Non-Line Blogging

What’s your reputation in the second largest search engine?  Since October 1998 Comscore has been telling us that YouTube searches passed those on Yahoo, with Google still dominating the pack.  So is it about time you started pinging your search terms into engines other than The Big G? 

First up, a bit of a brand reputation challenge. Imagine you are the brand police at Farrow and Ball, manufactuers of beautiful, traditional paints.  Everything is rosy (Rectory Red or Ointment Pink?)  in the marketing garden – natural search in Google for brand terms looks fine, as it does in Bing and Ask.  But have they tip-tied into the scary world of YouTube and looked at their brand reputation?  If they had they will see a dark grey cloud (Off-black, or perhaps Studio Green?) hanging over them.  For the rest of us we can sit back and chortle with delight as some young digital consumer shatters their reputation in front of over 400,000 brand searchers.

So, how about generic searches?  What happens when your next customer decides that YouTube might hold some handy hints and tips on buying things...like car insurance?  Could you have a group of consumers talking about your products, your competitors’ and market aggregators?  How about a few client testimonials, and how about re-purposing favourable reviews from other videos or TV shows?  Add some of the increasingly-easy video optimisation techniques and maybe you can steal a march on the competition.  Hats off to CompareCarInsurance for getting up and running with this strategy, but have a watch of the "Auto Insurance" clip if you've ever had to insure a young male driver...it's very, very funny!

So we now know that search and reputation management is much more than just checking your ranking in Google.  Now we have the challenges of real-time search tools and the sheer pace and volume of brand monitoring on sites like Twitter and Facebook.  But what about all the other search engines out there?  On my digital marketing courses I encourage people to check their brand on Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and all the other social networking/bookmarking sites.  Aggregate together all the generic and brand searches not being done on Google and Bing and there should be plenty of traffic there to keep you going into 2010. 

And finally, two things to consider with on-site search.  Firstly, how do you use on-site search data?  It could give you some clues about navigation...if lots of people have to search for something maybe it needs to better signposted, or maybe you’re not using the same words as your customers to describe a product/service.  Secondly, what are your in-site search results like?  Try typing a competitor’s brand and see what you get back...could you offer them your alternative product rather than return a “no results found” page?  Or pretend you are Larry and Sergei and build your own search rules to make sure the best results (most profitable, most in warehouse?) come to the top of  your in-house results page.

And what about that apology of a search box on your site?  (Yes, mine’s a weeny one too). A year ago Amazon made its search box HUGE because they noticed that Google had a big one, and people liked that.  Go to some of the younger, fresher sites and the top of the page is dominated by the search box.  It’s just another one of the web design trends that you may be wise follow.

So, search is much, much more than a bit of Googling for many of your consumers, and there are big, quick wins waiting to be taken.  Nows the time to improve your reputation and visibility for brand and generic terms on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Metacafe, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Reddit and then you get stuck into the next 100 search engines! Good luck!

I want to challenge our assumptions about email frequency.  Let’s start with a piercing question: If you mail people more often do you deliver more “successful outcomes” or just make people angry?

We seem to be obsessed about hurting people’s feelings.  We’ve been brought up in a culture that says too much email is a bad, bad thing.  But we've probably never tested "how much is too much", and we've never established the risk of people un-subscribing against the reward of incremental success.   I've tried to model it as a couple of graphs...

In this graph we see 2 campaign options...maybe invitations to an event, or follow-ups to a quote enquiry.  If we only send 2 messages to people (the lighter columns) we end up "converting" only 40% of all those people who could be convinced into buying.  However, if we kept hammering away at people with more messages we may convert the remaining 60% by the 9th message.  Makes us feel un-comfortable, doesn't it?  That's because we intuitively feel that the un-subscribe rate will increase.  But will it really?  Have we tested it?  Can we graph it?  Will it look like this?

The darker columns indicate our best guess of what will happen.  We think that by sending out 1 message few people will un-subscribe, but by sending out 2 or 3 the sky will be blackened with people hitting the "un-subscribe" button, and by message 9 we will probably have deliverability problems for ever.  Yet the reality (lighter columns) could be that even after 5 messages half the people are still "in the market", and only by message 9 do we reach un-subscribe saturation point.

