Web Data Drives Email Relevance

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

We've been working with a number of clients lately who are using custom message triggers generated from data pulled from their CRM or web analytics systems. By using a unique identifier in the database such as the login email or sometimes a cookie, we were able to build custom messages that were triggered by specific customer actions. In the end, the result has been a huge lift in response rates.

For instance, we used this data to trigger "abandoned shopping cart" messages to great effect. Due to the nature of these emails, they are usually sent to a small number of subscribers each month. However, the results have been amazing - usually in the 15%-40% lift range.

There are a couple of ways to execute an abandoned shopping cart strategy...

Categories: Response

What Business Professionals Really Want from Email

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

I was delighted to be asked to lead an email marketing session at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum earlier this month in Chicago (check out the sessions and some summaries here and on Paul Dunay's blog).

The theme of the conference was right on point for most of us -- "Driving Sales: What's New, What Works and What Sticks." When it comes to email, the only effective way to drive sales is to create great subscriber experiences. Look at your own inbox. When is the last time you got an email that was timely, easy to digest and relevant? (If you have, please let me know -- I love to celebrate marketers who are doing this well!) If you're like me, it's rare. To help give some perspective, here are some subscriber view stats we shared in our panel - some are surprising and most are helpful when thinking about ways to engage with subscribers. ...

Categories: Response

Is Opt-Out an Acceptable Permission Standard for Customers?

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

Here at the DMA on Saturday, a number of us email wonks (marketers and vendors) were talking shop and I got some push back on what I believe is the duplicity found in so many permission practices -- particularly among ecommerce sites.

Yes, I know that duplicity is strong word. But consider the most retailer email programs are opt-in -- until you buy. Then, the permission practice is either a pre-checked box on the check out form -- easy to miss and decidedly opt-out -- or worse, a buried notice in the fine print. Since these are buyers, they are by nature pretty active with the brand and products, so there isn't a huge penalty for this practice in ISP complaints or unsubscribes. In many cases, these buyers are sometimes the most active folks on the file.

So what is wrong with that? Nothing, if the marketer is clear about it. But quite a bit from a subscriber perspective!

Before I dive into the problems I see here (and an easy solution), let me be clear about how I define permission levels ...

Categories: Response

Great Place for Benchmarks: Conversation

(... and an upcoming DMA/EEC event to get some for yourself)

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

Ever need that one particular number to put in your forecast or executive briefing that proves you are not nuts and your email marketing is actually tracking pretty well? Yep - I can never find it when I need it, either. We all scour all available sources for benchmarks that are meaningful to our business, and yet these benchmarks seem to remain elusive. When we do find numbers, they never seem to accurately tell a story about how email is being used in the real world. I always feel that benchmarks are actually not that helpful - and they can actually be quite distracting. While sometimes they can serve as a guide (and a well timed source can sometimes get you through tomorrow's presentation!), unless you really understand the source of the data and the way it was collected, you will never be sure if it's actually relevant to your business.

Better, measure your success against your own progress ...

Categories: Response

Email List Size: Measuring Up Depends On Value, Not Volume

By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services

Does size really matter? It does, but not in the way you think.

When it comes to your email list, bigger is not necessarily better. You may have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on your file, but if a large portion aren't opening, reading and clicking on your emails, where's the value in that email address for your business?

"Finders-keepers" seems to be a common email marketing mantra for growing an email file. Once subscribers have opted in, the assumption is that they will want to receive email from you forever. As long as they don't opt out, you might as well keep sending, despite what the growing number of inert non-responders on your file may be telling you.

That's why it's refreshing to see what happens when marketing mavericks buck trends, challenge preconceived notions about file size as it relates to data quality and scrub the heck out of their lists. We were delighted to see Ken Magill's article for DIRECT about how CBSSports.com recently completed an across the board re-subscribe effort of their email lists. ...

Categories: Response

Email ROI is more than just a (bigger) numbers game

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

Email is the highest ROI channel by far, just ask any marketer managing a house file. Email marketing returns $57.25 for every dollar spent, more than 150 percent greater than the ROI for other types of online marketing (DMA, 2007).

Who's a bigger fan of email than me? Yet I risked getting kicked out of the email marketing club during a panel discussion at OMMA East with OgilvyOne's Jeanniey Mullen, eROI's Dylan Boyd and Lee Sherman of Avenue A/Razorfish when I suggested that the true ROI of email isn't captured solely in that big number. In fact, I believe it's misleading to think about email's contribution without factoring in the risks of batch and blast, complaints, irrelevancy and acquisition costs. ...

Categories: Response

3 Ideas to Boost Holiday Email Response

By Stephanie Colleton
Director, Strategic Services

For many retailers, the holiday shopping season is a make or break selling period. Our recent webinar, "Boost Holiday Email Response: Give Subscribers What They Want," presented many actionable ideas for using email to boost revenue during this season. Here are three of those ideas that will help you drive strong response rates this quarter.

1. Balance your promotions and offers with useful content by thinking of ways your products can help your subscribers throughout the holiday season. For example ...

Categories: Response

Elongated Sales Cycles Require Stronger Segmentation

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

The Internet has made sales cycles longer. "Selling now takes more time and resources then ever before. The sales cycle has become 22% longer as buyers are taking longer to consider their decisions. Plus, buying is being managed more professionally." (Source: Sirius Decisions)

Is this true for you? If you are a B2C marketer, check your ecommerce website path reports. If you are in B2B marketing, ask your sales team if they find it to be generally true. It's certainly true for my clients and at Return Path.

What a great opportunity for email marketing segmentation strategies! Just by segmenting your prospects from other subscribers, you can boost revenue, improve conversion from email marketing, strengthen buyer satisfaction and build your brand. Sound like a tall order for a segmentation strategy? Consider these ideas...

Categories: Response

Capture Mind and Market Share this Holiday Season: Send Emails that Break Through

By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services

As many email marketers know, the holiday season starts in August - and in the true holiday spirit, it can get pretty nasty out there with crowded inboxes, aggressive spam filtering, volume caps set by ISPs and subscribers looking for the best sale.

Those visions of sugar plums and high response rates that drive purchases and boost sales are not off base - our 3rd Annual Holiday Survey confirms what you already know: holiday email works. Roughly half of the respondents (49.1%) in our survey took advantage of several email offers during the holiday season.

Just how big of a challenge is it to break through the holiday clutter? ...

Categories: Response

Email Is the Center of Our Online Experiences

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

Some new data released by the Windows Live/Hotmail team in Redmond illustrates what we all know from our personal experience -- that our inbox is the center of the online universe. Well, maybe "center" is too egocentric even for someone who works in email marketing. But it's certainly a primary starting and ending point!

Data from Microsoft indicates that people make social plans, arrange travel and discuss purchases over email. A few examples ...

Categories: Response