Email Marketing Blog

I’m going to start out this post with the overarching statement of “I LOVE to shop.”  Shoes, clothes, house wares, books…you name it, I love to shop for it.  I also love email marketing, which works out pretty well for me because I subscribe to almost every eTailer to receive discounts, new product announcements, etc.  I do all of my holiday shopping online as well as purchase birthday gifts, wedding gifts and the occasional gift for myself (ok, maybe not occasional…) and I find it somewhat astonishing at the lack of retailers reaching back out to people who have abandoned shopping carts.

My number one reason for abandoning:

I typically don’t abandon my cart because I’m confused at the checkout page.  99.9% of the time I abandon because I need some time to sleep on my potential purchase and then I come back to follow through with the purchase at a later date (to see all of the other reasons why people abandon carts, check out Listrak’s new whitepaper here).  I put things in my cart because I don’t want to have to go through that process again if I decide to purchase at a later time. 

Now, let’s be serious, I don’t actually go back to purchase everything I put in my cart.  Sometimes I’ll put that new Coach bag in my cart to make me feel better that day.  Other times, I simply forget.  I’m a busy person and although I may want to purchase something, it may not be a top priority for me (or maybe I just need to save up the cash to actually purchase that Coach bag…)

Insert shopping cart abandonment email here:

 For those retailers that have reached back to me already with an email listing the items in my cart as well as other potential products I may enjoy: Congratulations!  You can stop reading this now.  For those of you who haven’t, shame on you for not enticing me to spend my hard earned money on your products.

Shopping cart abandonment emails are an easy, no brainer way to increase ROI on emails as well as recover potentially lost revenue on products people forgot they wanted.  The few retailers that have reached back to me with an abandoned cart email, I almost always followed through with my purchase - even better if they included an incentive (free shipping, 10% off, etc.)

Listrak recently put out a whitepaper on this exact topic and found an astonishing 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times.  Even more alarmingly, 22% admitted that they didn’t know what their abandonment rate is.  Check out Listrak’s whitepaper here: http://listrak.com/university/Recovering-Lost-Sales/.  There is no excuse for numbers like these. 

But, we don’t have the budget, resources, time, knowledge…:

Stop.  Stop right there with the excuses.  Maybe your 2010 resolution should be to stop making excuses about not doing shopping cart abandonment emails and actually do them.  Shopping cart abandonment emails rely on web analytics data and require an integrated email marketing solution, dynamic message assembly, and a behaviorally triggered messaging system. However, the messages can be set up to run in the background automatically so all you have to do is update the message template occasionally and monitor the results.

That’s where we come in:

Listrak has the platform and expertise needed to send the most sophisticated shopping cart abandonment campaigns. Working with you, Listrak will provide strategy, implementation, creative design, support, and campaign evaluation, to ensure your campaigns achieve your goals.

Look - Listrak has even built the workflow (with A/B split testing) for you here! http://listrak.com/university/Recovering-Lost-Sales/ShoppingCartAbandonment.png

Don’t believe me?  Contact one of our experts today: http://www.listrak.com/contact-expert.asp

As always, the MarketingSherpa Email Summit conference was packed full of exciting, useful information for email marketers. Brent Shroyer, Karen Nuss, and Dana Hammer-Eden provide their feedback on the sessions and on the discussions held at Listrak’s advanced strategies clinic during the show. Tune in to learn about subscriber retention, social media integration, testing, shopping cart abandonment, automated triggered messages, and more! Download now.

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Email Marketing Today: Episode 37 - Recap from MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit

 Better late than never - I finally have some time to recap some of the takeways from the 2010 MarketingSherpa Email Summit!  Listrak had a strategy consultation clinic at the show, which allowed for conference attendees to come in and ask us just about any email related question (seriously, people asked us ANYTHING).  One of the running themes I heard from many attendees revolved around data - how to get it, how to use it, when to use it, etc. 

As you all know, 2010 is the year of subscriber engagement (really, EVERY year should have been the year of subscriber engagement, but let’s start now if you haven’t already).  In order to send targeted, relevant content to your subscribers, you need the right data.  Here are a few of my suggestions to get this data:

1) Survey - probably the easiest and least expensive way to gather data from your subscribers is to survey them (use a free tool like Zoomerang to save on cost). Ask them what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, how often they want to hear from you etc. Unfortunately, the drawback to using a survey method is the lack of subscribers that actually fill out the survey. In order to combat this, use an incentive and truly prove to your subscribers that their feedback is valuable. Another drawback to using a survey is that it only captures subscriber preferences at one point in time. As we all know, people change their minds quite frequently so the data you gather probably won’t be relevant down the road.

