Non-Line Blogging

By way of validating my thoughts about email working brilliantly, here's proof that it can make you shedloads of money in a recession...

I emailed a link to my blog to the lovely people at Howies asking them if they could share any feedback on the success of their email.  Without giving away too many trade secrets here is what their marketing man, Ruben said...

We literally made the decision to go to sale on the Thursday morning, and by Friday lunchtime, it looked like we were on for the biggest single day in Howies history!

Way to go, Howies.

And if you really want to know, this is the jumper I bought that helped make a little bit of retail history in Cardigan Bay.

I am Course Tutor for the Institute of Direct Marketing's “Email Marketing – Beyond the Basics” for the next 2 days and it was a delight, as always, to hear John Ashton from Screwfix share some thoughts, this time on “email marketing in a recession”.   He waved a copy of today’s Sun newspaper and it was filled with BIG discounts from BIG retailers – 20% off at Marks & Spencer, 25% off at Debenhams and 6 pages of offer-driven ads from Argos.  In the face of all this, he warned, email marketers need to respond.  Here are 3 of his observations that every marketer should act upon: 

• Know what your customers are thinking – tap into forums, send them surveys and make sure you are in touch...are they deferring all spending plans for 6 months or just until Christmas.
• Remind people that you won’t be going bust – if it’s true.  Whilst other suppliers are engaged in ever-more desperate measures to get sales, maintain your dignity.
• Focus on existing customers – if they have loved you in the good times they may well be prepared to love you through the bad times. 

Interestingly, earlier today I dipped into an article from Lyris entitled “In this economy, its survival of the fastest”.  Here’s a thought from them:

“Don't assume the plan you created in September is still relevant. It isn't. Right now, any survey on future purchasing intentions that's more than a week old is probably obsolete.”

Now what is spooky about all this is that as John was speaking I received an email from Howies a company I have bought from before, that seemed to echo all the things he and Lyris were telling us we're supposed to do.  As a result I spent £50 with them 10 minutes later so maybe I should share the email they sent...talk about precient! (here’s the email on-line) 

So, there is an email marketer who got my £50 in a recession by being relevant, engaging and timely. Let's hope they thrive in a recession - as well as Screwfix.  And just as a compliment to John at Screwfix, here is a screenshot of a fantastic "persuasion device" he's put on their home-page...an offer with a countdown clock!  Who said we can't be a little bit cheezy as well in a recession if it makes the till ring? 

What will you do with the 97% of visitors who won’t “convert” on your website today?  You know, the hundreds of people you’ve paid lots of money to get to your site?  Probably nothing – unless you have worked on your registration strategies.  Here is the quick and easy way to convert more of your hard-earned traffic for a really low cost... 

Some companies are recognising that they are wasting money on driving traffic just to harvest a small percentage of sales:  There are probably a lot of non-customers who will soon be customers, but sadly with your competitors because you can't get back in touch with them.  Avinash Kaushik in his excellent blog illustrates this with his usual elegent simplicity...

This suggests that as people move around your site they are seduced by your marketing and may gradually become tempted to convert.  But quite often there is no chance for people to register their interest and you cannot re-market to them. No email address means no future contact that you can initiate and there's nothing you can do.  What a waste.  How frustrating

That therefore means that we have a chance to introduce a second tier into our conversion programme, taking some of the non-converted customers and working hard at getting them to part with some personal data.  I've taken the liberty of amending Avinash's diagram to explain this.  It is not unrealistic to expect 5% or even 10% of your most qualified prospects to want to enter a permission-based email marketing programme.

Without this view we only have one way to convert visitors, so let's pretend we are looking at people who have arrived at our site via a premium search term.  Your only way to value them is via conversion rate...

All your acquisition marketing is invested into the “converted” visitors and they carry a hefty £16.70 cost per sale.  However, what if we could work really hard on converting some “suspects” into “prospects” so we can build a file to re-market to...

Now, let’s be realistic and assume that in the next week we can convert 20% through a follow-up email (or better still an email programme).  Now we can pick up sales for peanuts...

So, factoring in the new sales through a follow-up programme into the overall campaign cost we have a really staggering conversion rate that is almost 40% less than...

If we can create a “value exchange” that gets 10% of interested visitors to part with an email address we can therefore increase sales and reduce cost per sale for a campaign. This means that you can probably afford to pay more per click and generate even more sales or make poor-performing media cost-justify.  And all it needs is a couple of days working on your registration strategy.

I will talk about this in more detail in my next blog but for now here are 3 really quick wins for kick-starting your registration programme, all relating to the visibility of the registration form

Be bold.

Quite often the registration is a sad forlorn box tucked beneath the fold of the home page.  Ironically, once people leave the homepage they are probably more engaged and would have been likely to register...had they been able to see the registration form. 

MarketingSherpa is using a cookie-based “Roadblock Registration” at present so that every single visitor will see their email registration.  It may scare a few people off but it may also dramatically increase conversion rates...test it yourself and see what impact it has. 

Be seen

One client I worked with recently only had a registration form on the home page.  By placing the form on 4 pages they generated 4 times more email addresses straight away.  It’s that easy.  Failing that, have it on the primary navigation so that it is visible on each page.  Once you understand the immense value of prospect registration you will probably give your form access to much more valuable web site “real estate” at the expense of other weaker content. 

