EMAIL INTEGRATION - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Jan 25

EMAIL INTEGRATION - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - Jan 25

As marketers, we think about campaigns and integrated promotions, but I am often surprised at the SOUR non-practice of leveraging other mediums to drive email communications and coordination with these tactics.  The biggest miss in opportunity is between email and social, specifically Facebook.

Social can and is used as a lead generation tactic, but it also does well as a branding and awareness medium.  Targeting there based on look alike audiences or against your targets or other interest areas can get prospects into your pipeline at an early stage.

I have said many times to my teams over the years that it is our job to get our prospects to raise their hands as early in their customer journey as possible. This gives us more opportunity to craft the customer experience from start to finish in a more personalized way.  At the same time, this helps push the competitors out.

So as we think about social for brand building and email to personalize the communication and drive conversions, I wanted to look at some of those businesses I've been watching over the past four months to see how well they are driving their prospects from social to email and visa versa.

We will take a look today at:

Pulte
Overstock
Secret Escapes

Pulte

First, Pulte does a SOUR job of pulling prospects in early in the process with limited "sign up" engagement and a focus on end of the funnel - getting them into the model center.

Their emails do have the ubiquitous set of links for social media on the bottom of their communication, and you can link there to, for example, their Facebook page which is totally generic, not market specific or having any relevance for me, the prospect who just linked from an email about a specific community in a specific market.

Also, one of the big misses that I see frequently is no links back to get email sign ups.  Really SOUR - their "contact us" link on their Facebook page takes the user to a service repair request - really?  What does that say about them?

Funny too that they take the time in their Facebook navigational links to include ones to other social channels like Instagram, but not to email which gives them the best ROI and ability to personalize the customer journey - SOUR email!

Integration Score:  D-

Overstock

No push to email from their Facebook page either!  They have space in their main navigation and offer a "shop now" button.  If you think about the use of social media as a branding channel, would it be helpful to ask people to sign up for personalized coupons and exclusive deals to move them to the next level  of communication? Do consumers want to go from social directly to shopping?  How many do?

We've talked before about retailers "blast" email practices - very SOUR in this day and age and Overstock is no exception.  It actually makes me cringe to see how many people even still think this way.  Most of the emails I receive in my inbox from Overstock are promotional, have no personalization and arrive way too often.

Of course they too have the social links across the bottom of the emails, but with no compelling reason to go there.

Integration Score:  D-

Secret Escapes

These guys have great vacations to beautiful places, but their emails are totally overwhelming with no personalization or understanding of what places might be of interest to me!  In one email mail I received they show me 44 different packages to such diverse destinations as Disney World and Bali.

Really SOUR - No social links, so skip what I said above about ubiquitous - I guess not totally!

They have a Facebook page and surprisingly ARE integrating from there to email.  A click on the "learn more" button opens a page and pop up with email sign up. NOT SOUR. They allow you to join with your Facebook profile and provide a reason to join.  They did not however recognize that I am already a member.  A simple cookie would do that. They could have personalized for me with a vacation of interest versus asking me to do something I already had.  SOUR!

Integration Score:  C

Todays Tips

-  Be sure to have a path forward from your social media presence to obtain early "hand raisers" - ASK for email sign ups

-  Give them a reason to engage in another channel (email) and make it prominent on the social space

-  Give more thought to how you position social media within your email communications

     -  What are your goals for integration?

     -  How do consumers interact in the channels through the customer journey?

     -  How to you proactively move your prospects through and between the channels depending on where they are in their personal journey?

-  Effectively use cookies, email sign ins and what you know about your prospects and customers to personalize every experience

-  Be sure to add the appropriate tracking parameters to watch how consumers and prospects move between the various channels and at what stage

Are you integrating your email and social presence?  Do you have a strategy for moving people through and between channels appropriate to their journey steps? Are you personalizing at every step along the way? These simple actions can help improve the effectiveness of both your email and social media marketing.

Don't be a SOUR emailer!

"FROM" ADDRESSES - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - SOUR eMail Oct 10, 2016

Week two of SOUR email and it's more fun than ever.  I'm traveling this week to connect with some of my girlfriends for a weekend in the mountains of Chattanooga, TN, so I thought I would focus today on some of the travel emails I receive and talk about how to best use the "From" address in your emails.  It seems like it should be a basic and simple thing to consider and do well and is also regulated by CAN-SPAM laws.  What can and should you do to leverage this important element of your email and one that pretty much everyone looks at in determining if they will ignore it, take action or something in between?

