Author Archive: Carolyn Kopprasch
Clicks are only half the battle
Tips to convert your email audience into purchasers, donators and loyal visitors
As much as we love helping you figure out your email response rates, we know that your email marketing doesn’t stop there. In fact, for most messages, email is just a starting point for a customer who will then go on to purchase, donate, share, comment or RSVP. The great news is that these folks are your most captive audience. So how can you encourage them to complete a task (or buy something) without being too pushy? From the email itself to the “thank you” page, your success depends largely on the experience you create for your customers. These steps will help you shape an experience that’ll allow you to reach your conversion goals.
Present your message effectively
You’ve spent considerable time crafting your email’s content and presenting your product or service. Pay mind to these aspects, too:
Reach your conversion goals one click at a time.
- Optimize the “path” to the sale. You need to move your audience forward in a logical way. Specifically, help meet their expectations by providing a next step that looks and feels sensical. A call to action of “Donate now” should lead to your donation page, not your homepage, for example. That one’s fairly obvious, but if you’re looking for even more tactics, take a look at KISSmetrics’ seven conversion tips. In one example, breaking from your color scheme actually helps the reader see your “next” button and move forward. Additionally, test the copy on your button to find what speaks to people. If you always say Buy now, try Add to cart, Make a purchase or Go shopping. In one KISSmetric case study, Dell made an extra $25 million in sales by changing a non-committal Learn more to the more decisive Help me choose.
- Remove the will. Including the word “will” in your marketing anchors your message in the future. As Smart Insights points out, this turns your sentence from a now statement into a future promise, and that’s too abstract for some consumers. Remove the “will,” and your audience is more apt to visualize themselves in your statement.
- Let your prices do the convincing. Do you know how powerful the price you set is? It not only affects the assumptions people make about your product’s value, but also how likely they are to buy from you again — or even recommend you to others. How your price is displayed, which items and prices appear next to it and even the digits in the price can make all the difference in your sale. Not, er, sold? Check out ConversionXL for fascinating pricing experiments to consider.
Make it easy on your customer
Your job is to simplify the process as much as possible. Any frustration or disappointment sends your visitor back to Google to find another company who can deliver with less hassle.
- Reduce friction. Make sure your text size, colors and content work with, not against, you. Keep the copy digestible — remember, visitors are likely skimming, not reading — and focus on your visitors’ needs, not your own. Want more tips? KISSmetrics has 10 of ‘em.
- Close the gaps. Do you know where in the process your customers abandon you? Use an analytics tool (we’re fans of Google Analytics) to identify and patch up those holes. Eliminate these five weaknesses, and your marketing funnel will be stronger for it.
- Serve up pages as quickly as possible. Your page load speed is paramount in retaining visitors. Impatient shoppers will go elsewhere if they’re waiting around too long. And even if you’d like to showcase snazzy photos of your products, too many graphics mean a trade-off in speed — so consider them carefully.
Boost engagement
When folks receive your email or visit your site, most aren’t giving you their full attention. They’re multi-tasking, looking at another site to compare products or even talking on the phone. With endless ways to get distracted, you’ve got to work to keep them engaged. Here’s how to get it right:
- Be choosy about your links. When a recipient clicks a link in your email, they’re essentially leaving your email’s message behind — and they may not return to read more. So make sure you’re delivering them elsewhere for good reason. Rather than directing to pages of your site, consider creating custom landing pages that speak uniquely to your email audience. Remember, they know more about you than someone who finds you through a search engine. That means you can deliver them to a deeper place in your sales funnel. For even more uses of landing pages, take a look at this article from ion interactive.
- Don’t waste your images. Keep the look and feel consistent by building your landing page and emails with complementary styles and images. And don’t go overboard; images soak up valuable space and attention. In an email, for example, an oversize image up top steals the prime real estate in the preview pane. Consider the meaning behind your images, too. As “conversion scientist” Brian Massey points out, if you choose generic stock images just because it breaks up the text, you are directing readers’ eyes to something that’s not helping you sell.
