Drip Campaigns: Converting Prospects into Customers

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I’ve resolved to get back into the swing of things with my writing. I apologize again for the absence, but it has not been for lack of interest on my part. I’ve been head’s down on quite a few projects, a couple of which have inspired me to write about drip email marketing campaigns. This is a lead nurturing technique that can be very effective if done properly. Hopefully, your actions in 2011 yielded a database of prospects that can be converted into customers in 2012.

What is drip marketing?
The premise of a drip email marketing campaign is simple: Subscribers kick off the email series by way of a specific action, such as subscribing to your list, clicking a link in a message, making a purchase, viewing a particular product, or downloading a white paper. Once the campaign is triggered, emails are automatically delivered on a predetermined schedule — a steady “drip,” if you will — until the series ends or the subscriber opts out of the conversation. Drip campaigns allow you to communicate with your subscribers on a one-to-one basis, and because the emails are more relevant, targeted, and timely, they have much higher conversion rates than mass emails.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when developing your drip marketing campaign:

1. Educate your contacts with relevant information: don’t make them do the legwork to research your product or company. If your prospects have to search independently on the internet for more details, they’ll be susceptible to being lured away by a competitor. Since your prospect is interested in your company or product, but not yet ready to buy, your drip campaign messages should address their needs and pain points. What are their needs or pain points? That’ll depend on how they came to be on the list for this drip campaign. Use that basis to segment your campaign and send them relevant links to your site. By directing them to information on your site, you’re limiting their potential exposure to competitors.

2. Make them timely: The purpose of a drip campaign is to maintain regular, continual contact with subscribers in an effort to keep your brand top of mind, increase engagement and accelerate the sales process. Don’t set the campaigns and forget them. Think of when it would be of most use to your recipients to receive a particular piece of information and work backward when developing a message outline. Keep your deployment timing in synch with where the contact is in the sales pipeline and plan your messages accordingly.

3. Have a clear, actionable call to action: This is an opportunity to solicit involvement with your company or brand. Unlike your general promotional email campaigns, drip campaigns are intended to be one-to-one communications. Each message should have a request for a relevant response, such as an invitation to download more information, give feedback on a recent purchase or visit a relevant product page on your site. Don’t bury the CTA – make it a prominent part of the campaign. At the same time, create a sense of urgency to respond.

Prospects may not take action the first time they’re exposed to your service or brand. A drip campaign can keep your company name top of mind when they’re emotionally ready to pull the trigger on making a purchase. A single mass message may not be enough to move the contact from prospect to customer status.

Here are a couple of other articles about using drip campaigns:
Sample of a drip campaign for real estate agents
Tips from Marketing Sherpa to Drive Revenue

Back to school basics for email marketing

In the United States, it’s the time of year when school kids and college students across the country are beginning class for the school year. Fall semester has begun, and with Labor Day (another American holiday) coming up, summer is just about over, for all intents and purposes.

In the spirit of going back to school, a time when students across the country are getting refocused on learning, here is a checklist of items to help your email program come together the way you intended:

1. Start with an objective: what’s the end result you’re aiming to achieve? Students have a degree or certificate in mind when they enroll. Be sure your call to action is going to help you achieve the goal you’ve set out to reach. Don’t bury the action in a big block of text and don’t only include it in an image that’s likely to be turned off.

 

2. Assemble a supply list: what is it you’ll need to get the job done? Whether it’s a relevant landing page for the email campaign or the buy-in from team members to fulfill the email’s call to action, make sure you have your resources in order before activating the campaign. Don’t send an email out with a free giveaway offer if you don’t have the commitment of purchasing and anyone who will have to help fulfill the offer, such as cashiers or your fulfillment house.

 

3. Who else is in your class? If you haven’t already done so, sign up for emails from your competitors.  Check out what they’re doing to keep an eye on the information your customers or clients are potentially reading.

 

4. Remember to put your best foot forward: There are so many ways to address this issue, whether it be testing how your email is rendering across platforms or proofing for typos, be sure your emails are as polished and presentable as they can be.