Let's take a campaign opportunity - one where we have a "window of opportunity" to get somebody to buy/register.  Insurance quotes are a great one for this model...people get a quotes from a few companies and make up their mind about which company to go with in about 10 days.  Here's what we do as marketers...

• We send out a quote confirmation on day 1
• Then 2 days later we send out a quote chaser.
• That's it.
• Silence.
• They choose a competitor on day 6
• They stay with them for 3 years
• What a wasted opportunity.

Now, what if we found reasons to get back in touch with people?  What if on day 3 we told them that we had a competition for all new insurance customers?  And on day 5 we told them that they could possibly save more money on the quote as you had taken on another under-writing company..or you just offered them another 20% discount?

• 3 more messages
• 30% more customers for 3 years
• A few more un-subscribes...probably people who were never going to be customers anyway
• More sales - very low risk
• What are you waiting for?

Some examples to inspire - and re-assure

Please don't think that by simply hammering people with the same message more often you will be more successful.  Try and think of engaging ways to re-position the call to action.  Be interesting.  Do a few different things.

Abandoned Registrations

This is a great opportunity to turn up the message frequency to get people to complete a "double opt-in" join process.  I was told by a fried that, as I have a lovely pet dog, I should sign up to Dogster.  I went through the web bit, but never quite got around to the email activation bit.  So I was locked into their "email opt-in reminder programme"

What I like about this is the need to chase people to complete the registration process.  Not one chaser, but 5.  Not one subject line, but 3.  Question marks and exclamation marks!  I converted on the last one...maybe there would have been a few more had I resisted.  And, as this is the only excuse I'll ever have, here is a picture of my faithful hound, Dylan.

Registered but not Purchased

Here is a lovely BtoB example of contact density.  I received 10 emails from the same company for the same event with the same call to action - "please come to our event".  But it was spread over a 5 month period, and they used a variety of angles to seduce me into registering.  Here they all are...

Nice variety of subject lines moving from "be better at your job" through to "have a wonderful time with loads of fun people" through to "make sure you get a bed for the night".  In essence it is saying "please come to our event".  Sadly I didn't, but that's because I was busy not because the email failed to convert me.

Frequency + Engagement = Results?

So what have we learned from all that?  Maybe you can ramp up the number of times you reach people by email during "windows of opportunity"...abandoned shopping carts, abandoned registrations and "non-purchased" segments.  We have to do it in a creative, engaging way otherwise we look and sound like spammers.    But if we get it right there should be little collateral damage as the only people who might un-subscribe could be the prospects who were not right for you anyway.

One final thought...as more people tune in for Google alerts, what is the "frequency" defaulted to?  

Daily.  

Just goes to show that we don't mind getting an email a day if it is relevant.  Maybe now is the time to test reaching people just a little bit more often.

Argos.co.uk I think I love you.

For several years marketers have been talking themselves out of using "FREE" or even "Free" in email subject lines.  "We'll end up with a bad reputation and blocked by ISP's for ever", they cried.  More and more marketers joined the chorus until even their colleagues in Finance would stop them in a corridor and say

"I was playing golf with my accountant friend Jack and he said we should never use "Free" in our subject lines".  

So, Mr Finance Director, just suppose you compete with Argos in the UK e-commerce market and into your inbox come the following email...

The Argos e-commerce team seem to know more than others about email delivery and, since "Free" is one of the most powerful motivators in our language I hope they are reaping handsome rewards for their know-how.  So, how are they doing it?

In short, the deliverability war has moved on from simplistic "content filtering" and is now based more on "consent" and "reputation".  I won't go into a big lecture on all that right now, but here is what you really ought to know.

1.  Consent - Get people to add you to their address book will ensure that emails you send (from the same address) will by-pass local Spam filters on clients like Outlook and web-based systems like Yahoo and Windows Live Mail.

2.  Reputation.  Do the right things - don't re-mail un-subscribes, or blast out lists with a high bounce rate, or send dull messages that nobody will respond to.  They will tarnish your reputation and organisations like SenderScore will share that bad reputation with ISP's and business mail hosting service providers.

For reference, Spamassassin does indeed have a "naughty boy" point for using the word FREE in the Subject line, but it is only a single point and is only 1 of several hundred rules that are run against all your emails.  However, there are worse tests to fail but thankfully people in Finance don't know about them.  Wouldn't it be a great day if somebody came up to you and said:

"I was playing golf with my accountant friend Jack and he said we should check our messages for X-IP Headers as they attract almost 3 times more points than using the word "Free".