These reminders will get you well on your way to more conversions, but also keep in mind that a certain amount of your audience is still in the research phase — so consider it a success that they’re “just looking.” If you make the experience a good one for them, they’ll convert when they’re ready.
We’d love to hear how you take a fresh look at your emails, landing pages and conversion goals. Share your experience in the comments below.
+++++
New to Emma? Learn more about our features and service.
Email click-throughs aren’t as elusive as you may think
Small changes in your campaigns can increase your click-through rates
Getting clicks on your newsletter is one of the elusive goals that requires a combination of the right information at the right time to the right recipient. No sweat, right? Well, it makes sense that the percentage of people who click is usually in the single digits. According to the Email Stat Center, the average click-through rate is 5.9%. You aren’t going to be able to meet everyone’s need in the right stage of the purchase cycle. However, there are a few things that you can do to encourage those on the fence to go ahead and learn more.
Right off the bat, you need to know that you have very little time to engage the person who has just opened your email. Think about that person for a moment; she has just deleted 12 other emails, she’s drinking her morning coffee and she is checking her day’s schedule. Or maybe your recipient is wrapping up before lunch (because at least one time zone always seems to be at lunch). He is seeing your email amongst social media notifications, YouTube videos from his sister, and all he can think about is that club sandwich in his future.
All that is to say, after you spend the time perfecting the content of your email, consider that you only have two seconds to capture the attention of your subscribers. That means that you must share what you’re offering in a clear, swift and appealing manner.
Here’s a good test: Hand your email to a colleague who has not helped design or write it in any way, preferably one who’s unfamiliar with your campaign. To be generous, give him 5 or 6 seconds with it. At the end of that time, he should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are you offering me?
- How can I get it?
You don’t have to be offering a coupon for this test to be relevant. If you are offering your expertise on choosing a wine to pair with dinner, that’s valuable. It just has to be clear.
The “How do I get it?” question is where you really figure out if your message is effective and actionable. Here are some tips (and some of our favorite click-related articles) for optimizing your emails.
- Make it easy to find. Your “click area” should be immediately obvious. Is it a different color? Does it have a giant arrow pointing to it? Is the model in your image looking toward the button? (That has been shown to increase clicks.) It should be very obvious, and you should use visual design techniques to grab the attention of readers. Try different shapes, colors and sizes of your buttons. Experiment with different areas of the page, too. Put the button above most of your copy and see if more people convert.
- Make it easy to click. Again, an immediately apparent button is going to help. (For mobile readers, make sure that your button is at least 44 by 44 pixels and preferably a few lines away from another button to avoid mis-clicks.)
- Make it convincing. The text matters, and slight variations can really make a difference. “Learn More” and “Buy Now” may bring you to the same landing page, but they will appeal to people on different ends of the buying spectrum.
- Limit your subscribers’ choices. Giving too many places to click may overwhelm or confuse your readers. Remember, you only have 2 seconds!
- Use some psychology. Did you know that we lose far more joy by missing out on something than we gain by actually getting it? Consider this as you design your messages.
The small changes go a long way, so give one or two a try and report back — we’d love to know which strategies work best for you.
This is part four in our holiday series where we answer email marketing questions provided by our customers. To see part one, click here. Visit part two here and part three here.
+++++
Not yet an Emma customer? Join now — your first two months are free.
Emma Agencies weigh in on Facebook’s new metrics
With the recent changes to Facebook's Insights, our agency partners are learning more about their audience
In the past few years, Facebook has embraced marketers more than ever. And, recently, they rolled out several changes to the data available to page administrators. It provides an even deeper look into your audience. In fact, you may be able to extrapolate and learn a bit about your market in other channels, too.
We asked a few of our agency partners to weigh in on what these changes mean for marketers and their clients. Let’s take a look at the updates, and then we’ll see what our agencies have to say.
What’s new
As a page administrator, you have access to a tab called Insights. This has always been the destination to find, well, insights into the success of your page. Take a stroll over to that area now, and we’ll walk through the new data:
Facebook now shows Total Likes, Friends of Fans, People Talking About This and Weekly Total Reach
Total Likes: Likes are a familiar stat that’s been here before. Also referred to as fans, likes is the cumulative number of Facebook users who have ever clicked “Like” on your page.
