EASY AS ONE, TWO, THREE…..
Step One: ACQUISITION What is acquisition in email marketing? Can’t you just email anybody?
In email marketing, “acquisition” means adding a person’s email address to your customer database in order to send messages. Implicit in that acquisition is permission – your subscriber or customer gives you that address in exchange for receiving email messages.
You can’t simply grab a list of email addresses and start emailing as a) it’s illegal in almost every country in the world, and b) you need high-quality addresses to run a successful email programme.
Most websites have an email sign-up form. Where else can an organisation look to gain new subscribers?
Having a highly visible opt-in form on the homepage is the bare minimum. You need to do more to collect as many high-quality email addresses as possible.
Here’s a list of 10 locations where you should post your subscription invitation: 1. On product pages and landing pages tied to your search marketing 2. On your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media homepages 3. On transaction confirmation pages 4. In transactional emails 5. In your mobile app 6. On print materials, such as in-store signs, bags and bag stuffers 7. In print ads 8. On emailed receipts 9. In conversations with customer support people 10.On product packaging
Each link or field should lead to an opt-in landing page where you can show customers what they’ll get for opting in and start collecting more data besides the email address.
NB: Nobody wants more email. They want better email – messages that reflect their needs and interests and deliver value every time.
You have the email address. Now what? Why is onboarding new subscribers so important?
Throwing new subscribers into the middle of your messaging stream, can turn them off quickly.
Use the “honeymoon” phase to send a series of emails that warm up your subscribers, train them to look for your messages and remind them about the benefits of signing up.
Your onboarding programme has three goals:
1. Welcome subscribers
2. Begin collecting data that you can use
3. Guide customers to their first conversions
What kind of data can you collect besides name and email address?
Possibilities are endless but even your most enthusiastic subscribers are going to back off if you don’t go about it the right way.
1. Don’t ask for too much data too early.
Income, home address and other information might be crucial for your business, but you could scare customers away if you ask for too much too soon.
2. Always explain why you need the data.
Frame your explanations around how it benefits the customer.
3. Use the data.
Customers pay attention - if you ask for a birthday send a birthday greeting, if you ask for location be sure your emails reflect it.
4. Explain clearly how you will use and protect the customers’ data – and then protect it!
Phrase your explanation in plain language
Rob Hollier, from Adestra, talks to us about using email and marketing automation to acquire, convert, and keep customers.
and put it in your email too. Don’t drop customers onto your privacy policy page and hope for the best.
How can you collect more data?
Data collection begins at the point of opt-in with the email address and continues through the whole customer relationship with your brand.
You can collect two kinds of data – directly from your customers and indirectly by observing their behaviour on your emails and your site.
The more data, the richer your customer records. That helps you personalise and target your emails better, letting customers know you recognise them as individuals.
You have three main sources for collecting data directly from customers:
1. Surveys
These can be as simple as asking a one- or two-question pop quiz in a special email. Some brands add a fun quiz to each message and use the responses to segment and target messages.
2. Preference centre
A preference centre is a webpage linked to the subscriber’s account listing the subscriber’s preferences for all the options you provide, from content interests to frequency and email streams.
Use an onboarding email to invite new customers to fill out their preferences. Explain why this can improve their email experience with your brand. Then, be sure your emails reflect those preferences.
3. Progressive profiling
Progressive profiling gathers data through a drawn-out series of questions sent via email. Instead of asking 10 questions at once, begin with one or two, then a couple more that build on the answers from those first questions. This way, you build up a reservoir of data over time without overwhelming or scaring off your customers.
When you combine this self-reported data with what you observe from their behaviour, you can create messages that come as close as possible to one-to-one messaging at scale. That’s the heart of First Person Marketing!
Step Two: CONVERSION We hear a lot about how well email can generate conversions, but what, exactly, is a conversion in email?
Essentially, a conversion happens when someone does something you want them to do. In its purest form, an email marketing conversion is either an open or a click. However, marketers typically extend the definition of conversion to include any consumer action that has been influenced by an email. The initial click then becomes a micro conversion that leads to a macro conversion elsewhere.
Rather than simply measuring opens and clicks – which are vital, but somewhat meaningless to an organisation’s profit and loss statement – a conversion could be a purchase, a subscription, an event registration, a download, or a preference centre update, among others. Now we’re talking real dollars, real consumer engagement, and real data… giving you real results such as revenue, audience, and insights to do better marketing.
Email is consistently ranked as a top-performing marketing channel, but its results remain all smoke and mirrors for many organisations. If you can start reporting that “our latest campaign returned $15,000 in sales”, instead of “our last email saw a 55% open rate”, then you can expect your budget to grow.
How can email help a marketer to increase conversions?
By moving away from broadcast email – the “batch and blast” model – and replacing it with “1:1” emails. This is the essence of First-person Marketing, which uses customer data to create highly personalised content relevant to each customer, whether to a segment or in a triggered message, and using marketing automation to do it at scale.
When you send a single EDM to your entire audience, you connect with only a small percentage of customers, and it’s completely at random. The conversions your email generates are due to more luck than skill. By using data to create content that reflects your customer’s preferences and behaviour, your messages become more relevant and valuable, and you encourage customers towards that conversion – much the same as a retail assistant presenting you with an outfit that is your favourite colour, the right size, and in the right price range… there is a good chance that you would buy it!
First-person Marketing, segmentation, automation… aren’t these difficult to implement?
