Bronto Blog

Dedicated vs. Shared IP: Find the Right Fit

Chris Kolbenschlag — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Whether you are high volume email marketing sender or a small sender with a fast growing list, most likely the question of should you send on a dedicated IP or from a shared pool has been brought up internally. This is a great question and something you should take a look at carefully. Previously on the Bronto Blog we compared a shared IP to driving in a carpool (shared responsbility) and a dedicated IP to driving on your own (your responsibility). That analogy still holds true, as a dedicated IP is a single IP assigned to a single client with high volume and only their mail is sent from this one IP. A shared pool of IPs is multiple clients sending lower volume from the same set of IPs. Marketers should understand the importance of how each of these option work best and decide which is optimal.

First, there are some questions to ask yourself:

Are you seeing declining open rates and conversions?
Are you being blocked for an unknown reason?
Are you seeing an increase in mail placed in the bulk mail folder?

Answering yes to any of these questions could mean you are on a shared IP and a victim of poor reputation, not because of what you send, but because of the actions of other senders on your shared IP. It could also be that you are on a dedicated IP and your volume isn’t strong enough to justify being on a dedicated IP. A key component to the reputation of an IP address is cadence and volume, so a shared IP pool is the ideal option for a sender who sends infrequently and has low volume. Sharing an IP allows marketers to help each other out on reputation measurement by the ISPs so that when a marketer isn't sending and other marketers are sending, this helps maintain steady and consistent volume on the IP. While this volume sharing helps, it can also hurt the reputation since many senders are sharing the reputation of that IP. Should one of these senders create a low performing email campaign that produces high spam complaints or high bad address bounces it could affect ALL who send on that IP, resulting in a block or bulk mail placement. Whereas a dedicated IP removes the fear of worrying what other senders are doing and puts all the responsibility on a single sender as well as maintaining the volume and cadence aspect. While both of these have good and challenging benefits, it's important to understand what would work better for you.

This is a high-level overview of dedicated vs. shared IP. I have recently published a whitepaper continuing this discussion, to get more details on the breakdown and answer any other questions you may have, please download Improve Email Deliverability with a Dedicated IP.

Chris Kolbenschlag
Director of Deliverability at Bronto

Email Metrics 101: Establish Your Baselines

Steven DuBois — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

I can't tell you how often I get the question, "How do my metrics compare to everyone else?" As an email or multi-channel marketer, it's a natural question to ask. We're driven to rate the success of our work against benchmarks within our industry. However, this simple question has a bit of a complex answer, so let's address this in a couple of blog posts, starting with "Establish Your Baselines."

Back in 2010, we discussed the pros and cons of benchmarks with a video post entitled “Add Some Salt to That Margarita: Benchmarks and Their Value." These points still hold true two years later. But this is an ongoing debate, and there are many variables to take into account when measuring against benchmarks.

Variables include, but are not limited to:

Sample Size
Subject Line
Send Time
Email Creative
Industry
Product Offering
Market Positioning
Sales Cycle
Promotions/Discount Offered
Seasonality
List health/hygiene

So, the first strike against measuring against using benchmarks to rate your own success is the sheer number of variables that prohibit fair comparison between your results and industry benchmarks. If you are starting a program from scratch and have no baseline metrics to evaluate, then you could look to industry benchmarks to help jumpstart your program analysis. However, if you have any amount of data collected from your marketing program, then it's time to establish your own benchmarks and goals.

There are two key steps in creating your own analyzing your metrics:

Focus less on others
Set goals based on your past performance

So how do you get started? What metrics should you look at to start analyzing your data?

Compile past results using the following metrics and be sure to collect/record these for future mailings.

Messages Sent
Messages Delivered
Total Email Opens & Unique Email Opens
Total Email Click-Throughs & Unique Email Click-Through
Email Forwards
Social Shares

These metrics are great for looking at engagement, but let’s also look at revenue as well:

Total Conversions & Unique Conversions
Total Revenue

And last but not least, you will want to focus on your contact loss metrics:

Total Unsubscribes
Total Complaints

We can then take these raw numbers to come up with some important rates that we'll use to establish our baselines.

Engagement Metrics

Open Rate = Total Opens / Messages Delivered

Keep in mind: Open Rate is a great formula to measure the rate by which emails are being perused. The open itself is recorded by an invisible pixel being fired. Opens, in general, are a somewhat flawed metric because an open will only register when someone either displays images in the email or clicks on a link. Therefore, if someone views a message with images disabled, the open is not recorded. The open rate is still important to evaluate because you can measure how effective your subject line/offer is, whether your preheader text is making a difference and even whether you may be having some deliverability issues.

Click Through Rate (CTR) = Total Clicks / Messages Delivered
Click Rate = Total Clicks / Total Opens

Revenue Metrics

Conversion Rate = Total Conversions / Messages Delivered
Adjusted Conversion Rate = Total Conversions / Total Clicks
Average Order Value (AOV) = Total Revenue / Total Conversions
Revenue per Email (RPE) = Total Revenue / Messages Delivered

Contact Loss Metrics

Delivery Rate = Messages Delivered / Messages Sent
Unsubscribe Rate = Total Unsubscribed / Messages Delivered
Complaint Rate = Total Complaints / Messages Delivered

For more details behind engagement, revenue and contact loss metrics take a look at a 3 part series that Kristen Gregory wrote, "Data: Jump on it!" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

If this is your first time doing this, start recording your metrics and find the average of your sends to determine your baseline metrics. If you are a seasoned vet, then take the average of your past sends and use this as your new baseline. One thing to note when taking your own averages over the last x months of mailing is to take the overall average by summing all the sent, delivered, opens, clicks, and conversions... then calculate the average overall rates. DO NOT do an average calculation of all the rates from the last x months.

