eROI Days Email Agency

It is hard these days not to notice the amount of people on the streets, in their cars, riding buses and even enjoying a meal while navigating through a mobile device.  What does this mean for marketing? The amount of time consumers are spending on mobile devices is increasing day by day. What have marketers done to tap into the new, dynamic phase of mobile marketing and how does social media fit in?

eROI decided to find out by conducting a study of over 500 marketers to see what their current attitudes were towards mobile marketing and social media trends.

Get a brief on our study from ClickZ

Our study was geared towards learning:

• The interest in mobile marketing to marketers, if any.
• The importance of mobile marketing and social media to the marketer.
• How the marketer is integrating the media and how much research is being done to optimize it.

The study was successful and informative if not a bit surprising. If 91% of the US population uses a mobile device, what are the marketers really doing to access those consumers? Get the full study here…

If you walk by any Icebreaker retail store it’s obvious that they have incredible assets and a lot of personality.

Our task was to put that brand creativity to work and drive up holiday sales.

Our challenge was to make the Icebreaker brand stand out against the barrage of holiday emails coming from every other retailer.

While the creative grabbed the attention of the viewer, the content kept people clicking and purchasing.

Using a total of 11 emails, the campaign helped to substantially increase the holiday sales of 2009 from the previous year.

Strategies we used in the 2009 Icebreaker holiday campaign included:

• Increased frequency of sends (2-3 per week)
• A/B Testing – offers and copy
• Free shipping offers
• Product bundles
• and more…

See the emails and stats from the campaign»

There is nothing like a little distance to make the heart grow fonder.  The past 5 days, I’ve spent with my little family in a remote, rustic cabin in the forested Wallowa Mountains outside of Joseph, Oregon (6 hour drive from Portland).  As with any vacation, it took a couple days to unwind, then it was pure bliss doing what I love doing – being outdoors nonstop, hiking, spending time with my family, and being undistracted by all the craziness in our technology-laden lives.

Upon my return to the grid (meaning my iPhone on the drive back), I realized that my longing for technology was really in communication of key information and emotional connection through my inbox (email is not, nor will it ever be dead in the foreseeable future), not through Tweetie, Tweetdeck when I returned to my laptop at home, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any website at all – it was spending 6 hours of catching up on all of the things that are hyper-relevant to me in my inbox.  Interestingly enough, I could only really scan and internalize all the issues brought up through hundreds of emails on my iPhone for about an hour, and the other 5 hours of digging way deeper and responding happened through my Outlook inbox on my laptop.  It’s a totally different mode of thinking on a 14″ screen than a 2″ screen.

There is a lot of chatter over the past several months among Email Marketing industry execs (over a hundred of us on a private email list) about whether or not Twitter is a complete waste of time or if it will kill Email, and it seems so obvious to me that Twitter is a useful conversation piece that has its place in the marketing mix, but is not yet the killer addictive app/platform/communication channel that email is.  In each of our daily lives, the large majority of us prioritize our Inbox over everything else.  It took almost a week in the woods to be able to articulate this simple gravitational pull towards email.

MediaPost’s Email Insider recently did an article on the importance of holiday emails.  As email marketers, it is our duty to not only create quality emails but also give our clients consulting on what kind of email will help their businesses grow.  Holiday email marketing goes beyond Cyber Monday campaigns or even general “Happy Holiday” emails, it is most effective when it starts slowly into an aggressive campaign.  The article pointed out that there are even great opportunities to not only drive business to your e-com site but also to stores with offers like “ship to store” which make up-sells and complimentary sales easier.  The main point is to plan.  Don’t throw together a sloppy campaign a week before Christmas, take it seriously to get serious results.

Here are a few examples of holiday emails eROI has done in the past.

Are You Ready For The 18 Phases Of Christmas?

“If you haven’t begun planning your holiday campaigns, then you’re already behind. The first salvo of holiday email marketing has already been fired, with 8% of major online retailers having already mentioned the holidays in their email campaigns. While most of those were running “Christmas in July” campaigns, a few were just getting in early references to be top of mind later in the season. August is traditionally a non-event for holiday marketing, but September will mark the beginning of a continued effort to win holiday sales that will continue into January…”

Read the rest of the MediaPost article here »

We, at eROI, just released a survey study called “Use of Testing in Email Marketing.” You can download the full study here – http://idek.net/Kxk.

In our last study, Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns, we showed email marketers how important metrics are in making decisions and proving campaign ROI. One major opportunity to improve metrics and strengthen brand positioning with potential customers is to optimize email campaigns through consistent, careful testing. So, in our newest study, we show how 623 email marketers are currently using, or not using, testing to improve their email marketing efforts. One of the key takeaways of this study is that 4 out of 10 marketers are not testing campaigns – but why aren’t they? And for those that are testing, what elements are being tested and what can we learn from them?

Some stats from this study at a glance:
• 37% aren’t testing
• Of marketers that don’t test their email campaigns, 33% say it’s because they do not know how
• 27% say they don’t have time
• 13% say their platform doesn’t have testing capabilities
• For those that are testing, they are testing a wide variety of elements including design, frequency, calls to action and day/time sent. Our survey shows this breakdown for email content testing: 85.2% test subject lines, 54.8% test calls to action, 50.9% test designs, 49.1% test copy, 41.7% test offers, 36% test timing of campaigns.
• The survey showed that 36% of marketers are testing timing, which includes day of week, time of day, and frequency. Although history shows that results on the most successful time and day are constantly changing, here’s the latest trends:
• Time of Day – 37.86% of marketers testing timing are testing time of day. Of those, 49.4% currently find sending mid-day (10am-2pm) to be best, while start of the business day (6AM – 10AM) showed to be second best at 31.5%
• Tuesday ranks as the most successful day, followed closely by Wednesday.

