This
time of year, every email expert hauls
out the crystal ball and predicts the
trends for the next 12 months. That's
okay as far as it goes, but we wanted
to come up with something more useful
for email marketers. So, we reviewed
the major email developments and came
up with 10 email marketing strategies
you need to take to rev up your email
program.
1.
Get relevant – dive into personalization
and segmentation. The
greatest capability of email marketing
technology – segmentation and
personalization – is likely the
most underutilized by most companies.
Making your emails as relevant as possible
to each recipient is the most critical
"must do" in 2006. Your emails
are competing for attention with an
increasing number of messages in your
subscribers’ inbox. The emails
that resonate most, through personalized
subject lines, offers, articles, products
showcased, and follow-up emails based
on recipient activity, will be the clear
winners. It is crucial that companies
begin this process, even if it is simply
personalizing the content of the subject
line or sending modified emails to several
different segments of your list. Once
the process is started, companies can
then work toward the promised land of
dynamic content and lifecycle-based
messaging.
2.
Resolve or minimize deliverability and
rendering issues. Marketers
must send pre-campaign test messages
to uncover delivery problems before
sending the actual message to recipients
and monitor results after each message
to spot ISP blocking, filtering and
blacklisting. They should test their
email messages in different email clients
(Outlook, Lotus Notes, AOL , and Web
clients like Hotmail/MSN , Gmail and
Yahoo!) and platforms (PC and Macintosh)
and correct problems. Establish authenticity
as an email sender by publishing SPF
code in their DNS record.
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3.
Redesign email messages for the inbox
and users who view them in the preview
pane and block images. Marketers
must redesign their emails to render
properly and be easily read and acted
on in a world of preview panes and blocked
images. In 2006 Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail
will add preview panes to their Web-based
clients, adding to the significant usage
of preview panes by Outlook and Lotus
Notes users. Marketers should redesign
email message templates to deliver maximum
information in the top 2 to 4 inches
and increase their creative use of HTML
fonts and colors, while relying less
on the use of images that ISPs or recipients'
email clients might block.
4.
Optimize the beginning of the email
relationship. Marketers
must focus special attention on the
beginning of the email relationship,
because the most significant decline
in email performance comes two months
after recipients opt in. Engage new
subscribers immediately with an organized
program that includes a welcome message
sent out upon confirmation, followed
by the current newsletter or promotion,
and emails offering a set of "best-of"
newsletter articles or an email-exclusive
offer just for newcomers. Manage subscribers’
expectations from the start by adequately
explaining the email program’s
value proposition, frequency, type of
content and privacy policies.
5.
Get on the permission train.
Marketers
must review the permission practices
across their Web sites and at all customer-contact
points within the company. Convert any
opt-out address collection (loading
a subscription form with a checked box
or sales offers emailed to prospects
without permission) to opt-in. While
not required by the CAN-SPAM Act, permission-based
email is becoming the acknowledged best
practice in the industry. Companies
that send unsolicited email risk damaging
their brand and losing customers.
6.
Focus on metrics that matter.
Marketers
spend way too much time worrying about
process-oriented metrics such as open
and click-through rates. Companies need
to focus more on the end goals by tracking
conversion rates, revenue per email,
whether specific desired actions were
taken, etc. Newsletter publishers need
to drill down and track which type of
articles and format style motivate subscribers
to click through to read more, and then
adjust content and formats accordingly.
Use open and click rates as indicators
of trends and possible delivery and
rendering issues rather than as stand-alone
measures of campaign success.
7.
Take better care of long-term subscribers.
EmailLabs
estimates that 30% to 50% of a company’s
email list may be inactive, meaning
that subscribers have not opened or
clicked on a link over a reasonable
series of messages or time period. Marketers
need to wake up these dormant subscribers
by trying different subject lines, frequency
of mailings and new formats, sending
them special offers or best of newsletters,
surveying them, and getting them to
update their demographic, preference
and interest profiles. Marketers also
need to analyze these “inactives”
to uncover potential trends such as
how they opted in (sweepstakes offer,
free whitepaper, etc.) and their demographic
profiles.
8.
Maximize search with email. Search
is now a dominant means to acquire customers
and leads, but companies that don’t
integrate their email programs with
their search efforts are throwing search-engine-marketing
dollars in the trash. Include an email
offer as a secondary objective on the
landing page. Invite visitors to opt
in to a newsletter, download a whitepaper
or try a product/service demo if they
don't want to buy or take other desired
actions. Then, use email to move subscribers
along the sales lifecycle.
9.
Test, test, test and improve.
Things
move and change quickly in email marketing.
What works for a competitor or worked
for you six months ago might not work
today. Companies need to test variables
continuously, including format, design,
copy style and calls to action, subject
line approach and offers, personalization,
content types or product categories
and more. Start with simple A/B split
tests, and repeat the test at least
a few times to verify results.
10.
Create an email marketing plan and align
resources. Do
you have an actual email marketing plan
with specific goals, success metrics
and action steps outlined? Because email
marketing is still so new to many organizations,
budget and resources for the channel
are often not in line with the opportunity
and potential ROI. Develop a plan that
clearly demonstrates to management the
value and ROI of a strategic and well-run
email marketing program. Make sure your
plan includes enough budget and resources
to enable significant improvement in
ROI through increased personalization
and segmentation, better deliverability,
continuous testing, analysis and improvement
and use of advanced technology.
To
sum up: Yes, it's a long list, and it
probably looks pretty intimidating if
you haven't developed your email program
beyond batch-and-blast. But remember
that a profitable email-marketing program
can't be developed overnight. You can't
fix an underperforming program overnight,
either.
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