MindComet

Make the Most of Internal Communication

When you make the decision to start an internal email communication campaign for your company there are some email guidelines to think about before you click the send button.

• Subject Lines - The subject line should pertain to the email and be compelling enough to encourage the reader to open it. The subject line should not be too long, in all caps, or contain any exclamation marks or $ signs.

• From Lines – From lines should clearly identify where the email is coming from. It can be from a group ie: XYZ News - or an individual ie: John Smith - . Remember that all undeliverable messages due to full mailboxes and out of office replies will go to the email address provided.

• Creative – The layout of your message should flow easily. Images should be clickable. Consider a brief synopsis of each article or story with a “read more” link that would direct readers to landing pages. This allows tracking by page clicks the articles that are most important to your employees.

• Opt-Out Method – While a business to business or business to consumer communication requires an email address or another Internet-based response mechanism, such as an opt-out link, to clearly be provided in order to allow a recipient to request that you do not send any future email messages to that address. This is not required in an internal communication. Consider instead a confirmation to your employees how important they are such as: At XYZ Company, we want every team member to receive the latest information about our company. Therefore, we do not provide an option to unsubscribe.

• Sending Frequency – You should be consistent in the frequency in which you send your emails. You should determine a schedule and stick to it, whether it is once a day, once a week, or once a month. The more consistent you are in your mailings, the more familiar your team will become with receiving them.

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Posted by MindComet on Jul. 18, 2006

Message with Meaning

One of the goals of your email marketing campaign should be to engage your subscriber and make them feel like the message was written just for them. By integrating web analytics into your messages, you have the ability to message with meaning.

According to JupiterResearch 41 percent of email marketers are making plans to use clickstream behavior data as an email targeting tactic. In the past the lack of resources and some difficulty integrating web analytics with email have been cited as the most common reasons why email marketers have not used clickstream data to target their campaigns.

There is the potential for considerable benefits of using clickstream behavior as a part of your overall email marketing strategy. A May 2005 study conducted by JupiterResearch showed that targeted emails that use clickstream data on average generate nine times the improvement in revenue and 32 times more in net profit over untargeted email blast campaigns.

As you start planning the web analytics integration, begin looking at customer behavior - as you understand their needs you will be able to market more effectively to them. Consider the following:

1. Who has abandoned you?

When one of your subscribers visits your site and fails to complete a process, weather it is abandoning a shopping cart, failure to complete registration or any other process that is left incomplete, you have an opportunity to reach out and re-engage your customer. Send a reminder encouraging them to return and complete the process.

2. Where have they been?

When you know someone is searching specifically for a product on your site, you are that much closer to a sale if you reach out to your subscriber with an e-mail message that includes additional product information, or discounts to related products or categories browsed.

3. When are they visiting?

When customers stop checking your site on a regular basis or, at the other end of the spectrum, do so more often, it may be time to change your messaging strategy. Consider the offering of rewards to devoted clients who visit often, and persuade those who haven’t stopped by in a while to come back for a visit.

4. Where have they been?

Depending on the implementation of your Web analytics, you may be able to tell what site an e-mail customer visited just before coming to yours. Were they looking at your competition? If so, be ready to respond with your most salient sales message. Customers who come to you from a partner’s site can be sent messages that support the value they receive from the affiliation.

5. Why do they do what they do?

By pushing the e-mail demographics such as age, gender, occupation, income and geographic data you already have into your Web analytics program, you can learn what product categories and what pages are currently appealing to your demographic segments rather than relying on past response and well-informed deductive reasoning.

In order for these tactics to work,  your e-mail and Web analytics programs must be able to seamlessly pass data between applications. At one time, companies were forced to coax together the relationship. Now, more e-mail service providers and Web analytics vendors are teaming up to make integrations an easier process so marketers can focus on campaign design and strategy. Because of this, the ability to develop highly-relevant e-mail messages integrating web site data has never been easier.

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Posted by MindComet on Jul. 10, 2006

Oops! I Did it Again

Email marketing poses a certain challenge.  In general, once a message has been sent to your list, it is delivered with little recourse to retrieve messages.  I am a firm believer in testing email messages through a rigorous QA process and splitting my lists diligently and carefully for A/B testing. 

Over the course of a ten hour period last Friday I was part of subject line testing from a company that I had previously double-opted in to receive marketing messages from.  However, instead of receiving one message, I received the exact same message five times with two subject lines.  What did this cost the company?  How many other subscribers received the message five times?  I would venture to guess it was the entire list.  How many subscribers were annoyed enough to opt-out?

While in this case, an apology email, a sixth message, was not necessary - five messages are enough - If an error is made, what can you do to soften the blow?

• Meet with your project team without delay to prepare a course of action if necessary.  But keep in mind that every error, depending on the severity, may not require a response.

• Discuss what types of mistakes require an apology or correction email.  There is no need to bury your subscribers in a tangle of unnecessary apology messages.

• Adhere to your strict QA process.  When teams start sacrificing process for a speedy turn around time, there is a greater opportunity for corners to be cut and errors to be made.

• Develop a procedure for apology messages.  Use the messages for loyalty and marketing purposes.  Use these messages as a reason to show your subscribers how much they mean to your organization.  Don’t waste the opportunity on an apology that has not been well planned.  You run the risk of irritating your subscribers further.