 

5. Be open to learning: Review metrics after each send and adjust future campaigns accordingly. Hopefully your production lead times allow for flexibility and adapting your plans based on recent past campaign performance.

 

6. Make new friends: In email marketing terms, this is also called growing your list. Just as with personal relationships, look for quality not quantity. Are you adding the best possible contacts to your database? There are plenty of co-registration tactics that will yield a large number of subscribers, but they may not be your best customers in the future. I always recommend promoting an email program in such a way that captures people who have willingly sought you out: web visitors, customers who have made online purchases, personal referrals from current list members and even those who orbit in your social media circles. Don’t forget to capture Facebook friends and Twitter followers – even FourSquare check-ins are a good source of emails.

Facebook and Email: Part 2 of 2

As mentioned in my first post about using Facebook in conjunction with your email marketing program, here are a couple more tactics for bringing the two channels together.

Do it “like” this
We all want to be “liked,” right? In addition to sharing our emails, it’s possible to simply “like” them. Facebook’s “Like” buttons can be incorporated into emails, and in some cases, that “liking” activity can be tracked via the ESP.

Comparing “Like” vs. “Share.” The benefits to an email sender of a recipient hitting the “Like” button in an email are similar to that of sharing, but it’s less of a commitment for the recipient. The recipient simply hits the “Like” button and the link to the web version of the email campaign appears on their profile page and also in their friends’ news feed. The difference is that there isn’t a place for a recipient to add in their personal endorsement when the “Like” button is used. So your recipient is still spreading the word about your content and passing it along to their network, but they aren’t asked to take the step of giving an endorsement.

Send it on Facebook
Just announced on Monday, April 25, 2011, is the “send” button for distributing website content within Facebook to a select group of friends.  To use this functionality, you would need to have a URL for your message (the “view as a web version” of the campaign) or embed this button within the landing page that’s a part of the email campaign.  To entice your recipients to “send it to a subset of their Facebook friends,” it will be imperative that you not only give them a reason to do so, but explain why they should keep the message exclusive to a select group instead of “liking” it and sharing with all of their Facebook friends. It’ll be interesting to see how this functionality evolves. Here’s the link to the Facebook developer’s page with more information.

Convert email subscribers to Facebook fans
Just as you’ve converted Facebook fans to email subscribers by including an email sign-up form on your Facebook page, it’s possible to drive email subscribers to your Facebook page and connect with them on the social networking site as well.

By adding an email subscriber as a fan of your Facebook page you’ve created an additional touch point with one of your more engaged customers. This is an opportunity to have a more immediate dialogue with an engaged customer. It’s also an opportunity to speak directly with them and with a greater frequency than through email campaigns. In the end, it doesn’t matter which came first – the email subscription or Facebook fan connection. A customer who engages with you in both channels is very valuable and should be treated accordingly in both places.

Got another idea (or two) for blending Facebook with your email marketing program? Leave a comment on this blog post or a note on my Facebook wall.

Facebook and Email: Part 1 of 2

For the sake of discussion, I’m going to assume you’ve heard of Facebook. But just so we’re all clear, it’s a “social networking service and website” (to quote Wikipedia) that connects people to their friends, family members, co-workers, etc. for the purposes of sharing information about their daily lives.

But can it really help your email marketing program? Of course! Here are a couple of tactics for using Facebook to enhance your email marketing program – and vice versa. This post is part 1 of 2. More tactics will be posted this time next week.

Email sign-up forms in your business’s page
This is low-hanging fruit. If you have a Facebook page for your business, incorporate a sign-up form for your email marketing program into the page. Some email software providers (ESPs) have a means for users to build the form directly into your page. Otherwise, link to it from your welcome tab.

By doing this, you’ve converted a Facebook fan into an email subscriber and have an additional channel by which to communicate with them.

Make your email messages shareable
You’ve created a fantastic email campaign and want to enable your recipients to share this message on Facebook. (You’ll first need to create content that your recipients will want to share. What’s considered shareworthy will vary from sender to sender, and even recipient to recipient. That’s an entirely separate posting, but here’s a link with concepts for sharing B-to-B content. Some of the ideas could apply to B-to-C as well.)

