You have a list of email subscribers, but are you ready to send?

Creating a positive subscriber experience before your first email campaign

by Mallory Hull, Agency Relations | January 17th, 2012 | No Comments »

Sometimes you procure an item that you just know will serve a grand purpose later but, perhaps, the timing of its use isn’t quite clear yet. For me, it’s an electric sander for all of the furniture re-finishing I plan to do in the rooms of a house I don’t own yet (but that’s the subject for another post).

For some of the companies I talk to each day, that item is a precious, albeit outdated, list containing the email addresses of all of their closest friends, customers and prospects. You may know what I’m talking about: you’ve gathered a rather impressive email list over time, but now the dust is beginning to collect, and you realize that you’re running the risk of being forgotten by those signups.

You may want to clutch that list in desperation (it’s hard-earned!) and send out a blast (ick!) to all of those recipients. Instead, consider fine-tuning your list, and think about making the experience personal — you’ll begin the email relationship with your subscribers on the right foot.

1. Review your list. Your audience isn’t just a list of email addresses – it’s a collection of people who have shown interest in your product or service over time. But, do you remember what you signed up for a couple years ago? Your audience probably doesn’t either, so it’s worth your time to review your email list before sending your first mailing. Start by giving Emma’s Privacy and Permission Policy a once-over, and narrow your list down to folks who have done business with you or opted in during the last 18 months. Next, segment the remaining subscribers by their relationship to you (friend, client, etc) or by their signup date. Consider sending newer subscribers a welcome email, and reintroduce yourself to people who signed up more than a few months back. Remind them that they’ve signed up, explain that you’re going to start mailing to them and mention the opt-out link in case a few recipients’ interests have changed.
2. Set conservative sending goals. Consistent communication strengthens the relationship with your audience. But crafting great emails takes time and planning. Do you know what kind of information you plan on sharing, how it’ll benefit your audience and how often you’ll be able to share it? If you establish your content strategy before you start sending, you can spare yourself some major headaches down the road. Next, determine frequency. For many, a monthly newsletter is a sustainable pace to establish. But if you’ve identified a need for weekly or daily emails, you’ll want to set that expectation with your audience.
3. Design a preference center. If you’re developing different types of messages (a regular newsletter plus periodical promotional messages, for example), or different audiences to target (like male versus female shoppers), give your audience as much power of choice as you can. By designing a signup form with options that best reflect your audience segments, you’re also setting up a “preference center” for current audience members. This will allow your subscribers to opt down (receive emails less frequently) or opt over (move to a different mailing group) in lieu of unsubscribing altogether. You’ll be rewarded with much more responsive audience groups. For instructions on customizing your preference center, head on over to this nifty page in Emma’s Help Guide.

There you have it – your three-step plan for rolling out a top-notch email experience for the folks on your list. If you have any questions about getting started, let us know.

This is part two in our blog series on audience growth. Read part one here.

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Interested in learning more?

• One of our delivery experts dives into opt-in email marketing.
• Emma’s Director of Content talks about content strategy.
• Molly answers FAQs about email marketing.

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Lifecycle mailings help you reach your audience at the right time

Email examples for different stages of the subscriber relationship

by Cody De Vos, Agency Relations | December 20th, 2011 | 2 Comments »

If you plan on catching up on your Sophocles over the holidays and you’d like to avoid spoilers, you might want to skip these next few lines: they give away the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx. Ready? What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon and on three legs in the evening? The answer: a man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and uses a cane in old age.

Consider this: there’s a morning, noon and evening (of sorts) to your email subscriber’s relationship with you, too. And, just like our riddle’s subject, your subscribers will benefit from a little extra help in the different phases of it. That’s where lifecycle emails come in.