Friends of Fans: This is a sum of your fans and all of their friends, a significant number because it represents the potential reach that your page could have if each fan talked about you.
People Talking About This: We consider this to be the page’s meat and potatoes (or its tofu and quinoa, if that’s your style). In the past, you’ve been able to watch your Likes and comments to get an anecdotal sense of how many folks were interacting with your page. Now, you can see the exact number of people talking about you, which Facebook explains as “the number of unique people who have created a story about your page in the last seven days.” More specifically, it includes folks who have liked your page or one of your posts, those who have checked into your Place and folks who have mentioned your page in a post or tagged it in a photo.
Notice that this metric is also a public number. Now, when someone visits your fan page, he will see both Total Likes and People Talking About This. This introduces a brand new success metric to report to your clients and to show potential fans.
Weekly Total Reach: With this update, you can find the number of Facebookers who have seen any content associated with your page. This includes fans who read posts by your brand and people who are not fans but saw someone on their newsfeed “talking” about you. It also includes people who saw your purchased ads. Naturally, as your talking metric rises and falls, your weekly total reach follows suit.
Post by Post: As you move beyond the large sweeping numbers, you can see more granular information too. Sorted by date, you’ll see how each individual post affected your audience.
- Reach tells you how many people were exposed to the post.
- Engaged Users counts everyone who clicked anywhere on your post, ranging from liking the post itself to clicking on a commenter’s profile.
- Talking About This tallies anyone who commented, liked or otherwise interacted with that post.
- Virality gives you the percentage of people who talked about your post compared to the number who saw it. This number allows you to compare your posts to each other to determine what type of content creates the most engagement.
Demographic Data: After you get a handle on the aggregate data, check out the Fans, Reach and Talking About This tabs. From there, you’ll see a breakdown of those people by gender, age range and location.
Facebook reports your fans by gender and age range, giving you more details about your audience
What these changes mean for marketers
Buzz data
As with any tool that marketers use these days, more data is better as long as it informs a greater strategy. While these changes may not upend your efforts, you’ll be able to track engagement and brand buzz at a much higher level.
People Talking About This provides both a new insight into the virality of your posts and a new metric by which others will judge your page. Craig Dunn, Vice President of Client Services at Music City Networks, one of Emma’s agency partners, weighs in on the sudden combination of Likes and this new metric:
People Talking About This may carry even more weight than Likes in some ways, but you have to look at them together. They point to success of different strategies and goals. Sometimes we’re trying to build an artist’s fans on Facebook, but sometimes we’d rather have people click to the website. People Talking About This will help us measure what’s generating real conversations and real sharing. Before, we could throw stuff out there and not really know what was compelling and what wasn’t. This metric extends Facebook’s numbers to be more like email, where you can actually see the direct results and drill down to what gets people excited.
Craig makes some great points. In fact, consider using the new data to inform your social media strategy in these ways ways:
- Better engage current fans by taking note of the types of posts that elicit the most response.
- Increase the reach of your page by encouraging discussion on topics that generate the most interest. (Compare your actual reach against your total potential, found in Friends of Fans. Then, use what you learned in the individual posts section and tailor your conversation starters to your audience.)
Giving your fans more of the content they love and react to is the obvious way to accomplish both. To get started, David Baser, a Product Manager at Facebook, recommends adding more photos and video in your posts, because those rich content categories are often more engaging. (Read the entire ClickZ interview with David Baser here.)
Polly Bibb, Social Media Strategist at JLB Works, one of Emma’s agencies, agrees that it’s vital to use the metrics to plan content:
You have to think about what’s going to stand out. You always want something catchy, but of course it depends on the company. This new tool is fabulous for knowing what works and what doesn’t. It definitely will encourage people to get more savvy with their status updates.