Once you have your numbers, start to think outside the box, test, take a risk and try something new. You want to improve from your benchmark and remember there is always room for improvement! Need some ideas check out "8 Key Ways to Keep Subscribers Engaged."

Next post I will be covering more on revenue and contact loss metrics, in the mean time create those benchmarks and let me know if there is something in particular you would like me to cover for next time.

Steve DuBois
Marketing Strategist at Bronto

Is This the Future of Email Lead Generation?

Anna Pfeiffer — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Have you searched Google lately and noticed anything different? As an email marketer, you should be aware of the new addition to Google AdWords - the Communications Extension. What is this Extension? Check out the images below to see how there is now the ability to sign up for newsletters/offers within the AdWords block:

If you haven’t seen or heard about this yet, here’s the rundown: AdWords offers Extensions for ads so that you can include your location, product images and more in your advertisement. These have been around for a while. But there’s a new kid on the block and it’s called the Communications Extension.

This extension allows the advertiser to capture email addresses right there in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) and it’s even auto-filled for users who are already logged in. This feature is not yet enabled for all advertisers so if you’re interested in testing it out, contact your AdWords rep to get set up.

In my latest spin around the blogosphere, I’ve seen many different opinions on what this new extension is all about and how effective it will be. Personally, I think it’s a pretty neat little tool! Although I do see the possibility for this method to collect people unintentionally, which could lead to a lower quality list with higher complaints and unsubscribes, I’m hoping that the benefit of the ease of use will outweigh these negative side effects. I think that it will be particularly effective for very strong, well-known brands.

But this is a new concept and it’s hard to predict how it will or won’t benefit us as marketers. So I decided to turn to the resident email marketing expertise here at Bronto to see how the pros weigh in… here are some thoughts from the other Bronto Marketing Strategists:

Greg Zakowicz: “I am not sure how many email signups this would get. I think most people are visual and unless they see the colors and imagery on the website they will not feel the connection to the brand. It feels cold and disconnected to me.”

Emily Keye: “While social networking continues to rise, email and search are still the most popular online activities, and these new ads take advantage of both. What a great idea! I think that testing and measuring the overall performance of subscribers coming from these sources is critical, but I'm all for adding the sign up right there in the Google Search Results. These ads could be a great search-driven tool for driving email sign-ups. Can't wait to see how this performs for my clients!”

Kestrel Lemen: “I'm always telling my clients ‘let's not leave any money on the table.’ Meaning that if there is opportunities to gather new contacts or convert a contact let’s do it! Leave no stone unturned! However I would be cautious of having the sign up in the AdWords section, as it seems contrary to the typical user’s search path. If I'm looking for new shoes, and I was only just starting my search process I would be hesitant to put in my email address. However, if I was farther along, ready to make a purchase and the ad was for the exact shoe I wanted, along with an incentive, I would enter my email. I'm sure the technology will get there eventually, but for now I think it would be more appropriate to have a really well-crafted email sign up with an incentive on the landing page of the AdWords ad. Time will tell. I'm very interested to see how many email addresses are being acquired through this, and the quality of those email addresses.”

Kellie Boggs: “I think the idea of adding the sign-up in the Google Search results is awesome, but I think the real question is the number & quality of the addresses that are collected. I don’t see any harm in testing it out and seeing if this adds a value to your business. I look at this as an opportunity to grow your list and potentially grow your revenue, so I say give it a shot!"

So the jury is still out on this new addition. Does it have the potential to change the way we think about email sign-ups? Yes. Does it represent great potential in the quantity of new sign-ups? Yes. Does it represent the greatest quality sign-ups? Debatable, given it's contrary to what we've believed is sign-up best practice. But as smart marketers, we must keep up with the progress of this Extension. It could be very powerful to help garner new sign-ups of engaged fans. Have you tried using the Extensions yet? If so, I would love to hear how they're working for you so comment below. For those not using the Extension, what do you think - will it be another great way to gain email subscribers?

Anna Pfeiffer
Marketing Strategist at Bronto

e-Receipts: What's Not in Your Wallet?

Jim Davidson — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

My wallet is an inflated heap of a few wadded bills and a pile of folded, fading, and crumpled receipts. The good news is I may not even need a wallet in the near future. Two technologies are becoming more widely available to help me not only cut the clutter but also make my life easier and more streamlined. Near Field Communication (NFC) enables a customer to pay for an in-store purchase using a mobile device. NFC is currently available on many mobile devices with plans for the technology to be included in many upcoming product releases. There are rumors that the next iPhone will be NFC capable which would really help to push this technology to the mainstream.

