Supercharge Email ROI - More Than Best Practices

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SUPERCHARGEEMAIL MARKETING

ROI:

MORE THAN BEST

PRACTICES

Kim Albee

President

Genoo / ContentZAP!

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About The PresenterPresident and founder of Genoo and our professional services “agency” called ContentZap.

We offer online marketing tools and marketing automation to small and midsize businesses. www.genoo.com

We work with businesses to supercharge their online marketing and build/augment their marketing teams. www.contentzap.com

•Kim Albee

@kimalbee

@GenooMarketing

/in/kimalbee

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Why Email?

• Has one of the highest ROI’s of any tactic, and it’s

not decreasing.

• DMA reported $40.56 return for every $1

invested.

• A current study of consumer habits found that

77% preferred email vs. 6% preferring social

media.

• Only organic SEO scored better as a lead

source over email marketing.

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Email Is Changing – Biggest Challenges

1. Sending relevant messages.

2. Identifying segments that will boost

engagement.

3. Not testing the best elements.

4. Looking beyond open rate as a measure of

email success.

And this points to…

… CONTENT!!!

97% of businesses do not have

a content development process

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It’s Simple. Email is getting personalized

(and automated)

Ready to get started?

Segmentation is a huge factor in

establishing relevance.

Having access to comprehensive

metrics makes a huge difference.

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Today’s Focus• How to Leverage a Single, Un-segmented List• Email Metrics – Going Beyond The Click• The Value of a Newsletter and a Blog Feed• Segmenting Basics

• The From, Subject and Message• The Call-To-Action

• A/B Testing• The Truth About Open Rates.

• Deliverability & How To Avoid Spam

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• “People want to do business with people.

We’re human, and we crave interaction

with people who know us.”

• -- David Meerman Scott

• “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”

Email done well builds relationship

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• Personalized, relevant emails, delivered at the right

time, can boost trust and build the relationship you

have with your leads and customers.

• Leveraging the content pathways that you have

assembled can help establish the content that will be

relevant.

• Migrating from batch-and-blast to segmented and

targeted sending can increase campaign

effectiveness.

Relevance is Essential for Engagement

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• Social Media is one-size-fits-all

• Social will not replace email – they each have

their different characteristics that should be

optimized.

• Email’s big differentiator is that it can be

personalized and targeted to a segment as small

as “one”.

Email Is The Most Personalize-able…

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• Design emails to aid segmenting.

• Why?

• 208% conversion improvement over batch-and-blast (Marketing Sherpa)

• $600 investment yielded 48% conversion, and 2500% Return on Investment (Case Study)

• The right tools can make this possible.

How To Leverage An Un-segmented List

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• Focus:

• Professional Development

• Course Promotion

CASE STUDY

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• Included Sewing class

• (personal enrichment)

CASE STUDY

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Mine Your Existing Metrics

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Going ‘beyond the click’ can be invaluable

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Going ‘beyond the click’ can be invaluable

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• 53 recipients clicked through

• 315 Total Site Visits (remember 41 social media shares)

• 42 minutes 29 seconds Total time on Site

Can you identify your most responsive?

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Design Your Emails Intending to Segment“When I design an email, I have links designed for each target based

On different interests and for different outcomes.”Director Continuing Ed Enrollment, Pierpont Community & Technical College

I can see what recipients were most

compelled by, and what links were clicked.

But then I can go deeper…

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Actionable Metrics Create Auto-Segments

I can click through the recipients and see

who was interested in each topic…

“Before Genoo, I could look at Google Analytics, but

that didn’t help me identify the people specifically.”

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Trigger Targeted Follow-Ups That Go

Deeper…

I can easily segment based upon a lead’s

active interest.

You don’t need to know the segments ahead of time.

You can learn as you go.

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A Centralized Lead Database – See Activity Over Time

Click-access to deeper metrics

“Beyond a specific email, we can find out more

specifics about WHO these people are.”

“And how they’ve participated

in our programs.”

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Drill into lead behaviors to get insights“And beyond just the email – when have they

come back to the site. I can see their visits…”

“And how much time they

spent during each visit.”

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Insights lead to discoveries that impact

your results

And how they navigated

during their visit – where did

they spend their time.

For each visit, I can see – in this case how this

person spent the hour and 34 minutes on our

site…

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And focus your efforts – clicks don’t tell the whole story

And ultimately ended up checking

out a supervision class, an

accounting class, etc.

This person came in through a link to a sewing

class…

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Case Study Takeaways:“With typical email marketing programs, all I would know is that they

clicked through sewing.

With this approach and metrics, I can discover the REAL interest based

upon where time is being spent beyond the initial click.