The CAN-SPAM act specifically requires that you must accurately identify the person or business who initiated the message.  The specific language is:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

But if you look at the elements of "from" lines that your recipients see, there are several parts to the From line that can be leveraged to your benefit and to help your list members clearly understand who you are and perhaps why you are sending this email.

You can use these elements to clearly articulate who you are and to make your from line more personal, relevant and beneficial to the receiving party.  The ESPs typically allow you to customize these elements of your email.

So let's look at some to see where we have some SOUR eMail and who is doing well.

First from above, while the "from" name certainly does tell us it is from "Secret Escapes," is it relevant to the receiving party that it is "US?"  Do I care that it came from the US part of Secret Escapes and will it make me behave differently by having that there?  I venture to say "no."

The actual email of the sender is also not helpful.  Do I want to see an email from "support?"  Maybe, if this is a support email.  Does "support" mean something in the email is about helping me with my order or trip?  Given the subject of this email was "Sun or City" I don't know why receiving it from "support" is helpful or provides me with any insight as to what "support" I might get from the content of this email. Is it necessary to include "email." after the "@?"  I know I am reading email, so it doesn't really tell me anything I don't already know.  SOUR eMail.  We can do better.

Several of the emails I looked at had these same type of issues with the email address including superfluous words that really didn't help clarify or improve the address or provide anything of value to the reader.  Things like:

"tvtgmail@list.vacationstogo.com"

"postmaster@listserv.crystalcruises.com"

That really doesn't make me feel that these companies care about me.  I am simply part of their "list" or "listserv" from their "postmaster" or even worse "tvtgmail."  While I am sure these terms had some logic to the programmer or whomever was setting up these emails, I think we could do better.  SOUR eMail.

There is also opportunity in these terms to provide some meaning to the message and use this most important content to connect or tell our readers something.  Some of my travel sites did try to get a bit better than the above with things like:

"hhonors@h1.hiltonhonors.com"

So at least the words made sense.  However given the "from" line before the actual email address had these same terms "Hillton Honors," they missed the opportunity to tell me more and simply repeated the same words in total three times in this space.  The actual full line looked like this:

"Hilton HHonors <hhonors@h1.hiltonhonors.com>"

NOTE:  Not really sure why they needed the "H" honors, but again, it must have meant something to someone in the creation process, although probably not the recipient. 

Here's an interesting way that Hotwire used the "from" to say more even though they were still repetitive between the "from title" and the from within the email address:

"Hotwire Recommended Deals <hotwire@e.hotwire.com>"

They met the requirements of CAN-SPAM by telling people who they were, but they took the opportunity in the from line to reinforce the overall message of the email and tie the from to the subject line which was "3-start Chicago hotel from $90, Ft. Lauderdale rental cars from $23 plus more."

I also liked a few others who used the email address to help clarify the message intent:

"Airbnb <discover@airbnb.com"

"TripAdvisor <memberupdate@e.tripadvisor.com"

"Lake Leelenau RV Park <info@lakeleelenaurvpark.com"

Only one in my inbox this weekend however really made it personal by having the email address be from a real person:

"Steppes Travel <justin.wateridge@steppestravel.co.uk>"

Who would you rather receive an email from, "Justin" or "list?"

"From" Addresses

Today's Sample: 12 emails
Overall Grade: C
Top Performer:  Steppes Travel - Grade A and Hotwire - Grade B

I decided because of the elements within these two they were both worthy of recognition - Steppes for using a real email address and Hotwire for creatively using the "from" to extend their subject line content.

Today's Tips to Improve Your Inbox Anatomy and not be a SOUR eMailer:

-  Don't include superfluous words and sub-elements within the email address - be specific and only include your root domain if possible
-  Make it personal - send the email from a real person, not a box or technical term; if you aren't making it from a person, at least use the email address to tell them something as Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Lake Leelenau RV park did
-  Leverage the "from" line to extend your subject line.  This is a really creative way to get more for your money
-  Don't make the "from" line too long and don't abbreviate unless it is a high recognition brand abbreviation

Use these "from" line tips to make sure you meet CAN-SPAM requirements and to connect to your recipients and obtain more interest and action!

TIMING AND FREQUENCY - Anatomy of an Email Inbox - SOUR eMail - Oct 6, 2016

People who have worked with me have heard me talk about timing and frequency of emails many times.  Some of the culprits that soured me the most were the book stores.  What are they thinking?  I don't know about you, but I am a prolific reader, both for pleasure and for work but I certainly don't go to the bookstore every day or even every week and sometimes not even every month.  However, it would never fail that I would get emails from the bookstores that I subscribed to every single day.