A second technology closes the purchase loop by emailing receipts to customers for an in-store purchase. Collecting email addresses in-store can be a hassle for both the cashier and the customer. It can be a challenge for the cashier to communicate the value proposition of joining the email program especially if checkout lines are long. The customer may not know what to expect if they provide their email address.

e-Receipts distill this exchange. The customer can easily understand what they will receive and the cashier can succinctly ask “Would you like to have your receipt emailed to you?”

Apple has been sending receipts via email since 2005. While they were definitely pioneers in this customer experience, their e-receipts now appear dated and disconnected from the Apple brand experience. A two sentence plain text email thanks the customer for shopping and links to a customer experience survey. The 8.5x11 formatted pdf receipt takes a “just the facts” approach with minimal branding and no marketing messages. It is definitely not easy to read on a mobile device.

Having the option to receive a receipt via email is becoming more common with companies like Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Sears, Nordstrom, and even Whole Foods offering the service. Marketers are starting to understand the value of carrying the in-store experience to the customer’s inbox.

Let’s look at the risks, benefits, and best practices for e-receipts.

Keep it Secure

Paper receipts have helped to reduce fraudulent returns saving retailers a lot of money each year. Printed barcodes, transaction IDs, and even imagery on the back of the receipt make them difficult to reproduce or modify. Digital receipts are easier for someone to modify. Customers can add products that were not purchased or change prices and then print a receipt. Additionally, customers could print multiple copies of the receipt and attempt multiple returns. The best way to avoid these issues is include a barcode in the email that links to the transaction in your commerce platform. Combining this with other unique identifiers can add another layer of fraud protection.

This e-receipt from Gap includes a barcode and other values which could be transaction identifiers.

Clickable Calls-to-Action

Printed receipts often contain information such as customer service surveys, coupons, and news about upcoming promotions. e-Receipts can provide similar opportunities but make it much easier for the customer to interact and take advantage of other offers. Similar to the Gap example, Old Navy includes links to different product categories that can encourage a recent purchaser to extend their shopping experience online. Sister brands are cross-promoted in a vertical banner and in the footer. Links to Facebook and Twitter are clickable and mobile alert opt-in is promoted as well. General customer service information such as a customer service phone number or links to customer service FAQs could be included to decrease the need for the specific store to provide the support. Many of the best practices for transactional messages outlined in Bronto Marketing Strategist, Fawn Young’s “Do Your Transactional Messages Check Out?” post can be applied to e-receipts.

Set Opt-in Expectations

Getting the email address from a customer is easier when asking for an e-receipt but it is important to clearly state whether the customer is only going to receive the receipt or if they are opting in to receive promotional emails as well. This will require store staff to be trained and scripted to inform the customer what they are opting in to receive. Always include a link in your e-receipt asking the customer to sign-up for your email program. The e-receipt does provide a nice customer experience but it is considered transactional. You will need an explicit opt-in from the customer in order to send promotional messages to them.

You can also include a sign at the register that explains the value of signing up for your email program and how their email address will be used. Avis has a section of their site dedicated to explaining the benefits of their e-receipt program and asking customer to enroll.

Timing is Everything

Walking out of a store without a receipt makes many customers uncomfortable. e-Receipts should be deployed as quickly as possible after the purchase has been made. Letting customers know that they will soon receive their receipt via email can help calm a customer’s nerves.

Here are a few more benefits of using e-receipts:

Cost Savings: With customers getting more comfortable with e-receipts, expenses for receipt paper, ink, and maintenance can be reduced.
Accessibility: e-Receipts can be easily searched in a customer’s inbox. This helps if they need to make a return or want to repurchase an item.
Digital Archive: They don’t fade, tear, and can’t be misplaced.
Environmentally Friendly: Paper use is reduced.

Implementing e-receipts will require a combined effort between your commerce platform team, you internal technology team, and your email service provider. Making the transition will not only make the in-store experience more streamlined, but you carrying the customer cross-channel can help grow your email list and drive sales.

Jim Davidson
Manager of Marketing Research

Do Your Transactional Messages Check Out?

Fawn Young — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

So you made it through the Holiday rush and the New Year's push. Maybe you have some time to breathe and you’re wondering what’s next?! This is a great time to take a look at your transactional messages to make sure they are really transactional in nature, that you are implementing best practices and that you are setting yourself up for success for the rest of the year.

Let's start at the beginning. The US CAN-SPAM Act exempts transactional and relationship emails. So, what is a transactional message? I’ve overheard some un-informed email marketers say that a promotional message was transactional because it “causes the subscriber to make a transaction.”

Let me set the record straight. Transactional and relationship emails are defined as a communication that:

Facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction including shipping notices, order confirmation
Provides warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service
Gives information about a change in terms or features, account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan
Provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits (employer to employee emails)
Delivers goods or services as part of a transaction that the recipient already has agreed to such as rebate info, recalls, legal notices, privacy policy changes

Now that you’ve got a good hold on what a transactional message actually is, let’s talk about optimizing its content.

Keep in mind the primary purpose of the email must be transactional or relationship in nature in its message, subject line and body. However, the good news is that it is permissible to mix in a marketing message/offer in the body - just be sure that the marketing portion of the email is below the transactional or relationship information and not the dominant message of the email. There are many ways to "spice up" your transactional messages to increase revenue, but always make sure to keep the 80/20 rule in mind. This is where 80% of the message is transactional or relationship in nature and 20% is promotional in nature. Also, the message must contain the transactional message in text format and not in an image.

