Email marketing 'must compete with social media'

Email marketing will need to compete with social media more over the next 12 months, although the content of emails will still be of greater importance, claims an industry website.
Email marketing campaigns must focus their energies on competing with social media websites for the time of consumers, an online advertising website has suggested.
The results of a survey of email marketers by Marketing Sherpa showed that this challenge has come to the fore over the past year.
Only 23 per cent of people polled said that vying for the attention of online consumers was an important challenge last year, whereas 71 per cent believe that its importance will increase in the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, the content of email marketing campaigns came top of the poll in terms of significance, with 76 per cent stating that it will be key over the next year.
The website explained: "While 'delivering highly relevant email content to recipients' continues to rank at the top, it is declining slightly in importance as email marketers conquer the complexity of this essential tactic."
This week, Marketing Sherpa advised email marketers to try to re-engage inactive subscribers as a way of increasing the number of consumers being reached.

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Email marketing 'boosted by social sharing'

Email marketers can boost the success of their viral productions by making an email which can be shared on social networks, says an industry expert.
Email marketing campaigns should use social sharing to spread a viral production rather than asking customers to forward to a friend, an industry insider has recommended.
Will Schnabel, vice-president and general manager of international markets at Silverpop, made his comments following the release of a study by his organisation, which indicated that social sharing is more than 500 times more effective than forwarding emails.
He pointed out that when consumers use social networks they will on average have up to 200 friends, so if an email is combined with these sharing sites then it will create a very powerful viral tool.
Mr Schnabel explained: "Developing an email that is socially shareworthy can turn messages viral very quickly and reach a new group of customers very similar to the ones you already have."
This week, online advertising website Marketing Sherpa released a study showing that 71 per cent of email marketers believe that they must focus on competing with social media sites for the attention of consumers over the next year.

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Smaller prizes 'can increase email marketing success'

People may respond better to smaller prizes as they believe there is more chance that they will win, says an industry insider.
When offering prizes as part of an email marketing campaign, it can be beneficial to offer smaller gifts, an industry insider has suggested.
Erin Daly, enterprise marketing program manager at PTC, told Marketing Sherpa that her organisation carried out a study comparing response rates between a campaign offering a $10 gift card and another offering an expensive mattress set.
What she concluded from the experiment is that people will assume that they are not going to win the prize if it is too expensive, because the gift card offer ended up giving a 467 per cent increase in the response rate.
She told the website: "If the incentive is 'You get a $10 Starbucks gift card,' I know I'm getting that gift card and I'm much more likely to respond."
Last week, Shera Sherago, senior manager at Interactive Marketing, suggested to Marketing Sherpa that email advertising needs to be managed just as carefully as any other part of a promotional campaign.

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Email marketing "should not be automatic"

Businesses should be managing their transaction email just like any other part of their promotional campaign, says an industry insider.
Email marketing that is sent out after a transaction takes place "should not be automatic", according to an industry insider.
Shera Shrago, senior manager at Interactive Marketing, told Marketing Sherpa that analysing and redesigning the page can make a difference to how successful the email is in attracting repeat customers.
She suggested adding more graphics and removing unnecessary text to make each part stand out more.
Ms Shrago also claimed that it is important to take a look at the repeat purchase discount offer within a marketing email and make sure it is noticeable and that the customer has to clickthrough to benefit, rather than just write down a promotional code.
"The marketing in there should not be automatic. We needed to manage it as a program, just as we would any promotional campaign," she explained to the website.
With regards to the use of promotional codes, she pointed out that they can be hijacked by users and shared with a lot of people when they are only intended to be for repeat users.
Recently, Michael McCathren told Marketing Sherpa that the key to advertising through emails is to encourage people to interact.

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18 to 25-year-olds 'are asking for more email marketing'

More permission-based emails are being requested by a significant proportion of 18 to 25-year-olds, according to new research.

18 to 25-year-olds want more permission-based email (PBE) marketing to be sent to them, according to a new report.

Research undertaken by Epsilon in their Global Consumer Email Study showed that 34 per cent of would like to receive a PBE more than once a day from an online retailer.

Kevin Mabley, senior vice president of strategic services at the organisation, noted that these results show how marketing strategies must change depending on which audience the adverts are aimed at.