Research states that marketers typically use 20% or less of an email and marketing automation platform’s features because they simply don’t know how to use the more advanced offerings. If you fall into that category, then either find a new provider or get them to help you out!
Strategically, these are not difficult concepts to grasp or implement. You don’t need a complex set of data on each subscriber in your database to begin creating subsections of your database that share one or more characteristics (gender, location, previous purchase, etc.). In fact, you can start if all you have are an email address and the date it entered your database: Create a segment with new subscribers and send a special onboarding email (see previous page).
Most email marketing platforms offer some level of marketing automation these days. If yours doesn’t, then find a new provider. If yours does, then give it a go. However you may find that the problem isn’t that the feature itself is not available, but instead lies around lack of data integrations to drive the relevant triggers – this simply needs to be scoped out, or lack of service and support to help turn your ideas into actual implementations – this comes down to your vendor.
What can marketers do right now to improve their conversion rates and generate higher ROI?
The most important thing is to understand that you can’t do it all right away – you can’t jump from broadcast email to triggered and targeted messaging, using dynamic content and creating 1:1 experiences for every subscriber. That shift can take years ago to accomplish. Besides, you still need to get your campaigns out the door. It’s like living in a house while you renovate every room all at the same time. It’s also hard to know
where to start if you don’t know what to fix first. Instead of trying to launch a full-blown program, which could take more than a year, take it one step at a time.
First, find something you could change in your next campaign – a new trigger, a new call to action, anything that doesn’t call for major upheaval. Make the change and measure your results. Then, next week, change something else. Now you’re trying two new things. The week after that, add another change to the two you’ve implemented already.
Build on your incremental innovations every week if you can. Before too long, you’ll look up and see how far you’ve come.
Step Three: SUBSCRIBER ATTRITION What is email attrition?
The dictionary defines “attrition” as “a reduction or decrease in numbers, size, or strength.” In email, attrition represents the customers who have left your list. Most attention focuses on people who left by unsubscribing, but many marketers also count spam reporters and bouncing email addresses, both of which must be removed from your list to avoid penalties from ISPS that could harm delivery.
Why should attrition matter to email marketers?
It matters because you have lost the opportunity to market to those subscribers. You did something to make them unsubscribe, and you need to understand why.
Maybe your content doesn’t talk about things your customers care about. Or, it doesn’t reflect their behaviour. Maybe you didn’t explain what your emails were all about, or your content didn’t live up to their expectations. They might not even have signed up for your messages, if you use pre-checked permission boxes or require them to receive email as a condition of doing business with you.
Sometimes, it’s not even about you. Your customers could have outgrown you, or changed their interests, or moved on from the products or services you offer.
High attrition puts an extra burden on your email acquisition program because you have to work twice as hard to grow. First, you need to replace the people you lose. Then, you must acquire new subscribers beyond just replacing your list-leavers.
So, attrition is a bad thing, right?
Not always. Despite what your execs might believe, database size isn’t everything. You could have a million email addresses, but only a few thousand ever open your emails, and only a few hundred click. That’s pretty dismal, and it can generate side effects that hurt your ability to reach the inbox.
People who unsubscribe are sending you a message. You need to figure out what that message is, whether it’s general discontent, a disconnect with your audience’s needs or inserts, or something that’s tied to your customer or product lifecycle.
The unsubscribe rate (the percentage of customers who unsubscribe when you send a campaign) can tell you a lot. Track it to discover trends and spikes and see if it corresponds to time of year, to the content you’re sending or some other factor.
What tactics can email marketers use to reduce attrition?
First, remember that some attrition is normal. As I said previously, subscribers can age out of your email program – parents who subscribe for offers on baby clothes probably won’t need those emails once their kids head off to university. People move away or change their minds or even find someone whose products they like better.
Focus instead on the issues that you can control – the content you send, the length, tone and design of your emails, even the frequency and cadence at which you send messages.
Opting down to reduce attrition
Getting emails too often always ranks high among consumers’ reasons for unsubscribing or even clicking the spam button.
We’re seeing more marketers – particularly retail marketers – take an “opt-down” approach to give subscribers an alternative to opting out. This means you give your subscribers more choices beyond opting out of your email program altogether, such as reducing frequency.
The opt-down approach to unsubscribe requests gives you an opportunity to retain those subscribers, and on their terms. You can offer this option to customers who choose to unsubscribe by sending them to a preference page that gives them the option to modify their subscriptions or opt out altogether.
The most basic opt-down list gives your subscribers the option to change their email frequency. If you send multiple emails daily, offer them the option to receive email once a week or once a month. Once a subscriber chooses a new frequency, you need to determine which emails from your entire email program will be sent to each frequency segment.
Let subscribers choose the campaigns
Consider giving subscribers the option to receive only certain types of campaigns. B2C marketers who sell several product categories could let subscribers choose the departments that interest them most, such as women’s or children’s clothing, sporting goods, or household appliances.
Financial-services companies could offer choices among mortgage rates, bank promotions, investments, or everyday accounts.
B2B companies can get quite specific, separating product updates from company news, white papers, and case studies.
What’s important is to think about the main verticals within your business and the types of products or categories you offer. Put those the options on the optdown page. Be realistic, however, and make sure those are categories that you can use to create segments in your email program.
Wrapping up
The caveat with opt-down, whether you tie it to frequency or interests, is that you will need to invest time and effort to create a page that offers those options. If you’re serious about trying to retain more subscribers, it will be worth the investment.