6 key tactics for a Smarter Email Programme

Dave Chaffey, SmartInsights.com Presented at e-Dialog Aspire 2011 London 03/11/2011

Your email marketing journey:

Assessing your email marketing capability
A. Goal setting & evaluation B. Contact strategy and policy None; Enewsletter / Solus emails Email marketing maturity stage C. Segmentation, targeting & personalisation 0 Segments D. Email marketing integration & governance Limited integration of broadcasts and data Campaign integration (DM or phone) ESP, web analytics & social media integration Auto-triggers based on web behaviour Right-channeling based on value & preference E. Test & learn

Stage 1. Initial Pray and Spray

None

Limited

Stage 2. Managed Improving relevance Stage 3. Defined Segmented relevance Stage 4. Quantitative Contextual relevance Stage 5. Optimising Optimised relevance

List growth Segmented response Marketing outcomes Beyond the click Subscriber engagement

Basic contact strategy and rules Basic lifecycle communications

2-6 Segments Basic contact strategy Simple eventtriggered Welcome reactivate Recency, Frequency, Value

Subject line Offer testing Template layouts

Individualised contact strategy

Individual / segment testing

Integrated web and multichannel

Integrated online & offline contacts

Multi-layered Dynamic content insertion

Real-time and multivariate

The main barriers to effective email marketing in 2011?

Agenda
6 Tactics that will matter most in 2013

1 Engagement
2 Mobile Email 3 Email contact strategies 4 Channel integration 5 Social-email marketing

6 Email marketing optimization

4 e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Tactic 1: Engagement strategies

Key questions:

Q. How do you measure engagement?

Q. Are you getting the sell-inform-entertain balance right?

Q. Do you have the publishing resources to create engaging content?

5 e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3 more advanced ways of measuring email engagement

How do you measure engagement with email? Open/clicks/CTOR is NOT good enough, instead Opens/clicks/CTOR/revenue:
1. At position in lifecycle 2. By segment 3. By offer / email type 4. Aggregated over a longer time period

Measuring list activity email engagement/disengagement

These hurdle rates are for whole list. Repeat:
By segment By product categories purchased
Measure Never Open Never Click Period All time Last 6 Months All time Number of Subscribers 48,000 168,000 96,000 % of list total 16.0% 56.0% 32.0% TIP: Measure the overall health of your list through activity / inactivity levels over time

Last 6 Months
Never Bought All time Last 6 Months Never Bought Online All time Last 6 Months
7

144,000
48,000 192,000 96,000 216,000

48.0%
16.0% 64.0% 32.0% 72.0%

Email Engagement:
What motivates Consumers to Opt In (UK)

Source: e-Dialog research August 2011

Email Engagement:
Where do Consumers Opt In (UK)

Source: e-Dialog research August 2011

Creating a content hub

1. Be relevant. Understand the content that will appeal to different audiences. 2. Create an editorial calendar. Your social media marketing will be more effective if you produce content on a regular, consistent schedule. 3. Offer distribution choices, but keep a focus. Offer choice to alert subscribers to content using different types of channels since they will have different preferences.
5 rules SMO Rohit Bharaava http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/

Creating a content hub

4. Syndicate through partners. Identify partner sites and networks who may publish your content, either in its original form or tailored for their audiences. 5. Make communications two-way. Dont just treat the channels as an alert or update service. Engage!

5 rules SMO Rohit Bharaava http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/what-is-social-media-optimisation-smo/

Tactic 2: mobile marketing

Key questions:

Q. How important is mobile email use for your audience?

Q. Is user mobile email experience satisfactory? Q. Is mobile driving commercial outcomes?

The desktop in decline?

Share of device page traffic for News category (weekday)

Source: comScore Custom Analytics, U.S., August 2011

British Airways
We helped BA launch a new suite of mobile applications in late July/early August. The campaign was prompted by an increasing penetration of smartphones, and an analysis of the devices most commonly used by members to access standard Executive Club emails.

Innovation in Email Marketing

Winner: e-Dialog and British Airways About the winning entry: To promote the launch and maximise downloads of the Executive Club mobile application, BA and e-Dialog developed a unique strategy, using historical customer data to target smartphone users in a highly targeted email-to-mobile campaign. Judges comments: A smart and progressive email marketing campaign that as well as being innovative in its scope generated some great results.

Still variable by country

Mobile share of non-computer traffic for select market

Source: comScore Device Essentials, August 2011

Targeting customer by Device

Skypes Mobile App Downloads After launching in 2010, the Skype App on Android & iPhone grew fast, becoming number 6 in Apples most popular app list in 2010. e-Dialog recognised that an analysis of the devices used to view emails would allow Skype to target owners of specific devices Email campaign CTA drove straight to iTunes for app download

Targeting customer by Device

Skypes Mobile App Downloads Results
Click through Target = 5%, Achieved 9% Open rates were as high as the mid 40s (%) The average across all markets was up from 31% to 38%, for the volumes sent this is

a significant increase

Mobile Email Design Best Practices

A narrow email width

Single column layout

Super subject line Large headlines & CTAs Bullet proof buttons Graceful Degradation

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-creative-best-practice-2011-style/

iPad Optimised Video in Email

e-Dialog planned, designed and executed a campaign that specifically targets iPad owners to drive digital subscriptions to the Times websites and iPad editions.