He said: "This research emphasises the importance of segmented and targeted marketing campaigns since there's a clear difference in behaviour among age groups.

The report also indicated that 32 per cent of people want more than one entertainment PBE per day and 26 per cent want discount offers from retailers trading offline.

Recently Epsilon managing director Ian Hitt pointed out that it is the control and accuracy that email marketing allows, which makes it a powerful tool right now.

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Businesses must 'test for responses' to email marketing

It is essential that businesses test how much of a response they are getting from their email marketing campaigns to see how successful they have been, says an industry analyst.
Businesses have been told that they must test their email marketing campaigns to see if people are actually responding to them, according to an industry analyst.
Matt McNeil, founder of the email marketing site Sign-Up.to, commented that it is important to communicate with customers and make calculations as to what they will want, but there is no substitute for checking whether they are actually responding.
He noted that it was very important for companies to define their target market when they are starting an email marketing campaign, but once it is underway it is vital to look at valid analysis of its success.
"You can make as many assumptions as you like, but you really need to test with live data to see if people are responding to your campaigns," he said.
Mr McNeil stated that it is necessary to take a different approach depending on which age group is being targeted, because some generations can be harder to win over.
Recent research by Epsilon showed that 18 to 25-year-olds want to be sent more special offers by email, in some cases more than once a day.

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Email marketing "particularly powerful at the moment"

The timing and accuracy of that email marketing allows businesses have been highlighted as the reasons why it is so powerful right now.

Email marketing has been highlighted as one of the most effective online advertising tools by an industry commentator.

Ian Hitt, managing director of Epsilon International, pointed out that the low cost and ability to contact customers more frequently is valuable now that more and more retailers are advertising online.

He commented that there are a lot of myths about subject line testing and about when is the best time to send emails to customers, but not all clients insisted on developing these strategies.

"It is that control over timing and accuracy, then the segmenting of that data that makes email marketing particularly powerful at the moment," he said.

Mr Hitt added that businesses should not use email marketing on its own though, as it works best when combined with other forms of communication, such as direct mail and social networking.

Recent research by Sign-Up.to showed that when somebody opened a B2C email 25.99 per cent of them clicked through to the business's website.

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Businesses must 'learn from customer responses' to email marketing

Learning from customer responses and building long term relationships with them would help businesses improve the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns, says an industry insider.

Businesses should be looking at customer responses to their email marketing campaigns in order to learn how to improve them, according to an industry insider.

Matt McNeil, founder of Sign-Up.to, suggested companies could build on the success of their advertising by listening to what the recipients of the emails had to say.

He also pointed out that retailers' email marketing campaigns are often more effective than advertising in other industries because they pay a lot of attention to getting the most out of them.

"Successful email marketing is all about building a long-term relationship with the customer, it's not about quick customer acquisition and it is certainly not about buying data," he added.

He commented that online retailers can also test how effective their email campaigns are, as they could see exactly how much income they generate from them.

Mr McNeil was speaking following the publication of recent research by Sign-Up.to, which tested how many of its clients emails were opened by recipients.

It found that government emails were opened the most, as they were accessed 49.35 per cent of the time.

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Email marketing great 'from a measurement perspective'

Email marketing should be used to talk to customers and find out which information they want to receive and how often, according to an industry expert.

Email marketing is a "retention mechanism", which businesses should use to talk to customers, according to an industry expert.

Simon Bird, technical director at dotCommerce, recommended not sending a constant stream of emails to clients and instead asking the customer what information they want and how often.

He noted that it was often tempting for businesses to "bombard" customers with emails due to the perceived low cost, but he claimed that the best way to upsell to them is to listen to what they wanted.

"Those companies who get those things right will become market leaders," he said.

While Mr Bird pointed out that email marketing is effective for retaining customers, searches were needed for generating traffic and a website for consumers to make their purchases.

A study by dotCommerce showed that many big retailers are not taking advantage of the chance to develop longer relationships with visitors to their websites - only 30 per cent offer the option of an email newsletter during online checkout.

