Marketing. Seven Steps to Success Guide. Dr Dave Chaffey. Published: November Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage

Transcription

1 Marketing Seven Steps to Success Guide Dr Dave Chaffey Published: November 2011 Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage

2 marketing Seven Steps to Success Guide Contents 03 Introduction 12 Step 1 Prioritise with the CRITICAL 18 Step 2 Set your goals and build a quality list 25 Step 3 Defining your 30 Step 4 techniques 45 Step 5 Defining your integrated communications strategy 48 Step 6 Creating effective templates and 57 Step 7 Test, learn and refine

3 Introduction Your options for using to grow your business marketing is far from dead as some have suggested in this age of social networking 1 As we ll see in this section, you can use both for gaining new customers and selling more to existing customers. In this guide we ll look at the options for each, but we ll focus on using as a customer communication tool, which is where it works best and can integrate well with your social media marketing efforts. Strategy Recommendation 1 Focus your efforts on customer retention marketing tends to work best as a tool to improve customer retention and growth. This is because your s are received by a warm contact that is already aware of you. doesn t work so well when it s with a cold contact. That said, there are a range of options to use for customer acquisition and it s worth considering them. Let s start here. Using for customer acquisition r Q. Have we reviewed our options for customer acquisition through ? Although many just think of as a customer acquisition tool there are still some great options to use for acquiring new customers through reaching new prospects. Checklist acquisition options These are the main options to review: 1. Rented list 2. Co-branded (and/or co-registration) 3. 3 rd party newsletter 4. Viral 5. Event-triggered 6. House e-newsletter Best Practice Tip 1 Don t miss the opportunities of advertising in others enewsletters We highlight the 3 rd option as particularly worth considering, especially for business-tobusiness marketing since the banner blindness that we see with display ads doesn t occur to the same degree with enewsletters since visitors scan them. To help you quickly review the options for acquisition using, this table shows their benefits, disadvantages and issues to consider to help manage. 1 Facebook s view on marketing 3

4 Table. Summary of methods of using marketing for customer acquisition and their advantages and disadvantages Option What is it? Benefits Issues 1. Rented list Buying access to contacts from a list owner who broadcasts on your behalf 2. Co-branded list 3. 3rd party e-newsletter ad/ sponsorship sent from list-owner but with your brand, message and offer Placing an ad, sponsorship, editorial in a publishers enewsletter. 4. Viral An is designed to be shared and seeded to a house list or a rented list in combination with social media 5. Event-triggered 6. House E-newsletter Conversion of leads Enewsletters are mainly aimed at customers and most sales will come from this source, but they can work well for prospects who haven t bought from you yet Reach into new contacts Leverage partner brand. Can also co-register signup on their site Responsiveness compared to other options Reach. Potentially low-cost and high reach. Automated just sit back and relax Helps build a relationship with recipient over time. List source. High typical cost of acquisition (CPA). Low responsiveness Perception of spam buy from a reputable list owner Exclusivity Prime position Clutter Cost Achieving cut-through Negative brand impact Optimising, offer and frequency Achieving balance between informing the list-member and selling to them. 4

5 Using for customer retention and growth r Q. Have we reviewed our options for customer retention and growth through ? Most marketers agree that works best as a relationship-building tool. Check out the options in the table. Checklist retention options These are the main options acquisition options to review: r 1. House e-newsletter r 2. House campaign r 3. Triggered r 4. Research r 5. Service r 6. Sales force r 7. Integration with blogs, mobile and social media messaging The table below summarises your options for communicating with existing customers via . You will see that some of these options such as event-triggered and social messaging are in common with acquisition. Retention option What is it? Benefits Issues 1. House enewsletter 2. House campaign Still one of the best digital marketing tools to build a brand and develop relationships. A focused e-blast or e-postcard on a single offer often has better response than an enewsletter because of its clarity 3. Triggered s Behavioural s following up on abandoned shopping basket, search or category browses on site or interest expressed through a click on an can be a cost-effective way to increase conversion to sale Add value, gain response Permissionbased: Responsive Low cost. Defining the best sell/ inform/entertain balance. Integration with social media. Resourcing. Managing contact strategies of frequency so that the impact is not reduced. Targeting. Testing the best template layouts and offers. There is growing customer distrust of tracking so transparency on this is required and opt-in is essential. 4. Research Research + Responsiveness Selection of sample. Managing frequency 5

6 Retention option What is it? Benefits Issues 5. Service Service + Responsiveness Cross-selling 6. Sales force Relationship build. Relationship Control Sell. Integration 7. Blogs/RSS/ Social and mobile messaging Other alerting and messaging tools should be made to integrate with your marketing for efficiency. Permission-based r Q. Is our permission-based? Brand and relationship building Adoption of different networks by different customers. Permission marketing, or gaining consent for marketing communications to be received, is fundamental to successful. If you don t practice permission marketing, customers will see you as a spammer and you may lose them forever. Then there are the legal requirements in many countries which make permission marketing a must. Strategy Recommendation 2 Ensure your is permission-based Audit your to ensure that your is permission-based. Since marketing underpins much of digital marketing, but especially, let s take a look at what s involved. You will know most of this, but it s worth checking. Permission marketing Permission marketing is an established approach that still gives a practical foundation for CRM and online customer engagement. Permission marketing is a term coined by Seth Godin way back in 1999, but it s still valid and we think that many still don t work hard enough to get permission. What is it? Permission marketing Customers agree (opt in) to be involved in an organization s marketing activities by , social networks or traditional channels in return for the value offered. The classic exchange is based on information or entertainment a B2B site can offer a free report in exchange for a customer sharing their address and details, while a B2C site can offer a newsletter or company Facebook page with valuable content and offers. This is stage 2 in the classic permission marketing process shown in the next diagram. 6

7 It s worthwhile optimising this process to ensure you re using the best engagement devices, messaging and placement to maximise lead generation. What is it? Engagement devices A call-to-action that encourages visitors to the site to interact. If these also enable capture of leads, these are lead-generation devices. To improve the effectiveness of your permission marketing, ask these questions: E-permission marketing checklist - how effective are our engagement devices? Appeal and range of devices? How effective compared to competitors? Balance of lead-generation and non-lead generation devices Placement and call-to-action? Ability to track (see our article on campaign tracking 2, the section Assess engagement beyond the click through web analytics on page 59 or the guidance on event tracking in our Google Analytics guide) Type of engagement device Videos Content download Poll, survey or interactive quiz Social recommendation (share through social networks or ) Strategy Recommendation 3 Review engagement and lead-generation devices Check that you have the best methods of generating leads within your budget. Review the range of engagement devices you have against competitors. Use testing to review the messaging and placement of offers to maximise conversion. It s best to use a mix of engagement devices that include both those that include lead generation and do not require registration to maximise reach. 2 Campaign tracking for guide 7

8 Common customer profile Your options to target your list will be based on your customer knowledge. Since we are looking to learn more through time, we need a structured approach to customer data capture. This can be achieved through a common customer profile. What is it? Common customer profile A definition of all the database fields that are relevant to the marketer in order to understand and target the customer with a relevant offering. It is best if different levels,1-3 of profile can be defined to encourage more customers to sign-up. Once defined, the common customer profile can then be used as a means of structuring e-permission marketing and refining understanding about the customer. A plan with targets for each level can be created about how to learn more about the customer. Best Practice Tip 2 Identify key profile fields Identify the profile fields you really need to be able to understand your audience and target them with future messages. These are level 1 or 2 of the common customer profile. A structured approach to customer data capture is needed otherwise some data will be missed, as is the case with the utility company that collected 80,000 addresses, but forgot to ask for the postcode for geo-targeting The customer profile can have different levels to set targets for data quality: Level 1 is contact details and key profile fields only Level 2 includes preferences Level 3 includes full purchase and response behaviour E-CRM and data profiling approach reviewed? r Q. E-CRM and data profiling approach reviewed? We can refine Seth Godin s permission marketing ideas, which have been described in the previous steps, to make them more practical to apply to retention marketing. Permission marketing E-permission marketing Opt-in Opt-out Initial profiling Continued profiling Targeted communications Selective opt-in Selective opt-out Communications preferences Sense & Respond These are some of the key features of E-CRM implementation we suggest you work through for your organisation. r r 1. Offer selective opt-in to communications. Offer choice in communications preferences to the customer to ensure more relevant communications. Some customers may not want a weekly e-newsletter, rather they may only want to hear about new product releases. Remember opt-in and providing opt-out is a legal requirement in most countries. 8