Demographic data
Beyond the buzz data, you’ll also be able to use the demographic details to watch as new segments of your audience pick up the conversation. Polly explains:
It’s going to help everyone in the online media world keep their game faces on because you’ll be able to see if you’re successfully targeting, or even if you’re bringing in a new audience you weren’t even aware of. It helps you assess and change your strategy a lot earlier than you otherwise could have.
Speaking of changing your strategy, keep the following in mind:
- Embrace new segments who are talking about your brand by including them in your messaging. They may become your best evangelists, and the Insights tab will help you pick up on that.
- Re-engage your core demographic if you are seeing a low response rate from them. Tune in to what makes them tick, or consider asking them what types of content they’d like to see. Brand updates, office pictures and videos, polls, events and questions offer a variety of ways to start a conversation with that group.
Onward
Ultimately, Facebook is still in the early years of its relationship with marketers, and we are going to see that relationship grow. Clients increasingly expect agencies to be experts on social media, and because these developments allow you to measure success a lot more easily, they will only enhance your expertise.
Julian Bibb, Principal and CEO of JLB Works notes:
Facebook is the rising tide that lifts all ships. It introduces the concept of social media and makes people more aware of all other social networks, like Twitter and YouTube. In years past, we were explaining to our clients what social was and why it was important. In 2011, they are coming to us with some of that knowledge. Facebook has become part of our clients’ public consciousness a lot more than it was in years past, and as time goes on, they will become increasingly aware.
We’ve heard from a few of our agency partners, and we want to hear from you! Let us know how Facebook’s changes are affecting your social media strategy, and how you’re using the new metrics to inform your clients. Comment here, or reach out to Emma’s Agency Relations team.
Want more details about Facebook’s changes? Download their Product Guide for Page Owners [PDF].
+++++
Learn more about becoming an Emma Agency.
Advanced email analytics with Litmus
Using Litmus and Emma to preview your email in various email clients and study engagement
Benjamin Franklin once said that the only certainties in life are death, taxes and the fact that various email programs display HTML differently. Well, he may not have been familiar with that last one. But as email marketers know, it’s a truth that adds a level of difficulty to designing for email.
Thankfully, we’ve got tools for that kind of thing. Litmus is a program that gives marketers a firsthand look at how newsletters render across the major email programs, and it also shows which ones your recipients are using. Last month, Emma took a Litmus for different kind of test drive. We’ve been using the system for quite a while now, but trying some of their more advanced features this time around gave us some fascinating insights.
Let me introduce two of the Litmus features that we found useful, as well as the results from our own newsletters.
Email previews
Because of the plethora of email clients out there, making campaigns look good everywhere is an uphill battle. Emma’s designers are stars at making your stationery display consistently, but once you add images and text to your campaign, you can bet that it won’t look exactly the same. And don’t even get me started on Outlook. (Here’s an example of Emma’s old newsletter in Outlook 2007.) To make matters more complicated, email clients span across three environments: desktop software (like Outlook and MacMail), web software (like Hotmail and Gmail) and mobile. For the purposes of this post, that’s all you need to know. But if you’re curious about rendering engines, which actually perform the task of displaying HTML, you can learn more here.
With a basic Litmus account, you send your email to a test Litmus address to see how your email looks on all major email clients in an instant. From there, you can browse through the clients, scroll on the mobile phones and even turn preview panes on and off to see all preference configurations. It really takes the guesswork out of it.
If you decide to go with a plus or premium account, you’ll actually see what emails clients are represented in your audience, and by what percentages. With this data, you can get a sense of just how mobile your subscribers are and how much your campaigns are affected by Outlook’s quirks.
Litmus allows you to preview campaigns in all major email clients.
Engagement
If you’re using Emma, you’re already getting a good idea of your reader engagement through the response section. Litmus gives you even deeper analytics, at their plus and premium levels. The report tells you exactly how many seconds your audience spends with your emails and categorizes the whole group into “read,” “skimmed” and “glanced or deleted.” It’s even organized by email client.
The results: Litmus in action
We used Litmus for two of Emma’s newsletters, our August Roundup (a newsletter sent to our entire community) and our Agency Insider (sent to our agency partners). (To subscribe to either or both of these, go right ahead here.)
