Coast Digital Blog

Now we’re in December I’m sure it hasn’t slipped your notice that the Christmas shopping period is well and truly under way!

Aside from all the usual kerfuffle, this may also have become clear due to the sheer number of marketing emails you’re seeing in your inbox, which constantly remind you of the fact.

[More]

If you’re keen to expand your email marketing strategy, click-through data should be a key consideration. It provides a wealth of information to help you understand what customers want. A basic send out isn’t enough to capitalise on the many benefits of email – it’s just the beginning.

Unfortunately many businesses don’t take advantage of email:

• to drive more traffic to their website
• to make them more money
• to deliver excellent online customer service

I recommend you keep on track and learn from your click-through data. This will help you deliver more targeted email campaigns.

Here’s a few ideas:

• Why not create an email offer for popular click-throughs? For example, if you’ve identified a particular group of customers that like “handbags”, why not send them a brand-focused email offer?
• If there’s a common pattern in order of click-throughs to your emails, re-arrange future messages in order of interest. Customers generally scan emails. Capture their attention as quickly as possible.
• Send follow-up emails based on click-through data. For example:

1. Create an automatic “thank you email” to send to customers following a purchase. Introduce the “customers who bought this item also bought…” concept pioneered by Amazon.

2. Identify segments of customers who don’t click through, and send them a “second chance email” offer. 

3. Create a well-developed email subscription model to target your data collection and increase click-through rates.

4. Click-through data can provide enough information on customer interests to enable you to follow up with a phone call.

5. Consider sending an online survey to customers who click-through. You could offer a reasonable incentive such a discount off their next order.

6. Don’t forget to say thank you to any customers who forward your email on to a friend – it’s just plain good manners!

And where possible personalise your email. But don’t make customers feel as if you’re stalking them!

Don’t forget… when a customer clicks-though on an email it’s only the start of their online experience. As a first step I recommend creating effective landing pages. Whether they form part of your website or specifically relate to your email link, landing pages are important to track where the customer goes next.

I was recently prompted for my view on the best time to send a marketing email and I have to admit it’s a tough one. On every course or seminar I’ve attended ‘experts’ have insisted there’s no specific or optimal time to send. But as a user I have to disagree.

B2B
When I was using email marketing for B2B I was almost fanatical about sending at 11am on a Tuesday.

Why? Because as a receiver of email in the workplace I found that to be the best time, although Wednesday and Thursday also follow hot on its heels for me. 

So why not send on a Monday or Friday? Well, I always worry that in amongst the mass of emails people receive my message will just get bypassed if I send it first thing on a Monday. And I think the same is true for Friday, as people tend to take Fridays off whenever possible, or use it as a day to cram in everything prior to the weekend.

On reflection, statistically the highest viewing time always occurred over lunchtime [admittedly that could partially be attributed to my mostly sending email in the morning, so it would arrive late morning... in time for a lunchtime read (though that was not my tactic)].

B2C
Well, this is a different kettle of fish altogether and as such has to be tailored to the specific offering and the consumer, taking into consideration dates such as pay day.

For example, a colleague recently mentioned a job site that seemed to be targeting its weekly email to deliver on a Sunday – what a great idea, very timely, and perfect for those who choose to reserve job-hunting for the weekend.

I advocate looking at your email schedule and considering the impact national holidays and seasonal occasions will have when planning your sends. In some cases this will be a pro, and in others, very much a con.

Overall, as with most things, it’s about putting yourself in the position of the recipient and working out when would be the best time for them to receive the specific content you’re sending.

And most important is that prized Subject Line, Sender Address and Content – get these wrong and it won’t matter what time you send your email.

With the loss of 25 million data records by HM Revenue & Customs towards the end of 2007, there are increasing calls from the UK Information Commissioner (ICO) for a tightening of our data protection laws.

With continued growth in online these issues are extremely important to anyone working in marketing & communications. Security scares & changes in legislation will affect us all; from reluctance from potential customers to surrender personal data to the imposing of stricter guidelines on how we treat data once it is in our possession.

But as a firm believer in the power of permission-based marketing I’m grateful that some positive good might emerge from such a monumental mishap.

We all need to take great care of the data in our protection and of course, of how we chose to use it. Following the HMRC debacle, news stories about loss of personal data have increased & there is rising concern among the public about privacy issues. The government is under pressure to do something. I predict that we’ll see changes to data protection legislation this year.

But what can I do to ensure compliancy with current legislation?
Online marketing is covered by the Data Protection Act & the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations. In relation to the latter the ICO website states:

“Unsolicited marketing material by electronic mail (including email, text & picture messaging) should only be sent if the individual has consented to receive them, unless the individual's details were obtained in the context of a commercial relationship & the marketing is for similar products or services.

The individual should always be given the opportunity to opt out in every message.

The ICO is working with its European counterparts & the US to try to reduce spam. There is currently no specific legislation to cover email sent to business addresses.”

In relation to the above it is essential that privacy statements are clear, concise and easy to understand. And of course it is absolutely essential that data is kept clean & up-to-date.

With the possibility of new legislation there’ll be a real chance that databases might shrink as we’re all impelled to remove obsolete records. I’d welcome such a move as both a marketer and a consumer.

Cleaner data offers the chance to build better relationships. Permission-based marketing results in more intelligence about customers and their needs, enabling far greater targeting. It should be a win/win situation. Data is so valuable it’s imperative that it is kept secure and protected from misuse at all times.

In this day and age you can’t go 5 minutes with out spam creeping into your inbox! Luckily for us at Coast Digital we use top-of-the line spam filters which catch 90% of these emails before they get too close.