9 Four key opt-in options, selected by tick-box are: Content News, products, offers, events Frequency weekly, monthly, quarterly, or alerts Channel , direct mail, phone or SMS Format Text vs HTML vs Mobile and now a choice of mobile as Amazon have in their preference centre This is an example of a preference centre or customer profile. Although many mega-brands use these, they are now within the reach of smaller companies through low-cost E-CRM tools, IF they have a strategy that acknowledges their importance. Best Practice Tip 3 Create a customer communications preferences centre A preference centre enables customers to adjust the frequency and type of communications so increasing the likelihood of engagement. 2. Create a common customer profile. Following on from the idea of a preferences centre. A structured approach to customer data capture is needed otherwise key data is needed for delivering targeted s will be missed. You don t want to ask for lots of details straightaway, so a preference centre enables you to gradually add data. Today, big brands such as Sears 3 are using social sign to integrate customer profile information with and CRM database information. What is it? Social sign-on Site visitors log-in to site services through their prefeed social network account such as Facebook or Twitter. Optionally this process can be integrated with additional profile fields which are stored in a customer database. 3 An example of how Sears use Social signon 9

10 3. Don t make opt-out too easy (selective opt-out). A bit radical, but my view is that we often make it too easy to unsubscribe. Yes, providing a straightforward opt-out is part of permission marketing and in many countries, a legal requirement. Although offering some form of opt-out is now a legal requirement in many countries due to privacy laws, a single click to unsubscribe is arguably making it too easy. Instead, wise e-permission marketers use the concept of My Profile. Instead of unsubscribe, they offer a link to a web form to update a profile, which includes the option to unsubscribe to some or potentially all communications. Amazon s communications preferences page is a good example of this approach. Remember though, that offering opt-out that works is a legal requirement. Many opt-out processes still don t work so instead subscribers may report as spam which can hit your overall deliverability. Still, we still think there s some merit in what we said way back: The use of My Profile can be tied to the principle of selective opt-in you could call it selective opt-out. Put the My profile option in the prompt the user to keep their contact details up-to-date. 4. Watch don t ask use Sense and Respond. The need to ask inteuptive questions to better profile customers can be reduced through the use of monitoring of clicks to better understand customer needs and to trigger follow-up communications or Sense and Respond. Some examples of personalisation through this technique include: Monitoring click-through to different types of content or offer. The interests of individual list members can be assessed through monitoring what they click through to. Lastminute. com reputedly tailor their newsletters to many different template types according to content clickthrough. For example, if you click through to theatres or city-breaks, then you will receive more of this type of content in future. Monitoring the engagement of individual customers with communications. This is achieved by monitoring trends of opening and click-through by individual customer. These metrics indicate the level of interest of individual customers and we can monitor how these vary through time and use follow-up communications. For example, perhaps a buying signal is suggested by a customer who has not previously responded to s who starts clicking through to the web site more frequently. This could be followed up by a tailored communication or a phone call. Follow-up of response to a specific . If a B2B vendor offers information about a new product launch which encourages click through to a landing page then they have two main choices of follow-up. First, the form could contain a question asking about the future buying intentions or whether contact from a sales rep is required. Alternatively, if there is a capability to monitor an individual who has clicked through to a page, then it may be best to use this to prompt a call from an account manager or sales person. The second approach may result in more sales, but of course there is a danger that the customer may react negatively to monitoring or stalking of this type and it is arguably not permission marketing. How is this guide structured? In this section we have introduced the concept of permission marketing and showed how it can be applied to using for gaining new customers and communicating with existing customers. In Step 1 we will show how to prioritise your activities using the CRITICAL. We then cover each of these in more detail in the next steps of the guide. 10

11 What makes our guides different? We ve created our guides to be your constant companion as you learn, review and improve your approach to digital marketing. We know you re busy and under-pressure to get results so they re written to help you do just that by taking you through the questions you should be asking to improve performance and suggesting the right approaches for you. Our Ebooks are all created to help you: þ Improve results. A focus on getting the best results from your digital marketing. þ Review your cuent approach. A unique workbook format helps identify priorities. þ Apply analytics. Inegrated advice on using Google Analytics to improve performance. þ Learn best practice. Strategy recommendations and practical tips highlighted throughout. How will the guides help you? Our Ebooks are designed to help you and your team if you are actively managing digital marketing. They are also packed full of practical advice if you re working hands-on on a company website or campaigns like search, or social media marketing. This is how our guides are designed to help create different types of people: þ Company owners and marketing managers. We help you create a plan so you can invest in the approaches that matter. We help you set goals and put in place a system to measure and improve since all our guides cover how to get more from Google Analytics. þ Digital marketing and Ecommerce managers. We help you get more from each of the key digital marketing channels plus your web and social presences through reviewing your approach using using our comprehensive workbook templates. þ Digital marketing specialists. Whether you work on social media marketing, SEO, PPC, or conversion rate optimisation for the website we have a guide to help you boost your approach. þ Consultants and agencies. Many consultants and agencies use our guides to check and refi ne their approach and recommendations to clients on digital marketing. They re also used to help educate team members on the latest digital marketing best practice and techniques. Guide features All our guides include these features to help you improve: þ Checklists of questions to ask to review your marketing approach þ Guidance on using Google Analytics to improve performance þ Colour-coded defi nitions, key strategy recommendations and best practice tips þ Diagrams giving frameworks to develop your strategy þ Lots of examples of best practice through mini case studies and screen captures Tell us what you think Dave Chaffey and team have developed these guides based on working with many types of companies and in training. But improvements are always possible, so we d be grateful if you could [email protected] with your comments, good or bad. In particular, we re interested in ideas on improving these guides or for other guides you would fi nd useful. Thanks 11

12 Step 1 Prioritise your efforts with the CRITICAL A review of the CRITICAL success for is a useful place to start your journey to improved. CRITICAL summarises the main which will determine whether you re successful with your. Let s now briefly review each of the eight CRITICAL success. We ll look at some examples of good practice to learn from along the way and cover them in more detail later in this guide. Conversation r Q. Is our two-way are we engaging visitors in a dialogue or just pushing content? works best when it s part of a wider dialogue encouraging user participation and interaction with a brand. It s easy to just treat as a substitute for direct marketing. But it works best when it encourages interactions, for example through: Polls or surveys (for an e-newsletter) Reviews and ratings on products (for an e-retailer) Competitions which are announced in several s Sharing of what s hot in the social channels like Facebook and Twitter Here s an example from the CIPD B2B Enewsletter showing how a poll is integrated: 1 Relevance r Q. Is our targeted? Are we segmenting sufficiently? It will be no surprise to direct marketers that response rates for s will be higher if they are targeted to the interests of individual recipients. In the section on targeting we ll review 6 options to targeting which cover both traditional 12

13 targeting options and methods to deliver contextual s through what my US marketing contacts call Sense and Respond communications. 1. Customer profile characteristics (demographics). 2. Customer value (cuent and future) 3. Customer lifecycle groups. 4. Customer behaviour in response and purchase (observed and predicted). 5. Customer multi-channel behaviour (channel preference). 6. Customer personas including psychographics. 1 What is it? Sense and respond communications Delivering timely, relevant communications to customers as part of a contact strategy based on assessment of their position in the customer lifecycle and monitoring and following up automatically based on specific interactions with a company s website, s and staff. The next diagram gives an example of how Sense and Respond can work. It may not be necessary to follow-up on all. Which do you think is most valuable here? We suggest Option C : Click Don t Respond because these respondents may just need a little push to convert, either through a follow-up or phone call if they are a high value customer. Rules- based response database engine Phase 1 Campaign Initial Opens Promotion(s) Response Clickthroughs monitoring tool A. Don t Open New subject Line, New time Phase 2 Campaign B. C. D. Open Click Respond Don t Don t Click Respond New Offer New Creative Timely New Follow-up Offer Key Landing page response Responses Landing page or microsite It s apparent that relevance also relates to the list quality you can only target if you have collected sufficient information to profile the individual and really understand their characteristics and interests. Incentive (or offer) r Q. Are our incentives or content offers effective? Is our engaging? This is the WIIFM factor or What s In It For Me for the recipient. What benefit does the recipient gain from reading the or clicking on the links within? For promotional s or e-blasts, there is a range of product or launch offers we can use in s which are often in the Free, Win, Save category. For an enewsletter, this is the content which we ll review in the section on developing your . Is the quality of content or offer consistent through time? 13

14 Best Practice Tip 2 Highlight your incentives through formatting Highlight your incentives in headlines, image text and call-to-action. This example shows how the WIIFM is included within the call-to-action buttons. 1 Timing r Q. Are we sending our s at the right time? Timing refers to when the is sent or received; the time of day, day of the week, point in the month and even time of year. It is usually thought that B2B s are best sent so that the recipient receives them during the working day or midweek. All of us have a full in-box to work through first thing in the morning, often containing SPAM and newsletters. It can help your stand out if it aives during the day. However, only testing can show this for sure some marketers get good results on Friday, when office workers are winding down for the weekend. Test the timing that works best for your audience by assessing the open rates for HTML s at different times of the day and week. Read our posts on timing for more ideas. 4 Timing also means the context of when the is received relative to user interactions the sense and response approach we mentioned above. 4 Best time of week to send an . Best time of day to send an . 14