Litmus’ email previews allowed us to test our campaigns before their send-offs. Then after sending, we dove into the engagement and email client details. We learned a few things along the way, including…
- The audiences for our community-wide newsletter and agency-specific newsletter are not that different. At over 80% for each test, desktop email clients are still king. Our general community has a higher percentage of Outlook users, while our agencies prefer Mac Mail; those were the #1 and #2 email clients for both.
- Our mobile readers, despite being a significant minority, were extremely engaged. Over half of mobile recipients fell into the “read” category, spending the most time with our emails. Maybe it simply takes longer to read and digest an email on mobile. Or, maybe folks who make time to check email on-the-go really want to receive the message.
- Our readers are environmentally friendly. Fewer than 10 readers chose to print out the newsletter.
Pretty interesting, right? You may find that you know your audience better than you expect — perhaps your assumptions are right on the money. Or, you may find that more readers than you realize are using mobile devices and that your mobile strategy needs a tune-up.
Even if the results don’t lead to major changes right away — we’re pretty pleased with how Emma’s data stacked up, for example — it’s useful to document the data as a benchmark. Gradual changes to your reports over time will indicate an evolving audience, and it’ll allow you to keep your content and formatting fresh. Got anything interesting to share about your own email testing? Please share any insights in the comments. We’d love to hear about it.
And for the record, we don’t have any special relationship with Litmus — we just think it’s a handy tool, so we wanted to share it with you.
Anna Yeaman’s 6 mobile design tips
How to create emails that retain their design and style on smartphones
It’s 3 a.m. Do you know who’s reading your email? A recent Return Path survey revealed 16% of email is viewed via mobile devices and 1 in 3 Americans own a smartphone. Chances are, at least one insomniac with a donut in hand will be reading your email. Design accordingly.
Since mobile is gaining so quickly, I asked Anna Yeaman, creative director at Style Campaign, to share her experience with designing emails for mobile devices. Read on for her six tips to optimize your email campaigns.
+++++
6 simple mobile email design tips by Anna Yeaman
1. Rework your creative for touch
Fingers are less accurate than a cursor, so you’ll need to increase the size of your links and spacing. In Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, they recommend a minimum target area of 44 x 44 points. Elements you’ll need to rework include CTA buttons and stacked links, e.g. table of contents and navigation.
Threadless CTA is large enough for your thumb to tap.
2. Push the contrast
Low contrast is not advisable on small screens, as elements become hard to read. Email on the Kindle is B&W Webkit, another reason to run a quick grayscale test.
Text becomes hard to read once scaled down.
3. Disable auto-scaling fonts
If your text is under 12px, the iPhone automatically scales it up, potentially breaking your layout. HTML navigation and pre-header text are particularly vulnerable.
To turn off auto-scaling add the following code:
style=”-webkit-text-size-adjust:none”
Better yet, make your fonts bigger. Windows Phone 7 recommends no smaller than 15 points; Apple recommends a 17 – 22 pixel font.
Here's a text-wrapping issue caused by font scaling.
4. Define the viewport
Safari on the iPhone uses a 980px wide viewport. This means any template hosted on the web that’s less than 980px wide will appear zoomed out. To correct this, you need to define the viewport for your mobile version and mobile landing pages.
Here’s the code:
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=width of your layout, initial-scale=1.0; minimum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes” />
This is a mobile version without the viewport defined.
5. Put some content on the first screen
You don’t want branding and navigation to take up the first screen, burying the content users want.
It requires a lot of scrolling to get to the first article in the Smashing Magazine newsletter. While I like that the table of contents has jump tags, the links aren’t designed for touch.
This requires lots of scrolling.
6. Narrow the width
When email is viewed on an Android, only a portion of the screen is visible by default (roughly 320px). Unlike the iPhone, the Android doesn’t scale content to fit the screen. To make navigation even more difficult, the min/max zooms are extremely limited.
