In the quick kick-off of the session I presented what I consider to be the 7 essentials to have in place if a company wants to see Return on Investment on their email marketing campaigns.

1. Set goals

What do you want to accomplish with your email marketing? Overall and with this send? Is it sales (immediate, repeat, cross-sell, etc.)? Traffic to the website? Is it ot nurture a lead or a customer relationship? This will inform your content and who you target. (I’ve written about this here.)

2. Know your subscribers

The more you know about your subscribers, the easier it will be to craft emails that are relevant to them. By being relevant, the email is more likely to turn into a sale. You can build profiles on your subscribers through your opt-in form, by their actions in emails (with metrics such as clicks), as well as their inactions. (I’ve written about this here and here.)

3. Understand life cycles

Knowing about the life cycle of your products and services will help you set the frequency that best matches where your recipients are in the life cycle. This includes the cycle through the lifetime value of your customer, the cycle of repeat purchases, and the cycle through from obtaining to retaining customers. (I’ve written about this here.)

4. Target by segmentation

By moving beyond one-size-fits-all, or broadcast, emails, you can tailor emails to groups of subscribers. Segmentation can be based on geography, demography and/or activity status, among many other attributes. (I’ve written about this here.)

5. Inspire action

What is your Call To Action (CTA)? This is what you want people to do - which is probably the essence of your monetisation goals. Are you actually making it easy for people to act on your email? Make your CTAs clear, easy and prominent. What do you want them to do? Purchase? Register? Download? Forward? (I’ve written about this here.)

6. Test for best results

Being able to measure your results has to be one of THE top tools available to you with email. With today’s technology it’s also quite easy to accomplish quickly - so there’s no excuse not to test. Elements to test include time, day, frequency, the sender line, subject line, layout, copy and call to action. You’ll be seeking best results that match your goals - not simply most opened or most clicked, etc. (I’ve written about this here and here.)

7. Measure and learn

Email marketing is an ongoing process. You should establish your own benchmarks and create an ongoing trend sheet to assess what’s working, what’s not working and spot trends. Metrics include delivered, bounced, clicks (overall, individual, articles), opens, subscribers (signed up, signed off) and conversions. (I’ve written about this here.)

Companies often say to me “but our products and services aren’t very interesting - how do we create an email newsletter that will be interesting and compelling?”

Well, you know what? I don’t care what your company’s products and/or services are. Wing nuts? Great! Because I really, really believe that every single company has a great email newsletter in them.

And here’s the secret: You just need to be passionate about your subject. Your company should strive to produce the best [insert your product/service here] email newsletter out there! Passion and knowledge jump out from the page - and it will get your readers excited as well. Let them know they’re making the right choice by listening to you because you know your product and service inside out. You are PASSIONATE about the beauty and design of what you offer. No one in your industry offers the customer service you offer … you get my point.

Here’s the best place to start. Your database. Send only to the people that want to hear from you. Who you are sending the newsletter to? If you have a huge database and you have no idea who’s on it, you’re wasting your time. By being savvy in the building of your database, e.g. having a well-crafted opt-in form, you will attract and create a list of prospects who WANT to hear from you, who WANT to get your newsletter because they have expressed a specific interest in your products and your services.

That’s the first part. Next you need to assemble a newsletter that delivers PASSIONATE content about these products and services. Useful information. Valuable information. Information that saves them time and helps them make a wise decision in their purchase (with you!). Your newsletter is friendly and conveys that passion YOU feel about what you have to offer.

Now you need to spend time designing a newsletter of beauty. Well designed and well rendered newsletters help convey your passion. (Both HTML and text can be things of beauty.) People are drawn in by good design. Design that is easy to read, appealing to the senses and easy to navigate.

Finally, get the send rhythm right. This is the frequency. You do that by matching the purchasing lifecycles of your products and services with where your prospects are in that lifecycle.

Okay, yes, these are tall orders. But in today’s world where people can find anything faster and cheaper on the internet … this PASSION is what is going to make you stand out.

Read more about this:

Why do people like (and don’t like) email newsletters?
Ten things to spice up an email newsletter
Ten things you should have in your opt-in form

The practice of using Do-not-reply email addresses in the from field.

He says do-not-reply email addresses should be considered an obsolete 20th practice.

I couldn’t agree more.

We no longer live in a do-not-reply world. Companies need to realise that we, ALL of us, want and now expect to be able to reply - to engage with, to interact. Immediately. From facebook, articles posted within online publications, blog posts to websites that feature user-reviews of products and services … we now live in a “we want to reply” kind of world. In fact, it’s heading quickly towards the “we have a right to reply”!

