MPDM Notes
Day 1
Advanced Email Marketing Analysis
Karen Talavera
Harvey Morris
Digital Marketing has grown while marketing budgets have remained flat or shrunk in the
past year. Doesn’t have the same hard costs as other marketing mediums.
Marketing fusion is now the norm. Email is at the juncture of all the different digi
mediums…socnets use email to communicate to their users when they’re not on the
network!
Consumers are most comfortable with using email to communicate w/companies but do
want to use permission marketing…
We’re getting used to newer stuff faster.
There’s a lot more data to work with, need more analytical tools.
What is worth measuring?
Process metrics – delivered, opens, clicks, conversions, complaints, unsubs.
Influence metrics: Forwards, share to social, cross-channel conversions
Feedback metrics: questions, complaints, critique, frustration, problems, praise
Contribution metrics: ROI, AOV, LTV, Share of Customer, Measurement against
business metrics
Chicago CCTB
Meetings, Conventions and group leisure.
$11Bn worth of impact on the city of Chicago.
More B-B than most CVBs.
Three Audiences:
Leisure/Bureau/Meeting Planners
Leisure, what’s new email to 85k 2x/month, biggest driver to website!
Inside Out – quarterly GLB newsletter
Eat It Up – restaurant centric for locals
Clean sign up page, keep all options out front along w/frequency. A meeting planner can
sign up for leisure email as well.
Leisure travelers are much shorter lead time than meeting planner or other travel
professional.
Tested their email, best is a targeted tagline, quick call to action and a good visual. Went
from 8-9 items to 5 but upped the frequency from once a month to twice a month.
Monitor list churn and engagement to ensure it’s not too much. Use SocMed to fill the
gaps between newsletters.
Share to social has been more successful in emails than Harvey thought it would be.
Moving it to the masthead!
Never fully satisfied w/an email layout…
6-7k local list, hoping to double it this year, work w/Amex, as well as others. Leverage
strength of partners to achieve list growth. “Barter is the key word.”
Chicago is also using YouTube to try to balance all their digital marketing efforts, ties it
in w/cubs etc.
Bureau Members – started off as a newsletter that went out when ‘they could’. Went to a
weekly ‘alert’ email, was too much otherwise. Marrying LinkedIn w/their member
communications emails. Great solution for co’s with limited numbers of employees on
contact list.
Do list rental for meeting/convention planners, but little else. List rentals performed by
1/3 as compared to in-house lists. Quality over quantity.
Cross post content via Facebook and twitter that goes out via email – tweet a link to your
online email version!
Also using LinkedIn as a way to allow members to communicate w/each other.
An email call to action signup is at the end of every online article – increased signups by
108%!
CVB is trying to act as a virtual concierge.
All responders are not created equally – importance of channel segmentation. Analyze
results through a variety of things such as socmed participation, permission type, source
channel, date acquired, multi-channel activity.
Subscriber Engagement Analysis – what percentage of our list has taken an action more
than one time. Same small minority doing the same actions each email? Figure out why
and how to move the needle…
Web traffic driven by increasingly fractured sources. Where and how they act. Multichannel engagement tracking, short term channel suppression is one way to test this.
89% of consumers believe they should receive a response to an email w/in 24 hrs. Part of
the art of listening.
All responders are not created equally and all responses are not equal. Use a weighted
value to generate a truer look at actions taken for each campaign.
Set your channel goals and then track/test and adjust.
Align email w/marketing goals ie acquisition vs retention
Metrics matter – measure beyond the basics – learn to listen – align w/the big picture.
Blog Hot Seat Labs
Tips from Mack – why first. Then what actions do you want your readers to take? What’s
the content going to be based upon the ‘bigger idea.’
Openhouse.homegoods.com – bloggers are front and center.
The bloggers are front and center – photos of them in every post. Use the first name of
your commenter in the greeting in the response.
1000words.kodak.com it’s a blog about photography and not Kodak itself – a bigger idea.
They post like clockwork, M-F
Thecleanestline.com (Patagonia) about the environment – the promotion of Patagonia is
indirect.
Blog.gracobaby.com Blog content that is relevant to readers. Every Wednesday they
write a post about their customers or employees “Wondrous Wednesdays”.
Our Blog!
Photos of the bloggers – maybe a bit more of a face shot.