If 320px (iPhone 3 screen width) is too skinny, try a layout between 480px-520px. The Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry all have popular devices that use a 480px resolution.
T.J. Maxx's email has a width of 520 px.
+++++
Anna Yeaman is the creative director and co-founder of email creative agency Style Campaign. Visit Style Campaign’s blog for more ideas and examples, and follow Anna on Twitter at @stylecampaign.
The marketer’s link digest
Recommended articles about time management, professional development and more
As an avid reader, I often stumble upon good articles on all kinds of subjects relevant to my work life, even if not directly related to email. Instead of focusing on email marketing this month, I’m sharing some non-industry link love. I hope the following articles will intrigue and enlighten you. And, well, maybe you’ve also always wondered about those ridges on quarters.
Getting more hours out of the day, doing your best work and finding inspiration: The Professional’s Section
- Getting constructive feedback: The 99% blog shares how to get honest and helpful feedback from employees, peers and your boss.
- Manage your energy, not your time: Harvard Business Review offers tips to feel stronger, live better and work smarter.
- 10 things I learned from failure: Inc. Magazine shares what’s gained from entrepreneurial growing pains.
Understanding your changing role, creating a villain to market against and using your time and technology wisely: The Marketer’s Section
- What is your brand against? Harvard Business Review reminds you that sometimes the story works better with a bad guy.
- A hammer is not a house: Jay Baer points out a critical difference between the metrics we need to measure and the tools we use to measure them.
- The new roles of a marketer: ClickZ walks through the many roles marketers fill these days, and how to succeed at each.
Creating the perfect playlist, discovering what’s beyond happiness and why there are ridges on a quarter: The Trivia Buff’s section
- What’s beyond happiness? The New York Times reviews life milestones and teaches how to achieve joy at every stage.
- Create the ultimate exercise playlist: No matter the exercise, research suggests that music helps. Use Lifehacker’s tools to find your sweet beat.
- Why are there ridges on a quarter? Mental Floss teaches us why our 25 cent piece has a rough edge, why the other coins do not and why the number of ridges varies.
Love these articles? Have others to share? Let us know in the comments below!
Unopened emails “nudge” subscribers to action
It may come as a surprise that unopened emails can still be effective
An email can affect a recipient’s actions, even if the email goes unopened.
At first glance, that seems unlikely. Isn’t an unopened email akin to putting music on but not putting the headphones in your ears? Pretty much no benefit, right?
According to Dela Quist, the perception that only the opened emails affect purchasing behavior may be selling your subject lines and greater marketing efforts a bit short.
The simple effect of seeing your brand in the inbox reminds your subscribers of your existence, as well as your new product line, sale, or whatever else you mention in your subject line. That can influence people to visit your store, recommend you to a friend or even make a purchase, without ever opening your email. (Read the full article here.)
You can loosely measure this by comparing the direct success of the campaign to its indirect success. If you know the exact number of people who clicked through to make a purchase from the email, and yet you had a jump in purchases above that number, the nudge effect may have something to do with it.
Here are some recent examples from my inbox. Each of these campaigns went unopened, and yet the underlying message reached me.
1. Sender: Redbox
Subject line: New to Rent This Tuesday
Why it works: Even though I have a busy week coming up and I know that I won’t be renting a movie, it reminds me that a fast and affordable movie night is within walking distance. I can picture where my local redbox is located, and I think back to the last movie I rented. (It was Iron Man 2. I admittedly don’t rent a lot of movies.)
2. Sender: Vera Bradley
Subject line: Shop Summer Sale and ship for free (ends today!)
Why it works: I recently moved and have put a strict no-buying policy in place until I find a spot in my apartment for everything I already own. However, it has me dreaming of a new summery bag, and I make a mental note to check their site once the dust settles.
3. Sender: Amerigo (a local Italian restaurant)
Subject line: Join us on Memorial Day for a special offer!
Why it works: I see this one after Memorial Day, so I don’t bother opening it. But, just hearing the name Amerigo has me thinking of their tiramisu, which is bound to get me in there soon.