15 Integration r Q. Are our s integrated with other channels? This is looking at as part of your integrated marketing communications. How it integrates with social media, websites and if you still use it, direct mail, are all important to getting your message across. Questions to ask include: Are the and copy consistent with my brand? Does the message reinforce other communications? Does the timing of the campaign fit with offline communications? Do we encourage social interactions? Creative and copy r Q. Are our and copy engaging enough? Creative refers to the overall design of the including layout, use of colour, images and copy. Best Practice Tip 3 Make your offer clear up-front Avoid the direct mail approach of saving the best to last. is an impulsive medium where visitors will scan it quickly, so if the recipient likes your offer from the subject line and the opening paragraph, then they should be able to click through straightaway. So in general, s should always have a link in the first three or four lines and then this call-to-action should be repeated in the close. Here s an example of an up-front offer repeated in the subject line, images and editorial text - which almost always receives a good clickthrough rate: 1 15

16 Key issues to consider are: How is the structured? Are layouts commonly used in direct mail appropriate for ? Where are the calls-to-action? What are the best positions for calls-to-action and how can clickthroughs be encouraged? Up-front is best. How is the branded? How should campaigns and newsletters support the established brand and when should brand variants be used. Is the tone of voice right for the ? Attributes (of the ) r Q. Are our and copy engaging enough? The attributes of the header which can all determine campaign success include the subject line, from address, to address, date/time of receipt and format (HTML or text). Of these, subject line, from address and format are most important in influencing response. The attributes also include: Deliverability Delivery will fail if your is assessed as a spam Renderability Your and won t be effective if it isn t easy to read in the inbox We ll look at more tips on subject lines later, but for now, here s one - shorter can often work best. The lesson from this reseach from Mailer-Mailer 5 is clear. 1 Landing page (or microsite) r Q. Do we send readers to the right pages to engage them? There may be a temptation when experimenting with to encourage click through to a web page that is already part of the site, such as the home page or a product page. However you will get a much better result from a landing page focused on achieving action. Landing page is the term given for the page(s) reached after the recipient clicks on a link in the

17 Typically, with a B2B , on clickthrough, the recipient will be presented with an online form to profile or learn more about them. Designing the page so that the form is easy to complete and reassuring about how their personal data will be used can affect the overall success of the campaign. The conversion rate on the landing page can make a dramatic difference to the success of an campaign, yet this is often overlooked in favour of the . Testing and improving landing pages can pay dividends. This is the landing page for the Euroffice earlier in this section. You can see the customer journey is nicely integrated, encouraging fulfilment of the offer. 1 17

18 Step 2 Set your goals and build a quality list for You probably know that interaction with campaigns is measured through open and clickthrough rates. While it s great to review response in this way, if this is all you measure, you re missing the bigger picture of how valuable is to your company and it s customers. Define cuent value of your to customers To assess how valuable is to customers it s best to measure the quality of their engagement how engaged are they? r Q. How well do we measure engagement of our subscribers? A review of campaign open, clickthrough and conversion rates is a natural place to start to improve engagement. Trends in overall response rates are a good starting point, but a capable system will give you more insight. For a more detailed analysis, you should review: Checklist measuring engagement with Click to open rates (CTOR) these will enable you to see how engaging your and offer is Open and clickthrough rates by segment engagement will vary by segment depending upon the targeting and relevance of your content or offers, so be sure to assess this. Open and clickthrough rates based on delivery time time of day and day of the week or time in month still make a significant difference so advanced marketers are moving to target according to time when individual subscribers are most engaged. Engagement at different points in the customer lifecycle it is natural that engagement will decline through time and some subscribers will become inactive. So you need to work to engage visitors through time, for example through a welcome strategy, or if necessary reactivate them. Reviewing hurdle rates at different lengths of time from original subscription can help assess the success of these strategies. Engagement with different types of offer and message different types of promotion or message will also vary in popularity, so you need a way of tagging offer-type to analyse what is effective. Some marketers tag specific types of links in different positions in the template to know which part of their template is most effective, for example, there could be a standard link for hero product or featured category in an . Hurdle rates of engagement over a longer period this assesses engagement over a six or nine month period to set goals to review how active your subscribers are measured through open, click or purchase rates. This is the big one If you have to choose just one measure to assess customer engagement, let this be it 3 18

19 Strategy Recommendation 4 Measure longer-term engagement through hurdle rates To analyse longer-term engagement, you can use the type of analysis shown in the table below, which shows a diagnostic for longer-term engagement with. This analysis can often shows that over half of your audience is not engaged, so this gives you a hurdle rate to benchmark your engagement efforts against. These types of hurdle rates should be used to set goals for list quality and engagement and can also be broken down by subscriber segment or offer type. Define value of activity to your company r Q. How well do we measure value generated from our? In the previous section on customer value we looked at value to the customer. But what about company value? To assess this we need to know about the marketing outcomes generated that lead to sales. So we suggest you set these as primary goals for your and how to track them. You can look at the efficiency from the point of view of s sent which shows you overall campaign effectiveness or visits to the site from that helps you assess the efficiency of your web conversion. Checklist measuring value generated from Outcomes (goals) per 1000 (or per 100) s sent Revenue (profit) per 1000 (or per 100) s sent You divide by 1000 to normalise value to make it easier to interpret, but it s not essential Outcomes (goals) from per website visit from Revenue (profit) from per website visit from This will be tracked through your analytics package. To implement your tracking to check whether you have achieved these goals you will need to tag your s as described in Step 7. Best Practice Tip 4 Use a conversion funnel model to set goals for your Through creating a simple conversion model for your campaign you can set realistic goals for your with an agency. You can also set expectations amongst colleagues since the multi-step response means that response may not be as much as they expect. 3 19

20 A conversion model to edit is available for members 6. Success refers to achieving the objectives set for the campaign does the campaign deliver the required outcomes? The success of direct response campaigns is often talked about in terms of clickthroughs the number of recipients who follow a link from the through to the organisation s website. But what really matters are results in terms of your original objectives how many recipients click through and then take the follow-up action on the site such as purchasing a product, agreeing to attend an event, receiving a visit from a sales rep or entering a competition. 3 Growing our list r Q. Do we have a structured process for growing our list? If you don t have a plan to grow your list then it will still grow, but not as fast as you would like since you will be missing opportunities from different touchpoints. A simple starting point to establish how well this is working is to assess is your cuent figure for the proportion of cuent customers for which you have addresses. You can then set targets for this metric and devise techniques to increase this figure. When devising these techniques don t only think quantity, but also think quality. What procedures can you use to maximise the number of valid addresses? addresses which have just one character wrong are no good to anyone since you won t usually know which is the miscreant character. A further aspect of quality is opt-in. Just because you have obtained an address from the customer doesn t necessarily mean it is opt-in and you have permission to use it. It is only opt-in if the customer has proactively agreed, and expects to receive communications. Perhaps there are a range of communications available to the customer such as different e-newsletters or alerts. Which have they agreed to receive or is there the expectation that they will receive all of them? 6 Download campaign calculator. 20

21 Strategy Recommendation 5 Set an allowable cost of acquisition It is useful to have an allowable cost of address acquisition which is a target figure for addresses from new prospects since it can help control spend on media such as paid search. Examples include a B2B software company who places an allowable cost of acquisition of 0.40 per and a recruitment company who placed an allowable cost of address (as part of a job application) at r Q. Do we have an allowable cost of address acquisition (for non-customers) to help control the costs of list-building? Define objectives for list building and list quality? Setting specific SMART objectives for your list can help grow the list faster, giving more opportunities to generate sales. r Q. SMART objectives for list set? Checklist list size and quality Here are some examples of objectives for list-building for you to review including: List size. Aim to increase the size of list over a particular time period, e.g. add 5,000 subscribers to an e-newsletter in a year address coverage. Aim to increase coverage of addresses in customer base you may have 15% of customers opted into an e-newsletter, but you want to increase this to 35% over the next year address quality proportion of valid or active addresses on your list (i.e. those that don t bounce back or the percentage of customers who are active i.e. they open or clickthrough on s within a defined period) permission quality. Although you may have collected addresses, you may not have explicit permission to use them, which is required by laws in many countries. Also have you got permission to send the full-range of e-communications, or just some, e.g. alerts and e-newsletter? List value value generated per 1000 or list members in terms of sales/leads in a time period. Targeting quality increase proportion of subscribers qualified for your products who you have collected profiling information about. Data quality proportion of specific profile fields held about individuals (see 2 below) This section describes a range of offline and online techniques to increase address capture and make sure that the accuracy is a high as possible. Review touchpoints to improve r Q. All touchpoints for collecting and updating addresses reviewed? It is important to have a structured approach to collecting and maintaining customer data. A good way to review all the possible methods of capturing addresses is for marketers to brainstorm alternative methods for capturing addresses by thinking about opportunities for capture which are: Online Offline 3 21