Lifecycle mailings are your opportunity to customize your readers’ experience from the very beginning — and to tailor consequent messages to the different stages of your relationship with them. For example, you might send a welcome email early on to offer new subscribers help getting started. Or, you might offer a unique deal or extra appreciation to active subscribers (those that regularly open, click or share your email). On the flip slide, you might want to give special attention to subscribers who have lapsed into inactivity. Lifecycle emails are a great way to show subscribers that you’re aware of the connections you’re building with them. Best of all, they really work. As MarketingSherpa reports, targeted mailings increase open rates by as much as 30% over non-targeted ones.

Emma’s trigger mailings and audience search capabilities make it easy to set up an automated lifecycle mailing program that meets your audience members wherever they are in their customer relationship. Looking for a little inspiration? Here are a few examples from companies that make lifecycle messaging a central part of their email strategy.

Welcome message series

Ebay welcomes new members in a series of emails.

You’ve got to crawl before you can walk, right? Your new subscribers are a special group: they’ve just joined your audience, they’re eager to learn more and they won’t know what to expect from your mailings. They’re also among your most engaged readers. A 2010 report from Experian Marketing Services indicated that the average open rate for welcome messages is as much as four times higher than the normal mailing.

Your welcome message is your first opportunity to tell new subscribers what they should know about you. As Molly demonstrates in this blog post, crafting great welcome emails is something of an art form. And sometimes, one welcome message may not be enough. I received a welcome email from Ebay on the day I opened my account. Then, two days later, I received a follow-up message with additional tips on getting started. There’s a lot to learn about how to use Ebay — so much so that it can be a little daunting for the uninitiated, and I appreciated the extra messaging.

Think about creating a series of welcome emails. They’ll help your new subscribers learn to navigate your service and offerings over time.

Anniversary messages

Redbox sends a note on your customer anniversary.

They grow up so fast, don’t they? After the first few months, your new subscribers aren’t so new anymore. If your messages are relevant and you’re targeting the right people, your subscribers mature into readers who don’t need as much handholding in their messages. And after their peak activity as early subscribers, your regular readers’ activity tends to level out as they make their own decisions about which messages and offers hold the most appeal to them. But even though they’re standing on their own feet now, they’ll still appreciate a specialized message every so often. In this eye-catching anniversary message, Redbox rewards their subscribers with a free rental. For your audience, it may be a free cup of coffee or just a follow-up check-in, but recognizing milestones in the relationship is a great way to let your readers know that you value them.

Re-engagement campaigns

Chico's lets you know that you've been missed.

Even if you have the most engaged of email audiences, it’s normal to have a batch of inactive subscribers, too. In fact, you may see 20 to 30 percent of an email audience lost to bounced emails and unsubscribes over the course of a year. Since a 2007 Return Path study indicated that only 22% of business professionals actually unsubscribed from emails they no longer wished to receive, that means that, at any given moment, your audience is likely to contain recipients who have moved past their prime as responsive audience members.

What to do? A targeted mailing to the unresponsive section of your audience is a great way to reconnect with lapsed subscribers. A simple audience search in Emma can help you target everyone in your audience who hasn’t opened a mailing in a set period of time (a year is a safe place to start).

This re-engagement campaign from Chico is an example of solid messaging for inactive subscribers. It acknowledges that the reader hasn’t been active in a while without sounding creepy, and it gives a strong incentive to re-engage with the brand. If you’re planning a re-engagement campaign for your own audience, remember that tone is everything —  keep it sincere and conversational. “We haven’t heard from you in a while” is a much better way to connect with a lapsed subscriber than “It looks like you haven’t opened an email campaign in 12 months.” You want your audience to feel that you’re listening to them, not that you’re watching them like a hawk.

Re-engagement campaigns will win back some audience members who would otherwise have wandered off into the sunset, but it’s important to keep realistic expectations: if they haven’t responded up until this point, many of your audience members may have reached the end of their day. After giving these members a few opportunities to come back into the fold, it may be time to remove them from your list.

And, don’t despair — as one section of your audience is going gently into that good night, there’s a whole other section whose day is just beginning. Catch folks — and speak to them — where they’re at, and you’ll be on your way to a solid list of engaged subscribers.