Those five messages I received last Friday were a good reminder that it is important to handle email marketing tests and sends with caution and care.  Be sure your list is split properly and in a way you understand before A/B testing.  And if you do make a mistake that warrants an apology, have a plan in place to help mitigate the damage.

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Posted by MindComet on Jul. 03, 2006

Writing for Maximum Impact

As you jump into writing the copy for your email marketing campaign, there are a few things you should think about before you get started:

• Understand your audience and your target reader.  This may require studying demographic information so you can address your subscribers properly

• Know what the objective is.  Be clear about the key objective – getting a response and make this prominent, weather it is to click, subscribe, buy, join or subscribe.

• Sentence fragments, one or two word sentences are OK.

• Beware of stops signs in your copy.  Stay away from heavy industry jargon or word readers won’t understand.  Keep it simple.

•  Avoid using clichés and familiar phrases.  This undermines your company’s brand.  Find a unique voice for your company

• If it is necessary to have a message heavy with text, keep the amount of copy in your message light offering a few sentences in the body of the message with a link to the remainder of the text.

• Because very few people read through an entire email marketing message, place the offer or call to action at the top or beginning of your message.  Add a deadline to encourage immediate action. 

• A reader is interested in what’s in it for them.  It makes no difference if you want them to click, buy or just try your product.  If you can’t spell it out and keep it compelling, they probably won’t.

By following these guidelines your copy will help make an impact toward the successfulness of your email marketing campaign.

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Posted by MindComet on Jun. 26, 2006

Spreading the Word

Adding a viral or refer-a-friend component to your email marketing campaign which encourage recipients of your message to pass the message along to their friends have gotten both positive and negative reviews from consumers, industry experts and privacy advocates. By cautiously using a viral approach to your message, you can avoid pessimistic reactions and gain an excellent return on investment as your subscribers help you reach a targeted group far past the original audience.

Below are five things to consider before you ask your subscribers to pass your message along.

1.) Offer Motivation

Viral marketing works best when a tangible value-added offer is included. You will want to consider capping the incentive with a specific quantity to avoid spam like spreading of your message. An example is to offer a 15 percent discount on the referrer’s next purchase if they forward the message to five friends. Incentives without a cap, such as five dollars off for every five friends referred are sure to cause customer service and privacy-related nightmares for your company.

2.) A Referral is Not an Opt-In

When your subscribers refer their friends, the referral should not be considered opted-in. Be sure to include an easy to find way for referrals to opt-in if they would like to receive future mailings.

3.) Personalize the Referral Email

Response rate increase radically when users can see that the message is coming from a friend. Consider personalizing the subject line to show that it is coming from a recognizable source. Your subject line may read: “Jane Smith Thought You Would Be Interested in 15% Off at ZZZ.com” by doing this, you have identified that it message has been sent by a friend and there is a special offer.

4.) Track Results

Tracking your results such as separate click-through and conversion rates by referrals and original customers will help you evaluate their individual campaign performance. The metrics you track will ultimately allow you to see which offers and which customers drive the best ROI.

5.) Promote Friendly Referrals

To ensure your message will be forwarded, place an offer for viral marketing offer in every pertinent email marketing message. Viral marketing makes a great one-time campaign, however it can also be an effective tool for expanding the touch of your messages over time.

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Posted by MindComet on Jun. 19, 2006

I’ll Trade You…

Would you be willing to give more than your name and email address if you could get more personalized information in an email?  A study performed in October of 2005 showed that 11 percent of respondents were “definitely more willing” and 57 percent were “somewhat more willing”. 

This touches on one of the strong points of not only the internet, but email as well – the ability to fit the needs of substantial groups of individuals in exclusive ways.

The remaining 32 percent of the survey respondents fell between neutral and not willing to provide personalized information.  The reason more people don’t respond positively to providing more information is because many marketers have been unable to fulfill on the capability of the medium they’re using.

With the right information, you have the ability to implement an email marketing program with dynamic content – providing relevant information to all of your subscribers based on their individual preferences.  This will not only keep them engaged, but it will keep them coming back for more.

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Posted by MindComet on Jun. 13, 2006

Start Dedicating Yourself

A recent deliverability test showed a campaign mailed to nearly 75,000 subscribers had all messages sent all MSN, Hotmail and Yahoo addresses delivered directly into the junk folder.  With 28 percent of the subscribers using these ISPs open rates were not as high as they could have been or were expected to be.

How can deliverability to the inbox be improved?

A dedicated IP is a step in the right direction.

A dedicated IP provides the ISPs the ability to accurately measure a sender’s reputation.  Think of it like your credit score.  It is unique to you.  A bad credit score = no loan approval. 

The key is to analyze where your current deliverability issues are now, prior to setting up your dedicated IP.  With the new IP in place ensure that reputation is a key focus so your best reputation will be credited toward the new IP address.  You will be on your way to becoming whitelisted with Yahoo. And due to a great reputation and a dedicated IP, Yahoo should not de-prioritize the whitelisting process because of spam complaints. 

While MSN and Hotmail do not have a whitelisting process, they do monitor reputation, and focus on the strength of your sign up process.  Having a Double Opt-In in place is the best practice so spam traps do not become an issue and you can be assured you will be well on the way to the inbox.

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Posted by MindComet on Jun. 06, 2006