22 Existing customers New customers Best Practice Tip 5 Grow your list with online and offline contacts. Use all customer touchpoints as an opportunity for gaining addresses. The chart below gives a good way for a company to review all the possible methods of capturing addresses and other profile information. Some examples are shown. 3 Here, we will consider online and offline opportunities for capture separately. Many of these apply equally to potential and existing customers. Checklist online methods to build your house list Here are eight online methods to help build a house list: 1. Direct from website permanent incentives to capture leads should be one of the main aims of a web presence, particularly for a B2B organisation. Design, structure and content should be devised to maximise conversion to sign-up. 2. Web response from offline communications. Here an offer is publicised offline and respondents are refeed to a website to sign-up. (e.g. Dell offered a monthly notebook prize draw ( or offline ads (such as the now discontinued Chocollect promotion from Mars ( which was featured in TV ads). 3. Renting an list from a third party recipients who click-through to a landing page are encouraged to opt-in to your house-list. 4. Placing an ad in a third party e-newsletter. This has the same aims as 3, but may be more cost effective and can often be tightly targeted. 5. Using a third party site, sometimes refeed to as an acquisition centre to provide offers with a view to sign-up (for example MyOffers ( r r 6. Campaigns with social sharing or viral elements where a friend or colleague is refeed can also increase the size of the house list. Here permission marketing and data 22

23 protection law require you to send an offering the refeed person the option to optin before further communications are sent. 7. Any other forms of online traffic-building not mentioned above. Examples include graphical online ads or Pay Per Click text search engine ads. 8. appending services. US companies such as Freshaddress ( com) or Movers ( in the UK can be used to identify likely addresses from existing customers who have not yet supplied their address, e.g. John Smith at IBM is (perhaps not the best example). Similar services can also attempt to coect addresses with typos. Checklist offline methods to build your house list Offline opportunities are the full-range of customer touch-points. Here are eight more: 1. Any form of paper registration or order form. But be sure to check the form of wording such that an opt-in to all forms of future communications is achieved. 2. Visit from sales representatives. Can be used for opt-in either on paper, or through subscribing online. 3. A phone contact at a call centre. For example a bank could ask customers whether they have an address during a routine phone enquiry. 4. Telemarketing. This can be specifically to capture addresses, but is more costeffective if it is part of a telemarketing campaign. 5. Point-of-sale. For a retail context. 6. Trade show or conference. For example from a prize draw collecting business cards (but care with the opt-in). 7. Paper response to a direct mail offer. Traditional direct response. 8. Phone response to direct mail or ad. Again traditional direct response. 2 When addresses are captured offline, a common problem is the level of eors in the address this can often reach a double figure percentage. So plan to control this also staff should be trained in the importance of getting the address coect and how to check for an invalid address format. Some call centres have even incentivised staff according to the number of valid addresses they collect. When collecting addresses on paper, some practical steps can help such as allowing sufficient space for the address and asking for it to be written in CAPS. Techniques for list maintenance As with maintaining any customer database, maintaining a list can be a major headache. For or mobile-related lists the headache can be more intense since: 1. With permission-based , the customer can opt-out or unsubscribe at any time 2. addresses tend to change more frequently than postal addresses 3. Multiple addresses are held, often to counter spam. If your e-newsletter or campaigns are good quality, then the unsubscribe rate shouldn t be too much of a problem. A typical rate for unsubscribes is 1% or below per broadcast for a house list. All the forms of collecting addresses online and offline that were mentioned in the previous section can also be used to keep addresses fresh since the most recent 23

24 address can be collected. This particularly applies to the offline methods where employees talk directly to customers and prospects. Since it is annoying to be constantly asked is your contact address still coect? it is best if this is only asked when an address becomes inactive as described in the section below. Encouraging self-service through an online profile or permission centre should also be used. Direct mail promotions also give opportunities for gaining addresses. In fact, whenever a prospect or customer has to fill in a form this is an opportunity. Collecting the address should be an inbuilt part of the sales process. Another approach to find out more about customers where you haven t collected their data directly is to use information available from registration on other sites like social networks. This approach is a service available from Rapleaf.com. 2 24

25 Step 3 Defining your r Q. We have defined how our communications offer differential value? Discussions of how to engage audiences often start with reviewing or the offers presented to subscribers, but in our view, a better starting point is the customer s needs. is like any other digital channel, whether it s a social media presence like Twitter or Facebook, Adwords in Google or mobile marketing To be successful in comparison with the other channels each channel like must offer its own unique form of value that is distinct from other channels. Every channel needs a distinctive online value (OVP) to succeed. This defines how the digital channel supports the core brand values but adds its own unique value. Within marketing, this is particularly important for an e-newsletter. Review these examples of the types of value that will engage subscribers and improve perception about a brand and see which is most relevant for you: Engaging text content that makes the subscriber feel happy, angry or as if they are learning Engaging non-text or rich media content such as videos, podcasts, presentations, blog posts, photos, etc More in-depth content or alternately a summary of content Sharing of other subscriber views and opinions through votes, product ratings and polls Exclusive discounts or coupons only available through the channel. 3 What is the focus of what this campaign is looking to achieve, i.e. focus on acquisition / retention/awareness/brand building/roi? Write down different types of value that you do offer or could offer: Do offer? Competitors offer? Should offer?

26 Define the value offered through our communications r Q. Do we get the sell-inform-entertain-share balance right? Achieving the coect balance between using your newsletters or other communications as a sales tool and adding other types of value is key to their success. You will definitely have seen examples of overselling, but maybe also underselling where the call-to-action or connections to products is too limited. Remember that this relates through to the structure also the most enticing content needs to be above the fold when the is opened. Start with what you feel are the strongest articles for your audience. Have regular features plus new, topical, articles separate in each issue. As well as different types of feature, think about how you can use your e-newsletter to give a sense of community and engage the audience. Write down your assessment of the types of value you offer through your e-communications: Sell ( /10) 3 Inform ( /10) Entertain ( /10) Share ( /10) Define value r Q. We communicate our value effectively? Having clear goals around the value you want to offer will help internal copywriters focus and can also be defined on the website to encourage signup. For business-to-business e-newsletters, think about how you can add value by acting as a filter for information about your market sectors. Your e-newsletters can potentially Alert, Aggregate and Distil information through market alerts, industry trends and in-depth best practice case studies. But to deliver this informationbased value will not be cheap as the content will have to be up-to-date, relevant, accurate, concise and clearly presented. 26

27 Best Practice Tip 6 Define and communicate value of your e-newsletter or programme You should explain your newsletter, i.e. how it will deliver value to subscribers, for example, through: Saving time. By providing a single, up-to-date source. Learning. Increasing knowledge and solving day-to-day problems. Saving money. For instance through exclusive offers or offering new ways of working through a company s products. Entertaining. All newsletters can and should be fun for their audiences this is not only the preserve of consumer newsletters. Sharing. Sharing information about your organisation or facilitating sharing of content from customers. To achieve engagement, you should review how the newsletter delivers value and try to incorporate these into the e-newsletter. You should answer these questions and emphasise them through the design of the e-newsletter. 3 B2B Proposition Make my work easier Help me develop Make me look good Give me a great deal B2C Proposition Make my life easier Help me learn/have fun Make me look good Give me a great deal The example below gives a great business-to-business example of the value an can offer: 27

28 And here is an example for an engaging newsletter for a consumer brand focus not around product or offer but customer need and interest. Sales offers are below the fold: Integrating value into social media marketing communications r Q. Do we show the value we offer from our in our social media communications? With the rise and rise in popularity of social media, faces competitors for customer attention, like Twitter and Facebook which are increasingly offering similar types of value. So the channel needs to compete with or complement with these to stay relevant. Think how can be more valuable compared to these other media? Alternatively, it can be argued that a company simply needs to offer choice and many customers will prefer for its lower frequency and richer media. can help the time-poor audience by filtering or summarizing the high frequency messages from blogs and social networks. In the example below, the retailer is using to promote an exclusive campaign offer available through Twitter, but equally, the campaign could work in reverse. 3 Best Practice Tip 7 Enable share to social options A Share-to-Social feature allows marketers to include links from the so recipients can easily post s to their social network profile page, where friends can see the message, make comments and even post the on their own profile pages. Speaking about the Share-to-Social concept, Matt Lindenberg, assistant director of marketing for Diapers.com, explained the benefits thus: 28

29 Social networks are all about communication. This feature empowers our customers to communicate with each other, and therefore allows our messages to move beyond our list. One of our s was posted on 50 different social network profile pages. That kind of customer endorsement turns our push marketing into a powerful pull campaign. Finally, a simple, but effective approach is to include more reference to customer ratings within as this example campaign encouraging purchase based on customer-picks shows: 3 29

30 Step 4 techniques r Q. Strategic approaches to segmentation reviewed and selected? There are many different levels in sophistication of targeting, some of which may or may not be worthwhile according to the size of your list. But it s still useful to review the segmentation approach used by the top e-retailers to deliver relevance. Typically, these are based upon five layered segmentation options used to develop a more effective targeting. Best Practice Tip 8 Different targeting options can be combined through layering the segmentation approaches A layered segmentation approach summarising the segmentation approach used by ebay UK is shown below. Here, I ll outline the five segmentation approaches that you could use. Checklist 5 targeting approaches 1. Customer profile characteristics (demographics). 2. Customer value (cuent and future). 3. Customer lifecycle groups. 4. Customer behaviour in response and purchase (observed and predicted). 5. Customer multi-channel behaviour (channel preference). 6. Customer personas including psychographics. 4 Best Practice Tip 9 Using event-triggered s and dynamic content insertion to deliver really relevant s To implement this level of needs a capable system that supports event-triggered marketing and dynamic content insertion where rules are used to drop different offers and messages into a container as described in this post:

31 Targeting option 1. Customer profile characteristics (demographics). This is where most will start; based on their traditional strategic customer segmentation based on the type of customer recorded in the fields of their profile. For B2C e-retailers this will include age, sex and geography. For B2B companies, this will include size of company and the industry sector or application they operate in. This example shows a girls and boys with the tone and style varying in line with their preferences. Best Practice Tip 10 Test different targeting options Use the lower cost of and broadcast to test different targeting to create more relevant s for your audience. Many B2B companies target according to industry sector, but do not also look at job role. Different messages can be developed for people with more strategic interest (e.g. for a senior manager the benefits of a new printer may be reduced costs, while for an IT manager it may be ease of administration or throughput). Similarly, many B2C companies may conduct national campaigns, but with can add a regional element perhaps using the postcode to determine different parts of the country and then give different messages according to region or airport they will fly from (for a travel company). Best Practice Tip 11 Consider tone and style preference Some demographics will naturally respond differently to different types of message. Some customers may like a more rational appeal in which case a detailed explaining the benefits of the offer may work best. Others will prefer an emotional appeal based on images and with warmer, less formal copy. Sophisticated companies will test for this in customers or infer it using profile characteristics and response behaviour and then develop different treatments accordingly. Companies that use polls can potentially use this to infer style preferences. 4 31

32 Targeting option 2. Cuent and predicted value Retailers work hard to understand their most valuable customers so that they can develop loyalty in this group. A useful way of thinking about customer value is these three groups, originally identified by Peppers and Rogers: 1 Most-valuable customers (MVCs) These are the customers who contribute the most profit and are typically a small proportion of the total customer base as suggested by their position in the pyramid. These customers will likely have purchased more or higher-value products. The strategy for these customers focuses on retention rather than extension. In the case of a bank, personal relationship managers would be appointed for customers in this category to provide them with guidance and advice and to make sure they remain loyal. Often this strategy will work best using direct personal contact as the primary communication channel, but using online marketing for support where the customer has a propensity to use online channels. 2 Most-growable customers (MGCs) Customers who show potential to become more valuable customers. They are profitable when assessed in terms of lifetime value, but the number of product holdings or lifetime value is relatively low compared with the MVCs. Strategies for these customers centre on extension, through making recommendations about relevant products based on previous purchases. Encouraging similar re-purchases could also be part of this. Online marketing offers great opportunities to make personalised recommendations through the web site and . 3 Below-zero customers (BZCs) BZCs are simply unprofitable customers. The strategy for these customers may vary they can be encouraged to develop towards MGCs, but more typically expenditure will be minimised if it is felt that it will be difficult to change their loyalty behaviour or the source of their being unprofitable. Again, digital media can be used as a lower-cost form of marketing expenditure to encourage these customers to make repeat purchases or to allow them to self-serve online. When considering loyalty-based segmentation, it s useful to compare cuent against future value, and it s best to visualise this within a matrix. Here s an example presented by Chris Poad of retail group Otto to an E-consultancy Masterclass. 4 32

33 Here s a for a VIP mailing sent to highest value segment. ESP ecircle shared that the average performance was 5 times higher than the regular newsletter: 4 Targeting option 3. Customer lifecycle groups. As visitors use online services they can potentially pass through several stages, often known as the online loyalty ladder. Once you have defined these groups and setup the customer relationship management infrastructure to categorise customers in this way, you can then deliver targeted messages, either by personalized on-site messaging or through s that are triggered automatically due to different rules. First time visitors can be identified by whether they have a cookie 33

34 placed on their PC and their computer setup or user agent settings. Once visitors are then registered, they can be tracked through the remaining stages. Two particularly important groups are customers who have purchased one or more times. For many e-retailers, encouraging customers to move from the first purchase to the second purchase and then onto the third purchase is a key challenge. Specific promotions can be used to encourage further purchases. Similarly, once customers become inactive, i.e. they have not purchased for a defined period such as 3 months, further follow-ups are required. Here s an example of the lifecycle segmentation approach used by e-retailer Tesco. com which they call a commitment-based segmentation based on recency of purchase, frequency of purchase and value. It s used to identify 6 lifecycle categories which are then further divided to target communications: Logged-on Cautionary Developing Established Dedicated Logged-off (the aim here is to win back) This is an example of what we think is an excellent branded welcome from Clinique: 4 Here s a nice low-tech, but often more effective activation where the attempt is to win-back a lapsed customer. 34

35 Best Practice Tip 12 Use behavioural Rather than manually planning campaigns, use automated event-triggered messaging to encourage continued purchase. For example, Tesco.com have a touch strategy that includes a sequence of follow-up communications triggered after different events in the customer lifecycle. In the example given below, communications after event 1 are intended to achieve the objective of converting a website visitor to action; communications after event 2 are intended to move the customer from a first time purchaser to a regular purchaser and for event 3 to reactivate lapsed purchasers. Trigger event 1: Customer first registers on site (but does not buy). Auto-response (AR) 1: 2 days after registration sent offering phone assistance and 5 discount off first purchase to encourage trial. Trigger event 2: Customer first purchases online. AR1: Immediate order confirmation AR2: 5 days after purchase sent with link to online customer satisfaction survey asking about quality of service from driver and picker (e.g. item quality and substitutions). AR3: Two-weeks after first purchase - Direct mail offering tips on how to use service and 5 discount on next purchases intended to encourage re-use of online services. AR4: Generic monthly e-newsletter with online exclusive offers encouraging cross-selling AR5: Bi-weekly alert with personalised offers for customer. AR6: After 2 months - 5 discount for next shop AR7: Quarterly mailing of coupons encouraging repeat sales and cross-sales Trigger event 3: Customer does not purchase for an extended period AR1: Dormancy detected Reactivation with survey of how the customer is finding the service (to identify any problems) and a 5 incentive. AR2: A further discount incentive is used in order to encourage continued usage to shop after the first shop after a break. 4 35

36 Targeting option 4. Cuent and predicted behaviour in response and purchase As customers progress through the lifecycle, if all interactions with different communications such as clicks and pages visited on site are captured, we ll be able to build up a detailed response and purchase history. Best Practice Tip 13 Develop an activity score to show levels of customer activity Here each customer is scored according to their response whether it is the number of opens, clicks, leads or purchases. Different communications can then be sent to list members depending on their historical level of activity. Customers who don t seem to be responsive to online messages can be targeted through other approaches such as direct mail and phone. A more sophisticated method of understanding behaviour is to categorise customers according to the details of their recency, frequency, monetary value and category of products purchased (RFM analysis). The RFM technique is quite involved, so we will cover that in more detail in a moment. Using these RFM techniques in combination with the other targeting techniques it becomes possible to use predictive modelling to identify the Next Best Product for particular customer types. With the right system of tracking and web analytics, it should be possible to see not only which types of links in an a customer has clicked upon, but also which types of web pages they have visited recently. For example, a select on the database for a wine promotion could be used to target customers who have been to the wine section of the website in the last 3 months, but have not purchased wine. Targeting option 5. Multi-channel behaviour (channel preference) No matter how enthusiastic you are about online channels, some customers will prefer using online communications channels and many others will prefer traditional channels. We call this Right Touching 7 this is the holy grail of digital marketing delivering the perfect message for each customer. Just one aspect of this is determining which customers prefer and then upweighting activity more for them, while reducing frequency and using more traditional communications for those who prefer these. These days we will also need to consider social media response. 4 Best Practice Tip 14 Use a right touching approach to channel preference It is useful to have a flag within the database which indicates customers channel preference and by implications, the best channel to target them by. Channel preference will be indicated by RFM and response analysis since customers with a preference for online channels will be more responsive and will make more purchases online. Customers can also be asked direct through surveys. Customers that prefer online channels can be targeted mainly by online communications such as , while customers who prefer traditional channels can be targeted by traditional communications such as direct mail or phone. To deliver relevance also requires a plan specifying the number, frequency and type of online and offline communications and offers. This is a contact or touch strategy which is described 7 Dave s definition of Right Touching 36

