List Fatigue – Frequency vs Quantity

Posted: February 21, 2012 by captaininbox in Email Marketing, Message Content and Design
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Go for the click, not the read

When you have a lot to say, you tend to say a lot but do you save it all up and say it all in one go?

If you did that to a person while at work, how long will they last before they had to stop you because they had to get back to work?

The same thing applies to email.

Email is the shop window to the web-site where you tempt them in except it’s at your front door/inbox.

If you put all of your wares in the window they would only need to walk in to the shop if they wanted what was in the window.

But because your shop/web-site has even more great things to spend money on inside, you add content to the email to entice them in so they walk in the door, where there is a whole store of products that people can touch and try on.

A web-site is capable of far more dynamic experiences than an email, the page space is bigger, you can make images move, include videos, allow people to socially share it, leave comment and more.

Send more, say less

Everyone is busy, from the success of Twitter we can safely assume that a web-users’ attention span is tiny. All people get is a subject line and a link to click from Twitter. While an email can give more, it can also give too much and people may get bored a tune out.

If someone sees that the scroll bar on the right of the window is tiny when they open your email, they will know it is a long email. They are likely to decide to read it later when they have the time and then probably not get around to it.

Then over time, they will expect the email to be long and knowing that they will need to allocate more time than they have now to read it, they’ll make a filter and put your emails in to a folder and slowly fade out of your openers.

If you have a lot to say send more frequently but with less content.

Try sending bi-weekly or weekly rather than monthly and even offer people the choice to have a weekly email or a monthly digest.

Segment out the people who are not opening your monthly emails and send them two articles a day for a month, see if that wakes them up.

Word to the Wise’s IP Address reputation primer

Posted: January 27, 2012 by captaininbox in bookmarks, Deliverability, Email Marketing, IP Warming
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As you may or may not know: whatever Laura Atkins, of Word to the Wise, doesn’t know about email deliverability, is probably not worth knowing.

This recent blog post is particularly remarkable, so I’m linking to it from here, so less people miss out on it.

The post is called “IP Address reputation primer“, it was published on 26th Jan 2012 and covers the following:

  • Why IP addresses?
  • What is IP reputation?
  • How is IP reputation measured?
  • How fast does IP reputation change?
  • How is IP reputation used?
  • Key IP Reputation takeaways

This also does a fantastic job in validating one of my previous posts “dedicated IPs are good“.

I’ve also added Laura’s page to my “IP Warming” page.

 

On-line Retail List Building with Customer Referral Rewards

Posted: January 11, 2012 by captaininbox in Email Marketing
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I’ve been having a conversations recently with a few on-line retailers about list building tactics and then after a quick chat with Claudiu at PadiCode about his latest blogs on on-line retail I felt compelled to publish my thoughts.

Firstly, for context, go and have quick read of Claudiu’s blog “How to beat the top online fashion retailers at email marketing“…

You’ll see that essentially, retailers are doing enough to get the newsletter sign-up on their sites.

If’ you’ve read “Strangers to Fans, Search to Subscriber” you know I believe so much money is being focussed on search and ads but so much of it is being thrown away by not capturing email addresses of the bouncers – people who don’t convert.

With all of this together I came up with this concept:

Referral Rewards

There is no higher recommendation for a brand than that of your friends and the subsequent good experience from a friend’s recommendation is almost always remarkable enough to say thanks and tell others about it.

Subsequently I’d recommend that retailers, and anyone else who can work it in, to focus on referral schemes, where people can be rewarded if someone they recommend spends money – do not incentivise pepole to enter their friends’ addresses because people will make up addresses to get something for nothing – only reward for purchase the purchase!

A cheeky referral method is to create personal referral codes that existing customers can give to their friends or paste on their Facebook pages for example, for their friends to enter when they purchase. You can then track that back to a existing user who will get a reward like a voucher. Not unlike Amazon affiliate links.

This could also offer discount or free delivery, for instance, on the friend’s first purchase if you wish.

This can help build lists and customer loyalty without incentivising people to try and beat the system for something free.

It can also help you link people together into micro-communities within the shop, like a social network for purchasing from you.

Link Love

If you look further into the Amazon affiliate links, this could be recreated for anyone, they simply put a link with their own referral code in anywhere, people click through to the site and if they purchase, the existing customer gets a reward.

You could then merge this in to your sign-up form lightbox and make it appear specifically for these people to optimise the email capture. Capture the referral code there too, then you can know who’s building your list and when they purchase you can see who’s delivering your revenue.

Implementation?

I’ve not been hands on with eCommerce in a while but I’d expect that Magento would have something that could manage this?

If you’ve got any ideas feel free to stick them below in the comments.

Stop your unsubscribers hitting the spam button

Posted: December 12, 2011 by captaininbox in Best Practice Strategy, Email Marketing
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I’ve just read a cracking article from the incredibly talented and knowledgeable Remy Bergsma on his Emailblog.eu called  ”Don’t hit the spam button when you actually just want to unsubscribe“(12/12/2011), I was inspired to reply but as I was writing/gibbering it got a bit long so I moved it here. If you haven’t already, read it first then click through from the comments…

Aaaand you’re back! Glad you liked it and yes he has got a great way with words, better than me :-) …

My point is that often senders get inconvenienced that they are punished when they’ve done nothing wrong, “we can’t stop people hitting the spam button instead” I get told,

I beg to differ: The sender has more control than you may think…

The question that senders need to ask themselves is why would a recipient not be willing to make the effort to hit the unsubscribe link?