I contend that it reflects badly on any company that uses do-not-reply emails in any context, no matter how large the organisation. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t even need or want to communicate you the company - it creates a perception of barriers.

With companies keen to jump on the social networking bandwagon, it’s ironic that there are probably a good number of them that actually use the do-not-reply in their email marketing campaigns. Yet they don’t see the irony in this. Companies want to control WHEN customers can interact with them – and it just doesn’t work that way anymore. A company must strive to strip back as many barriers and layers as possible to allow people to actually get in contact with a real person at the company.

Every email sent from a company, even a transactional email, should allow for two-way communication. There should be processes in place to handle emails coming back into the company. If it is an impossibility to have someone to handle the incoming emails, then I would consider it acceptable to have an initial automatic reply that gives the recipient contact points in relation to the specific question they have. Sort of like that automated phone system that says “press 1 for this, press 2 for that…”

Again, in today’s world, since anything can be found cheaper and faster online, it can come down to customer care, and the ability to get customer satisfaction immediately that will retain your customers. If you don’t do this, you risk people writing about their bad experiences trying to communicate with your company on the many, many social network sites available around the internet.

Usability Guru Jakob Nielsen, who’s behind the reports, continues to believe that well-done email newsletters are one of the top investments a company can make. (I wrote about this in a previous post.)

But the points made during this event drove home the fact that it has to be an email newsletter of value to the recipient. While email marketing has a zillion benefits for marketers - in the end all efforts and time spent should be about delivering value to the recipient. This is the only way marketers will see ROI in their email marketing.

So …

What do people value in a good email newsletter?

• Enjoyable to read (offers at least one: interesting, relevant or useful information)
• Easy to sign up to (didn’t create barriers or ask for too much information. Earlier post about this here.)
• From a “good source” - known for expertise in the field, or a well-known brand.
• Easy to navigate - well designed, looks good, easy to read more then one article.
• Well written content
• Easy to share
• “Saves time”
• Provides automatic updates
• Offers exclusive content (special offers not available anywhere else)
• Arrives at times that are convenient

Some of the survey participants’ specific reasons:

“Keeps me informed about things that I wouldn’t otherwise research.”
“Reminds me of things I would otherwise forget.”
“Teaches me new things I’d otherwise pass over.”
“I do not have to fetch the information actively. I can just sit back and get the information I need”
“Free”
“I can click delete if I don’t want it.”
“Current information could lead to a competitive edge.”

OK that’s what the best email newsletters provide. Here’s why people DON’T like a newsletter they receive.

• No useful content - nothing useful. no special offers. no new information.
• Hard to read - maybe it’s one big image that’s blocked and appears to be an empty email. Maybe the design and layout of the text makes it hard to read and decipher.
• Ignores permission - comes too frequently (or feels like it does) - or more frequently than promised. Or, the sign up appears to generate lots of third party mailings.
• “Hello, are you ready to buy?” * - Each newsletter gives the same feeling you would get if you walked into a shop and five sales people descended on you immediately to ask you if you are going to make a purchase. The newsletter is all sales, no information. All pressure, no enjoyment.

(*Thanks to Stephannie Miller at ReturnPath for this great phrase.)

So, back to this: why are 40% of potential subscribers not completing the sign up process?

Here are some of the reasons:

• Form not working - error messages.
• Too many pages to go through during the registration process.
• Double opt-in email (the final click) was not completed by the potential subscriber. (Reasons included: email never arrived or didn’t arrive immediately, was filtered, wasn’t recognised, never got around to clicking it.)
• Too many required fields.
• Too much personal information required in exchange for “just a newsletter”.
• An account (create a password and username, etc.) was mandatory to activate in order to get the newsletter. Too much effort for a ‘free’ newsletter.

Anything here you need to rethink about in your own sign up process? It’s apparent by the reasons given that the key to success is ease and simplicity. Easy to sign up, and fast to complete. No barriers. Don’t start a relationship by pressing for as much information as your marketing department thinks they can get away with - but instead ask for enough to allow you to send timely, targeted and relevant emails right away.

(I’ll be posting more of my insights from this fantastic day long conference.)

What: The Email Marketing Conference
Theme: Customer focused email - marketing to people not lists
Presented by: DMA Email Marketing Council
Date: Thursday, 5 June 2008
Time: 9.00am - 4.30pm
Venue: London Zoo, Regents Park, NW1
To Book: Catherine Gibbon on 020 7291 3355 or catherine.gibbon@dma.org.uk
Booking Form: booking form

Benefits:

* Explore how to connect with your customers to maximise outcomes.
* Gain a fundamental understanding of how to use data to achieve your objectives.
* Get real-life ideas of what works and what doesn’t in email campaigns.
* Discover how to effectively measure your campaigns.

