It’s that time of the quarter again for you to be involved in a really cool study to see how many of us in REALITY actually practice what we preach when it comes to testing our email campaigns. The “Email Testing Survey” should take 2-3 minutes and you’ll probably learn a bit in the process of answering some pretty insightful questions. Also, you have a good shot at winning a Flip Ultra Video Camera -take the survey here >>
Fill out survey, and you could win this
The results should be fascinating as everyone in the email marketing world always talks about testing, testing, testing, but not everyone has time, patience, $, or know-how on how to do testing right.
I’ve attended hundreds of marketing conferences over the years, and spoken at a few, but this one was pretty unique in that the speakers and content were the best of the best from all over the country on leading topics such as email marketing, search marketing, and social media. But more importantly, Online Marketing Summit delivered in making a lot of personal connections primarily through its founder, Aaron Kahlow, who ran an online marketing agency for years and understands the subject material inherently and the crazy breed of people known as online marketers. Here are my tweets from Aaron’s opening session at the Washington DC OMS on May 14:
Aaron doing a great job getting audience out of their shells at #oms
Tip to event organizers - learn from aaron - institute the “boo” rule. It liberates the crowd.
Aaron opening - marketing in a recession. Fear will cripple your decision-making
management is all about cya, no future vision to give marketing any resources at all.
Overall mktg budget wacked, but bigger piece of the pie going online #oms
100 percent of people prefer to communicate online
Pillar 1 is search. Pillar 2 is email marketing. Pillar 3 is analytics. Across all pillars is social media
@aaronkahlow - guessing on aaron’s handle - what % people here at #oms will tweet immediately vs email a couple days later from your biz card
Email is like yesterday’s fax. Even facebook uses email to pull you back into the online community
Need to customize web analytics reports to align with business goals #oms
I highly recommend you attend another OMS - there’s also a good chance you will see eROI folks like Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, or me speak at some of the upcoming cities - Chicago, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, San Fran, Portland, Seattle - there are others as well - check it out here >>. I will try to dig up where my presentation from this event is posted - stay tuned.
Many companies have treated email as the “red-headed stepchild” of the online world, but as money gets tight and targeting become more important, “rock star” becomes a more appropriate term for the direct marketing technique. Natalie Zmuda’s article, How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession, shows that not only are businesses talking about beefing up their email, they’re actually allocating a budget for it. Because of the relatively low cost of using this form of marketing during a recession, email has been looked upon with new eyes. While other forms of marketing have flourished in the past, the interactive nature and sustainability of email has proven most effective. One of the most important aspects of a strategic email campaign is that it is trackable. In Zmuda’s article, Zappos.com mentions that segmentation will be a big part of their strategy moving forward. By looking at the data from their previous “mass mailing” technique they can start to identify what to send and to whom to send it to. A case study recently done by eROI lays out the importance of this and using the full potential of the data that is driven from email campaigns. Below is an excerpt from the Advertising Age article.
E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that are cost-effective and results-oriented. That’s led to increasing investment in technologies that better target customers and serve up more enticing messages.
“The economy has energized this channel,” said Ryan Deutsch, VP-strategic services and market development at StrongMail. “It’s become the rock star of direct marketing in a lot of these retail organizations because it’s the most cost-effective and most trackable.”
Alcoa presents (sorry, that’s the beginning of a TV commercial of “The Catch” in the 1982 NFL NFC Championship flashback when Dwight Clark levitated to grab a perfect pass from Joe Montana to lift the 49ers over the Cowboys). But, I digress. My mind faded to the dramatic music to Monday Night Football, but it’s now back on the prize - bragging rights to the Third Annual PAF Battle of the Bands at Someday Lounge in Old Town / Chinatown, Portland, Oregon where the creatives show their true colors after dark. If you want to take a look at videos from prior year’s Battle of the Band, now is your time to really soak in some entertaining video for 2008. It’s going to be almost impossible for eROI to win it for yet a third year in a row, but we’re going to bring our “A” Game. Check it (this is PAF’s main event email and all the info is below):
BATTLE OF THE BANDS
DATE:
Wednesday June 17, 2009
TIME:
6:00 pm
PLACE:
Someday Lounge
224 NW 5th Avenue
Portland, OR
This morning’s article on eMarketer, “Marketers Moving to Digital Media” had some really encouraging and powerful data in it. For all of us in the interactive agency and email marketing industry, this is great news that validates our gut instinct that we’ve been seeing anecdotally. The article begins:
“Looking for an upside. In the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.
Although the name of the organization might imply a slight bias, in a survey by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), 81% of respondents said they plan to invest at least as much in digital marketing in 2009 as in the previous year.
More than 77% of traditional advertising agencies are increasing the amount of digital in their budgets by 1% to 29%. And over 10% are upping online budgets by 30% or more.
Remember the last great offer you didn’t see? The savvy email marketer knows that you catch more conversions with honey than you do with vinegar, so make sure your email design is sweet!
If you’re starting a new email marketing program, or looking for an edge to take your email campaigns to the next level, consider these ideas for designing emails that get your compelling offer noticed. These tips and tricks will start you off right, and even help experienced email marketers amp-up existing campaigns, turning precise communication into profits and visibility.
