eBusiness Programme

Copyright Bluebird Sales and Marketing Ltd 2009 ©

eBusiness Programme

Top 20 Email Marketing Tips“in one hour we’ll equip you with tools, hints and tips to develop and deliver an effective email marketing campaign”

Will InglebyBluebirdCRM.co.uk


Top 20 Email Marketing Tips

1. Develop a digital strategy

2. Get permission

3. Understand the law

4. Deliver value

5. Make quality a priority

6. Manage frequency

7. Consider timing

8. Cleanse your data

9. The ‘From’ line

10. Craft a good subject line

11. Design for the inbox

12. Personalise your message

13. Use a strong Call To Action (CTA)

14. Use html but keep it simple

15. Consider ‘text’ alternatives

16. Don’t assume delivery

17. Use the proper tools

18. Create good landing pages

19. ‘Web 2.0’ email marketing

20. Viral email marketing



• If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there!

• Define how email marketing will contribute towards your business development strategy

• Be realistic (it takes time to build a trust relationship with your ‘targets’)

• Make some time to analyse what you did, and use that knowledge to improve what you do next (email marketing is the ‘long game’)



£-

£1.00

£2.00

£3.00

£4.00

£5.00

£6.00

Search Email YellowPages

BannerAds

DirectMail

Search

Email

Yellow Pages

Banner Ads

Direct Mail

* U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, New Methods in Search Marketing: Contextual Advertising and Other Evolutions (Safa Rashtchy),

Cost per lead across various direct marketing methods

Source: Piper Jaffray & Co.


2. Get permission

Expressed Consent v Implied Consent:

• Expressed Consent typically means:

• Better response rates

• Increased trust and brand affinity

• Better deliverability

• Click-Through Rates (CTR)…

• Expressed = 10-20%

• Implied = 1-5%


2. Get permission

Attitude towards the email when opened…

Expressed Implied

Curious to read it 48% 16%

Eager to read it 13% 4%

Indifferent to it 30% 3%

Somewhat annoyed 7% 76%

Delete it without reading it 2% 1%


2. Get permission


3.Understand the law

1. You cannot transmit unsolicited marketing email to an individual subscriber unless they have previously notified you that they consent, for the time being, to receiving such communications.

(Exception to rule - ‘soft opt in‘ (Regulation 22(2) refers).

2. You cannot transmit marketing email (solicited or unsolicited) to any subscriber where:

• the identity of the sender has been disguised or concealed• a valid address to which the recipient can send an opt-out request has not been provided.

*Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003


Soft opt-in (Regulation 22(3))?

You may send marketing emails to an individual subscriber where:

A. You obtained contact details of recipient in the course of a sale or negotiations for sale of a product or service ;

B. Content relates to similar products/services; recipient has been given a simple means of refusing the use of their contact details at time initially collected and, where they did not refuse, at time of each subsequent communication.

*Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003

3.Understand the law

4. Deliver value


5. Make Quality A Priority

• Double Opt-in: Where user subscribes for newsletter or other email messages by explicit request and confirms the email address to be his own.


6. Manage Frequency

Q. How often should you broadcast marketing emails?

A. When you have something new and/or interesting/valuable to communicate

Email your customers often enough that you don't lose contact with them…but be careful not to alienate them by contacting them too much.


7. Timing: When To Broadcast

Source: Constant Contact

Day Time Open Rate

Tuesday / Wednesday

11:30am - 11:30pm

50-62%

Thursday 3:30pm 34-44%

Friday 9:30am 18%


8. Cleanse Your Data

• Address churn means that old data is likely to contain a higher percentage of bad emails than you think!

• If you use old and unchecked data you may be wasting your time and your money…


9. Don’t Underestimate the ‘From’ Line

• Commercial recipients open emails from a sending company they have subscribed to or from a sender whose name they recognise*

• Choose a ‘From’ line that recipients are most likely to identify with

• Many email marketers use ‘real names’ in the ‘From’ line to suggest a personal connection

• Consider company names or subject names if these will assist the recipient in identification of:

• A. You as the sender

• B. Your message *Forrester


9. ‘From’ line examples…

From: “Will Ingleby”

Where I’m targeting people who know me, anticipate and look forward to receiving MY communications

From: “BluebirdCRM”

Where I’m targeting people who are likely to be familiar with my corporate brand or have subscribed to a company newsletter

From: “Sage ACT! Specialists”

Where I’m targeting people who may not be as aware of my brand (‘implied’ opt-ins)


10. Craft a Good Subject Line

• Get the key message at the beginning of the line

• Try to keep your subject line within 30-35 characters

• Consider using this structured construct:

• 1. Description

• 2. Differentiator / Value Add

• 3. Call To Action


10. Subject Line Example

• Good…

• “ACT! Software Training Near You Book Now”

• Not So Good…

• “Offer ends 30/09/09: Guaranteed visitors to your site”

• “Optimise your daily budget to get more clicks”


11. Design Emails For The Inbox

• Get your key message ‘above the fold’ (and preferably in the top left corner!)