Agenda/Speakers:

Panel discussion - Why being customer focused is so important?

Title: How to focus on your subscribers: making a case for a new customer centric approach
Keynote speaker: Stephanie Miller, Global Markets Catalyst, Return Path
Covers: Are you suffering from diminishing returns, decreasing subscriber engagement, lower response, lower conversions, lack of engagement, increasing opt-outs, poor deliverability? In this session Stephanie Miller of Return Path will share with you why the days of mass broadcast may indeed be limited and how organisations can create a subscriber centric approach. She’ll show you how to make a business case for doing it, ensuring senior management buy in, enabling you to create unique and powerful subscriber experiences.

Title: Data for driving email marketing
Speaker: James Bunting, Head of Client Services, Communicator Corporation
Covers: Customers see registration forms as a transactional process, the more data they give, the more they will want in return. This session examines how to collect, maintain, clean and grow your databease with the customer in mind.

Title: Segmentation and targeting: how to speak directly to your customers
Speaker: denise cox, Newsletter Specialist, Newsweaver
Covers: In order to connect with your customers, every single element of every single email you send, from subject line to content, links and call to action, must be compelling and engaging. Get tips and real life ideas for stepping up your own email marketing through segmentation and targeting.

Title: Relevancy in email
Speaker: Simone Barratt, UK Managing Director, eDialog
Covers: If you work in email marketing, you constantly hear that everything has to be relevant, but what exactly does that mean? Relevant email is keyed to a recipient’s location, interests, attributes, behaviours, and other important factors that drive attention and response. Relevance increases email productivity (improving conversions, revenue, and profit) as well as customer engagement. Achieving relevance, however, is not simple. In this session Simone Barratt discusses how to create a framework which increases relevance based on customer data, targeting tactics, marketing expertise, process, workflow, and of course technology.

Title: An eye-opening expose on 47 major e-retailers campaigns, and the lessons to be learned
Speaker: Tink Taylor, Business Development Director, dotMailer
Covers: dotMailer’s “Hitting the Mark” report caused waves in the press this year. An eye-opening study of email campaigns from 47 major e-retailer from Argos to Woolworths, the report pulled no punches. Tink Taylor discusses the results - both surprising and revealing, and the valuable lessons to be learnt by every emarketeer.

Title: Frequency and timing
Speaker: Skip Fidura, Managing Director, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Vice-Chair and Email Marketing Council, DMA
Covers: “How often should I communicate with my customers and when is the best time to reach them?” This has been the “Holy Grail” of marketing since before there was . . . well . . . a Holy Grail. Gone are the days when frequency and timing were dictated by the marketer. Today’s consumer wants messages that are relevant, personal, and timely. This session will delve into the challenges of this new environment and discuss practical solutions for how to solve them.

Title: Measurement - Metrics for understanding
Speaker: Dela Quist, CEO, Alchemy Worx

Newsweaver: UK B2B marketers accelerate use of email marketing

According to email marketing provider Newsweaver, email is now an essential part of the B2B marketing mix. Based on a recent survey conducted by B2B Marketing Magazine and sponsored by Newsweaver, 78% of UK B2B marketers surveyed consider email to be either a “critical” or “very important” part of their marketing mix.

Of the 175 B2B marketers who completed the survey, 68% believe that the versatility of email is on the increase and are integrating email more into the overall marketing mix - over 40% of respondents said that they are now using email as part of integrated marketing campaigns. B2B marketers also see themselves as sophisticated users of email marketing with 67% stating that their understanding of email and how to leverage its effectiveness is either “excellent” or “good”. [Newsweaver's press release]

B2B Marketing magazine: Email continues its inexorable rise

B2B marketers are increasingly relying on email as a vehicle to engage with and sell to new clients, despite acknowledging that it is most effective as a customer retention or maintenance tool.

This is according to B2B Marketing’s annual email marketing survey, sponsored by Newsweaver, which reveals that 90 per cent of B2B marketers are currently using email to communicate with prospects. This is despite the fact that less than 20 per cent believe it is most effective at achieving this objective. The survey also revealed that ‘prospecting’ is the joint most popular use of email amongst B2B marketers, closely followed by ‘generating new sales leads’. [B2B Marketing magazine's press release]

I came across this great example from J.Crew, which gives the subscriber an opportunity to control the frequency - or to easily go on to totally remove themselves from all J.Crew mailings.

This form comes up when the recipient selects unsubscribe. J.Crew offers a polite touch point between the initial ‘click here to remove’ request and the final ‘remove’ function. (NB: The form is pre-populated with the email address.)

(click thumbnail for bigger view of form)