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.
At eROI, we launch a quarterly email marketing study on things that make you scratch your head and do a bit of a double-take. Conventional wisdom says that EMAIL IS DEAD among high schoolers and college students. So, we decided to test that hypothesis, and this report has some fascinating discoveries.
Our latest survey uncovers exactly how high school students, college students, and recent college graduates communicate online. 283 high school and college students participated in the study and 29 states were represented.
These survey results reveal eye-opening trends and preferences of this demographic in how it communicates digitally. We also get valuable insight into the effectiveness of marketing messages received through email, and discover areas of opportunity for marketers to connect with this in-demand group.
Students can be an elusive demographic for marketers. From this study, you will learn about a lot of new trends and valuable information about students. You will also learn specific data on which marketing channels will carry and present your message most effectively.
We want to know – how does your little brother, sister, nephew, or neice Use Email? We don’t know the answer yet, and need your help to discover how high school kids, college students, and recent college grads actually use email. That’s why we’re conducting this survey >>
All the articles we’ve read pretty much tell us that email marketing will be dead in a matter of years (because kids are only into texting and social networking communities), but we’re a little skeptical of that assessment that email is not or will not be a big part of their lives. So, we are conducting our own survey and we’re primarily using blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and a little bit of email to reach out to our .edu friends. Please help us to fill out this awesome survey, and you might win your very own, limited-edition KillROI in the process.
We need to know what our kids (or nephews, neices, cousins, brothers, or sisters) futures will look like, so please spread the word to fill out this survey; http://eroi.onlinestudentcommunication.sgizmo.com.
Additionally, I’d love to read your thoughts on the survey in the comments below. Thank you thank you!
Ok – so the Break Media study spins it another way, but c’mon guys, who are the 26% of you how would rather interact with a computer than your partner? Here’s the study published by MarketingVox:
Men Prefer ‘Net to TV, but Sex Trumps Both
Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. More than two-thirds of men age 18-34 say they cannot live without the internet vs. television, but 74% would rather have sex than surf the web, according to (pdf) a study from Break Media, conducted by Hall and Partners, MarketingCharts reports.
The study, which was designed to determine what men (age 18-34) are doing online and how they respond to internet advertising, found that this demographic – which views itself as responsible and conformist overall – spends close to 22 hours on the internet per week, goes online for entertainment, and prefers to spend time on the internet rather than TV.
As we mention in our Resources section of our site, “In today’s hectic email marketing landscape, it’s easy to overlook important aspects of your campaign. So, we are offering you this cheat sheet. Check and review each point on the sheet before your campaign is sent, and increase your campaign performance by catching something you forgot to double-check.”
If you think this is one of the cheesiest blog titles and opening two sentences, post a comment. It’s getting late in the office, and I’m a little punchy. But seriously, check out this Guide / Cheat Sheet – I really think you’ll find it valuable.
The End Of A Chapter – My Next Move - Just like a good book, there are never really any endings, only beginnings. I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I am leaving my position at eROI as of January 31st, 2011. I will be starting a new position at a company outside of the email marketing and interactive agency business [...]
Join eROI at DMA 2010 in San Francisco – October 11th-14th - Alex Williams, Strategy for eROI, will be presenting in San Francisco at DMA2010 on email, social, mobile and ecommerce. DMA2010 is the global event covering all marketing channels — from traditional...
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1. Before you start