37 in a later section. Targeting option 6. Customer personas including psychographics Once we have reviewed and selected from the five targeting approaches above, a final step to think about is using design personas for typical customer types. Best Practice Tip 15 Use digital customer personas Web design personas are a powerful web design technique increasingly used to improve the usability and customer centricity of a web site. What is it? Digital customer personas Digital customer personas are a summary of the characteristics, needs, motivations and access platform preferences of different groups of users. These have the benefit that they characterise segment types in the context of the targeting options mentioned above such as stage in lifecycle, demographics and style preferences. We can also include psychographics which summarise the mental attitudes, motivations and opinions of customers, for example: Impulsive or rational decision maker Price-conscious Risk-taker or conservative Willingness to share information or participate socially View they want to project of themselves The design persona concept can also potentially be used for e-newsletters, but isn t used so often. Personas are essentially a thumbnail description of a type of person. They have been used for a long time in research for segmentation and advertising, but in recent years have also proved effective for improving web site design by companies who have applied the technique. I have not heard about personas being used that much in an context, but I think they could be usefully applied, particularly for e-newsletters. One example where they were used is where the American National Football League (NFL, ) identified three types of scenarios one following a particular team who wanted to check upcoming games, another who was very interested in the statistics associated with the fantasy league and another who tended to be more interested in the position in the league. These are some guidelines and ideas on what can be included when developing a persona. The start or end point is to give each persona a name. The detailed stages are: 1. Build personal attributes into personas: Demographic: Age, gender, education, occupation and for B2B, company size, position in buying unit. Pyschographic: Goals, tasks, motivation Webographics: Web experience (months), usage location (home or work), usage platform (dial-up, broadband), usage frequency, favourite sites 2. Remember that personas are only models of characteristics and environment: 4 37

38 Design targets Stereo-types 3 or 4 usually suffice to improve general usability, but more needed for specific behaviours Choose one primary persona whom, if satisfied, means others are likely to be satisfied What is it? Primary persona Digital customer personas are a summary of the characteristics, needs, motivations and access platform preferences of different groups of users. Once different personas have been developed who are representative of key site visitor types or customer types, a primary persona is sometimes identified. Wodtke (2002) says: Your primary persona needs to be a common user type who is both important to the business success of the product and needy from a design point of view in other words, a beginner user or a technologically challenged one. She also says that secondary personas can also be developed such as super-users or complete novices. Complementary personas are those that don t fit into the main categories which display unusual behaviour. Such complementary personas help out-of-box thinking and offer choices or content that may appeal to all users. To summarise the approaches described, the example of Euroffice is a good one. Euroffice targeted case study Euroffice ( is a large online office supplies company which targets small and mid-sized companies. This description is adapted from the company web site press releases and Revolution (2005). According to George Karibian, Euroffice CEO, getting the message across effectively required segmentation to engage different people in different ways. The office sector is fiercely competitive, with relatively little loyalty since company purchasers will often simply buy on price. However, targeted incentives can be used to reward or encourage buyers loyalty. Rather than manually developing campaigns for each segment which is time consuming, Euroffice mainly use an automated event-based targeting approach based on the system identifying the stage at which a consumer is in the lifecycle, i.e. how many products they have purchased and the types of product within their purchase history. Karibian calls this a touch marketing funnel approach approach, i.e. the touch strategy is determined by customer segmentation and response. Three main groups of customers are identified in the lifecycle and these are broken down further according to purchase category. Also layered on this segmentation is breakdown into buyer type are they a small home-user, an operations manager at a mid-size company or a purchasing manager at a larger company? Each will respond to different promotions. The first group, at the top of the funnel and the largest are Group 1 Trial customers who have made one or two purchases. For the first group, Euroffice believe that creating impulse-buying through price-promotions is most important. These will be based on categories purchased in the past. The second group, Group 2 The nursery have made three to eight purchases. A particular issue, as with many e-retailers is encouraging customers from the third to forth purchase, there is a more significant drop-out at this point which the company uses marketing to control. Karibian says: When they get to Group 2, it s about creating frequency of purchase to ensure they don t forget you. Euroffice sends a printed catalogue to Group 2 separately from their merchandise as a reminder about the company. 4 38

39 The final group, Group 3 Key accounts or Crown Jewels have made nine or more orders. They also tend to have a higher basket value. These people are the Crown Jewels and will spend an average of 135 per order compared to an average of 55 for trial customers. They have a 90% probability of re-ordering within a six-month period. For this group, tools have been developed on the site to make it easier for them to shop. The intention is that these customers find these tools helps them in making their orders and they become reliant on, so achieving soft lock-in. We can then target these segments through using fields within the database to identify which segment customers belong to and then using mass customization an personalization to tailor offers to these customers as described in the following section. RFM analysis As is well known by catalogue retailers, knowledge about customer purchase behaviour typically falls into three key areas: Recency of last purchase, e.g. 3 months ago Frequency of purchase, e.g. twice per quarter or twice per year Monetary value of purchase(s), e.g. average order value of 50, total annual purchase value of 5,000. Assessing these behavioural characteristics is known as RFM or a similar equivalent FRAC, which stands for: Frequency Recency Amount (obviously equivalent to monetary value) Category (types of product purchased not included within RFM) These approaches have not been limited to retailers though, they have been a staple approach for many years for some marketing applications such as catalogue and mail-order companies; grocers and other retailers with loyalty schemes; charities who can track donations and car manufacturers who can track car purchases or services through time. However, for many other organisations, they have proved less relevant. With the advent of web and, there are many more opportunities for applying this behavioural customer information to use RFM in virtually every market. This is possible since recency and frequency of purchase can be used to understand and respond to other types of digitally recorded transactions and interactions, for example visits or log-ins to a website or interaction with s such as opens or clicks. These types of interactions apply not only to e-retail sites, but also relationship-building websites, brand-building sites and portals. We will now give an overview of how RFM approaches can be applied in online marketing, with special reference to. Recency: Recency shows the number of days since a customer completed an action. Jim Novo stressed the importance of recency when he says: Recency, or the number of days that have gone by since a customer completed an action (purchase, log-in, download, etc.) is the most powerful predictor of the customer repeating an action Recency is why you receive another catalogue from the company shortly after you make your first purchase from them. 4 39

40 (Of course, this applies in particular to catalogue style purchases). Online we can measure a lot more than days elapsed since last purchase. We can assess: Purchase Visit to site or particular type of content (using cookies) Log-on to a site (more accurate than cookies provided user id is not shared) Opening or clicking through on an or e-newsletter Online applications of analysis of recency include: Monitoring through time to identify vulnerable customers Score customers to preferentially target more responsive customers for cost savings Frequency: Frequency refers to the number of times an action is completed in a period. Examples are similar to those for recency, for example, but with reference to a time period: 5 purchases per year 5 visits per month 5 log-ins per week 5 opens per month, 5 clicks per year Online applications of analysis of include: combine with recency for RF targeting. Monetary Monetary value is the amount spent in the period. The amount could be per month, per quarter, per year depending on the type of application. For an e-retailer, average order value would be appropriate also. Generally, customers with higher monetary values tend to have a higher loyalty and potential future value since they have purchased more items. One example would be to exclude these customers from special promotions if their RF scores suggested they were actively purchasing. Assessing the characteristics of these customers on the database to understand which may make them more valuable is often insightful. These customers could also be surveyed to find out these also. Since frequency is often a proxy for monetary value per year since the more products purchased, the higher the overall monetary value. It is possible, then to simplify analysis by just using recency and frequency. Monetary value can also skew the analysis for high value initial purchases. Values could be assigned to each customer as follows: Dividing customers into different RFM groups The rigorous approach to RFM analysis is to use an approach which places an equal number of customers in each quintile of 20% (10 deciles can also be used for larger databases). This approach is shown below. 4 40

41 The diagram also shows one application of RFM with a view to using communications channels more effectively. Lower cost e-communications are used for the most loyal customers and more expensive communications are used for the less loyal customers. It is also possible to place each division for Recency, Frequency and Monetary value in an arbitrary position. This approach is also useful since the marketer can set thresholds of value relevant to their understanding of their customers behaviour. For example: Recency: 0 Not known 1 Within last 12 months 2 Within last 6 months 3 Within last 3 months 4 Within last 1 month This could be purchase frequency, or as here, recency of a visit to the website. Frequency: 0 Not known 1 Every 6 months 2 Every 3 months 3 Every 2 months 4 Monthly This could be purchase frequency, or as here, visits to the website. Monetary value: 0 Less than More than 200 This could be total purchase value through the year, or as here, average order value. Another example, with real world data as is shown in the next diagram. 4 41

42 You can see that plotting customer numbers against recency and frequency in this way for an online company gives a great visual indication of the health of the business and groups that can be targeted to encourage greater repeat purchases. Source: Interactive Marketing Journal January to March 04 SilverMinds music catalogue Another example, which shows how it RFM can be applied in non-retail settings shows how a theatre group uses these 9 categories for its direct marketing: Oncers (attended theatre once) Recent oncers attended <12 months Rusty oncers attended >12, <36 months Very rusty oncers attended 36+ months Twicers: Recent twicer attended < 12 months Rusty twicer attended >12, < 36 months Very rusty twicer attended in 36+ months 2+ subscribers: Cuent subscribers Booked 2+ events in cuent season Recent Booked 2+ last season Very rusty Booked 2+ more than a season ago This approach shows how the full RFM analysis approach doesn t have to be applied. Three or four RF groups can be sufficient. A final example is shown in the next figure where online community provider Magicalia has categorised its audience to assess the volume of members in different categories (denoted by the size of the circles). Triggered communications and on-site personalised messages are then developed for each group to encourage customers to migrate to higher recency/frequency categories. 4 42