Here are some of the Spamassassin checks you may want to get excited about, but you will never know what score triggers filtering, or what % of a total process is made up of the Spamassassin elements so it really is a blunt tool for precise filtering from the marketers' perspective.  (you can find them all here but it still won't give you any clues as to how many points your message needs to get delivered - it will vary every day and for every in-bound filtering system); first up is everybody's favourite with the word FREE, then I have shown one of many tests done on the "header" of your message, and finally one to show that even filtering tools now factor in some kind of reputation checks...you can start off with MINUS 100 points if you have all the Authentication tools in place.

So, how do you know if its safe to use FREE?

Well, the first thing we can do is know our Reputation as others will see it.  Head over to Senderscore and read all the lovely stuff they have written about reputation-based filtering.  Then find out your own reputation score by doing the following...here'e the results for Argos.

First, find out your sender IP address - its somewhere in the message headers.  This is where it is in Outlook 2007

Then copy the IP address and pop it into the FREE (!) Senderscore Reputation checker (you will need to register to see more detailed information).  This will give you your reputation as others see you:

So, with a 70 out of 100 overall reputation score, a 100% delivery rate and a "Low" risk it is quite likely that most ISP's will allow most Argos messages through without getting excited about the words and pictures they use.  And with powerful motivators like "free" in there, I hope they are enjoying wonderfully high click and conversion rates.

Just to validate my thinking here is one from deep in my Gmail Spam folder...with a 5 out of 100 its got little chance of getting into my primary inbox regardless of the words

And finally, just like a personal credit record in the financial services world, sometimes having no reputation is as bad as having a poor reputation.  Here is a lovely email that made its way into my Junk Mail folder

...and here is the reputation report from Senderscore, showing that little or no activity gives them too little information upon which to base their opinions:

So, to summarise, don't hang on to outdated, over-simplistic email filtering rules.  Get good at managing your reputation and take a few "risks" once you know that your message has a good chance of being delivered.  Keep testing campaigns to check delivery into Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail and if all seems good, keep filling up those subject lines with presuasive words!  Way to go, Argos!!

I was asked this week to share some "inspirational" digital marketing experiences by Ian Jindal, and came up with a couple of sites that "did it for me", as it were....more of those in a moment.  But a while ago I blogged about the way that in some marketplaces all companies were migrating to similar web site design characteristics.  It seems that on-line retailing is heading the same way as Financial Services was a couple of years ago.  As somebody who likes un-cluttered web design I'm finding it delightful and I'd like to share what we can all learn from it.  But first - the fun bit.

I love the way that Hema, a Dutch retailer have decided not to take themselves too seriously and a couple of yeas ago pulled together a fantastic home page experience.  It relies on people waiting for the page to load and for them to wait a couple of seconds before whirring into life but it is worth it to enjoy the chaotic exuberance of the web experience!

http://producten.hema.nl

On an altogether more serious note, I recently heard a presentation from the web team at Finnish ceramics and homeware company Iittala.  They have spoken a couple of times on the Certificate in Digital Marketing course that I run on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau Finland and the Institute of Direct Marketing.  I think its time the site shared a wider audience because it is so elegant.

It is everything that some of the lifestyle e-commerce players in the UK are trying to be, except this does it with even more elegance...IMHO.  They even drop a bit of the old social stuff on the home page.  And they carry it through with some great “non-line” integration and will soon have a single customer view via the MyIittala concept. And they tell stories...is the return of the “narrative structure” the next big thing in web marketing?

Specifically the site ticks all the right design boxes because: 

• Brand personality is strong
• Consistent, classy fonts across the whole site
• Bleeding the Capital "L" on the home page into the border oozes typographic confidence (!)
• "Navigation" pages built for 1024 x 768 browser
• Breathtakingly elegant photography
• Beautiful product shots
• Confident, approachable, conversational tone of voice – sometimes hard for non-UK countries.

And they are even taking on Howies.co.uk with the "we're a retailer and we really care" angle:

And they use excellent copy to build the story - and the experience

So, from the cheeky fun of Hema or the classy sophistication of Iittala it appears that we can build strong brand experiences through web site design.  And with sites like John Lewis and Marks and Spencer setting the pace for clear, un-cluttered web experiences in mainstream markets will the messy ones with multiple fonts and poor design suffer as the bar is raised ever higher?