Philosophy has a wonderfully optimized transactional template. You can clearly see everything transactional in nature presented in the main portion of the email. They’ve done a great job making sure they've maxmizing this communication, similar to the tips pointed out by Emily Keye in Transactional Message Musts & Missed Opportunities. Note they've added promotional areas into the template by incorporating a navigation bar and a right rail with promotional call-outs. I love that they’re not only calling out different products in their right rail, but they give a clear sign-up for emails option. Just in case you didn’t opt-in in cart you’re getting another gentle nudge here. It’s a great and easy way to use transactional messages to help grow your list and drive revenue.

Now that you’ve got your message set up and you’re following all the best practices, you may be finding yourself stuck on the subject line. Keep this in mind as you’re working on it: a transactional or relationship email must include a subject line that is transactional in its message and not a marketing message.

For example,

Acceptable subject lines:

Thank you for your order
Your order with XYZ company
Your order of widget has shipped
Your recent return

Unacceptable subject lines:

Order more for Free
Save $10 on next order
Free shipping next order

Making sure you know the right use, composition and approach to transactional messages is key to maintaining a high level of trust with your subscribers. Create transactional messages that inform, make relevant suggestions, and deliver great information to make sure the experience is so pleasant that they want to turn right back around and buy again!

Fawn Young
Marketing Strategist at Bronto

Be My Valentine: The Marketer's Quest for Subscriber Love & Affection

Jim Davidson — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Valentine’s Day is a time to remind those most important to you just how special they are. While you may have a significant other in your personal life, let’s not forget to show some love to your customers. I’m using my favorite Valentine’s Day candy to sweetly illustrate the customer lifecycle and include reminders for best practices throughout this very romantic, but sometimes rocky, relationship.

(Click on the candy to view the tip.)

Be Mine

Oh, the early days of a relationship. Are they that into you? Can you work up the courage to ask for the first date? Will they say yes? We have the answers that can calm those giddy jitters. Remember that timing is everything so consider all of the places you currently ask subscribers to sign up for your program.

Bronto Marketing Strategist, Fawn Young, provides excellent direction in her post “Grow your email list through Facebook: How To and Real Life Examples.” Kristen Gregory, Bronto Manager of Strategic Services, shares “21 Ways to Build Your Email List Organically” which will surely inspire you find a few approaches to asking folks to sign-up. Always keeping up with the latest trends, Steve DuBois, Marketing Strategist at Bronto, walks us through subscriber acquisition via QR codes in his post “Point, Shoot, Signup… Grow your list with QR Codes.”

Well, Hello!

Whew! They have said they are interested by opting-in to your email program! The post-acquisition phase begins with your welcome message/series. Think of this as planning your first date. You need to wear a nice outfit, take them somewhere they will enjoy, show up on time, and give them a reason to not have the first date be the last. Many marketers underestimate the power of a solid welcome message series. You need to impress, inform, and demonstrate the value of your brand.

Check out a few “Top Tips for an Email Welcome Series” to see if you have your bases covered. Also, learn how a Bronto Marketing Strategist fell for a 5 message welcome series in the post “Countdown to Conversions: A Welcome Series that Works.” Lastly, Blooms Today, a Bronto Client, shares some Valentine’s Day successes that include the value of a strong welcome message.

Be Good, but Flirt a Bit, Too!

Congratulations, you haven’t scared off your subscriber yet! We have entered the “getting to know you” phase of the relationship. It is important to focus on better understanding a subscriber’s interests and preferences. Fawn shares tips to help you “Resolve to Really Get to Know Your Contacts!” You also need to make sure you keep things interesting. Kristen gives us “8 Key Ways to Keep Subscribers Engaged.” You should also not be afraid to try new things. Kristen chimes in again telling us to “Get a Personality & Leverage Social Media to Keep Email Subscribers Engaged.”

Remember that we are ultimately on one knee waiting for our subscribers to say “I do” and purchase. We need to make sure we continue to send the right signals and move the relationship forward. I detailed tactics to help close the deal in my post “Push Clickers Across the Conversion Finish Line.” Bronto Marketing Strategist, Kestrel Lemen, extends this theme to Facebook in her article “More than a Fan: How to Drive Followers to Buy.” We also can’t discount the creative tactics that keeps the subscriber on the path to the longer term relationship. Marketing Strategist, Anna Pfeiffer, helps you to “Find Your Email Inspiration: 4 Creative Tactics.”

The Big Moment

In the end, it’s the subscriber’s decision to commit and make a purchase. Hopefully the evolution of the relationship from prospect to potential purchaser has been fulfilling for the subscriber and nurtured and respected by the marketer. It is important to be prepared for potential rejection or for some honeymoon planning!

It’s Over, So Over… I’ve Moved On!

Not the answer we wanted to hear. Our dearly beloved has started to ignore us. Should we fill up our Netflix queue with tearjerkers and avoid human contact? No, no, no! Let’s see if there is a way to win back the love and affection of our sweet subscriber.

First take a look at “Four Easy Steps to Reactivate” to find the best way to analyze the causes for the distance and how to say the right thing to win back the subscriber’s interest. If your subscriber is still not answering your calls, Kristen recommends asking a very important question in her post “Will You Stay or Will You Go Now? How to Successfully Run a Make-Up or Break-Up Campaign.”