43 Additional methods of reviewing online customer behaviour Jim Novo also recommends two additional measures of customer behaviour in his DrillingDown blog that can be used to understand behaviour and also to set targets for retention marketing. These are latency and hurdle rate. Latency: Latency is the average time between customer events in the customer lifecycle. Latency can be applied to these events: Website visits Second and third purchase click-throughs Online applications of latency analysis include: Put in place triggers that alert you to behaviour outside norm increased interest or disinterest, then Manage behaviour using e-communications or traditional communications For example, a B2B or B2C organisation with a long interval between purchases would find that the average latency increased for a particular customer, then they may be investigating an additional purchase (their recency and frequency would likely increase also). s, phone calls or direct mail could then be used to target this person with relevant offers according to what they were searching for. Hurdle rate According to Jim Novo a hurdle rate refers to the percentage of customers in a group (such as in a segment or on a list) who have completed an action. It is a very useful concept, although the terminology doesn t really describe its application. Its value is that it can be used to compare groups or to set targets to increase engagement with online channels as the examples shown below. Online marketing examples of hurdle rates 20% of customers have visited in past 6 months 5% of customers have made 3 or more purchases in year 60% of registrants have logged on to the system in year 4 43

44 30% have clicked through on in year 8 Online applications of analysis of include: Use for objectives to deepen relationship Use for targeting communications on particular groups, e.g. reactivate those who are less engaged Use for monitoring impact of communications, i.e. how many change hurdle rates as a result of tactics. A related approach to RFM analysis is propensity modelling which is one name given to the approach of evaluating customer characteristics and behaviour, in particular previous products or services purchased, and then making recommendations for the next suitable product. However, it is best known as recommending the Next Best Product to existing customers. A related acquisition approach is to target potential customers with similar characteristics through renting direct mail or lists or advertising online in similar locations. Lifetime value calculations An appreciation of lifetime value (LTV) is key to the theory and practice of marketing and customer relationship management. However, while the term is often used loosely, calculation of LTV is not straightforward, so many organizations do not calculate it. Lifetime value is defined as the total net benefit that a customer, or group of customers, will provide a company over their total relationship with a company. Modelling is based on estimating the income and costs associated with each customer over a period of time and then calculating the net present value in cuent monetary terms using a discount rate value applied over the period. There are different degrees of sophistication in calculating LTV. Lifetime value modelling is vital within marketing since it answers the question: How much can I afford to invest in acquiring a new customer? If online marketers try to answer this from a short-term perspective as is often the case, i.e. by judging it based on the profit from a single sale on an e-commerce site, there are two problems: 1. We become very focused on short-term return on investment (ROI) and so may not invest sufficiently to grow our business. 2. We assume that each new customer is worth precisely the same to us and we ignore differentials in loyalty and profitability between differing types of customer. Lifetime value analysis enables marketers to: Plan and measure investment in customer acquisition programmes Identify and compare critical target segments strategies usually involve preferentially targeting the most profitable customers and minimising communications with the least profitable customers. Measure the effectiveness of alternative customer retention strategies Establish the true value of a company s customer base Make decisions about products and offers Make decisions about the value of introducing new E-CRM technologies 4 8 See these ideas on how to treat inactive subscribers. 44

45 Step 5 Defining your integrated communications strategy There is a fine line between being seen as a spammer who sends too much and selecting a frequency which maximises returns. The next step involves selecting the best frequency for you. Set best frequency r Q. frequency reviewed? Is there an optimal frequency? Is it one a quarter, week, month or day even? Is less more or is more more? This is a basic question every digital marketer has to try to answer to maximise profit of activity. We are looking to achieve the right balance between overexposure and underexposure. With overexposure, the recipient receives from the same company so frequently that they don t have the time to read it or feel they are being spammed. They become emotionally unsubscribed. On the other hand with underexposure, opportunities and sales are lost since the customer does not receive s sufficiently frequently. Evaluating cuent frequency and customer response behaviour The first step to help decide is to assess the impact of your frequency on customer activity and perceptions. If frequency is too high, subscribers will tune out. The obvious thing to measure is aggregate open and click rates and most broadcast systems are good at this. Best Practice Tip 16 Review your frequency and types against competitors A good starting point is to look at the average of number of s you and your competitors send to subscribers per week, month or year. 5 Econsultancy reported 9 that the average in 2009 for US e-retailers was 2.5 s per week and 11 s per month giving an average of 132 s per year. But you need to go beyond this and use these measures that most systems can t measure readily, so you need to do some more analysis to identify: Average frequency of received and plot profile by frequency for different list members to see the proportion of the list who are receiving too many or two few s see chart. List activity the % of your list that open, click and buy within a period, e.g. quarterly or annual. Recency of response what is the average for the last open, click or purchase a good tip is to store recency in your database as a field for analysis. Alternatively score list members by activity and store this in the database also. 9 Econsultancy article 45

46 Break down list activity and recency measures by different type of list members it may the frequency is working for some segments but not others. Break down list activity by time on list commonsense suggests, that the longer they are on your list, the less responsive your s will become. Best Practice Tip 17 Review unsubscribe and activity levels through time Graph the response rate and unsubscribe rate of your e-marketing campaigns weekly or monthly independent of campaigns. Try to maximise clickthrough and minimise unsubscribe rates. Testing options to decide on the best frequency It s not an easy question to answer by gut instinct, so maybe testing is better. So how do you decide on frequency? Here are some ideas and examples showing how you can approach frequency testing. First you need to think about defining a random control group to test frequency changes against. Here you continue with cuent mailing frequency for the control group and then vary the frequency for other groups and review changes in response and in particular revenue per 1000 subscribers. In one case a bank tried frequencies of 1,2,3,4 times per month and found the right frequency this way. Example 1 Sean Duffy of Center described how Toptable measured the long term impact of increased frequency by creating a control group with half the new customers that joined in a month held back from the second send. After three months this control group was measured against those who had joined the site at the same time yet received the default setting of two s a week. Open rates were 86% higher, unsubscribe rates 57% lower. But the main figures that proved why sending too many s leads to long term damage those receiving only one a week had made 14% more bookings than those receiving two s over that three month test period Example 2 In this case fashion e-retailer Net-a-Porter.com reduced the number of s it sent to customers from up to 10 per week to two according to Brand Republic 10 It had been ing some customers up to 10 times a week with information including generic updates, highlights from specific designers and details of new products. After the experiment Net-a-Porter.com now sends each user two automatically generated s a week that take into account their specific interests and preferences. Conversion rate increased; product update s get a conversion rate of more than 10% and newsletter s are opened by nearly half of recipients. This report also shows the importance of getting frequency right. The company sends out around 300,000 s a week. drives 32% of Net-a-Porter s sales and generates more than 1m in revenue each month. If you have a single newsletter as in the Toptable example, testing is relatively straightforward. It s more complex if you have a range of different types of s such as e-newsletters, promotional offer s and also individually tailored event-triggered s. Different offers or to each segment will also have to be overlaid upon this

47 Other options to solve the frequency dilemma include: A. Reduce frequencies automatically for lower responding customers? Set a database field for activity or engagement level for each customer to help implement this. Amazon is good at implementing this and increases frequency through event-triggered s sent in response to someone browsing, searching or buying that s the smartest approach. B. Change frequency for different segments. One frequency size is never going to fit all. So if you find that open or click response is lower for certain segments, then decrease the frequency when they are inactive. C. Give customers a choice on frequency. You do this through their profile or communications preference centre. Give options to change content and frequency preferences through profile or survey ( , DM)? D. Increase direct mail for customers with a lower response. This is sometimes called right channeling. To test the value of this use a holdout group. This small group, perhaps 5% of your list or a specific segment doesn t receive the catalogue (or if you re testing this) at all. E. Re-engagement campaigns. Re-activation campaigns use content or discounts to encourage subscribers to become active again. 5 47

48 Step 6 Creating effective templates and r Q. templates reviewed for effectiveness? Effective templates should balance the need for visual prominence of: A main text headline Copy to engage (where relevant, like an editorial on an e-newsletter) Sub-headings Different blocks of content and offers The call(s)-to-action Assess headlines r Q. Headlines reviewed for effectiveness? Since most of the readers of your will only scan them, it s important to offer clear messages in the header and within the sub-headlines or section. Best Practice Tip 18 Ensure the is scannable even when images are blocked Since images are still blocked by many as a spam prevention measure, so you will get a better response where the main headlines and headlines of sub-sections or containers are clear. This is particularly important for e-newsletters and business messages, but including some text or at least alternative text for images will give you a better response for consumer messages also. r Q. Headings and text are clear when images are blocked? This is an example from our e-newsletter with images blocked, you can see how we make use of tinted background colours to give focus to the different areas of the