Did they really think I had the time to read these or that I wanted to?   With email open rates consistently hovering around 20 to 25% and click through rates far less than that, (2 to 3%), we can do better. What happened, which is what happens I suspect, to a lot of emails is they became disinter-mediated from my attention.  I patently ignored them and ultimately unsubscribed from those emails as they were just filling up my inbox with little to no value.  No more waste for me and no more money for them.  SOUR eMail

I took a look at my email box over the last few days and here's what I see.

Loft

Between sender "Loft" and "Loft Card" I have received 7 emails as of 7 am this morning (I know I will receive one more today!) since October 3rd - that is 2 per day (not counting the "sponsored" email).  Now, I love clothes, like I love to read, but do I really need 2 per day?  I can't even tell you the last time I walked into their store or went to their website and I haven't been compelled by their subject lines (another topic coming) to open.  Even, the "Free Shipping + 50% off everything" one is losing out on my attention because I get too many - SOUR eMail!  Loft, you can do better.

I also wonder why they aren't coordinating their lists and emails to reduce both their workload and my irritation.  Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) have automated resting rules that let you set a standard of how many emails you send a day, but if you are using different accounts or have different teams working on these programs, this is being overlooked.  For all of you Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) and marketing leaders, have you developed an email marketing strategy and systems to support this?  It appears from my inbox that this is not happening with Loft and many others.

Side note:  Look at the image below - this view is from a search in my inbox for Loft - you can see that Loft is not titling their documents, so the content I see includes "untitled document" as the description.  SOUR eMail and a big missed opportunity to tell me something of value.

Not to just pick on Loft, here's a few more:

-  Costco - 1 per day

-  Secret Escape - 1 per day

-  Rugs USA - every other day (a little better)

-  White House, Black Market - 1 per day (plus one from WHBM Outlets - again I ask, CMOs', where's your strategy?)

-  VRBO - so far only 1 in 4 days (Yes, I don't take a vacation all the time, not that I wouldn't like to!)

Discount Contact Lens

So who is doing better?  There is a dearth of examples of someone doing well in frequency and timing, but I did have one this week that exemplifies the right way to make email relevant and impactful.  Here's why:

-  I know the brand and they know me

-  They know that I am a customer (good connected databases) and it has been about 90 days since I ordered my last supply of contacts

-  They aren't sending me emails in between my need period (i.e., running out of contacts)

-  They make it personalized by including the exact brand I order

-  They are making the title relevant, telling me they know I am running out

-  They aren't leading with a deal, but are using it to make sure I convert and buy from them (I normally do check for others with a better deal when I'm ready to order - who doesn't like to save money if we can?)

-  When I clicked, it sent me to a landing page with the offer and a reorder button (button could have been higher on the page)

They could be a bit better though:

-  They use sponsored emails to find potentially new customers (but appears they likely aren't screening out their current customers from these, so perhaps a waste of money)

-  When I clicked on the sponsored ad it just took me to their home page rather than a specific location to make it easy for me to respond and see the promotional details

Timing and Frequency

Today's Sample: 291 emails
Overall Grade: D
Top Performer:  Discount Contact Lens - Grade A-

Today's Tips to Improve Your Inbox Anatomy and not be a SOUR eMailer:

-  CMOs and marketers need to have a much more thoughtful and strategic approach to their email programs
-  Database structure and where your data resides across business units and channels is critical to success
-  We need to do a much better job of using the data we have to send fewer but more relevant emails:  collect only the data you need, consolidate it into one database and leverage it to send the right message at the right time to the right person
-  Use resting rules to automate the limits of emails being sent
-  Make sure any landing pages you use are relevant to the reason you are sending the email and make it easy for the recipient to take the action you want
-  Think about your product and frequency of purchase - what is the right communication cadence?  Too many of us over communicate through email.  Test a change to your cadence and measure against open rates, click throughs and ultimately ROI.  Don't forget to consider the opportunity costs of the team members time executing unwanted emails and how they could be better deployed to higher value activities.

The goal of email marketing is to stay relevant, serve our customers and prospects needs when they want and need us and ultimately deliver revenue and ROI to the company.  Email marketing is one of our highest ROI channels, but could it be even better?  Stop SOUR eMail  Let's get smarter about how we execute in this valuable channel before it becomes less so due to our bad practices.

Sources:
MailChimp
MainStreetROI