Finally, your subscriber may be telling you that they have moved on. Things happen. Take a moment to be sad but collect yourself and let Kristen boldly show you how to “Drop Your Email List's Dead Weight Without Sacrificing ROI.”

I Do!

Oh happy day! The subscriber said “I do” and purchased! They have now entered what could be a lifetime commitment and transitioned from an undecided prospect to a customer! We all know that maintaining a healthy relationship requires an ongoing effort so you can't stop working. A cross-channel marketing plan should cover all phases of the relationship but making sure you are expressing your love across the board after the purchase is important. Emily Keye, Bronto Marketing Strategist, helps you to “Set the Groundwork & Build a Cross Channel Promotion Strategy that Works!” Emily also shares best practices for that moment right after the deal is sealed in her post “Transactional Message Musts & Missed Opportunities.”

Remember that love is a two way street! Your newly committed customer can do some work too. Kristen shares information on building customer generated content in her post “Product Review Requests: Recommendations for Success.”

It's important to take the time to appreciate your prospects and your purchasers throughout the year even when all of the delicious, cavity inducing candy hearts have left the shelves. Make sure you evaluate your subscriber and customer relationships constantly and keep love alive.

Jim Davidson
Manager of Marketing Research

Think Like Deanna but Act Like Data. Smart Lifecycle Marketing.

Kestrel Lemen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

For those who weren’t witness to one of the best Sci-Fi shows of the nineties let me briefly explain the title.

On the starship Enterprise there was a ship counselor Deanna, she had the ability to empathize with people, she could understand their motivations and through that predict their actions. On this same glorious ship there was also an android Data, who walked and talked like a man but did not understand the subtleties of human behavior. He was however, very good at logically understanding a situation and making quick calculations to very complicated problems often discovering the best outcome.

When thinking through a lifecycle marketing program you must find the ability to empathize with your audience’s needs and wants in order to predict what type of messaging will get them to convert. However, when it comes to implementation you must be ontime, calculated, sophisticated and able to come up with the highest ROI.

Let’s say you are in an industry where your audience feels emotionally connected to your product, ex. organic womens clothing. Your contacts love the products, which is evident by high open and click rates for both promotional and informational messages. You have a strong following on social media, and unsolicited customer testimonials come in regularly.

The Deanna side of your marketing brain can infer what type of lifecycle marketing messages would be appropriate based on the emotional needs and wants of your contacts.

A welcome series is a good place to start. The welcome series could introduce them to the all aspects of the brand and range in products. It could promote social efforts giving them a way to connect with you and other brand lovers. It could utilize a strong manage preferences form to ensure that the contact gets the messages they want AND ask the contact for their birthday, which you can use later to give them a customized experience. By setting up a series like this you are merely feeding into the excitement of a new contact and making them feel special.

A birthday message (or series) would again show the contact that you want to connect with them, and give them something they want when they want it. On your birthday, you want presents (discount/free shipping could be seen as a gift), plain and simple.

Let’s reward those contacts who have shown us loyalty! Once a contact has shown solid and consistent buying patterns why not set up an automated VIP series as well? They want to be recognized for being good customers, (kinda like when the owner at the restaurant comes out and thanks you for being such a good customer and gives your free desert, of course you’ll buy that new bottle of wine they recommend!).

A post purchase series develops the relationship after a purchase. An excellent opportunity to show off a little customer service. A product review message and a product recommendation message could be sent as a way of solidifying the new customer has a happy experience. Be sure to include your customer service info, so that if there was any kind of issue, you can correct it.

There are many more life cycle messages that your Deanna brain could come up with. But let’s switch over to what your Data side is thinking.

Welcome messages yield some of the highest open rates, an excellent opportunity to make a sale. A message promoting your social pages provides an opportunity to identify contacts who are interested in cross channel efforts, which can produce excellent conversion rates. A manage preferences message ensures the right message is going to the right person, minimizing wasteful sends.

A birthday message can yield conversions and can be created and automated with minimal effort.

A VIP series is directed at contacts who are most likely to convert, and is an excellent opportunity for an up sell or cross sell. Again this can be automated if the proper purchase data is available.

Getting someone to be a second/third/forth time buyer is always better then spending money to try and acquire new buyers. Utilize the buyers you already have to drive revenue. A post purchase series can be easily triggered by past purchase date and automated. The series could include product review requests (which in turn help others to use that information in their buying process), and product recommendations which offer an opportunity to upsell by suggesting very relevant, very data driven recommendations (since they were based on past purchases). If you've automated these emails, make sure to monitor them on an ongoing basis.

By utilizing the contact creation date, purchase date, birthdate, total value and average order value of a contact you are able to create targeted automated messages. These lifecycle messages are efficient and produce valuable results. But remember, they will need to be monitored and altered as needed for maximum ROI.

So now that you are thinking with both a Deanna and Data mind set, go back and look at your current email program. What does your audience want? And how can you utilize lifecycle marketing to create efficient messages that produce revenue?