Let us know what kind of insights you get from the new eROI Study Report -

Use of Testing in Email Marketing!

Chad White wrote an eye-opening story about the real ROI in email.  The raw return is not being measured in the traditional sense.  Having a ROI of $43.52 is killer, but the fact that the real number may be closer to $103 is astounding.  Devoting more budget towards email is the smart thing to do.  It should put a smile on your face to know that when you are tracking your data the numbers are higher than they first appear.

Even online, where it’s easiest for email marketers to track the path of subscribers, we’re not getting credit for much of the action that our messages drive. That’s because 33% of permission-based email recipients say they usually visit sites directly, instead of clicking on an email link, according to Epsilon. This means conversions may be undercounted by 50%.

Taking into consideration the action that email drives offline and directly to Web sites, email marketing’s ROI is probably closer to $130 — about three times the DMA’s estimate. And that’s clearly ignoring email’s ability to drive interest and actions in other channels like catalogs and social networks.

Email Marketing’s ROI Probably Closer To $130 Than $43.52
By Chad White

Read the rest of the MediaPost article »

At eROI, we’re not always as disciplined as we should be about asking our customers what they think of us personally and the kind of work we do here. So, last week, we decided to ask a few customers (thru 1-to-1 email outreach) and here’s what we heard:

“eROI is what you look for in any business relationship: an expert partner who helps you realize your vision. The eROI team listened carefully to our needs, asked probing questions that helped us better understand the capabilities that would enable us to reach our goals, and communicated closely with us all the way to achieve success. The final product went above and beyond what we thought was possible. It was mindblowing.”
–Noah Glass, CEO, GoMobo

“Choosing eROI to help launch our magazine into the digital realm has been a great decision. The support from their web team has been incredible, making the scary transition from print to online- stress free. They provided structure, guidance and solutions to any minor hang up we experienced along the way.”
–Kaitlyn, CBS Watch Magazine (new site hasn’t been launched yet)

“Working with eROI to help with the development and launch of seven planet was key to company on many levels and will prove to be a critical positive impact on the brand. We began speaking with their team about 7 months prior to launching our virtual trading post (our ecommerce store/company site) with the intent to launch a site that was easy to navigate, that visually differentiated our brand and that helped our patrons effectively find out how the “mindful commerce” could work in their lives. In the end, they met all three of those criteria without question and in turn also were very patience with us in the process as we had scope revisions, content delays, support needs, etc. Finally, they proactively approached us after our launch with product review site upgrades, that would help improve the trading post and usability, without being asked to do so. Those upgrades are now implemented and we look forward to working with them consistently on making the seven planet site and our company newsletters as key to the brand and the vision of mindful commerce as our traditional green general stores.”
–John Friess, CEO, Seven Planet

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.

At OMS Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget, had some solid ideas about how to make sure the right message got to the right people.  He showed success stories of ET clients that used past consumer behavior to deliver extremely targeted marketing with positive results.  Here are my tweets from Joel’s presentation:

• @joelbook – speaking now at #oms. 33 years as direct marketing – called out @djwaldow in a friendly way

• Email has become the ultimate social medium

• 34 different marketing channels. We have created an ADD world, now we have to live with it

• The sales cycle has become 22% longer because resources tight

• Retention is the new acquisition #oms

• “The medium is the message” is like hearing at a wedding “love is patient, love is kind” – predictably used at every conf

• Newest dma study shows $45 roi for email marketing which is highest of all channels

• This aft, Need to make my pres interactive. Ask real questions and get user gen answers from audience

• Home depot is using dynamic couponing based on past buying behavior

• J+m uses brwsing history thru omniture to infer your preferences. Very cool #oms

• Question from #oms about where to put images for email campaigns, we have used amazon s3 or bitgravity in cloud.

• Question at #oms about affordable platforms – google analytics great first step before omniture

• Old-school phrase – OH: here’s a dandy way to do that

• @joelbook – nice pres. You know your stuff.

DJ Waldow, Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto, spoke at OMS about the perfect email in a recession.  Read my tweets from DJ’s presentation:

• @djwaldow starts his #oms presentation with his twitter police mug shot

• Recession proof email marketing – adage did article on same topic

• Relevancy is key. Batch and blast. Spray and pray.

• Forrester said in 2008 that email marketers – only 15% – concerned about recession

• Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who ask for them

• Perfect email is like the perfect meal. Timely. Relevant. Engaging.

• @djwaldow – good example of sierra trading post email – but do they consciously make their email design less polished compared to rei

• @djwaldow shares @returnpath email campaign example of doing all elements of email right – subject, call to action, reminders

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.”

Read the entire article »

I know, I’m a marketer, and I like visual things, which is why I always wondered why Twitter was so spartan with its notification emails.  Below are a couple screen-shots of the types of email I’ve been getting from Twitter since 10am this morning.  They used to be so transactional, bussiness-like, and dreadfully boring.  Now, Twitter has elevated its brand massively through a wildly effective push-medium like email.  The below emails really pop of the page instead of being completely forgettable.  This is all the more important considering folks like me almost never go to twitter.com – instead, I always use Tweetdeck or Twitterberry, therefore I almost never interact with the Twitter brand in an environment that Twitter controls.  So, long story short, I’m in love with their decision to go with HTML email notifications. Such a tiny little thing makes a HUGE difference to many of us.  Take a peek:

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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.

I recently wrote an article for iMedia Connection titled “11 Email Design Best Practices” and thought I’d share it with you if you hadn’t already checked it out.  It starts like this:

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?

Check out the rest of the iMedia Connection article here >>

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.

http://www.eroi.com/eroi-email-marketing-study-7-elements-of-email-survey-results-report/