Be relevant.

Working for the fashion brand Kangol a few years ago we worked hard on making the “value exchange” relevant to where people were on their site journey.  It was not hard and it made the experience more relevant and boosted registration rates by 10% for every page...  

• If you were on the “Find Nearest Store” page the copy was “Want to hear when new stores near you stock our products?  Sign up for our emails”. 
• If you were on the “Spotted wearing Kangol” pages the copy was “Be the first to know what Kangol stuff the stars are wearing – sign up for our emails.”  
•  If you were on the “Products” pages the copy was “Hear about new products as soon as they’re launched – sign up for our emails” 

So, think strategically about why you should gather “non-converted” prospect details and work hard on making the process as efficient as possible.  Next blog we’ll look at what the US market calls “reciprocity” but what we in the UK still refer to as “bribery”...what ”value exchange” will make prospects part with their valuable personal data. 

Digital marketing technology is a great business leveller.  We all have access to the same tools but its what you do with them that makes you successful.  Take email personalisation: You can do some dynamic personalisation with the same ease that you do a "Dear Title Last Name" in a good old direct mail campaign.   For those of you who have never dared to press some of the buttons on your email platform interface, this is an example of how simple it is to drop personalised content into an email from those nice people at Emailvision

So, in 20 seconds we can take a "1 size fits all" message and begin to drop in field values to show we care...click "add field", select your field, click "add to body" and Voila! The downside is that you need to be discerning about the way you play with these tools...the internet is a demanding medium, your inbox is a more personal space than your doormat and we're tired of cheesy direct mail personalisation tricks online.

So, I chuckle when good old VistaPrint take cheesiness to a new level with theis subject line...

In the wrong hands personalisation technology is a dangerous tool.  Slapping first names into subject lines may be worth testing, but it can do a huge amount of brand damage when people think you are trying too hard to weasel your way into their lives.  Maybe its a case of "Less is More", and you should look at all the field values you hold and see whether dropping casually into the subject line "post town" or "product purchased" or "hotel location booked" provides more engaging, tempting, successful campaigns.  You'll never know unless you try.  

For a couple of years I have been the author of the UK Direct Marketing Association's Email Marketing Benchmaking Report.  It's aims are fairly modest - to share average campaign metrics from about 26 of the email service providers working on UK campaigns and provide some insight into trends and issues.  If truth be told, I have a bit of a problem with averages, and here is why...

 - The report covers BtoB and BtoC
 - It includes service and product marketing
 - It includes all industry sectors
 - It includes best, recent customers and worst, lapsed customer

Maybe the slide below explains it better...

In short, averages conceal the really interesting behaviour of segments that we as digital direct marketers shold be investigating.  We walk away content that our "average click through rate" is not so bad after all.  But what if your email file contains less than the "average" number of active customers who tend to respond better than prospects?  You have no idea if you are doing better or worse than average, and that's not very good.

So this brings me onto research that Alchemy Worx has been promoting recently about the relationship of email subject lines and success:  

“In summary our findings show that shorter subject lines optimise open rates, while longer subject lines optimise both click and click-to open rates. We were also surprised to identify a “dead” zone! Subject lines of between 60 and 70 characters (6-10 words), optimise neither the open rate or click to open rates.” 

This kind of research, in my humble opinion, gives marketers false hope.  It oversimplifies the complex chemistry that determines email marketing success and suggests that a specific length of subject line will deliver results.  Alchemy Worx then proceed to reel off a lorry-load of qualifiers about the proposition itself as to make their sweeping generalisations redundant. 

So, the report just looks at 1 of many factors in un-weighted samples and comes up with some "rule of thumb".  This is not necessarily good direct marketing because:
  - It deals in big, bad, lumpy averages that hide the best/worst performing segments
  - It treats active, loyal customers and old prospects as equal in proposition responsiveness
  - It did not test long versus short, so we have no control to gauge their impact
  - It does not mention different From Fields, or how well the "preview pane" area was exploited - critical "open rate"   influencers.

Out of respect to direct marketers everywhere we should qualify and re-phrase how to use this report 

“In summary our findings show that some campaigns with shorter subject lines got high open rates, while longer subject lines got a high click and click-to open rates.  Because we never ISOLATED subject lines as a variable and TESTED long versus short we cannot say with any confidence that the extra opens and clicks were down purely to the subject line length."

So here's my advice based on 10 years of email marketing:
  - Go and do your own tests - your products, brand, customers are unique and special
  - Segment your file to identify the extremes, not the averages
  - Test short and long subject lines, but use proper "control" groups
  - Test different From fields - they have a huge impact on open and click through
  - Don't be too prescriptive - use the right words to persuade regardless of length.
  - Be relevant and engaging - show people you know and value them

And finally, now I've got my angry hat on, here are 5 subject lines that are in the Alchemey Worx "dead zone" (60-70 characters and 6-10 words) that I would definitely have opened and clicked...more to do with my interests in life than the word count?

  - Sleep better - stop your springer spaniel barking at night
  - Crystal Palace win race to sign Ronaldo, Lampard and Crouch
  - Welsh Rugby Union offers free tickets to email marketers
  - 20 fun family activities when its pouring with rain in West Wales
  - Why averages are a bad bad thing in digital marketing