Kestrel Lemen
Marketing Strategist at Bronto

8 Key Ways to Keep Subscribers Engaged

Kristen Gregory — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

You’ve worked hard to get people onto your email marketing list, but that’s only part of the battle. What are the things you need to do to make sure people not only stay ON the list, but stay engaged and interact with your messages? Here are 8 key ways to keep subscribers engaged through their lifecycle:

1. Set Expectations from the Start

You want people to be excited to join your list in order to receive certain communications from you. In the case of Kaleidoscope Yarns – that’s knitting tips and tricks, free patterns, special offers, and more. Subscribers also understand that they are going to get one email a week.

By making it clear WHAT they are signing up for and, roughly, how often they can expect to hear from you, you’ll start your relationship off on the right foot with everyone on the same page.

Setting proper expectations is key to a good email relationship. It helps establish trust.

2. Keep it Relevant - Segment & Target

Another key to creating great relationships with subscribers and maintaining engagement is keeping content RELEVANT. We do this by leveraging data we have on our subscribers.

We can take advantage of the following types of behavioral data:

Email behavior: What are they opening and click on? That is a demonstration of interest you can pursue.
Web site behavior: What categories of product are they browsing? According to recent studies, we know that messages that leverage clickstream data, like abandoned cart and browsing recommendation messages, produce 9 times the revenue and 32 times the net profit of standard broadcast messages.
Purchase behavior: What have customers purchased from you? How much money do they spend? How many times have they purchased from you? When did they last purchase from you? You can do some really smart marketing if you have this data flowing into your email platform regularly.

We can also leverage demographic information gathered via:

Sign-up: What are you asking for up-front? Highly consider name, location, birthday and interest areas for future segmentation.
Manage preference center: You can run an ”Update Your Information” campaign to get data from existing customers and motivate response using a drawing or sweepstakes.

3. Automate: Set up Triggered Lifecycle Messages

You can’t get more targeted, relevant and timely than setting up automated lifecycle triggers. Lining up touches like welcome series and birthday triggers can make a huge difference in your interaction with subscribers (and absolutely help your deliverability). It’s not uncommon for these kinds of messages to see anywhere from 30-80% open rates. Beyond helping your business stand out from the competition, these messages often create brand new revenue streams for your marketing program.

4. Leverage Real-time News & Events

Be on top of what’s going on in the world to really gain attention. “Trendjacking” is the idea of taking everyday topics people are already discussing and creating content that taps into them. This CompanyStore email was sent out in the midst of the major snowstorms that were hitting the East coast last winter - highlighting an issue that was already top of mind.

Personally, I had a client who leveraged the American Idol chatter a couple years back regarding the “Pants on the Ground” contestant in a subject line the following day and got RIDICULOUS open rates (they were selling jeans, by they way). This works!

5. Get a Personality & Interact

Humanizing your business can go a long way to driving better relationships with your customers and prospects....so go ahead, get a personality.

Even if you don't have or can't develop a distinct individual to represent your brand,"getting a personality" can also just mean speaking in a conversational, friendly tone and creating dialogue.

The advent of social media platforms has also made it easier than ever to drive conversation and interaction with your email subscribers. We want to peak their interest, make them laugh or get their thoughts - even if they aren't ready to buy from us today. That way, they'll hopefully want to continue interacting with us over time.

Engage and speak with (NOT AT) your subscribers. Here are 4 ways to drive conversation in your messages.

6. Inspire and Inform

People are not generally going to buy from you with every email you send them. In order to keep them engaged, we occasionally have to take a break from pushing just BUY, BUY, BUY messaging and instead try different, more informational approaches.

How can you be seen as helpful, as an advisor, as a thought-leader?

Try to incorporate some straight informational messaging in your welcome series or in a post-purchase series or have a more informational slanted newsletter that you send once a month. Here are 6 ideas to make your messages more beneficial, educational and inspirational to those receiving them.

7. Consider Giveaways, Customer Spotlighting

Think about doing gift-card giveaways to a certain number of people every month to keep people interested in STAYING on the list. Mention this explicitly at sign-up and in welcome messages or series to keep people hooked.

Additionally, feature those winners in your emails to keep people excited about potentially winning and to drive opens to see if they won.

Also, consider highlighting customers in general. We are a voyeuristic generation - just think about all the Facebook spying we do! Interview and spotlight your customers. People will see that you care about your customers and those who are highlighted will share these emails with friends.

This is a great opportunity to get creative. Think about having people submit photos of themselves wearing your clothes or with the project they just knitted with the yarn they bought from you or the car they restored with your tools, etc.

8. Recognize, Reward and Inspire via a Loyalty Program

Another way to keep subscribers engaged (and encourage repeat purchases) is to develop a loyalty program, leveraging a lifetimevalue field or # of purchases field. We can use this data to trigger rewards when people reach certain spending levels or have them reach VIP status with various perks (like Sephora does). We can even trigger messages to people monthly with their balances.

All of these tactics combined can lead to very powerful engagement with your email subscribers, enabling you to maintain a relationship and hopefully inspire multiple purchases over a longer period of time.

What have you seen drive the best engagement? What other ideas would you recommend?

Kristen Gregory
Manager of Strategic Services

Targeting the Tablet Customer

Jim Davidson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Adobe Systems’ first "Digital Marketing Insights" report begins with a powerful statement: “Consumers who visit retail websites using tablet devices are more valuable online customers than those who visit websites using smartphones or traditional desktop/laptop computers.”