To be able to share your content or message on Facebook, you need to use the share URL that Facebook has created. By doing this, it will create a preview of your content, which can then be posted to a Facebook profile or sent as a direct message.
The simplest way to give a subscriber the option to share your link is to add this code into your email:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=URL

Just replace URL with the link you want to share. In the case of an email message, it would be the URL to view your message online. Don’t forget to include a call to action to “share this message”, preferably using a Facebook icon or linked text.

For example here is the link for the blog post of this message arranged so you can share it on Facebook.

Share this post on Facebook

When you create a link such as that, a preview window will open with optional image selections from the page URL provided. There will also be a place for your email recipient to include their thoughts as to why this link is worth viewing. Once they hit the “share” button in that window, the link is posted to their Facebook profile profile, their wall is updated and the URL will appear in the news feed of their friends with your recipients’ endorsement. Your message now has a personal referral to your recipient’s Facebook network!

Showing up in multiple news feeds is when you start to leverage your recipients’ entire friend list. This process has the potential to move virally as people leave comments or share the item with their friends and family – and so on and so on.

---

Got another idea (or two) for blending Facebook with your email marketing program? Leave a comment or post to my Facebook wall. Otherwise, stayed tuned next week for a couple more ways Facebook can enhance your email marketing program.

Usability study takeaways worth noting

Welcome to 2011! Yes, we’ve been into this new year for quite some time, but this is my first note of the year and I feel it’s OK to kick things off with a hearty salutation.

I’m going to begin this year by highlighting a recent usability study the Norman Nielsen Group conducted of email newsletters across the U.S. and abroad. Given the highly emotional reactions consumers have to email newsletters, and a newsletter’s ability to generate consumer loyalty, I wanted to bring to your attention some findings from their study. These are items to keep in mind throughout the year as you manage your email campaigns. Also, this was a “newsletter” study, but the takeaways I’ve highlighted can be applied to all kinds of email.

The full executive summary can be found here, but below are some notes that I wanted to call out for your information:

• Above all, convenience rules. This applies to the subscribe/unsubscribe process as well as the benefit of receiving information via email vs. snail mail.
• Long-term nature: When it comes to customer relationships, newsletters work their magic over time. This is why it is best to emphasize value-added publishing instead of simply spamming too-frequent newsletters to anybody and everybody you can contact.
• It’s also critical to start a newsletter with the most important stuff, but the increased use of previews makes it even more important to focus on high-value content at the start of a message, since users are less likely now to look beyond it. (Note that “high-value” is judged based on what’s valuable to the recipients — not on what you feel like promoting today.)
• A predictable publication frequency that is not too aggressive is usually best, except for newsletters that report breaking news. A regular publication schedule lets users know when to look for the newsletter and reduces the probability that they’ll confuse it with spam and delete it. Set expectations for how often a message will be sent during the sign-up or subscription process.
• Just because they’re a subscriber doesn’t mean they want to be. They may have just neglected to unsubscribe once they lost interest or they feel bad about unsubscribing, even though they no longer read the newsletters.
• It’s not uncommon for subscribers to use their spam filters as a shortcut to eliminating newsletters they no longer want. Instead of unsubscribing, which users often view as too cumbersome, they simply flag a message as spam, which prevents it from hitting their inbox in the future. This is a compelling reason to increase the usability of the unsubscribe process: better to lose a subscriber than to be listed as spam.
• The number of new or unread messages is now 300% higher than it was just four years ago. In addition to competing with your competitors for subscribers, you’ll now need to compete with the rest of your subscribers’ inbox just get your message opened and read. Takeaway: use brief and informative subject lines to get your messages read while the information is fresh.

A newsletter doesn’t necessarily need to imply an email with a few article excerpts and links to more information on a landing page. Newsletters can also include emails that have a single piece of content that are sent on a consistent basis and follow a regular theme (i.e. coupons, tips for using a product, single news item).

