Non-Line Blogging

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’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.

A few years ago the email marketing community was trembling with fear at the arrival of RSS feeds. Outlook 2007 was built to make their subscription, rendering and filing smooth and efficient; RSS readers like Newsgator and GoogleReader circumvented spam filtering of any kind; and distribution was even cheaper than email – completely free!

Today email and RSS live in peace and harmony. Content-driven organisations have developed elegent RSS capabilites to link new articles with interested readers, whilst email continues to be the workhorse of marketing departments – delivering “successful outcomes” across the acquisition, conversion and retention cycle.  There is no suggestion of dropping one for the other - they do slightly different things. 

So with trepidation we hear that once again email is under threat, this time from the shiny, fluffy world of Social Media. Web users are flocking to the tweeting of Stephen Fry and the poking of Facebook groups. But once again, reports of the death of email are grealy exaggerated. 

Its itonic that social media sites are some of the most prolific email marketers – using the channel to inform people of changes to site status and getting people to a page in a simple click. At The Email Academy we are already seeing clients asking us how we can integrate their email retention programmes into their social media activity. Welcome programmes for new subscribers to a Facebok Product Group? Progressive registration via a web form link to learn more about Twitter followers? Aggregating forum discussions from LinkedIn into weekly newsletters? 

For experienced email marketers all these social media interactions give us a new layer of clickstream data to interrogate and respond to with even more relevant, engaging communications. Social Media? Bring it on!

Been working with a client this week on proposition building - trying to "distil the product down to its core proposition".  It reminded me of the brilliant quote from Dilbert (Scott Adams) and how many companies struggle with this...

Value Proposition:  

A long, awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly

Looking around the UK marketplace it seems retailers are falling back on slashed prices as their only proposition as they try and soak up the small amounts of cash in circulation.  Sorry to be banging on about retailers right now but they seem to be throwing up a rich seam of email marketing experiences - some good, some bad.

It worked when Howies did it in an "out of character way"...their 20% proposition was a surprise because this is not what they normally do.

Great Little Trading company just sound a little bit desperate and in too much of a me-too way, (In My Humble Opinion)...  

Boden are not shy in leading on price...all their on-line propostitions start with at least 10% off.  However, last week Boden showed a glimpse of quick thinking and quick actions to mask the recent reduction in Value Added Tax from 17.5% to 15%.  It's done with a light touch and a patriotic heart... 

So maybe the companies that will survive will be those most able to respond to opportunities, as we have seen this week with the Howies case study.  Aside from the "biggest single day in Howies history" quote I want to share something else with you.  Our man at Howies also said to me... 

So yeah, it went really well.. and I think the success made us realise we have to be a lot smarter and a lot faster about marketing in the future. Especially in the current climate.

Meanwhile I was chatting to another retailer, this time a big traditional retailer, about being quick off the mark.  He wanted them to go with an email campaign the other day -  a swift, tactical response to market conditions.  But no, it was all too much for them.  (Reminded me when I asked a UK high street bank team how fast they could get an email out the door...the response was "6 weeks")  Howies said in their email to their customers...

We didn't need a board meeting, we didn't need to get the idea signed off by loads of departments. We didn't even have to get the calculator out. We just decided whilst we were walking over the bridge to work. 

Maybe that's the difference between success and failure.  Not just having the ideas, but having the process efficiency and corporate mindset to "just do it".  So the challenge for 2009 is to create a way of working that allows you to dream up great propositions and also execute them swiftly.  And in the next post I'll outline 10 ways to speed up the time taken from "thinking" to "doing"...which may just keep your company afloat in 2009!