Let’s think about that for a moment… device type is now another layer that we can use to measure customers that bring in the most value. Traditional purchase behavior, site activity, social media interactions, and overall engagement can now be broken down by what someone is holding in their hands or where they are sitting. I love data.

Not only are your tablet buyers valuable, they are spending more dollars than their smartphone and desktop and laptop counterparts. The report found that tablet users spent 50% more than smartphone users and 20% more than those on traditional computers. They are also nearly three times as likely to purchase compared to smartphone users and nearly as likely as those using traditional computers.

The actual percentage of your customer base using tablets may be small but clearly they are important… and growing. A report by Pew Internet found that tablet ownership nearly doubled (from 10% to 19%) between mid-December and early January.

Let’s explore a few tactics you can employ now to not only learn more about your tablet audience but also make sure they have a positive experience when interacting with your brand.

Raise Your Hand (but don’t drop your tablet!)

From the email engagement perspective, most tablets will provide a web-based user experience similar to that of a traditional computer. But that’s today and who knows what advances will be made and how engagement trends will shift. Start identifying your tablet users now by adding an option to your site where a user can tell you that they use a tablet to shop as well as what kind of tablet they are using. You can add this to a “How do you shop” option on your sign-up forms and preference centers where the choices could be: In-Store, Online, iPad, Android Tablet, iPhone, Android Phone, or Other Mobile Device. Not only will you still start to gain insight into the tablet adoption rate of your customers but you can also analyze their historical performance to find open, click and conversion trends. Even if you are not at a point to take action on this data now, it is important to start the collection process in advance. This data may also help you to determine whether a tablet focused app would be worth the investment.

Email Creative Gets Tablet-ized

It is important to consider the unique tablet, smartphone, and desktop user experiences separately and, once you have completed that exercise, try to combine them. That’s what your customers are doing. Your emails are most likely being read on monitors, smartphones, and tablets. This presents a challenge for your email design. A mouse click is different from a “pinch and zoom” world. Bronto Marketing Strategist, Emily Keye, previously posted several recommendations for email design for mobile devices.

What changes for the tablet user is that they are viewing on a larger screen and usually in a portrait mode. This pushes the fold of your email down so the above-the-fold area is more present. View your emails on a tablet and alternate between portrait and landscape orientations to see how your message appears. Pay attention to how this device shifts what is seen by the recipient without scrolling.

Let’s take a look at a Zazzle email on the following devices:

iPad

Click to see full-size version

iPhone

Click to see full-size version

Android tablet

Click to see full-size version

Desktop Monitor

Click to see full-size version

The amount of content shown above-the-fold drastically varies by device. If you know you are sending to a segment containing tablet viewing subscribers, make sure you have something interesting below the standard fold line.

This Zazzle email effectively communicates the “New Custom Products” offer within all devices. It should be noted that iPad sleeves are part of the new custom product line so this should be great news for the Zazzle.com team!

I also like how Zazzle has alternated the product shots in the secondary section of the email. Having these large chunks of clickable space physically divided on each row will decrease the amount of fat-fingering misclicks that frustrate many mobile device users.

Another factor to keep in mind is image quality. With smartphones, you need to consider the overall size of your email and images can impact download times. Most tablets use wifi connections and will be able to handle the load. Considering the numbers reported by Adobe, making sure the tablet population has something pretty to see can result in some serious conversions. Make sure images can be “pinched and zoomed” and that the detail of those images is pleasing to the tablet holder.

With tablet usage increasing, the cost of tablets decreasing, and new tablet lines launching pretty much daily, this is the time to start paying attention to your tablet customers and collecting relevant data about them. Based on Adobe’s report, these are valuable customers that should not be ignored.

Have you launched any tablet specific strategies? Share what has worked for you below.

Jim Davidson
Manager of Marketing Research

Bronto's 2012 Trends and Predictions for Retail Marketers

Jim Davidson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Will 2012 be the year Black Friday and Cyber Monday become less important? Will marketers finally start to drive revenue through social channels? Bronto’s Marketing Strategists, who help clients including Party City, Dean & Deluca, and LittleMissMatched increase revenue and engagement via email and cross-channel marketing, share their insights and predictions for the year ahead.

Email Creative Goes Cross-Channel

By Emily Keye

With consumers constantly on the go and viewing email messages on a variety of devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.), marketers will be paying more attention to email design. Email messages will have to be scannable and display clear calls to actions that are evident with eye-catching buttons. Larger fonts will be used and designed into single columns. Many of these design changes will evolve as the click of a mouse is increasingly replaced by the touch and swipe of a finger.

From Email Marketing Reports:

An April 2011 study sponsored by Google showed that 82% of smartphone users check and send email with their device.
Merkle's "View from the Digital Inbox 2011" survey found over half of those with an Internet-enabled mobile phone used it to check a personal email account

Brands Step Up Content and Social Consciousness

By Anna Pfieffer

Content has always been king, and we’re going to see more of it than ever in retailer’s 2012 marketing campaigns. Leading retailers will add softer sell, value-added content campaigns to their revenue-focused marketing as a way to build community and pride around their brands. We’ll also see more brands embracing cause marketing – another great way to build brand awareness and customer loyalty while helping others.

