costs which include ESP fees, expenses of content and list development and team costs.
Today's Tips for Better Email Metrics:
- Be thoughtful and insure you fully understand the nuances of the metrics you choose to use
- Select the metrics that will insure ongoing success (unsubscribes, ROI, etc.) and allow for insights and actions and relentlessly track
- Be sure to trend metrics over time; watch for seasonality (retailers especially) and other market conditions that can impact these; most ESPs publish standards and averages at least for things like open and click through rates, so reference those to benchmark how you are doing.
- Sub-segment emails by types and categories and understand what the trends are. It is entirely reasonable to expect 90%+ open rates from certain transnational emails, but far less from others. If you aren't creating segments of emails by type and tracking you will miss problems and opportunities to improve.
- When looking at your statistics in totality, think about the blend of types of emails and take that into account. You may pat yourself on the back for a big improvement in open rates in a month where perhaps your volume of promotional emails was lower as a percentage of total emails. It may be that you actually had a problem that was masked because your data wasn't granular enough to obtain a complete understanding.
- Consider a deliverability audit for a deep dive into where and how your emails are being delivered to unmask any issues.
- Watch for any red flags that can get you on a black list. Once you are on, it is very difficult to get off, so make this a top metric.
Overall, email metrics can insure you invest wisely, learn as you execute, continue to improve and drive notable revenue from this valuable channel. Take the time to build a strategy for you email metrics just like you do for marketing and email overall and put the tools and resources in place to support the channel. Don't have SOUR email metrics and missed revenue!
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
EMAIL STRATEGY - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Nov 2, 2016
Email statistics show that on average 18% of emails are opened. Now we all know that a lot of people view their emails in preview panes and can get the idea of what you have to say without opening them. In fact, Email Labs says that 69% of at-work email recipients read in preview pane.
So why are we even talking about open rates? We need to ask ourselves what is the purpose of our email marketing, the subject line and content and how do we measure the effectiveness of these? Obviously, the subject line is meant to tell the reader what the message is about and to catch attention. But, like those really creative television ads that everyone remembers but no one buys as a result of, there needs to be more than a catchy subject line and more thought put into our emails and why we are sending them.
We spoke in our post on October 6th about email strategy overall. Today, I'd like to focus in a bit on the subject lines, content and what that tells us about a companies email strategy and what we can learn.
So, as we think about our subject lines, let's start with what are and should be our goals and metrics. Obviously open rates can be used as a comparative metric for the goal of gaining attention, but what else should we consider when assessing subject lines? Do you and can you tie your emails to actual web visits (click throughs) and transactions? If you do, how does this fit within the overall customer journey? What role do you want emails and the subjects and content of those to play in your overall communications? Depending on who the person is, what the content is and what your product is, email could be more or less important to the journey towards purchase and play a role in how you manage that relationship and what you want to deliver in this channel.
Let's look at an example from clothing retailers to illustrate.
I have used many of my favorite clothing retailers as examples in past posts, organizations such as Macy's, Loft, White House, Black Market and Chicos. My relationship with them is about need and desire to be fashionable, up-to-date, buy and own quality clothing that will last, be functional and perhaps to fulfill a specific clothing need such as for an event or activity.
When I look at 20+ of my recent emails however, virtually all the subject lines focus on sale messages:
Loft: 50% OFF = love at first bite (we mean, sight)
Macy's: On the ballot: big savings on all your fave accessories!
White House Black Market: Columbus Day Sale Starts Now.
Chicos: A Berry Good Deal: 50% Off Sale
Are they doing this because their data shows that promotional subject lines have the best open rates or do they have data that shows this drives the best immediate sales? Is this the best way to add value and build relationships with customers and prospects or are we as marketers driving less value to our brands by constantly offering deals and selling only based on a deal? Are we even thinking about ways to engage our customers via email other than by offering a deal and trying to drive an immediate sale? Is there something more to the subjects and email communication that we should be considering?