Being able to see that, helps us develop and target better content for

this individual.

But it also helped us see that personal enrichment classes can be an

‘entry point’ that gets people exploring what’s available.

We never realized that before – and would never have made that

connection.”

Director, Community Education Enrollment

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• Had the opportunity to

send to large list of 160k+

of mainly B2B marketers.

• We had a series of

webinars that we wanted

to use as a Lead Gen

opportunity.

• We designed a series of

“Invitation Emails” and

sent the first one to the

ENTIRE list (in sends of

approx. 40k each).

Case Study #2

Segmenting

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• Send

Results:

Case Study #2 - Segmenting

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• Send

Results:

Case Study #2 - Segmenting

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• We only did additional

sends to those who

opened the email.

Case Study #2 – Re-Send only to Opens

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• Email #2 Results:

Results from Follow-Up send

49% open rate!

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• Email #2 Results:

Results from Follow-Up send

49% open rate!

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• Use broad sends to segment.

• Follow up with those who exhibit some interest.

• Maximize your future engagements based on interest.

Case Study #2 Takeaways

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The Value of a Newsletter and a Blog Feed

• If you have a blog, then sending a newsletter can be made infinitely easier.

• You want to set up your newsletter to pull from your Blog feed.

• (optional) You can even have multiple newsletters and filter what you pull from the blog feed.

• Benefit: You focus on the blog posts.

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CASE STUDY

Blogs have RSS feeds.

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Embed The Feed In Your Newsletter

Blog Items from RSS feed

(not included in newsletter yet)

Personalized Introduction text

Sign-off and Signature

Schedule the Newsletter to go out on

A recurring schedule based on the frequency

You need (i.e. monthly, bi-weekly, etc.)

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Schedule Newsletter to Send On Recurring Schedule…

• For example, every month or every two weeks.

• It will ONLY include blog posts that haven’t yet

been sent in the newsletter.

• Apply filters if needed, to allow for topical

newsletters (pulled based upon blog category or

keyword/tag).

• Benefit: You Focus On Blog Posts!

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• Normal/Standard Segmentation.

• Based upon attributes of the lead (i.e. industry, job title, company size, geography, age, etc).

• First tier segmenting.

• Ties well to persona for high level segment and content pathway.

• Can you determine these dynamically? (i.e. saved search as recipient list) – smart rules to activate?

Segmenting Basics: Demographics

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• Cannot do this well with Email Service Providers.

• They are LIST based, not lead/activity based.

• Need comprehensive lead metrics (w/centralized lead database).

• Allows you to see what a lead (or leads) are interested in.

• What have they downloaded?

• Where have they spent time?

• Opportunity: Go deeper with content into areas they will truly value.

• Automation based on activity triggers can ensure the right message at the right time.

Segmenting Basics: Behavior/Activity

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Behavioral Segmenting Goes Beyond The Click…

and looks at a lead’s interest

I can see what recipients were most

compelled by, and what links were clicked.

But then I can go deeper…

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Tracking Lead Behaviors Across All Campaigns

Allows you to identify WHO might be Sales-Ready

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Comprehensive Tracking Allows for Targeting that Engages

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Your Ability to Target Expands Possibilities

Case

Study:

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And produce powerful results…Case Study: Lunch & Learn In-Person Event.

Pulled a targeted list from the people who had

exhibited an interest in specific types of

programs.

Was a nice lunch – learned about pending

legislation in this area. Soft sell, focused on

providing value.

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Leveraged Online Tools for Offline Event

• Sent Email Invitations to targeted list.

• Used Landing Page with Lead Capture Form for

Event Registration.

• Triggered into Follow-up email campaign to

remind people about the event.

• Printed List of “registered” easily for sign-up on

the day of the event.

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Results from Lunch & Learn Campaign

Total people at the event:

Number who registered into the class:

Total expense for the lunch & learn:

Cost of the class:

25

12

$600

$1250

48%!!!

2500% Return on Investment!

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• The ability to target effectively based on both demographic and behavioral data can provide far greater ROI and conversion than general marketing and content.

• Being able to mix online and offline can make excellent sense, and

• Email with other online tracking and capabilities makes more efficiencies possible.

Case Study: Takeaways

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Tips For Your Emails

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• No-reply@...

• info@...

• support@...

• Emails sent from these sorts of email addresses do not have recipients feel like they are getting an email from a person. They are getting an email from a Company – and those are by definition, Impersonal.

Send FROM A Real Person

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• Get Attention Up Front.

• Watch Your Length.

Subject Lines Get People To Read Further…

Desktop Inbox

Mobile Inbox

~35 Viewable characters

~75 Viewable characters

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• Be careful to take studies ‘at their word’.