4. Sender: The Limited
Subject line: Save $15 Off Every $50! 4 Days Only!
Why it works: Due to my aforementioned no-shopping policy, I don’t open this one either. Before I remove temptation from my inbox, I can’t help but notice the math on that deal. 30% off is a nice deal, and I appreciate that they reward their email subscribers with a discount. Positive brand experience!
5. Sender: Amazon.com
Subject line: Amazon.com: Kindle with Special Offers from $114
Why it works: I’m already thinking of buying an e-reader, but I haven’t committed to one yet. Though I’m not quite ready to buy, I process the decreasing price of Amazon’s version. Due to the simple exposure of it, they’re my most top-of-mind vendor right now.
Pretty impressive how much I’m affected by these subject lines alone, right? Still, remember that the subject line’s purpose is to get your subscribers to open, not to do the email’s whole job. But, if you’re sending close to the deadline, on an unusual day, or just want to reach those non-opens for a change, try designing a subject line that stands on its own to remind your recipients why they buy from you.
+++++
Want to read more strategy tips for reaching your audience? Consider segmenting based upon the customer lifestyle or split testing your emails.
Segmenting your audience list
How to differentiate your email audience based upon the customer life cycle
If you have more than one, you’re off to a good start, but don’t stop there. Dividing your audience into unique segments allows you to send targeted, relevant messages to those groups. You can find plenty of examples of segmentation helping conversion rates, but it’s also just logical — if you only send messages that are likely to interest each group of recipients, you’ll do better as a marketer.
How, though, do you define what is “likely to interest” any particular customer or group of customers? Dividing your audience among demographic lines is one way to do it, but a certain age, gender or location can still return quite an array of people — and some of those people aren’t going to connect with your messaging.
Where do your email recipients fit into the customer life cycle?
A brand new customer has different needs than a long-standing customer; a prospect who’s just collecting information has an entirely different set of needs. When you present subscribers with information that meets them where they are in the customer life cycle, it reduces the “noise” they have to wade through and makes it easier for them to purchase. That, in turn, improves your bottom line.
Econsultancy describes the five stages of the email life cycle and then dives into the specifics of each. Prospect, welcome, single buyer, multi-buyer and dormant are all categories that your recipients may fall into, and you may have others, depending upon your business. Are you initiating your new customers and reactivating your old ones, without confusing overlap?
Use our search and segment feature to target your list.
Keep in mind that your list can turn over as much as one-third every year, so growing your list and activating the new members should be a priority. That means welcoming these folks more intentionally than just adding them to your usual stream of sends.
Take a look at the five major email life cycle stages, and think through how you can use email to reach them. Triggers are a good way to welcome new subscribers, and our search and segment feature can help you find those dormant readers. (If you’re an Emma agency, share this trigger documentation and this search and segment documentation with your clients.*)
For a bit more reading on this topic, tactics for effective B2B email segmentation can provide additional details on how to properly classify your readers. Tell us how it goes, and let us know if we can help along the way.
* Are you an Emma agency? Share the links from our Agency Help Guide with your clients to support their email marketing efforts. This Help Guide is geared toward accounts within the agency structure, which have their own unique settings and offerings.
+++++
Not a customer yet? Interested in seeing more about the features Emma offers? Take a look at Emma at a Glance — it’s a meeting-ready PDF that highlights Emma’s email marketing features and pricing.
How’s your content balance?
Building a content plan around your areas of expertise
Marketers are familiar with the credo, “Content is king,” a concept that’s as wildly popular today as it was when Bill Gates started a craze with his column in 1996. With so many sources of content, it’s a challenge to get your customers to pay attention to (and share) your content unless you’re saying something pretty interesting — or, of course, unless you’re sending a laughing baby video. While we can all appreciate the value of a good YouTube video, it can be hard to fully grasp how this trend applies to the average email marketer. Not every piece of content will go viral, nor should it. How will you create content that nonetheless stands out?
