The odds of: inbox placement
I work with a lot of small business owners and it has been my experience that not everyone knows a message isn’t automatically going straight to the recipient’s inbox. If you want to increase the chances that your campaign doesn’t land in the spam folder, start with a list of contacts who have given you their permission to send them marketing emails. After that, it’s about relevancy, good message design and readability.

The odds of: successful metrics
More relevancy = more engagement = more opens and clicks. The formula really is that simple.

The odds of: social media engagement with your campaign
More relevancy + the tools to share your message = more shares within a recipient’s network. By giving someone content that resonates and the means to easily pass it along, the more likely it is that they’ll actually share it on Facebook or tweet about it.

What other odds does an email marketer want to be in their favor? Having a message that’s readable is one, as is a good subject line. Knowing how your recipients like to read their messages and what subject lines generate the most action will come over time. But once that knowledge is obtained, it’s important to remember to use it.

The topic of email deliverability is worth a deeper dive than I’ve given above. Here are a few blog posts in the that are worth a read:
15 best practice tips for improving email deliverability
Five Ways to Improve Email Deliverability with Gmail
Understanding and Improving Email Deliverability

On this first full day of March Madness 2012, I thought I’d apply email marketing strategies to the annual ritual of filling out tournament brackets. Here are four No. 1 seed strategies to keep in mind as you develop and manage your email marketing program.

No. 1 – West Region: Relevance
Is what you’re sending of interest to your audience? The information in your message may be a priority to you (and it should be if you’re sending it out), but the reader needs to be able to quickly understand how/why your email is important to them.

No. 1 Seed – East Region: Audience
Do you know who’s on your distribution list? I don’t mean knowing them personally, but are they people that were invited by you to join your email program? I hope the answer is, “Yes!” It’s key to manage your opt-in program with more information about your list members than just an address. Use this additional information to send your database and send targeted campaigns.

No. 1 Seed – North Region: Design
News flash – the days of single-device viewing are shrinking. A May 2011 report by Campaign Monitor saw 20% of total emails opened come from a mobile device. Bear in mind that not everyone views 100% of their emails in one place. But if some of your list members switch between viewing their emails on a PC and their phone, a smaller subset of that group might only see your message on their phone or iPad. The growth of a mobile audience has been sharp over the past year and it’s critical to make your message actionable for someone surfing their emails with their thumb. Design your message to be action-friendly for desktop platforms, web-based programs and mobile devices.

No. 1 Seed – South Region: Timing
Woody Allen is quoted as saying “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” (I don’t think any of the teams who made it into the tournament would use that as their primary game plan.) Yes, getting into the inbox is what we strive for, but how about sending at a time when your message is most likely to be read? Over a period of time, test out different send times and monitor the results. Whatever time is best reaching your desired metric, be it opens or sales or some other business objective, use that until you see a dip in results. Then test again. But always keep in mind your audience demographics, if you know them, and act accordingly.

Do we need a Cinderella story for our tournament bracket?
It wouldn’t be March Madness without one! Pinterest is the social media darling du jour. Let’s keep an eye on how this site integrates targeted HTML emails into the mix.

A recent study stated that the first two days of the NCAA tournament account for a loss of $175 million in productivity as basketball fans turn their attention to the games and away from their responsibilities.  Don’t let your email program’s productivity suffer by ignoring any of these top-seeded strategies.

With February being my birthday month, I’ve received a ton of notes to wish me well on my special day. This seemed like a good opportunity to talk about these feel-good emails that any business can send.

Step 1 to sending these is collecting the necessary information. Adding the birthday field to your sign-up form will solve that problem.

The next is to decide the objective for your birthday email program. Do you want the messages to be a branding initiative or are they to be a means for adding incremental sales? There’s no reason you can make both of these a goal for your happy birthday emails. Keep this in mind as you design the email’s template.

If you’re using these as an opportunity to merely have a favorable brand impression, your message doesn’t need to have a sales incentive, but the content should be strong enough to have a positive impact. If you also want to increase offline or online sales from the message, include an incentive, such as a special birthday discount, to drive purchases.

Here are some birthday message tips:

• Make the email pretty – keep your brand colors and look intact, but this is an opportunity to do something playful as well.
• Give people time to redeem the offer – Your contacts receive lots of birthday emails. Give them a chance to make use of your promotion.
• Test your campaign – this message can be used all year long. Keep an eye on what offers are performing best and which subject lines have the highest open rates. Adjust as needed.
• Send a targeted offer – use past purchase behavior or other information collected at sign-up to send a relevant offer.

As was expected, I received numerous emails to wish me well on my birthday. Here are some notes about a couple that stood out:

Atlanta Magazine:
What I liked: I’ve been a regular reader of the print version for several years, but their message included a discount to subscribe to the digital version of the magazine. In all, the message was short and sweet.
The offer: In addition to giving a discount on the digital version, a local museum also offered a discount on tickets to visit. This is one that I’ll definitely be using, especially since the offer is valid for four months – plenty of time to visit.

The Counter
This burger restaurant is a favorite of my family’s, but I’ve never ordered a shake after a meal there. The email itself looked pretty, but left me with more questions than answers. The message didn’t include any details about the offer (What size shake? When does the offer expire?) or even what types of shakes do they offer. When I clicked to learn more, I was taken to a web page with offer details written in tiny print. It’s nice that they wanted to wish me well, but I’d have had a much more enjoyable experience if I could’ve just printed the email (or shown it on my smartphone) to get my free shake. Is abuse of the offer really that rampant?!

Here are some other links that discuss birthday emails:
Silverpop: Your Blueprint for Building a Birthday Email Program

Marketing Profs: Birthday, Anniversary Emails Generate More Revenue

If a birthday wish is buzzworthy, your customers can become brand ambassadors. Be sure to include a sharing mechanism if you want to extend the “birthday party.”

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

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.