2) Preference Center - this is probably old news to the savvy email marketers out there, but for the rest of us, this is a great place to start. Building a preference center for your subscribers allows them to tell you what content they want to receive, when they want to receive it, how often they want to receive emails, etc. Preference centers may include things like general interests, product choices, newsletters and frequency of communication. Preference centers reinforce your brand and give your audience the choice of how to interact with your brand. The best part about building a preference center is that subscribers can continually change their minds with how they want to interact with you.

3) Behavioral Data/Clickstream Analysis - if you have links in your email, you should be tracking them. Period. No excuses. Knowing which subscribers purchased and tracking campaign results is imperative to determining your ROI; but knowing which subscribers viewed additional items on your website, the length of time they spent browsing, which product reviews were read, etc., provides additional profiling attributes that can be used to better target your messages with relevant content and offers. If you can incorporate this data into your email marketing campaigns to truly provide targeted, relevant content - you have officially reached “grand poombah” status among email marketers.

4) Data Overlay - one of the commonly overlooked options for gathering data for subscribers is to purchase/append data to provide additional subscriber insight, including household income, age, job titles, lifestyles, children, geography, etc. This builds a more complete picture of each and every subscriber on your list.

If you attended the Email Summit, you know that Joseph Jaffe’s keynote was all about retention and how it’s becoming the new acquisition.  It is easier and less expensive to engage the subscribers currently on your list rather than going out and trying to acquire new ones (although, this is most likely a secondary goal).  Keep your current subscribers happy and engaged by gathering the right data to target them with relevant content (I promise, I won’t mention the words targeted OR relevant again in this post).

Lastly, this wouldn’t be a blog post without a shout-out to the Listrak Professional Services team.  Listrak can help you design, implement and track all of the data solutions I mentioned above.  Questions?  Contact us at: http://listrak.com/contact-expert.asp.

What worked in the good old days of email marketing can be outright dangerous today; but if your boss hasn’t kept up with the times, it can be difficult for you to implement best practices. Brent, Matt, Dana, and Megan share their thoughts on how you can prove to your boss that it’s time to upgrade your sending procedures. You’ll get a bigger return on your email marketing investment, and maybe even that promotion you’ve been hoping for! Download now.

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Email Marketing Today: Episode 36 - Selling your new ideas to your old boss

2010 is the year of subscriber engagement!  Here are seven tactics that will help you keep your subscribers reading and responding to every email you send this year.  If you have any questions, contact us via the web, call 877.632.4556, email info@listrak.com, or visit us in person at our advanced strategy clinic at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit later this month.

1. Engagement profiling

Accurately measuring subscriber engagement depends on the ability to monitor each recipient’s response to every email message. Knowing who opened, read (held the email open at least five seconds), and clicked on your messages allows you to identify your most, and least, engaged subscribers.

• Target subscribers based on date of last open, read, or click
• Re-engage subscribers who haven’t opened, read, or clicked on a message in over 90 days
• Only send messages to active subscribers to maintain a positive reputation

2. Dynamic profiling

Save, update, and use the most accurate subscriber data possible – automatically! With the click of a mouse you can capture the most valuable information from every email campaign, such as the date and time of click, the subject matter of the message, or the offer that generated the response.

• Eliminate countless hours of manual data input
• Ensure subscriber data is accurate
• Use the data to segment your audience based on past behaviors, not just preferences

3. Geo-tracking profiling filters

Listrak pioneered geo-tracking in email marketing through its integration with Google Maps. Subscribers’ locations are automatically captured when they open, read, or click on a message. You can use this data to target your subscribers using three built-in profiling filters:

• Country - speak relevantly to your global audience by targeting a specific country, or group of countries
• Region - give your emails a local flair by filtering your audience by U.S. state, Canadian province, or geographic region
• Postal code - segment your list down to a specific U.S. zip code or within a defined mileage radius for highly targeted messages

4. Heat maps
Are your emails designed for optimal performance? Listrak’s heat maps give you a snapshot of how subscribers are interacting with your campaigns. In a glimpse you can see which areas got the most clicks, and which were overlooked.

• Quickly evaluate design and effectiveness of your calls-to-action
• Redesign emails based on performance metrics
• In one click, drill down to the numeric overlay report to see the click count and click-through rate percentage of each link in your message

5. Dynamic message assembly

The greatest way to increase the relevancy of your email campaigns is to use dynamic content. From a single template, virtually hundreds of different versions of each email campaign can be created automatically by matching the right content and images to subscriber profiling data.

• Emails are personalized and customized for each recipient on your list
• Click-through, response, and conversion rates are much higher due to the extremely relevant and individualized nature of each message
• Emails are created on-the-fly automatically, eliminating the need to manually create different versions of each message

6. Automated drip campaigns

Event triggered messaging is a powerful engagement tactic that allows you to create, automate, and measure one-to-one email conversations with your audience. Welcome messages, shopping cart abandonment notifications, birthday clubs, event reminders and follow up emails, etc., can all be scheduled in advance and deployed at the appropriate time.