I know as a consumer, I would be interested in reading about latest trends and colors, seeing great ideas on combining tops and pants or what the hot accessories are this month. We buy fashion magazines, so clearly we are interested in that kind of content. However, the retailers we buy the products from don't help us with that type of content via email. I ask, if I was receiving this type of content would I think first of that brand when I had the need for clothing and would I be more willing to buy it at a premium or at least not discounted? Would this be a better way to solidify my long term relationship with that retailer and thus build lifetime customer value for them? Perhaps the answer is "no" and this is not SOUR eMail. There is the classic example of JC Penney and their attempt to become an everyday value retailer. Now I am sure this strategy didn't fail due to a poor email strategy, but it speaks to the challenge for marketers of remaining relevant, driving value and becoming the brand of choice when clothing (or any product or that matter) is needed.
How do we develop a thoughtful, relevant, personalized and timely email strategy that connects our customers and prospects to our brand in a meaningful way and drives value for both of us?
Today's Tips for Better Email Strategy:
- Understand the customer journey and what role email plays and can play for your products and brands.
- Ask your customers what kind of content they care about and deliver it via email.
- Think about how this email content connects to your overall content strategy and how you tie your communication vehicles together for a comprehensive strategy.
- Think about different types of email, what makes them relevant and when and how to deliver them. So for example for our clothing retailers, should they be sending fashion trends content during the debut season for designers? A good example of providing value beyond the sale is from Shaw Industries. They sell flooring products, but do an excellent job of making flooring experiential. Each year they feature a color of the year to show that flooring choices are more than just the carpet or hardwood you buy and giving you a bigger reason to care about their brands.
- Make sure you focus on the right metrics in your emails and consider that you should have different metrics based on the type of emails.
- When looking at email statistics, classify the emails by type and set metrics standards based on those types. For example, promotional emails, transaction emails, newsletters versus sales emails should have different metrics.
- Change the cadence of your emails based on the type of content, subject and based on what consumers desire and what you know about them and their behaviors. A good article was recently published by Marketo and one of the points covered is cadence and the impact of good segmentation and targeting. The chart below shows graphically what this looks like.
- And of course, test and learn on a continual basis.
Use these email strategy tips to create an insightful, actionable and ROI driven approach to email marketing that wins for both you and your customers. Don't be a SOUR emailer with no strategic approach to your email marketing efforts!
Source:
Marketo Email Blunders
Email statistics show that on average 18% of emails are opened. Now we all know that a lot of people view their emails in preview panes and can get the idea of what you have to say without opening them. In fact, Email Labs says that 69% of at-work email recipients read in preview pane.
So why are we even talking about open rates? We need to ask ourselves what is the purpose of our email marketing, the subject line and content and how do we measure the effectiveness of these? Obviously, the subject line is meant to tell the reader what the message is about and to catch attention. But, like those really creative television ads that everyone remembers but no one buys as a result of, there needs to be more than a catchy subject line and more thought put into our emails and why we are sending them.
We spoke in our post on October 6th about email strategy overall. Today, I'd like to focus in a bit on the subject lines, content and what that tells us about a companies email strategy and what we can learn.
So, as we think about our subject lines, let's start with what are and should be our goals and metrics. Obviously open rates can be used as a comparative metric for the goal of gaining attention, but what else should we consider when assessing subject lines? Do you and can you tie your emails to actual web visits (click throughs) and transactions? If you do, how does this fit within the overall customer journey? What role do you want emails and the subjects and content of those to play in your overall communications? Depending on who the person is, what the content is and what your product is, email could be more or less important to the journey towards purchase and play a role in how you manage that relationship and what you want to deliver in this channel.
Let's look at an example from clothing retailers to illustrate.
I have used many of my favorite clothing retailers as examples in past posts, organizations such as Macy's, Loft, White House, Black Market and Chicos. My relationship with them is about need and desire to be fashionable, up-to-date, buy and own quality clothing that will last, be functional and perhaps to fulfill a specific clothing need such as for an event or activity.
When I look at 20+ of my recent emails however, virtually all the subject lines focus on sale messages:
Loft: 50% OFF = love at first bite (we mean, sight)
Macy's: On the ballot: big savings on all your fave accessories!
White House Black Market: Columbus Day Sale Starts Now.