The I Send Your Email Facebook page

I’ve taken the leap on Facebook to start a page for my consultancy. Blogging is great for long-form takes on an email topic, but I’m aiming to use this Facebook page as a place for quick thoughts on various email topics. Please “like” the page and join in on the discussions!

The Facebook page is also another way we can stay in touch. I’m on Twitter (@sandisolow) and of course, there’s always email!

Getting to “send”

A recent project has me thinking about the importance of the process that’s behind the development of every email campaign. There are several important steps that need to be taken before giving the green light to hit the send button on any email. Here’s a high-level look at actions to take and things to consider in the course of developing your next email campaign:

1. Goal of the message: Be it a certain open rate, click-through percentage or sales goal, knowing what you want to achieve is important.
2. Content: Determine what you will include in the message to achieve your goal. It’s possible that your message may need to be tailored to different segments of your audience to help you reach your objective.  It’s smart to send customized messages.
3. List Preparation: Conduct list hygiene after confirming your latest opt-in addresses have been added. If necessary, create an A/B split (for testing) or other list groupings/segments according to the message content(s) being sent.
4. Message creation: Develop an HTML and text-only version of your email. Include profile update link and ways to share the message with friends and social networks. Don’t forget to include CAN-SPAM compliance information, such as your company address and an unsubscribe link. Get necessary message approvals.
5. Web Site/Server: Create landing page(s) for your message and be sure update profile forms are functioning properly. Post images and PDFs that are linked in the message to the server. Add a version of the message to your web site so it can be viewed as a web page.
6. Testing: Spell check, spell check, spell check. (Don’t forget the subject line.) Make sure the links in the message work and confirm that information in the message, such as prices or event dates, match what’s on your web site or landing page. Send test messages to key email clients/domain accounts (AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.).
7. Message Scheduling: Check and re-check the time. Make sure the AM or PM is set properly. If your software makes note of time zones, be sure it knows the one you’re in.
8. Post-send monitoring: Monitor bounces and unsubscribes. Take note of any spam complaints. Keep an eye on opens, clicks and web site activity.
9. Reporting: Update reporting spreadsheet and analyze results. Compare to previous messages and target goals.
10. Learnings: This stage could arguably take place at the beginning, too. This is an opportunity to record and analyze past successes (and less-than-successes) and outline a strategy to apply them to future campaigns.

The above can be modified to fit any individual situation, but can serve as a guide for any campaign – from the most basic to one that’s very complex.

Email and WordPress

The Business of WordPress Conference taking place on Wednesday, June 23 has gotten me thinking about using email with sites built on this platform. (If you’re asking yourself, “What’s WordPress?” go to this site and check out the capabilities of this content management system.)

So, if you’re a WP user or are thinking of using it to manage a website for yourself or your business, here are some things to keep in mind as it relates to email marketing:

Sign-up with an email service provider (ESP) that has a WP-plug-in: By having a sign-up form on your site that drops new additions into your ESP automatically, you’re saved the step of manually adding new sign-ups to your distribution list each time you want to send out an email. MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber and Emma are just a few of the many ESPs that have a WP-Plug-in created. (You will need to open an account with the ESP if you want to use its plug-in.)

Don’t mistake your email sign-up form for your contact form (or vice versa): Adding a “contact us” form is pretty much standard operating procedure for a web site these days. But this form shouldn’t be the same form people use to sign-up for your email program. You can blend the two if you a) add a box for people to manually opt-in to your email program and b) filter out the extraneous contact information and only import into your ESP the relevant fields, such as email address and first and/or last name. If your form includes a multi-part question, such as “Which products do you want more information about?” and three choices are included, this could also be added to your ESP as a way to further segment. (Look at Wufoo.com as a way to blend the two. It can be linked to your MailChimp account, too.)

Mention your email program on every page! OK, so this one isn’t specific to WordPress, but if you’re planning a website on any platform, keep this one in mind. Add a button in your header or sidebar that’s linked to an email sign-up page.

Am I missing something from this post? Please let me know in the comments section and I’ll be happy to fill in the blanks.