• Email drip campaigns are deployed automatically based on defined trigger
• Leads are qualified more quickly and may be nurtured through the sales cycle
• Subscribers are engaged in personal, relevant email conversations

7. Split testing and multivariate testing
Testing your messages prior to deployment should be a standard part of your email marketing strategy as it allows you to identify your most powerful messaging, images, subject lines, etc., before deploying the email to your entire list.

• Test subject lines, creative, images, deployment days and times, frequency, layout, calls-to-action, links, etc.
• Increase the performance rate and ROI of each and every email campaign
• Accurately predict campaign results and sales projections based on the test campaign responses
• 

The struggle that marketers will face in 2010 is how to implement the right interactive media mix in order to reach their goals. With limited budgets and resource constraints it can be tough to figure out which investments will provide the biggest returns. With so much at stake marketers must revamp their strategies quickly, but they must be careful to avoid the hype and only focus on areas that have proven results.

Here are three tips on how to maximize your marketing investment in 2010:

1.  Work smarter, not harder:  While marketers have been forced into trying to do more with less as budgets were cut this year, it’s more important now for marketers to focus on what works.  The DMA reported that email’s 2009 ROI was $43.62, which is twice as much as search marketing, the next highest return.  Instead of trying to stretch your marketing budget in 2010, put more time and effort into your email campaigns in order to get the biggest return on your marketing investment.

2.  Take your email campaigns off autopilot:   Marketers are constantly updating print and broadcast campaigns, but online campaigns, especially email, have a tendancy to be overlooked.  You should continue to update your emails so the messages remain fresh, and you should also update your strategy to try new things. 

3.  Take the time to do it right:  Email’s curse is that it works even when best practices aren’t implemented.  However, it is proven that emails that are created with dynamic content and emails that are targeted using event triggered messaging have the highest returns.  The same goes for organic lists versus puchased ones.  Purchased lists have the lowest conversion rates and the higest complaint rates.  If you take the time to do it right, your returns will be through the roof.

To learn more, read our latest white paper “Three Steps to a Higher Return on Your Email Marketing Investment” or contact us at 877.362.4556.

Ross, Brent, and Megan discuss Listrak’s latest white paper “Three Steps to a Higher Return on Your Email Marketing Investment.” Everyone needs to get the most out of each and every marketing campaign, and with email’s enormous ROI, it just makes sense to focus on doing it right to maximize your returns. Download now.

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Email Marketing Today: Episode 35 - Getting The Most Bang for your Email Marketing Buck

Brent and Ross welcome Stephanie Miller from Return Path to Email Marketing Today to follow up on her webinar “Five Ways to Increase Inbox Placement and Revenue.” They discuss how engagement factors into subscriber reputation and give advice on ways to ensure your emails reach your audience. Download now.

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Email Marketing Today: Episode 34 - Stephanie Miller on Email Deliverability

Brent, Ross, Brandon, and Megan discuss Listrak’s latest white paper “Email Deliverability: Six Steps to Maintain a Positive Reputation in 2010“ and its useful, interactive wheel of deliverability. ISPs use a number of different factors in measuring reputation, and Listrak’s deliverability wheel is an easy tool for marketers to use to stay informed on the latest developments. Listen now, and be sure to let us know what you think of Brent’s sound effects! Download now.

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Email Marketing Today: Episode 33 – Wheel of Deliverability

Deliverability remains the number one concern for email marketers, and it all begins with a positive reputation. ISPs are moving toward an engagement-based reputation measurement so it’s more important than ever for you to follow email best practices.  It’s important to remember that deliverability is something you control – your sending practices will make or break your reputation. You cannot buy a positive reputation or buy your way out of a negative one.

ISPs measure many different factors when deciding whether or not to deliver your messages.  User complaints and invalid addresses are still the largest factors, but level of engagement, sending infrastructure, third party reputation services, spam trap hits, domain, frequency, volument, and yes, still the message size and content, all play a part.  To help you figure it all out, we put together an interactive reputation chart so you can learn how all of the factors are measured and how they all work together.

We have also recently published a new white paper entitled “Email Deliverability: Six Steps to Maintain a Positive Reputation in 2010” and we’re hosting a webinar with Stephanie Miller from Return Path Nov. 18 at 1:00 ET entitled “Five Ways to Improve your Inbox Placement and Revenue.”  It is free to participate in the webinar and the information gained will help solve your deliverability issues.

And, as always, we’re here to help.  We published a case study on how we helped Turkey Hill Dairy overcome a deliverability issue at MSN and Hotmail, which you can read here: http://www.listrak.com/university/Turkey-Hill-Case-Study/.  Or contact us with questions.