Chicos: A Berry Good Deal: 50% Off Sale
Are they doing this because their data shows that promotional subject lines have the best open rates or do they have data that shows this drives the best immediate sales? Is this the best way to add value and build relationships with customers and prospects or are we as marketers driving less value to our brands by constantly offering deals and selling only based on a deal? Are we even thinking about ways to engage our customers via email other than by offering a deal and trying to drive an immediate sale? Is there something more to the subjects and email communication that we should be considering?
I know as a consumer, I would be interested in reading about latest trends and colors, seeing great ideas on combining tops and pants or what the hot accessories are this month. We buy fashion magazines, so clearly we are interested in that kind of content. However, the retailers we buy the products from don't help us with that type of content via email. I ask, if I was receiving this type of content would I think first of that brand when I had the need for clothing and would I be more willing to buy it at a premium or at least not discounted? Would this be a better way to solidify my long term relationship with that retailer and thus build lifetime customer value for them? Perhaps the answer is "no" and this is not SOUR eMail. There is the classic example of JC Penney and their attempt to become an everyday value retailer. Now I am sure this strategy didn't fail due to a poor email strategy, but it speaks to the challenge for marketers of remaining relevant, driving value and becoming the brand of choice when clothing (or any product or that matter) is needed.
How do we develop a thoughtful, relevant, personalized and timely email strategy that connects our customers and prospects to our brand in a meaningful way and drives value for both of us?
Today's Tips for Better Email Strategy:
- Understand the customer journey and what role email plays and can play for your products and brands.
- Ask your customers what kind of content they care about and deliver it via email.
- Think about how this email content connects to your overall content strategy and how you tie your communication vehicles together for a comprehensive strategy.
- Think about different types of email, what makes them relevant and when and how to deliver them. So for example for our clothing retailers, should they be sending fashion trends content during the debut season for designers? A good example of providing value beyond the sale is from Shaw Industries. They sell flooring products, but do an excellent job of making flooring experiential. Each year they feature a color of the year to show that flooring choices are more than just the carpet or hardwood you buy and giving you a bigger reason to care about their brands.
- Make sure you focus on the right metrics in your emails and consider that you should have different metrics based on the type of emails.
- When looking at email statistics, classify the emails by type and set metrics standards based on those types. For example, promotional emails, transaction emails, newsletters versus sales emails should have different metrics.
- Change the cadence of your emails based on the type of content, subject and based on what consumers desire and what you know about them and their behaviors. A good article was recently published by Marketo and one of the points covered is cadence and the impact of good segmentation and targeting. The chart below shows graphically what this looks like.
- And of course, test and learn on a continual basis.
Use these email strategy tips to create an insightful, actionable and ROI driven approach to email marketing that wins for both you and your customers. Don't be a SOUR emailer with no strategic approach to your email marketing efforts!
Source:
Marketo Email Blunders
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
TOO MUCH EMAIL? - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - SOUR eMail Oct 18, 2016
As I mentioned last week, I took a short vacation over the weekend so for the most part was away from my email with any regularity. Now that I have returned, I took a look at my inbox and it got me to thinking about the topic I covered two weeks ago related to timing and frequency.
So, I asked myself and I ask you, how much email is too much for you? In that time frame from 10/10 through 10/17, I received 525 emails. That equates to 75 emails a day. Given this is a personal account, it seems like a lot. Here's some mind blowing statistics:
- 205 BILLION emails are sent a day (as of 2015)
- average U.S. desktop open rate is 18%
- 42% of Americans check their email in the bathroom
We have a love affair with our email almost as strong as that with our phone and given that 66% of emails are opened on a mobile device, that makes sense.
Given all this, are we getting too much email? My vote is yes. Just in my one post a few weeks ago, I identified some of the egregious uses of email marketing and where people are just doing "spray and pray" - something that should be long gone in this day of predictive analytics, big data and dynamic targeting.
Why do marketers send too much email? I can think of all kinds of reasons like lack of strategy and focus, lack of talent, lack of tools and more. But, we can do better.
What I find interesting is the differences between industry and genre of email. Here's a good summary of email statistics by industry.
This summary tells you something about the psyche of email recipients and perhaps why we continue to send too many emails.