Tactic 3: Channel integration

Key questions:

Q. How does email work with other channels to drive results?

Q. Have we reviewed attribution? Q. Are we using email to drive offline outcomes?

Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-business-case/

Source: Forrester eBusiness research in collaboration with GSI Commerce Holiday Season Marketing Attribution Research

Case study
Understanding multichannel behaviour implications? Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO)
Mobile Buyer

Mobile Buyer

Mobile Buyer

http://www.smartinsights.com/analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/multichannel-customer-journeys-ropo/

http://www.smartinsights.com/analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/qr-codes-location-demographic-statistics/

Is Blippar relevant?

Tactic 4: Contact strategies

Key questions:

Q. Is our layered segmentation effective?

Q. Have we optimised our triggered emails? Q. How do we grow value?

Relevance!

Common Email targeting options

Targeting approaches 1. Classic profile-based demographic segmentation 2. Customer value 3. Web design personas 4. Customer lifecycle Method Target customer groupings according to their characteristics & motivations Assess customers by current and future value potential Target 2-10 typical customer journeys Target messages according to length of time using online services

5. Purchase and response behaviour

6. Channel preference 7. Tone and style preference

Use sense and respond behavioual targeting based on RFM

Communicate with customer in their preferred media (and according to value) Communicate with customers according to their tastes inferred from demographics or behaviour.

31

Tip create a layered segmentation

An example from eBay
Demographic

Static

Gender, Geography

Consumer/Business

Derived

Transactional Value Segmentation Propensity Models

Behavioural

Kids Last purchase

Tech

Fashion

Cars & Parts Keyword personas

Category clusters

Recent

Last category

Keyword

Recent Activity

Do you send out emails based on the following triggers?

Integrating SMS into email campaigns

Confused.com Renewal Reminder

Confused.com is the UKs comparison site of choice for car, home, travel, life, and more.
Keeps its customers up-to-date with guides, tips and information and renewal advice To extend emails impact they followed it with an SMS using our platform to send both email and SMS messages.

Contains two custom published fields: first name and the lowest price offer for insurance.

Summary: targeting options

Purchase behaviour:
Buyer vs non-buyer One-time vs multiple

RFM
Proportional Hard-coded

Email activity
Active vs inactive clicker

Category purchased Appending lifestyle data Value

Number of clicks on email

Web activity
Visited, never visited Browsed, not bought

Channel activity
Web vs Store vs Catalogue

Tactic 5: social-email
Key questions:

Q. Are social sharing links and social content effective?

Q. Do you cross-promote social channel OVPs? Q. Do you have a plan for social sign-on / email integration?

Social email marketing is much more than SWYN

SYWN prominent above fold

In this May 1, 2011 email, Macys places the share call-to-action in the same content block as the Friends & Family promotion. This positioning is much more prominent and compelling than the usual placement in the header or footer.

In this Feb. 2, 2011 email, Kohls asks their customers to nominate a kid in the community to receive a scholarship. Theres a prominent secondary call-toaction to Share this on Facebook to try to broaden the reach of the campaign.

Social channel OVP

TIP: Recruit to Twitter or Facebook via Email

Integrated campaign example

Integrating social into Enews

Source: http://www.retailemailblog.com/2011/09/am-inbox-pulling-social-content-into.html

Social sign-on
The new preference centre

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing-alerts/why-social-sign-on-matters/

Tactic 6: Email optimisation

Key questions:

Q. How advanced is our incentive optimisation?

Q. How structured is our creative optimisation? Q. Mobile optimisation?

43 e-Dialog Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Offer optimisation
Summary
A simple, generic (branded-only) retargeting email achieved a 10 percent uplift in online conversions A bespoke retargeting email that offered a 5% discount via a time-limited promotional code of 72 hours, more than doubled this conversion rate A bespoke retargeting email with the same discount, but this time with a time-limited code of 48 hours quadrupled the original conversion rate

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing-ecrm-alerts/email-remarketing-an-example-of-how-to-test/

Creative optimisation

Test version A Send Volume: 10,000 Sample criteria: Random Click through rate: 6.1%

Test version B Send Volume: 10,000 Sample criteria: Random Click through rate: 4.5%

Main Broadcast Send Volume: 180,000 Click through rate: 5.8%

Source: Craig Sullivan @OptimiseorDie http://www.slideshare.net/sullivac/ http://www.smartinsights./analytics-conversion-optimisation-alerts/dell-international-web-analytics-case-study/

Timing optimisation
May sound simplistic, but finding the right day to send to our customers has significantly improved our revenue and engagement rates To find the right time, we undertook significant day of the week testing, with some interesting results

Subject line optimisation

Subject line testing has been one of our most powerful ways of increasing channel engagement Every eBay DM is tested against at least three different subject lines with test cells sent 4-8 hours before main cells are sent Subject line optimisation can increase response rates by up to 20-40%

Lets Connect!
Questions & discussion welcome

Blog
uk.linkedin.com/in/davechaffey www.smartinsights.com/blog

Feeds
www.facebook.com/davechaffey www.feedburner.com/smartinsights

Email Newsletter
www.twitter.com/DaveChaffey

www.smartinsights.com