Solutions to the Most Critical Facing Email …...Marketers are actively working to increase relevancy in email marketing messages o This is a good thing • But don’t forget about

Jeanne S. JenningsIndependent Consultant, Email Marketing StrategyEmail Marketing Trainer, MarketingSherpa

Practical Solutions to the Most Critical Challenges Facing Email Marketers Today

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Biggest Challenges

1. Strategy2. Relevance3. Deliverability4. Return on

Investment

Source: 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, MarketingSherpa

Strategy


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Strategy vs. Tactics: The Art of War

Strategy• A plan of action designed to achieve a specific goal

• Sun Tzu: Assessing five fundamental factors and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements

• Jeanne: Looking at your own internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as macro‐environmental factors, to determine the best path to reach your goals

Tactics• Conceptual actions to advance toward a specific goal

• Sun Tzu: Nine common situations, three general areas of resistance, six types of ground positions, five targets for attack and how to navigate them

• Jeanne: How to take your strategic plan and “Make it So” in the words of Jean Luc Piccard

Sources: The Art of War, Sun Tzu, written in the late sixth century BC; Jennings on Email, JeanneJennings.com, Inc.


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Seven Steps to an Effective Email Strategy

5. Create quantitative goals

6. Complete budget and ROI projections

7. Evaluate results as you go and tweak the strategy accordingly

Source: Jennings on Email, JeanneJennings.com, Inc.

1. Identify qualitative goals2. Define the target audience3. Perform a SWOT analysis4. Develop a content strategy

Your Email Strategy is Your Blue Print


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SWOT Analysis – InternalCase Study: National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation

Strengths• Members have a highly favorable impression of the association

• Great holiday offers available to members

• Recipients have historically responded well to discount offers

• New CMO that encourages and supports new ideas

Weaknesses• Emails to date have been a catalog of offers

• Limited internal resources and budget to create content

• Limited budget to hire freelancers to create content

• Concern that members are being bombarded with email; decreasing response rates

• No explicit opt‐in; opt‐out email permission

Source: Client Case Study, JeanneJennings.com, Inc.


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SWOT Analysis – ExternalCase Study: National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation

Opportunities• Groupon and other regular deal emails are popular right now

• People are actively looking to save money in this economy

• Busy professionals are looking for ways to reduce holiday stress

• Shopping online is becoming more and more popular

Threats• All other holiday offer emails – how to differentiate these from those

• General inbox clutter – how to make members actively look for these email messages

• Some of the deals offered by retailers aren’t exclusive to the organization



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SWOT Analysis – ResultCase Study: National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation


• Weekly Emailo 100% opt‐in

• Content Strategy:o Engaging quoteo Gift‐giving ideaso Single discount offer

• Low‐resource content marketingo Quotes and tips from

staff• Differentiation from

NEAMB control and other retail email messages


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• Holiday Cheer vs. Controlo Lift of 214% in open rateo Lift of 105% in clickthrough rateo Decrease of 34% in click‐to‐open rate

• Holiday Cheer vs. Internal Benchmarks

o Lift of 185% in open rateo Lift of 337% in clickthrough rateo Lift of 49% in click‐to‐open rate

• Conversions are TBD…

“Seasonal Surprises” Control

“Holiday Cheer” Test


Quantitative ResultsCase Study: National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation

Relevance


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Relevancy Tactics

• Marketers are actively working to increase relevancy in email marketing messages

o This is a good thing

• But don’t forget about the content!

o Having relevance‐increasing tactics in place without solid, relevant content won’t automatically increase relevancy

Source: 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, MarketingSherpa


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Relevance

What It Is• Relevant: “Bearing on or having reference to the matter at hand”

o Oxford American Dictionary, 1999

• Relevant: “The marketing is about something the prospect is interested in”o Seth Godin, Permission Marketing, 1999

• Relevant: “They opted‐in to receive email on this topic so that’s what we’ll send them”o Permission‐based email marketers, 2011