But unfortunately this also means we have to fight even harder to ensure delivery of marketing messages. In fact it’s a huge challenge to guarantee delivery of genuine emails. As spam filters become ever-more sophisticated, deliverability has become the number one issue for email marketers.

Here are my top tips for getting emails to your customers’ inbox.

1. Choosing the right email system
The system you use to send email plays a large part in how many of your messages get through. There are lots of systems out there offering an abundance of features to ensure your emails are as targeted as possible.

More importantly, the majority of them will be white-listed with all the major email providers. So it’s worth asking who they’re white-listed with, and if you’re sending high volumes, how many emails they can send to these providers (safely) in an hour?

2. Double opt-in
To comply with data protection legislation you should only ever send emails to people who have opted-in to receive your communications. And to increase the quality of your list - if nothing more - you should also use a double opt-in.

In this way not only do users have to sign-up on your site, they also have to click on a link in the email you send confirming their wish to receive your electronic communications: the double-opt in.

And while spam filters don’t actually take opt-ins into account, this approach gives you the opportunity to ask users to add you to their “white list”. Which leads nicely to my next point.

3. Encourage users to "white list" you
At every possible opportunity you should encourage users to “white list” your email address. If a user white lists your address, it means that each piece of correspondence you send will always get through to their inbox.

You can ask users to do this from a very early stage, i.e. directly after their initial sign-up, and follow up with a double opt-in email, and in then again in any future correspondence.

In fact a lot of big brands offer a page on their website with step-by-step instructions on how to “white list” them for most of the most major email providers (hotmail, gmail, etc). And they’ll offer a link to this page in all their email communications.

4. No attachments
Whatever you do, don’t send attachments with your emails unless you can guarantee that your messages will be delivered (even then I wouldn’t recommend it). Attachments can contain viruses and so will always attract a lot of attention from spam filters.

5. Send HTML emails with an alternative plain text version
Always send a plain text version of HTML emails. This means even if the user can’t view or receive HTML emails, then they’ll still be able to view your plain text version.

And if you’re really not keen on creating a plain text email then use it to link to a (website) hosted version of your HTML email. This way, the user will still see the HTML version, but via their browser rather than their email client.

6. Watch out for trigger words
Spam filters scan email content for trigger words and use this information to determine if a message is spam. Obviously words like Viagra (and other sex-related words) are an absolute no-go, but there are words that seem quite relevant that can still cause problems. See here for a good list: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/spamwords.htm.

Always run your content through a spam checker before sending. A good spam checker will generally pick up on any problem words.

7. From address
Watch out for trigger words in your from-address. Even if the sole purpose of your email is to promote special offers from your website, don’t send it from special-offers@domain.com.

This is an easy mistake to make, and one that can be easily overlooked even by spam checkers.

8. Subject line
The subject line is the most important line of text in any email campaign. If you get it wrong your open rate will take a big hit even if your message makes it through the spam filters!

Make sure your subject line doesn’t contain any trigger words. And make it enticing and relevant so that the user will really want to open the email.

If I speak about “optimisation” people naturally assume I am talking about the practice of search engine optimisation, or “SEO” as it’s otherwise known. But optimisation should mean a whole lot more than just SEO.  

When considering the optimisation of your website you need to consider not only how search engines will see it but also how people will use it. So here is a quick guide to help you optimise for all of your web marketing, not just your search engine results!

Optimise the user experience

All too often I see companies’ spending money on internet advertising and search engine marketing when their websites offer a poor user experience. There is little point in driving traffic to a website if it fails to engage, or even worse, offers a confusing user experience. Generally speaking people prefer simple websites with clear, uncluttered screens and logical site navigation. So the message is “keep it simple”.

Optimise your landing pages

If you are considering running an online advertising campaign then you should review your campaign landing pages. These are the pages people will hit when they click through to your website. The more targeted the landing pages, the better the response rates and the more successful the campaign. So optimise your campaign landing pages and make sure there is a clear “call to action”.

Optimise your logistics

If you are launching a web marketing campaign then you will need to ensure the order fulfilment process is smooth and trouble free. Too many companies launch online marketing campaigns without considering the logistical issues of order fulfilment. Take time to carefully plan your logistics, paying particular attention to ensuring you have sufficient stock and dedicated resources to handle fulfilment, returns and customer services.
 
Optimise your relationship marketing

It can cost a lot of money to acquire every new customer online. So you need to make sure you put a strategy in place to communicate with your customers on a regular basis, in order to help retain them.

Communication should be personalised wherever possible and based on your users’ specified areas of interest. Implement data capture and personalisation techniques via your website and start to build “relationships” with your customers online. Use email newsletters to keep them informed and questionnaires to capture feedback and new ideas. 

Optimise your results

So now you have a great website that’s working well for your business. Don’t forget to use an analytics package to further optimise your campaigns. Analytics isn’t just about how many hits or visits you’re getting. You can use an analytics package to see where visitors are dropping off your website and gain insight into user behaviour. Take the findings and use them to make your website even better!

Optimise for search engines

Of course it goes without saying that you also need to optimise your website for search engines – both for paid and natural search. A good SEO agency can assist in getting you to the top of the search engine results pages and can also advise on set up and management of pay per click campaigns. 

Overall optimisation

I believe it’s important to take a holistic approach to optimisation. This approach will yield significant benefits, which as we’ve seen, involves much more than just optimising for your position in the search engine listings. The best method to ensure overall and powerful optimisation is by working with an agency which can advise on a whole range of online issues, both commercial and technical.