Posting schedule…one post a month from other authors. Bring up that level to add more
engagement (2x week). Readers see the blog as dying in the off season. Train readers as
to when posts are coming out.
Blogroll – link to other local sites w/travel deals. How to lists, what to pack, etc…more
video on how to ski on YouTube, perhaps pick up some traction there as well.
Datacraftrockford.com/blog
Assume that no one coming in has been there before and got there completely by
accident! Make sure photo and bios are up. 3 seconds for the initial impression, who are
you what are you and why should I care?!
blog.cncahealth.com
Cross posting content in emails and the like. Posting 5x/week. Prefer to have someone
inside the company writing, but w/resources this approach can work…
The New Triangle Offense of 1to1 Marketing
Joel Book Exact Target
Renee Middleton/Taco John’s
Kip Edwardson/Scott’s
Media is continually evolving.
Smart brands are the ones empowering their customers to share – brand evangelists are
the most successful marketers. More than 40% increase in email dollars in 09 than in 08.
Shift from traditional to digital – most to email.
If you are good at getting individuals to become email subscribers, provide them w/good
content, they will reward you with their business – 138% more.
Taco John’s
Basic website, 7k email subscription list - 40 yr old brand.
Created Potato Ole club as a way to build off their iconic food brand. Two ways to
become a “maniac”, sign up on the website and POP driver was the free coupon. Then
looped into a number of different touch points, including a dress up yourself page,
customer content videos, Facebook fan page and other games/fun.
Has to balance between the customer and franchisee.
Just started in July, initial email is basically the coupon and links to Facebook, Twitter
and send to a friend. Both Facebook and Twitter biz accounts were started by fans.
Facebook ads are working strategically for TJ, nearly 6k and good conversion.
Mobile is only in 14 stores, only averages 39/store but 1800 have signed up from the site.
Set her objectives as trying to reach the under 30 crowd, this is what she looks at when
the mobile campaign showed success.
Grew email optins to 35k, 200+ new fans per day…
2010 – 1 drive transactions 2 engage the core 3 gain new members 4 fuel brand passion
Scotts
Using Pluck (?) platform, just recently moved from just forums.
Email list was started in 2000, all customization was done by hand. Dropped from 1m to
800k subs. Segmenting list by geography to represent all the different factors in lawn
care.
Learned:
What day of the week/time
A/B copy/subject
Layout/design
Offers
Most compelling content and where it should be (bucket it and move it around)
How the email is used
Re-engagement – asking why not opening or clicking.
Many have learned what they need to know.
Learned:
Remain relevant
No one wants to be marketed to
Listen, ask, evaluate, act
Do what you say you’re going to do (set expectation for emails in terms of
content/delivery)
Subscribers vote.
For Scotts, forums are one of the most popular items on their site.
Interesting Forrester stat - forums are just as popular as texting (still).
Top of email shows user submitted photos, blog post summarized in a side bar
Turf to 63747 for text setup. What when, and how to unsubscribe.
Scotts already has one of the oldest call centers in the country and still get 1million
calls/yr, email is lock step w/the call center knowledgebase. They are a publisher, their
website creates more questions than it answers, which is a good thing!
Home Depot is using “Live Offers” which uses predictive modeling to put the right offer
in front of the right consumer.
Text as a direct response tactic…we don’t use our cell phones like the rest of the world
does.
Enewsletter Campaigns That Strengthen Customer Relationships
Greg Cangialosi
Brian Logue – US Lacrosse
A sign up for newsletter is the ultimate compliment to a marketer.
SWYN – share with your network, a client saw a 58% increase in spread of their message
when using SWYN incentivized by prizes for the best sharers.
Good ‘eyeflow’ is what you need for newsletter design.
Test, test, test - because what you think, may not be the case – Marketing over coffee
email template with just text was just as effective as the ‘pretty’ version.
Keep focused on opt-out rate, if it’s growing that’s a big cause for alarm.
US Lacrosse
Grassroots to educate and inform. 300k members, youth dominated.
Focus print to youth and newsletter on segmented audiences. Saw marked increase in
open rates.
We want to service you better as a message to get your lists to segment themselves better.
Always give the ability to change preferences on every email.
Marketingexperiments.com have a lot of data on email eyetracking.
Put email opt-in form on Facebook Fan Page.
Tweet out before your email goes out, always get some new subs that way.
Put dead heads into a ‘nurture’ file, one that only gets touched on a much less frequent
basis.