• Google ‘optimal length of email subject lines’ to

get a variety of studies and results.

• The better you know your audience and

understand what engages them, the more

success you will have.

Subject Line Tips

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• As marketers, we fuss over the email itself –

spending hours constructing the “perfect” email.

• Then we spend about 5 minutes on the subject

line, and wonder why our open rate and

engagement was low.

Spend Time On The Subject Line

Book Recommendation:

Great Headlines Instantly

by Robert Boduch

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• “Dear Subscriber”

• “Valued Customer”

• The greeting doesn’t convey that the recipient is

special, but rather, lumped into a category. The

recipient knows that it was sent as a mass email:

Impersonal.

• Are you too formal for the world we live in today?

What’s Your Response To Your Greeting?

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Crafting The ‘Right’/’Best’ Message

• What is your objective?

• What do you want recipients to do?

• If they don’t do that, what else would you like

them to do?

Great Book by Victor Schwab

How to Write a Good Advertisement

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• I received this email

this morning – how it

looks on my iPhone:

If Using Responsive – Make sure it Works

Doing test sends and looking at on popular platforms is worth it.

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• Decide what you need to test…

• and what will be considered success.

• Test only ONE thing at a time.

• What to test?

• Call to action / offer

• Subject line

• Headline

• Layout of the message

• Personalization

• Body text

• Closing text

• images

A/B Testing

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• Generally, if possible, you want to test your entire list – that will give you an accurate picture of response and engagement.

• If you have a very large list – you may only want to test a sample. Test the largest sample you can afford.

• If trying something “on the edge” you might want to limit how many people see it, just in case it doesn’t work.

• If it’s a limited-time offer, and need to maximize conversions, run a small (a few hundred recipients) test, and then send out the winner to your entire list.

• The larger your test sample, the more accurate your results will be.

A/B Testing – Test entire list?

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• Can be really valuable – but will it alter what you would otherwise get if you

used BOTH A & B as sends to your audience?

• Our experience with SMB marketers is you struggle to put a SINGLE email

together.

• We’ve also seen that it’s inefficient (and ineffective) to send ONLY one email

to your audience on a specific subject.

• Oftentimes if you send multiple emails, the SECOND email will get better

results than the first one.

• That would be a better use of your time and maximize your results and effort.

A/B Testing – For Smaller Lists

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ExampleA B

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ExampleA B

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ExampleA B

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• Most unreliable metric.

• Be more interested in click-throughs

• And what happens beyond that.

• Be hungry for what’s working rather than a

simple Open metric that doesn’t help you learn

and improve.

A Word About Open Rates

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• With B2B markets, you deal with corporate spam filters, managed (and often times unnecessarily “locked down”) by corporate IT.

• With B2C markets, you deal with Cable providers, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft (MSN, Hotmail, and Outlook.com)

• Engagement matters (clicks, replies) if you want Inbox delivery.

Deliverability & Spam

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Ask Subscribers to White List Your Email

And have a page that gives them instructions

on how to do that.

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• Google “spam words to avoid” and get yourself

familiar with the language that will land your emails

in spam traps and hinder your deliverability.

• Adhere to good CAN-SPAM practices and make

unsubscribing from your list easy.

• Seek to understand your target audience (i.e.

personas) and develop good, relevant and

engaging content.

Avoid being seen as SPAM

Check out this Blog Post of SPAM Words:

http://bit.ly/spam-word-list

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• http://bit.ly/gscoop-1

Additional Tips

http://bit.ly/gscoop2

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• Evaluate your email sending capabilities and determine what you can and cannot do

• Not all Email Service Providers allow you to easily segment, or include an RSS feed in an email – or they do not have the metrics and capabilities you need – so understand that up front.

Take the First Steps…

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• Construct an email for your target

audience that will allow you to further

understand what they are interested in.

• Include at least three different links back

to your site/blog that allow you to derive

meaningful distinctions.

Create an Email To Your Target Audience

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1. Email is one of the most powerful tools you have in your online marketing arsenal.

2. It’s possible to start with an un-segmented list and start to build segments you can engage.

3. The metrics that are available can make a huge difference on your email effectiveness.

4. The ability to “go beyond the click” can help provide insights you would otherwise miss.

5. Open rate is the least reliable metric.

6. Use good sending practices and make opting-out easy.

Key Takeaways

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THANK YOU!

QUESTIONS?Follow Kim:

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/kimalbee

Twitter: @kimalbee

Follow Genoo & ContentZAP!:

Twitter: @GenooMarketing

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/genoo-llc