Much of the time it is not out of laziness but lack of trust. If someone has forgotten they asked for an email, and I mean actually filled out a form saying I want your emails, how can they forget that email?

  • Was it a sneaky opt-in when it was in the linked Ts and Cs?
  • Was it a forced opt-in when someone has to provide an address and opt-in to get their quote?
  • Was it a soft-opt-in where someone bought something and then just started to get emails?
  • Was it a corporate subscriber, where legally you don’t need permission but empathetically you’re digging a hole?
  • Has the brand not sent out an email for 2,6,12 months or even years?

None of it illegal, but all lacks empathy for the recipient and their experience of the brand and will attract spam button use.

If a recipient does not remember asking for an email or even giving the sending brand their address, why would they click any link – if they perceive it as spam they won’t want to let the spammer know that they exist, so they hit the spam button, which is why it is there.

If you’re worried about your rapport,  try to earn enough trust to at least get the opt-out rather than the spam in the preheader. If it is the first string of text in the email, it could also feature as the inbox snippet in Gmail and the iPhone to help people hitting spam before the open. Then once they do open, have an unsubscribe link in the top right, this way if someone’s mouse is heading for spam button it will also be close to the opt-out link. This can then not only lose you someone who is of little value to you but also save the negative effects to your inbox placement.

Ensure you have readable text at the top of the email and not a giant image, if they are likely to hit spam, loading the images is asking too much.

Try and personal message, being humble and open.

make the opt-out easy. If you are getting high complaint rates and your inbox placement is plummeting, push these people to the opt-out link, they are worthless to your ROI and are hammering your deliverability.

Be relevant, consistent, collect addresses openly and obviously, send a welcome email and keep an eye out for non-openers over time and try to re-engage them before they forget who you are.

 

edit 12/12/2011 16:53: Originally sourced from Loren McDonald’s G+ stream

How long do you have to convert an email recipient

Posted: November 22, 2011 by captaininbox in Best Practice Strategy, bookmarks, Email Marketing, Message Content and Design
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Dori Thompson guest writes for the awesome Smart Insights in “The 3-5-7 rule for Email marketing” (01/11/2011).

This is probably more vital information than you may, at first glance, think…

So many emails are created as a giant image and then get sign off, as a giant image but don’t tested in the inbox’s preview pane with images blocked until it is too late to do anything about it. The result is another under achieving delivery.

If you rely on the images to be loaded to convert, they need to take an extra action once they have opened the email.

Consider the 3-5-7 Rule in conjunction with the Triangle of Conversion when you have one main call to action.

Of course always make sure you have additional things for people to engage with, either to the right or beneath your main content.

When it comes to newsletters, where you have a lot of content try some teaser text in preheader or even more of a contents section in header, this way if the content that is visible when the email opens is not suited but there is more further down that might be, they will be able to know about it, rather than click away without knowing what they’ve missed!

 

 

The triangle of conversion

Posted: November 22, 2011 by captaininbox in bookmarks, Email Marketing, Message Content and Design
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Originally published on the Pure360 site as “Single Call to Action Emails” (22 Aug 2011)

There are two main types of email marketing campaign: newsletter and single call to action. Single call to action emails have only one main goal for their recipients, this could be about an event or a product or any other one thing.

Single call to action emails work best with a triangle of call to actions (CTAs) and account for the three stages of conversion:

The three levels of conversion

1. Converted from the subject line

Some people get the email, see who it’s from, read the subject line and as they open it all they want to do is click through and get involved; be it book a trip, look at pictures or buy a product. To account for this it really helps to present readers with an opportunity to convert from the preview pane whilst the images are blocked so there are no barriers to conversion and momentum is maintained.

2. Converted by the header

Some recipients are early adopters and work quite visually or simply want to get engaged quickly when something gets their interest. These people will open the email out of curiosity and want to see what the email is about, these recipients will then either load the images or view in a browser. If your content in the top third of the email is optimised to wow them nice and quick they will click through on your main call to action and your website can do the rest for you.

3. Converted by the elaboration

Some openers need some convincing before they commit to the click, the big wow header and short and sweet elevator pitch will not be enough for them, that’s just ‘salesy bumpf’ to these kinds of people. They want a real reason to click through, they need some facts and some details to investigate further. So further down the email you have something like a more detailed bulleted list and something to explain the product in more detail. This can be nice and literary to let people really read it, but still shorter and more to the point than a book; then at the end flow the call to action to click through so they click the link as the next stage in the story.

The triangle of conversion

This is something learned over time by many marketers and fits in nicely with the three levels.

Essentially the top of the triangle is the quick conversion in the top; the next section stage is normally graphical and more to the right hand side, then the last section is nearer the bottom of the contextual copy on the left, making a triangle.

triangle of conversion

The triangle of conversion – in practice

triangle of conversion in practice

 

Have more than one call to action

While it is common for an email to only have one call to action when a brand only wants to convert for one thing, it is a wise idea to have additional engagement points, either below the main content or in the right hand margin.

Try and make it personalised where possible or at least relevant. Up-sells and cross-sells are popular for this purpose as well as social media pushes.

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