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Email Marketing

Email marketing 'should include transactional messages'
15/04/2009

Transactional messages should be used in email marketing

Issue Codes Email marketing services Retail

Businesses could do more to include transactional messages in their email marketing strategies, it has been suggested.

According to Stephanie Colleton of Return Path, most retailers do not include any promotional content in their transactional emails at present.

Writing in a DMNews column, she noted that doing so can aid product up-selling and cross-selling, thus enhancing online sales.

However, the two main barriers to this appear to be spam fears and technical issues due to the fact that many retailers use two separate systems for their email marketing and transactional messaging strategies, Ms Colleton commented.

She said: "It may make sense to start with doing simple, generic promotions to dip a toe into the water and get a benchmark for what kinds of sales these messages can generate."

Ed Henrich of ClickZ recently advised email marketing executives to ensure promotional content does not make up more than one-third of the total content of their transactional messages.

Email Marketing

Charities 'offer good examples of effective email marketing'
14/04/2009

Businesses should follow charities' examples of good email marketing

Issue Codes Email marketing services

Businesses could take a leaf out of the books of charities when it comes to improving their email marketing campaigns, according to one expert.

US charities such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Humane Society of the United States are making use of good email marketing practices in terms of driving sign-ups and delivering compelling content, Cynthia Edwards of Email Insider explained.

The World Wildlife Fund offers an email sign-up box on its website while also displaying the most recent e-news in a dedicated section on its homepage, she noted.

Meanwhile, the Humane Society of the United States offers email content that is created to play to subscribers' emotions, Ms Edwards said.

The specialist called email "an intensely personal medium", adding: "An emotional approach can grab attention and motivate readers at the core of their being, if handled well."

Service brands in particular could do more to use emotional ads to appeal to their target audiences, according to a study published by BrandHouse in February this year.

Email Marketing

Render rate 'good for email marketing'
09/04/2009

Email marketing can benefit from render rate

Issue Codes Email marketing services

A new proposed metric for the email marketing sector offers a number of benefits for businesses, it has been suggested.

The render rate was put forward as a possible new metric for email marketing by the Email Experience Council in January this year.

It records the rendering of images contained within a marketing message in subscribers' email services and counts these as opens.

Luke Glasner of Rodman Publishing and Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget said on the Email Experience Blog that the render rate offers numerous opportunities for pre-conversion testing, as well as for measuring in-message ad rendering.

"Since [the render rate] limits the value of the metric to specifically image based opens (renders), it gives us the true number of total impressions using the total emails rendered," the two experts commented.

Another proposed email marketing metric is the action rate, which combines the render rate with calculations regarding the clicking of links within emails.

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Email marketing campaigns 'should be responsible'
08/04/2009

Responsible email marketing urged

Issue Codes Email marketing services

Email marketing campaigns should be responsible when it comes to consumers' need for trust, an expert has said.

Marketers should consider making the process of changing email marketing preferences as easy and transparent as possible to earn recipients' respect, remarked Ashley Johnston of DMNews.

Businesses could set up email marketing preference centres that offer options to update profiles in as simple a manner as possible, she suggested.

Ms Johnston added: "Make it easy for customers to tell you what they want, while keeping in mind that their stated preferences are not static and susceptible to change."

Best practice guidelines developed by the Direct Marketing Association for the email marketing sector advise businesses to tell customers how often they are likely to receive messages they have signed up for when they opt in.

The organisation also recommends that marketers give consumers the option to change the frequency of their online mailings.

Email Marketing

How to make email marketing more social
02/04/2009

Email marketing can work well with social media

Issue Codes Email marketing services

Email marketing professionals have been offered advice on how to update their campaigns so that they take the growing popularity of social media into account.

Ryan Deutsch of StrongMail Systems told BtoB Online that marketers could consider creating their own social network and using the discussions that take place on it in their email marketing newsletters.

He also suggested adding email opt-in links in all online marketing material to expand email databases and using status updates on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote email marketing newsletters.

"Publish a status update the day before you send your newsletter out to remind people it's coming and get them excited about it," Mr Deutsch recommended.

According to a recent study by Nielsen Online, social networking and blogging activities are now more popular than using personal email for web users around the world.

More than two-thirds of global web users now visit blogs and social networks online, the research company noted.