Preview pane optimization

Preview pane optimization isn’t the sexiest of email topics, but it’s one of the most important. After all, you’ve worked so hard to craft an engaging subject line that has convinced your recipients to read further, why waste that opportunity to capture your recipients’ attention with wasted space in the preview pane area?

Most folks assume that others view email the same way they do, but the reality is that there are so many different email clients, which all have multiple ways of being configured that it’s quite likely no single email is viewed the same way. The more someone has to scroll to get the gist of the message, the more likely they are to give up and move on. Don’t kid yourself by thinking that you’ll get a second chance to get your point across!

EmailStatCenter.com, a leading authority on email marketing metrics, posted the following note from an ExactTarget study: 52 percent of mobile phone owners access the same email account across multiple devices (PC, laptop, mobile phone, etc.), while 48 percent have a distinct eMail account for mobile-only email. -ExactTarget “2008 Channel Preference Survey”

This means that your emails should be designed to be viewed in web-based email platforms (like gmail, hotmail, etc.) as well as in Outlook, Mac Mail or Entourage (since many people view these accounts in those platforms) as well as on iPhones and BlackBerrys (or other PDAs). Sound like a big task? Just keep these things in mind and you’ll be OK:

Insert a link in your preview header (the space above your uppermost image) to view the email on a mobile device. Here’s an example from Old Navy:

When you click the “view on mobile device” page, you’re taken here, which is optimized for a BlackBerry.

Another trick is to put the main point of the email above the header image. Here’s an example from O’Charley’s:

Here’s a quick list of other ways to optimize your email for viewing in a preview pane on any device or platform:

Reduce the size of your header image. It may be great for branding, but the taller the image, the less recipients will see of the thrust of your email in their preview pane. The more scrolling they have to do to read the message, the quicker you are to lose them.

Use alt tags as teaser copy in case images are blocked or turned off. Here’s before and after copy of an email from Snapfish that still conveys the special offering, even with images off.

Do not embed copy in images or use single, large images. What happens if your headline, call to action or even the entire email is encapsulated in a graphic? The reader can’t see it at all if that image is blocked. Make your most important points in HTML text, as well as in graphics. Also, always link to a web version of your email with all graphics intact.

Say good-bye to One Size Fits All mailings

In my last posting I covered how to ask your email subscribers for more than just their address. I understand that collecting information retroactively can be tough, but no matter whether you’ve been able to collect more than an email address from the get-go or not, it’s important to think about segmenting your database to send relevant information.

What am I, just an address to you?!
You should really want to have a deeper relationship with your list members, which is why you should collect (or ask for retroactively) more information from your subscribers than their email address.

If you only have an email address for your subscribers, you’re taking the “spray and pray” approach. You’re sending the same message to the masses and praying that it’ll be well received. But that’s most likely to be a waste of your time and resources. (This will work for general company updates, i.e. “everything is on sale” or “We’re moving” notices.)

The objective of segmenting your email list members is to increase the relevancy of your messages so that they add more value to your members. This makes your messages a welcome addition to their inbox – builds a good brand awareness for you and improves your reputation with your ESP (fewer spam complaints is good thing).

Moving beyond one size fits all
To segment your the list for your email campaign, split your email list into groups, where each group has some shared characteristic(s). Then you tailor your campaign to each group, with email content, timing and frequency reflecting those shared characteristics.

Still not sure how to segment your list? Here are some ideas:

1. Prospects and clients:

For service providers, someone who’s made a purchase shouldn’t receive the same information as someone who’s still making the purchase decision. Once an email list member has become a client, it’s time to re-classify them so they receive emails that are designed for clients and not prospects. There is nothing that can create more cognitive dissonance than for an existing client to receive an email marketing to them as if they were a prospect offering a better deal than they just received.

2. Demographics:

Too many marketers still fail to leverage the data they collect, such as gender and birthdate. Other demographics might include education levels, occupation, location of residence, marital status, number of children, income or other socio-economic factors. Birthdays are great opportunity to mix up your messaging to an email subscriber and give a non-sale oriented, warm and fuzzy to build trust and enthusiasm with your brand and email program. Only ask for demographic information that’s relevant to your business’s objectives.