• Use text and html colours rather than images

• Setup a test group using various email clients and internet email accounts





Default Image Blocking Settings in Mail Clients

Source: www.campaignmonitor.com


http://www.campaignmonitor.com/


12. Personalize For Greater Relevance

• Dear Sir/Madam,

• We would like to invite your company to join our network of approved internet suppliers of IT products and services to the catering industry…

• Dear Will,

• As a leading supplier of CRM software from your online shop at www.BluebirdCRM.co.uk , we thought you might like to join our network of approved suppliers to the catering industry...


Email Marketing Process

Email

sent

Delivered to inbo

x

Not immediately deleted

Opened

Read

Actioned

Website

visit

Click through to

shop

Purchase made


12. Personalize For Greater Relevance


13. Use a Strong Call To Action (CTA)


14. Use ‘HTML’ But Keep It Simple

For (html)

• Create visually appealing emails that stand out in the ‘inbox’. You can differentiate yourself and deliver a more inspirational message that could induce the reader to respond to your ‘call to action’.

Against (html)

• There is no guarantee that your email will be ‘rendered’ the way you intended as html is interpreted in different ways by different ‘email clients’. Some spam filters may ‘score against’ html emails.






15. Consider ‘text’ alternatives

html emails will not be correctly ‘rendered’ where:

• The email is opened in a mail client that only supports text based email

• The recipient has configured their mail client to render all inbound emails as text

• The recipients employer/organisation has configured its mail server to only pass mail through as text

• The recipient is reading email on a device that does not support html (some blackberry, PDA, mobile phone devices etc…)


15. html rendered as html


15. html rendered as text


15. Text Email


• Currently, 80%+ of email traffic is spam

• ISPs and Internet Email Providers (IEPs) such as Yahoo and Hotmail need to maintain 4X in extra hardware and processing capacity to handle this volume

• Not all words that trigger Spam filters are obvious

• seemingly innocuous words such as ‘tips’, ‘enter’, ‘sample’, ‘private’, ‘reserved’, ‘products’ and ‘introductory’ could be viewed by filters as “spammy”

16. Don’t Assume Emails Will Be Delivered



Bayes Theory

“The probability that an email is spam, given that it has certain words in it, is equal to the probability of finding those certain words in spam email, times the probability that any email is spam, divided by the probability of finding those words in any email”




MailingCheck from sendblaster.com



• Standard Email Programs (e.g. Outlook, Hotmail) are not designed for group email messaging…

• Limited number of emails can be sent at one time

• Message can be filtered, blocked or undelivered without notice

• No tracking and reporting of email results

• If messages perceived as spam, entire corporate email server can be blocked by ISPs

• Legal compliance is manual

17. Use the Proper Tools


17. Use the Proper Tools• Many ‘ESP’s (Email Service Providers) offer tools to assist mass

mail delivery from about £10 per month (there are even some free ones). Common features include:

• Full open and click-through tracking.

• Opt-out suppression

• Drip-marketing

• Pre-constructed html templates

• Text alternatives

• Spam filter checkers

• Integration with analytics

• Double opt-in …. and much more


18. Create Good Landing Pages

Unless your ‘landing page’ is structured to convert your visitors into customers, or to gain some kind of commitment from them, your investment in email marketing could be wasted!


19. Recognise the benefits of web 2.0

• Web 1.0 - pure information gathering (email = simple message delivery)

• Web 2.0 - combines information gathering with collaboration (email = personalised messages with content appropriate to expressed preferences)

• Web 3.0 - The ‘net won’t just be a place for interacting with others; The web itself will interact with you, learning what you want, who you are, and what you might do in the future


20. Don’t Ignore Viral Email Marketing

"viral marketing's rubbish, tell yer mates“

Some advantages of effective Viral email marketing are:

• High response rates

• Spam mails can be avoided

• Reliable word of mouth recommendations

• Achieving high target in less time

• High pass along rate

• Gradual link building


The Law And Best Practices

• Data Protection Act 1998

• Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003

• Direct Marketing Association Best Practice Guidelines for Email Marketing


Data Protection Act - Registration

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/notifications_handbook_html/introduction.html


Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003

Information Commissioner’s Office

• The Information Commissioner's Office is the UK's independent authority set up to promote access to official information and to protect personal information

• ICO will have more extensive fining powers.

• www.ico.gov.uk

http://www.ico.gov.uk/


DMA Guidelines On Email Marketing Campaigns

• ‘the right message. . . ’

• - is it the right product? • - is it the right incentive? • - is the tone appropriate? • - is it the right call to action? • - is the email format appropriate?

• ‘. . .the right person . . .’

• - is it going to the right segment? • - how can you personalise the message?

• ‘ . . . at the right time’

• customer buying cycle?, • time of year, month, week? • event associated?


www.EmarketingTips.co.uk

You can download:

• This presentation

• Email marketing services – free tool downloads

• ICO Guidelines on Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive

• Data Protection Act 1998 (Office of Public Sector Information)

• Data Protection Notification Handbook

• DMA Email Marketing Council Best Practice Guidelines

http://www.emarketingtips.co.uk/


Next Steps

• Complete Evaluation Form

• Further Support

• Action Planning Workshops

• Business Support Advisers

• www.businesslink.gov.uk/eastmidlands

• Tel: 0845 058 6644

• Email: [email protected]

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/eastmidlands

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