1. Before you start
Prior to constructing your email, make sure that your message is clear and concise. Develop and refine what you want to say so that readers don’t lose interest or get confused about what your call-to-action is. What is your offer? How will reading and clicking through this email help the reader? Make sure they know what’s in it for them. Before and during the building process, continually ask yourself, “What would I think if I got this in my inbox? Would I immediately delete it? Or worse, report it as spam?” Rule No. 1 — don’t be spam.
Even the most compelling message can be rendered ineffective if it’s presented in an undesirable way to your readers. During this process you may encounter many challenges and obstacles. Your design team may want to create something striking and beautiful, but your audience may not want it. At the same time, don’t throw readers for a loop with a design that is off-brand. Your email design should be able to flow well with the look of your website as well as any pieces collateral offered. Consistency is good. Also, design the email around your readers by responding to their personality. Are they tech savvy? Parents? Students?
If you’ve got a couple hours to spare, then you should read this whole 176 page report. If you only have 5 minutes, it’s worth skimming thru the online pages. Razorfish, one of the largest digital agencies in the world, did a phenomenal job with laying out the landscape of online for the first half of this year (I don’t think anyone can accurately predict what’s going to happen 6 months from now, but I am an optimist and think our industry will grow at a healthy clip in the second half).
I’m publishing my schedule for SXSW - it’s kind of ridiculous how much stuff there is to see and learn. This is my first time to the amazing, well-known event and we are showing up in full force - 1/3 of eROI staffers will be there, but clients, don’t fret, we will be on email and working during most of it. Cheers!
Marketers: know this - doing things the same old traditional way that you’ve always done it is not going to work anymore.
We, as marketers, need to innovate. We need to take a risk with our methods, our message, our mediums, our transparency, and our openness to listen to customers. We need to take a risk with new products, software development, feature roll-outs, user-interface design, cutting edge design, and pushing our brand to mean something in today’s world.
We meet with clients regularly who have almost waited until its too late to dramatically improve their results on increasing the number and quality of leads captured, nurture campaigns, resource centers, the works.
Start small - celebrate your wins even if it is something less than a website launch. At eROI, I am really psyched about a landing page we rolled out that is compelling and has a much higher conversion rate than we’ve ever had for our own marketing purposes - tell me what you think.
According to a new study published today by eMarketer, “57% of consumers had a more positive impression of companies they had purchased from when they received e-mail from them—and 40% said such e-mail made a future purchase from the company more likely.”
I just got eMarketer’s daily email showing a study by Epsilon where email delivery rates are steady, open rates have dropped a little over time (which makes sense as many default email environments like Outlook 2007 and Gmail have images turned off), and click-through rates are slightly down probably due to some fatigue from email recipients where the expectations have raised for better call to action and compelling email content to lure email recipients to the landing page. Good article below.
E-Mail Performance Steady
Consumers are still reading marketing e-mails, and still clicking on them. That steady performance is driving an equally steady rise in e-mail ad spending. Full Article
We just released a new case study and launched the below email to folks who have downloaded previous case studies, guides, and survey studies in our Resource Center. Check it out:
Email Design & Appealing Content Drives Subscriptions for The Smithsonian
Clean, targeted list? Check.
Excellent deliverability? Check.
Hot subject line? Check.
So why aren’t your email marketing campaigns performing like they should?
Our latest email marketing case study illustrates the effectiveness of appealing content and design in email marketing campaigns. Read how creative content offerings and precise brand presentation, combined with email marketing best practices, helped Smithsonian Magazine substantially increase both new & renewal subscriptions.
After the last week of blog posts looking forward into 2009, I thought it would be relevant for the first blog post of 2009 to be about the Best of ‘08. The key to email marketing is personalization and ultra-relevance. This email was to my parents, sisters, and brother-in-laws about a funny video on Saturday Night Live called “Jizz in My Pants.” My Mom’s response was so funny I had to forward it to all eROI employees. If you know my Mom, it’s even funnier.
—–Original Message—–
From: Ryan Buchanan
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 1:53 PM
To: Ryan’s family
Subject: Very funny, popular SNL video
Thank you to everyone at eROI who donated to the Women’s Shelter! I’m really appreciative that you ran with this whole donation effort on your own and got so many employees here to give so generously. Garrett, Summer, Chuck, Meaghan and Kelsey delivered the boxes of various warm donations to the shelter on NW 5th and Burnside in Portland this morning. They were very grateful and surprised by the amount of donations eROI had collected for them. I am sure we have made many Women happy (and warm) this Holiday Season.
When Does One Permission Overwrite The Other - In the world of multichannel and location opt in and opt out how do you keep your lists in sync? Can you?
Let me put some scenarios on the table to give you some real world examples of challenges I have been facing in some recent work with a retailer.
1. Your customer opts in from your [...]
Here is a great example of making your transactional email more than just a notification. When done right, transactional email can be a great branding opportunity.
Check out this awesome shipping confirmation email from Cd Baby below (click to enlarge).
1. Before you start