Each year, the Cause Marketing Forum recognizes the best cause marketing campaigns with its Halo Awards. Check out the 2011 winners for some great examples of what we’ll see more of in 2012.

Marketing Automation Gains Traction

By Kristen Gregory

More retailers will grasp the immense value of marketing automation and will have better, easier-to-use tools at their disposal in order to move from good intentions to implementation. We'll see a spike in adoption of timely, targeted triggered messages such as abandoned shopping cart reminders, recommendations based on purchases, inspirational welcome series, and meaningful post-purchase touches. This will translate to a better experience for the consumer and more revenue for the retailers who move forward in this manner.

From Email Marketing Reports:

Bank of America reports that event-based trigger emails are 250% more effective than broadcast promotional emails
75% of registrations for Roku’s referral program are driven by triggered emails to new customers
People who purchase after getting cart abandonment emails spend 55% more than those who buy straightaway

Social Gets Real

By Kestrel Lemen

Many companies have had a chance to experiment with social media channels and build a social audience of followers. More advanced companies have developed analytics and metrics criteria for measuring social media successes and failures. This will be the year when retailers develop social marketing campaigns that not only engage their audience, but also drive direct conversions. Driving revenue through social will result in retailers scaling their social marketing campaigns by using cross-channel techniques to expand their audience. Continuing to evaluate performance and ROI of every channel will be essential.

From the Direct Marketing Association's “The Power of Direct Marketing” a biennial forecast of direct marketing's economic impact on the US economy (October 2011):

Social networking’s ROI is also expected to rise. The report found that the current payback from $1 invested in social media is $12.71 and is expected to increase to $12.90 in 2012 and climb to $13.43 by 2016.

Daily Deal Sites Differentiate with Cross-Channel Strategies

By Steve Dubois

Daily deal sites have hit critical mass and the winners will have to get smarter and more creative with their marketing to differentiate themselves from competitors and drive sales. In 2012, we’ll see more daily deal sites partnering with marketing technology companies offering core technology in tracking and analyzing the online behavior of consumers across email, mobile and social channels. Social and mobile channels will play an increasingly important role in the success of leading daily deal sites. The companies that invest to better understand consumer behavior will thrive. Those who fail to adapt in this way will be out of market in twelve months.

From “How Businesses Fare with Daily Deals: A Multi-site Analysis of Groupon, LivingSocial, OpenTable, Travelzoo and BuyWithMe Promotions” Study from June 2011:

Rice University Associate Professor of Management Utpal Dholakia found that there is very little difference between daily deal providers in the ever-expanding competition for consumer dollars, and it will be difficult for any one site to stand out from the others.
"The major take-away from the study is that not enough businesses are coming back to daily deals to make the industry sustainable in the long run,” Dholakia said.
21.7% of deal buyers never redeem the vouchers they've already paid for.
- Although close to 80% of deal users were new customers, significantly fewer users spent beyond the deal’s value or returned to purchase at full price.

Holidays 2012: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Decrease in Importance

By Steve Dubois

Black Cyber and Cyber Monday still made headlines in 2011, but as marketers extend the marketing season for the holidays, launching campaigns months in advance, the importance of those two days as bellwethers of holiday retail sales will continue declining in 2012. The trends will be more about consumers increasingly shifting more holiday shopping dollars online versus shopping in store. We will continue to see better discounts on days leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and that entire week of frenzied online promotions and sales will emerge as a marketing entity in and of itself deserving of its own coined term.

From: Nielsen: “80% of U.S. Consumers Skipping Stores on Black Friday” (November 2011):

Much like in 2010, the majority of consumers (80%) are avoiding in-store Black Friday shopping.
While increased Black Friday promotions appeal to consumer’s desire for “hot deals,” as a shopping event, Black Friday is becoming less relevant in the retail world as online shopping grows and holiday promotions begin earlier and earlier in the year.
In fact, 35% of those recently surveyed cited they’ve already started their holiday shopping.

Preference Centers Become Vital

By Fawn Young

As engagement plays an increasingly important role in email deliverability, a growing number of marketers will launch preference centers to give the customer more control over the marketing messages they receive. Through preference centers, consumers let marketers know how and when they want to hear from the marketer, as well as what type of content they'd like to receive. Giving consumers more control has a significant impact on improving email deliverability, which will drive more retailers to launch and improve preference centers.

According to a survey of 1,001 consumers conducted by The Relevancy Group:

72% of consumers stated deleted email from a marketer wasn't relevant to me
59% of consumers stated deleted email from a marketer because I get too much email from them.
49% of consumers unsubscribed from email that I had opted in to because it wasn't relevant.

Retailers Ramp Up Loyalty Programs

By Greg Zakowicz

Consumers today have grown accustomed to deep discounts and other perks, such as free shipping - especially around the holidays. In order reclaim profit margins, an increasing number of retailers will launch and cultivate loyalty and VIP programs that will keep consumers coming back for more year round. These programs will allow retailers to show the love to their best and most loyal customers, while cultivating more repeat buyers.

From Colloquy's 2011 "Forecast of U.S. Consumer Loyalty Program Points Value" study:

The retail industry makes up 40% of all loyalty program memberships, and issues rewards at $12 billion a year