“Demographics” is not to be confused with “Psychographics” or the identification of certain characteristics that your clients have that would influence their buying decisions. These could be factors that include measuring their attitudes, interests, opinions, cultural identity, etc.

3. Open rate or CTR rates:

Open rates are inherently inaccurate, so this isn’t one that I’d recommend highly. But, it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that email list members that open your newsletter or click on something on a frequent basis are clearly more engaged than members who do not click on things… therefore, you can test sending a higher frequency to your most engaged members to increase conversion or response. Because of the wonky nature of open rates, some of these followup campaigns may be perceived as pesky duplicates to some recipients.

4. Acquisition Channels:

Where your email members came from is known as an ‘acquisition channel’ and different acquisition channels have different characteristics. Example: Co-registration email list members will always respond or convert differently than organically acquired email members.

5. Geography:

Your prospects or clients in a foreign country really don’t want to hear about your domestic holiday chit chat. And sending your email for a morning special that arrives in your recipient’s inbox at lunchtime because you’ve forgotten about the time zone difference isn’t very helpful either. Why waste resources sending an email to someone who’s geographically undesirable to the point of your message?

6. Interest-based preferences:

If you’ve done surveys over the past year, then you know certain email members have different interests that can help you classify their interest levels in various offerings related to your core product or service.

7. Product lines purchased:

If your firm has a wide line of distinct product lines, it’s best to address your prospects and clients by product line. Give this segment specific offers or content relevant to the product line they are interested in or purchased.

8. Major clients:

VIP clients need to be acknowledged, remembered and given better attention, gifts of exclusive information / content and some of your best deals.

9. Most recent activity:

If you have transactional customers who only purchase your type of product once every X weeks/months/years, it would be wise to segment this type of buyer so that the moment you identify their recent visit or click of a specific campaign, they would be the perfect target for increased attention and offers vs. other times in this type of customer buying cycle.

Anything that lifts the relevancy of your message lifts responses and protects against email fatigue is a good thing – and segmenting your database list will do just that. Questions? Be sure to contact me or leave a comment on this blog post and I’d be happy to talk with you about this topic.

Asking for more information

I’ve had a few conversations recently about how important it is to ask for more than just an email address when setting up a form on a website to begin an email marketing program. So many times, someone will add a box to collect an email address, make sure the form works and think they’re done. That’s some short-term thinking right there!

Of course you want an email address, but how can you segment your database with just an email address?! You can’t. (Unless you want to separate the Yahoo!’s from the Hotmail folks….) As a result, when getting addresses for your mailing list, be sure to collect information that will help you segment your database in a way that’s relevant to the purpose of your email program. Let’s say you want to send offer A to folks who live in Georgia and offer B to everyone else. To do that, be sure to have a place for people who are signing up for your emails to enter in their state.

After the fact…
Now say you’ve been collecting addresses for a long time and want to go back and get more information to go with these addresses. Think that’s going to be tough to do? Think again. Here’s how you do that:

1. Set up a preference center. That’s a fancy name for “form to collect information for my email database beyond just an address.” Here’s a link to an article with tips for better sign-up forms.
2. Craft an email to explain why you’re now asking for more information. Be sure to carefully explain that you’re doing this to send them future emails tailored to their location/interests/whatever else you plan to ask about them to segment your list. For example, if you’re going to be offering seasonally-relevant items to your list members, mention that you don’t want to accidentally offer a snow shovel to a Floridian.
3. Include a link to update their profile in your database. Every reputable email service provider (ESP) will have a means for inserting this link into your email. It’s generally part of the footer boilerplate verbiage. The form itself is similar to the email sign-up form, but that form would give your recipients an error message since their email is already in your database. An “update profile form” will recipients to add the information that’s asked for in your sign-up and associate it with their email address.

Tactically, that’s how you get started. Now that you’ve begun to collect more information about your recipients, it’s time to segment your database and send them relevant information. That’s the topic for next time!

Next Page »