I’ve been involved in email marketing for over 12 years now, as a client, for a technology vendor, as a trainer and as a consultant.  It’s been really exciting helping to shape a channel that continues to deliver the highest ROI of any direct marketing channel ever ever ever.  I have a particular (un-healthy?) fascination with the way that marketers have adapted to the changing legislative environment, specifically in the emotionally charged area of un-subscribing.

In the bad old days of email, we made the un-subscribe process the very opposite of usability best practice: 

• The opt-out link was hard to find - not quite ”white text on a white background”, but not far off!
• The landing page demanded a 20 character alpha-numeric password that had cunningly been asked for at sign-up.
• The un-subscribe would take 10 days to come into effect, during which time the recipient would be spammed to within an inch of their life. 

Then in 2003 it all changed (for the better, I may add).  In Europe the “Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations” ensured that every marketing message carried a “free and simple mechanism” by which people could un-subscribe, and in the USA the “Can Spam” act did pretty much the same thing.  The bar was raised a few inches and the less reputable email marketers who had been blasting away at their base had nowhere to hide.

Fast forward to 2009 and we are seeing some really creative, and wholly appropriate, approaches to un-subscribe management.  The first thing to stress is that we have moved on from a binary world of “opt in or out for everything” to a place where people can “tune” their relationship with an organisation.  If you’re not doing this through “permission centres” then you’re missing a trick to engage at an appropriate level with potential and existing customers.  But of more interest is “what happens when they smack the un-subscribe link”?

Legally, under a 2009 amendment to the “Can Spam” laws in the USA, you must not force people to log into a system in order to un-subscribe:  The link should take them to a landing page where they should be able to opt-out of the email programme.  Nothing wrong with that, you may say.  Indeed Seth Godin in Permission Marketing written 10 years ago suggested that you should let people unsubscribe easily...I would add the phrase “with grace and dignity”.  But how far can we raise the emotional temperature?  What can we say to people to make them change their mind?  And how do we get our great ideas past the stuffy old legal team covered with dust in the basement?!

Un-subscribing is a critical moment in a long-term relationship.  Left in the hands of the legal team it will end up as a dull, rude, clinical process with only one outcome – they’ll un-subscribe.  But legally, the game is not lost.  We can take them to a landing page that simply asks them “are you sure?”.  We want to remind them of how it all began, the good times we’ve had together and the wonderful future we can enjoy together if only they don’t click that “confirm” button...”

So, here’s a little exercise for you...

Firstly, do you know the value of an email address for your organisation?  If not, add up the money you generate from campaigns, look at the cost savings of not having to mail/phone people, and calculate the incremental revenue you can get from all email campaigns over a 2 year period.  If you’re an e-commerce company, the figure may well be near 200 (Dollars, Pounds, Euros...they’re all worth the same these days anyway!)

Secondly, look at the current un-subscribe rate from click to “gone”.  What if you could halve that un-heathily high conversion rate?  How much revenue would that save/make over 2 years?

Thirdly, think about how you could make people change their mind.  Do you re-sell the benefits of a hard-won email relationship?  Can you bribe them, or can you make them feel guilty?. 

Here are 2 landing pages that I’m sure will reduce the number of “un-successful outcomes” (un-subscribes).  The first is a lovely BtoC example in keeping with the brand personality of a photo-sharing site that makes you think “how could I be so mean?”.  The second is  a BtoB example where you’re being “bribed” to stay registered in exchange for an “exponential gift” that needs me to use a racy Password (ICY-HOT, if you please) to get $97 worth of value.  Saddest of all things is...I fell for it!

Easy to set up.  Easy to test.  Easy to deliver some really big wins in your email strategy.  This is one of the few times in digital marketing where we can judge success by the number of people who DON’T do something!  

 Here is a great "are you sure" landing page in keeping with a digital photography client.  Maybe it could build on the "think of all the wonderful stuff you're missing" but as an emotional response, we don't weant to upset the baby! (Many thanks to Avinash Kaushik for spotting that one)

This is a really in-your-face challenge to un-subscribing.  It may sound a bit cheezy and even desperate, but I fell for it!  You'll need tune the tone of voice to suit your own organisation, but keep the passion for maintaining an email dialogue.