While special offers and coupons are an effective way to reward subscribers and increase revenue, and while a funny video can occasionally do the trick, recipients really want to hear the knowledge and expertise that you have. This is a form of content marketing that positions you to engage your fans and strengthen your brand. What sort of specialized knowledge can you provide? If you can answer this question — and build a strategy around your content — you’ll expand your brand’s reach without ever having to discount services.
This article does a great job of demonstrating this trend, even breaking it down by answers for B2B and B2C marketers. It includes a visual representation of ongoing research by the “RF Intent Index,” which studies the reasons that people go online. Some examples are to shop, to do business, for personal expression and to learn. The results may surprise you.
Hey, who doesn’t love a good infographic?
As the article explains, selling, informing and entertaining make for successful messaging balance. We’re all pretty familiar with sales goals, right? And entertaining finds its way into a content strategy pretty easily with the right dedication to a bit of humor. But, based on this research, the opportunity to learn is the clear winner that drives people to go online.
This concept is easy to understand but harder to implement in email. Still, it doesn’t take anything revolutionary or out-of-the-box. Sharing your expertise in an accessible, human way is often all it takes.
Let me take a moment to share a few examples from my inbox. My insurance agency emails me tips on driving safely on ice and keeping my home safe from burst pipes, which is simple knowledge to them, but not necessarily to me. Since it’s helping to keep me (and my home) safe, I’m always interested.
I also welcome advice from furniture stores and home-related blogs that teach me how to maximize a small space. I enjoy getting cooking secrets from well-known chefs, and a recent footwear brand’s email included links to videos of “barefoot running,” a new hobby of mine. Clearly, each brand is hoping that I will continue buying, and they’re making sure that their sell/inform/entertain messaging is balanced to keep me interested throughout the entire customer life cycle.
Think about the best ways to share your expertise with your fans, or if you’re an Emma Agency, how you can encourage your clients to effectively share their own. If you have questions along the way, let us know.
The art of the short (holiday) email
Try short emails that your audience can read on a smart phone.
As a savvy marketer, you know how important it is to send targeted, relevant emails, especially as the holidays approach. You know that a well-timed email alert to that new product line or sale can really drive your numbers. (It’s not called “Black Friday” for nothing.) And no matter what your business or organization specializes in, you know how important it is to stay in front of your audience toward the end of the year.
Luckily, you also see the other side of the story because you’re a consumer, too. Even as the daylight hours grow shorter and your to-do list grows longer, you’re still likely interested in hearing from your favorite brands. (And you might even be planning to pay attention to the sale emails to assist you with the holiday mall stampede crawl.)
Still, the fact remains: Toward the end of the year, you’re a little too busy to give the same amount of attention you normally would to each email in your inbox. Perhaps making a special, non-fat, gluten-free, vegan pumpkin pie for your picky sister-in-law is taking precedence over the shoe sale or non-profit request calling from your inbox. And your own email marketing audience is facing similar challenges.
So what to do? You embrace the art of the short, mobile-friendly email, that’s what. Create a campaign that’s easy to read on-the-go.
Here’s how.
- Keep your message simple. One large, obvious call-to-action will do better than multiple, smaller links.
- Keep your message short — ideally, with no scrolling. It’s a challenge, but it will be far more effective with busy recipients who only pay attention to your email for a few seconds before choosing how to proceed.
- Keep your message narrow. If you have some flexibility, try keeping your campaigns no wider than 600px.
If you want to get fancy, consider fitting your campaign within the general mobile phone screen ratios. For example, the iPhone has dimensions of 2:3 width to height, the early Droid is 3:4, and some blackberries are 1:1. What does that mean for you? Don’t make the height of the campaign much longer than the width (if at all), and make the font legible on a small screen.
One last trick is to give your subscribers a chance to tell you, “Thanks, but not right now.” Email has a distinct advantage over some other marketing channels because you can respond to exactly what your subscribers ask for. Add a button to the campaign that says “remind me in three days,” and use the list of clicks on that link to send a follow-up reminder.
Good luck reaching those busy consumers this holiday season (and even better luck finding that pumpkin pie recipe).
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
Copyright © 2003 - 2012 Emma. All rights reserved.