What It’s Not• “We know more about what they want and need than they do”

o Database Marketer, 2010

• “They’re a female, so when they opt‐in for email from ESPN and partner companies they must also want ABC Soap Opera Updates”o ESPN, mid‐2000s

• “They are on our list, d p , so we know they’ll be interested in this”o Too many email

marketers in 2011


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Define Products and AudiencesCase Study: Consumer Reports Magazine

Products• Consumer Reports Online (CRO) subscription plus Car Best Deal Plus

• CRO subscriptiono Annualo Monthly

• Car Best Deals Plus (add‐on to existing CRO subscription)

• Consumer Reports Health Onlineo Annualo Monthly

Audience Segments1. Current CRO/CRH Subscribers2. Lapsed CRO/CRH Subscribers3. Attempted CRO/CRH

Subscribers (Abandoned Carts)4. CRO/CRH Free Newsletter

Subscribers

Segments are mutually exclusive based on this hierarchy



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Opportunities Ranked by 5 VariablesCase Study: Consumer Reports Magazine



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Newsletter Click streamCase Study: Consumer Reports Magazine

Tactical Plan• Trigger: Recipient clicks on a car article in the free email newsletter

• Goal: Sell related CRO‐CBDP/CBDP subscription

• Send a targeted series of messages, based on subscription status and behavior



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Newsletter Click stream ExampleCase Study: Consumer Reports Magazine

Key Content Messages• Benefits of CRO/CRO‐CBDP subscription related to cars

• Customer testimonial related to car content

• Regular price offer with free special report on cars (incentive)

• Copy based on behavior


Deliverability


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Deliverability

• Marketers are seeing some improvements in deliverability

• But there are still challenges:

o Inbox vs. Junk folder placement

o Bounce‐backs and undeliverable mail

o Lack of response (opens and clicks)

o AWOL messages

Source: 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, MarketingSherpa


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Deliverability

What it is• Getting your email delivered to the inbox

o Not the junk mail folder or not delivered at all

• Having a good email reputationo Which equates to being a good email

citizen and proactively combating deliverability problem triggers

• Something to work on every dayo Not just when you have a problemo If 1% of your emails aren’t delivered,

your ROI is probably 1% less than it could have been

o What if it’s 3%? 5%?

What it’s not• The quantity of email you send minus your bounces

o Not everyone that filters your email as spam will send you a bounce message

o You won’t get a bounce message if your email is delivered to the junk mail folder

• Intrinsically tied to your ReturnPath Sender Score or other markero You can have an acceptable,

even high, send score and still have deliverability issues


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Six Ways to Protect Your Email Reputation

1. Monitor your reputation on an ongoing basis2. Have email authentication in place3. Manage spam complaints appropriately4. Process unsubscribe requests in a timely manner5. Remove or opt‐down

non‐responsive addresses6. Quarantine high‐risk

campaigns

Sources: 9 Best Practices for Protecting Your Email Reputation, MarketingSherpa, March 2010; Jennings on Email, JeanneJennings.com


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• Do this even if your spam complaint rate is low, even if you are working with an ESP that manages your feedback loopso Your reputation is your responsibility, not theirso A poor reputation will damage your brand and your email marketing – not theirs

Monitor and Analyze Spam ComplaintsCase Study: Client Name Withheld


• Sign‐up for Feedback Loopso Type “Feedback Loops” into a search engine to learn how

• Gather and analyze your spam complaints on a regular basis, at least monthlyo Ideally your spam complaint rate will be below 0.1% ‐‐ fewer than 1 of every 1,000 email messages you sent


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Analysis: Complaints per Individual Email AddressCase Study: Client Name Withheld

3 Months of spam complaints• More than 12 million email messages assumed delivered• Nearly 38,000 complaints

o Complaint rate of 0.3%


• From fewer than 3,000 email addresseso Average of nearly 14 complaints per email address

• Course of Actiono Suppress email addresses that lodge spam complaints from ALL future sends

If this had been done, the complaint rate would have been 0.02%, well below the 0.1% threshold

Analysis: 10% of email addresses (also 10% of complaints)


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Analysis: Source of Email Addresses That ComplainedCase Study: Client Name Withheld