Daily deal emails have the lowest open rates at 13.87%, but also the lowest unsubscribe rates. We don't want to miss a deal even when we don't engage. How can we deliver fewer emails while still serving the consumers need for a deal? We know that when people are ready to transact, they will first search for a "deal." Just check your brand name in a search with the word "coupon" or "deal," or look at the sites that make their living offering deals like ebates or coupons.com to name a few. We send thousands and thousands of emails with deals, take a look at just a few from my inbox this week.
These all came within the past week without regard to my purchasing history: what I purchase, when I am likely to purchase again or what I might purchase. Does the deal drive me to take action? While it might if I had already been thinking of purchasing, it is more likely the trigger is something else. What if instead of receiving these unwanted emails that are not in alignment with my need for the product or a deal, I could get the deal when I am in the transaction process? Would that increase my conversion during that time? Would that keep me on the site and not distracted by other searches to find that deal? How would I feel about the company if they made it easier for me to purchase with a discount when I want to purchase?
I don't propose to have all the answers, but it does seem to me that as marketers we should be asking these questions and finding better ways than sending millions of unwanted emails.
I would like to see my inbox filled with 20 highly relevant and compelling emails than the 75 I averaged this week of which very few did I open and even fewer did I take action on.
We can do better. SOUR eMail can and should stop. What are you doing to improve your email performance? What is good performance for you? Is it getting better each week, month and year? What are the right metrics to even use?
We will answer some of these questions in our next post on email metrics and what you should be using to measure your success and how to continue to improve and evolve your email marketing.
As I mentioned last week, I took a short vacation over the weekend so for the most part was away from my email with any regularity. Now that I have returned, I took a look at my inbox and it got me to thinking about the topic I covered two weeks ago related to timing and frequency.
So, I asked myself and I ask you, how much email is too much for you? In that time frame from 10/10 through 10/17, I received 525 emails. That equates to 75 emails a day. Given this is a personal account, it seems like a lot. Here's some mind blowing statistics:
- 205 BILLION emails are sent a day (as of 2015)
- average U.S. desktop open rate is 18%
- 42% of Americans check their email in the bathroom
We have a love affair with our email almost as strong as that with our phone and given that 66% of emails are opened on a mobile device, that makes sense.
Given all this, are we getting too much email? My vote is yes. Just in my one post a few weeks ago, I identified some of the egregious uses of email marketing and where people are just doing "spray and pray" - something that should be long gone in this day of predictive analytics, big data and dynamic targeting.
Why do marketers send too much email? I can think of all kinds of reasons like lack of strategy and focus, lack of talent, lack of tools and more. But, we can do better.
What I find interesting is the differences between industry and genre of email. Here's a good summary of email statistics by industry.
This summary tells you something about the psyche of email recipients and perhaps why we continue to send too many emails.
Daily deal emails have the lowest open rates at 13.87%, but also the lowest unsubscribe rates. We don't want to miss a deal even when we don't engage. How can we deliver fewer emails while still serving the consumers need for a deal? We know that when people are ready to transact, they will first search for a "deal." Just check your brand name in a search with the word "coupon" or "deal," or look at the sites that make their living offering deals like ebates or coupons.com to name a few. We send thousands and thousands of emails with deals, take a look at just a few from my inbox this week.
These all came within the past week without regard to my purchasing history: what I purchase, when I am likely to purchase again or what I might purchase. Does the deal drive me to take action? While it might if I had already been thinking of purchasing, it is more likely the trigger is something else. What if instead of receiving these unwanted emails that are not in alignment with my need for the product or a deal, I could get the deal when I am in the transaction process? Would that increase my conversion during that time? Would that keep me on the site and not distracted by other searches to find that deal? How would I feel about the company if they made it easier for me to purchase with a discount when I want to purchase?
I don't propose to have all the answers, but it does seem to me that as marketers we should be asking these questions and finding better ways than sending millions of unwanted emails.
I would like to see my inbox filled with 20 highly relevant and compelling emails than the 75 I averaged this week of which very few did I open and even fewer did I take action on.
We can do better. SOUR eMail can and should stop. What are you doing to improve your email performance? What is good performance for you? Is it getting better each week, month and year? What are the right metrics to even use?
We will answer some of these questions in our next post on email metrics and what you should be using to measure your success and how to continue to improve and evolve your email marketing.
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