• 70% of spam complaints were coming from two sources

o Both were appends the organization was doing on a regular basis

o They were current customers, but they hadn’t opted‐in

• Course of Actiono Change to an explicit opt‐in process for all future appended email addresses

Which may cause the program to be cost‐prohibitive

o Quarantine all sends to all appended addresses to a designated server

To contain the risk in case of future blacklisting

Source of Email Address

Percentage of Spam Complaints Cumulative Total

Append (Source A) 41.5% 41.5%Append (Source B) 28.6% 70.1%Website Sign‐up 9.3% 79.4%Purchased 7.8% 87.2%Former Customers (3+ Years) 5.7% 92.9%Supplier Provided 4.5% 97.4%Website Registration 1.1% 98.5%Partner Registration 0.6% 99.1%Customer Service Center 0.5% 99.6%Email Change‐of‐Address 0.3% 99.9%Customer Loyalty Program 0.1% 100.0%Total 100.0% 100.0%


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0.00%

0.10%

0.20%

0.30%

0.40%

0.50%

0.60%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

97% of email messages sent garnered spam complaints• 97% had spam complaints of 0.1% or above• 53% had spam complaint rates above 0.3%• Somewhat skewed by non‐removal of past

complaints

32 Unique Sends

Spam Complaints (percent of assumed

delivered) Average / Mean and Median: 0.31%

Industry Threshold (High): 0.3%

Industry Threshold (Low): 0.1%


Course of Action• Identify messages which routinely have high spam complaint rates

o What do they have in common? o Why are recipients so dissatisfied with

them?• Rethink the approach on these messages

Analysis: Messages Which Garnered ComplaintsCase Study: Client Name Withheld

Return on Investment


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Return on Investment

• Delivery, Opens and Clicks are important, but bottom line metrics are critical

o Only 44% of marketers are tracking post‐click conversion rate

o Only 33% are tracking revenue per email sent

• Marketers need to focus on bottom line metrics to show success

Source: 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, MarketingSherpa


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Return On Investment

Excuses Not to Measure ROI• Our Web analytics software doesn’t provide this information

o Most do – you just have to set it upo Google Analytics does and it’s free!

• We can’t track online sales back to email

o Not difficult to set up – do it!

• We don’t have an exact figure for costs

o Don’t worry about perfect; as long as you use the same cost model for all your calculations you can get data to compare

Ways to Measure It• Return‐on‐investment

o Net revenue divided by cost

• Revenue per email sento Net revenue divided by the number of email messages sent

• Conversion rate is good but it doesn’t tie back to revenue

• Open and clicks don’t tie directly back to revenue at all!


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Which Creative Won?Case Study: Large Publisher


If you only have opens and clicks…


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Which Creative Won?Case Study: Large Publisher


When you have bottom line data…


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Testing: Improving Return‐on‐Investment

Obstacles to Testing• “When I test I’m not maximizing the revenue on that send”

• “We’re so busy just getting the campaigns out that I don’t have time to test”

• “My send quantities are too small to test”

How to Address Them• True, but testing maximizes your revenue over the long term

• Slow down. Cancel or de‐prioritize some sends so you have time to test where it will have impact

• Test over a series of sends. Use formulas for subject lines, layouts and the like and combine results to get your findings.

Additional Resources


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Additional Resources

• Full‐day Workshop• San Francisco, March 10• Chicago, April 21• www.MarketingSherpa.com

• “Email Marketing” column written by Jeanne (9+ years)

• Every other Monday in the “Experts” Section

• www.ClickZ.com

• Free Email Newsletter on Effective Email Marketing

o Market researcho Articleso Other resources

• Published monthly by Jeanne

• www.JeanneJennings.com


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• Jeanne S. Jennings• Independent Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy• Email Marketing Trainer, MarketingSherpa• [email protected] | 202.333.3245 | @JeaJen

Thanks for Attending – Questions?

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Solutions to the Most Critical Facing Email …...Marketers are actively working to increase relevancy in email marketing messages o This is a good thing • But don’t forget about