49 This is an example of how not to do it. There are plenty we could have chosen, even in this time when mobile marketing is becoming more important. \ Visual focus or priority on a limited number of areas r Q. has clear visual focus? Although we can scan quickly, a page will still be more effective if there are clear visual priorities on a limited number of areas on screen. Our e-newsletter offers these opportunities. Use pyramid style copywriting r Q. effective if only first part above-the-fold displayed? Oftentimes we will only browse the first part of the above the fold, so you need to make sure the first part of your engages and a call-to-action is visible above the fold Calls-to-action clear r Q. Are our calls-to-action clear? Calls-to-action are often embedded as images, but text call(s)-to-action can add to the response, so need to be clear. Ensure images effective r Q. Effective imagery consistent with ? Some of the image issues to consider are: r Relevant to product or offer r Quality effective to support message and offer 6 49

50 r Images linked rather than embedded to reduce weight of r Alt-text tag used to explain message when images are blocked in reader Crafting effective copy To write successful copy, you need to start by thinking about readers interact with . If you are familiar with writing copy for print, consider these three important questions you should ask. Subject lines effective r Q. Subject lines effective? The reality of subject lines is that your readers aren t waiting to lavish their eyes on your , rather their fingers are hovering over the delete button waiting to assign it to trash. We all know that subject lines are important, but do you know the part which is most important? For us it s the first two words. Let s now look at some questions related to subject ines. Make copy scannable r Q. Copy scannable? Jakob Nielsen reported on research that shows that in a test, 79% of test web users scanned, while just 16% read word-by-word. Since we tend to read 25% more slowly from a computer screen, this behaviour is likely to be exhibited in all on-screen copy, whether web or . One implication of this is that we should write less copy when writing for the web or . Nielsen suggests 50% of the original for web copy. We can suggest that for , which tends to be read in a smaller window, and in a different context, this should be even shorter. To achieve brevity, Steve Krug, author of Don t Make Me Think suggests we should: 1. Omit needless words He says we should remove half our original words and then strive to remove half again. 2. Marketing happy talk must die Avoid that introductory text intended to make the customer feel comfortable or extol the virtues of a company. 3. Instructions must die This refers to online forms rather than s where it is achieved through making the options clear without extensive text. For we can argue that instructions are often useful to explain to the reader what they need to do to redeem the offer and to convert them to action. But we can certainly keep instructions succinct. Of course the other implication of scanning behaviour is that we should make our s scannable Nielsen suggests these as approaches to this: highlighted keywords (we will look at different forms of highlighting for text and HTML s later in this guide) meaningful, not clever sub-headings bulleted lists one idea per paragraph the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion half the word count (or less) than conventional writing. 6 50

51 Make style conversational r Q. Conversational style of? Although we receive many unsolicited communications, many of the s we receive are from work and friends. So we are used to using in a conversational, informal way with friends, family, or work colleagues. It follows that copywriters can be more conversational with than other media, and this can help us get closer to our prospects and customers. Some have said we should Write like you talk a good test is to ask whether you would say it someone face-to-face. If not it is probably the marketing happy talk we refeed to above. Other ways to make conversational is to use simple words and use colloquial expressions. Pronouns such as I, we, you, they are also effective. Some talk about the we-we test reviewing the to see whether the emphasis is on the sender we or the recipient you. The example below shows an that passes this test: You already know how easy it is to get instant online insurance cover from Norwich Union. But did you know that Norwich Union can also offer you online access to low-cost life-cover. For example, would cost you as little as Y per day. Connecting copy with readers r Q. language connects with your readers? With so much spam, every reader is going to be super-cynical about what you are offering. So, professional marketers have to work extra hard to establish credibility and prove their benefits. So, as you write, put yourself in the position of a cynical customer who is fed-up of insincere and bogus offers how are you going to prove that you are a credible supplier? These are some approaches to overcome cynicism and build credibility through Try to achieve connection with the reader to show that you understand them by using customer language and buzzwords. Spell out the benefit the feature gives. For the example a bulleted list could use different fonts or formats to emphasise benefits. Backup with facts and numbers. Build testimonial elements into your s such as customer quotes, number of customers, client names and independent reviews and awards. Customer-centric copy 6 r Q. Copy customer-centric? It is often said that to write good direct mail copy, you need to write for your reader, in other words to imagine the person who is reading your carefully crafted words. But to do this, we need to remember the different types of position that our readers are in. Write down how their backgrounds vary. These are some of the different aspects you should consider: r r How well do the recipients know your company? Are they prospects, customers or firsttime customers? 51

52 How well do they know your products? Have they bought single products or a range of products? What style of communications will appeal? What will they expect from previous interactions with your brand? Do they like a direct approach or do they prefer a more involved dialogue? What is their age they may prefer more or less formal communications accordingly. How technologically literate are they? Some may have been using and web sites for 5 years, others for only 5 weeks. Make it obvious for the newbies, but while avoiding patronising the old hands. Do they scan or do they read? Depending on time available, and their character, some recipients will just scan the body, others prefer to read more carefully. You need to provide copy and design that works for both. Through using customer personas and asking these types of questions you will build a picture of the range of people you are writing for. If it is not practical to write for such a wide range consider separating your mailing for example into recently acquired customers and established customers. Does your have CRABS? r Q. CRABS copy? In my Emarketing Excellence book, my co-author Paul Smith recommends using the acronym CRABS to summarise effective web page copy. This is even more appropriate to copy, since we typically have even less space to communicate. CRABS stands for: Chunking Chunking means that paragraphs must be shorter than in paper copy. Think one or two sentences. Three or four maximum. This helps scannability. Relevance With limited space, we have no room for fillers. Stick with what matters the details of the offer and how to receive it. Personalise the where possible. Accuracy Don t get caied away with your copy; don t set expectations so high that you overpromise and can t deliver something you offer. Brevity Brevity goes with chunking and scannability. Write your copy, reduce the word count and then reduce it again. Give yourself targets and beat them without sacrificing good English and understanding. Scannability This is reading without reading every word, just picking up the sense of each paragraph from the keywords. The eye will pick out words at the start of paragraphs and those emphasised in bold. 6 The title of Steve Krug s book on web usability gives a useful guideline for copywriting for Don t make me think. He also suggests that you should consider the amount of copy you have, half it and half it again. If you have produced copy that follows the CRABS guidelines, you are only a small way there, since there are many issues of style to make successful copy. As with any direct mail piece, the first paragraph of an must: r r Engage when reading this, perhaps in the auto-preview window, recipients are deciding whether to delete or read further. So as for any, the opening needs to be powerful. 52

53 Add detail to the subject line or the headline repetition is less important in than in direct mail since it is processed so quickly the recipient will remember the gist of the subject line, and it is always there at the head of the , so reinforcement is the main objective of the message here. Summarise the whole the opening of an is often compared to the opening of a press release which typically uses an inverse pyramid structure to summarise the main points of the message in decreasing order of importance, as briefly as possible. Include a call-to-action if the reader likes the offer or wants to know more, we shouldn t make them scroll down to find an elusive hyperlink it should be there in the first paragraph. This is a mistake often made by newbies leaving the best until last. Making copy engaging r Q. Engaging copy developed? To complete Step 6 here are some other ideas to help your copy connect to the max. campaign checklist Eight key copy questions Question 1. Does your copy excite? You have a great offer, but have you supported the offer by writing enthusiastically to appeal to the reader s emotions? For the consumer you are offering riches, dreams and experiences does the copy effectively communicate how your offer will improve their life? For the business person you are offering time, knowledge and control does the copy effectively communicate how your offer can help them work smarter? The copy also needs to excite from the outset see Question 7 for tips on headlines. Question 2. Does your copy convince? You may believe that your service or your offer sells itself on its features because you believe in it. But the recipient is less likely to be a believer they don t have the interest or knowledge you have. Have you backed up your promise with enough detail to convince the reader that the offer is worthwhile? Is the unique selling point clear? The style of writing also needs to enthuse about these benefits. This may be difficult if you cannot personally relate to the customer s needs sometimes difficult for technology markets. The only way to succeed is to develop empathy with your reader by researching, and maybe even living the role as actors do. Question 3. Is your copy natural? We have said that is a social, conversational medium we mainly use it to chat to friends or communicate to colleagues. So we want to avoid our reading as if it was written by a machine. If you can make copy conversational, write at the same level of your audience and make it flow naturally then you will get closer to the reader and predispose them to what you are offering. However don t overdo the informality some s seem as if they are written by someone you have known from back at school. Question 4. Is the copy length right? Let s look at the extremes. Which is best short copy or long copy? 6 53

54 There can be no right answer because it depends on purpose. Most people answer that short is best since the reader doesn t want to read your carefully crafted words, just WIIFM What s in it for me? My view is that you can combine short and long copy in one . For those who are more likely to respond to short copy you use the introduction and the start of the main copy which is above the fold. For the scanners who scan through the whole you may impress with detail, provided that detail stands out. For the readers who read every word and want the details you need the long copy. I would argue that the cannot be too long as long as it is relevant and entertaining and another call-to-action and summary of the total copy are included at the start. Some argue that the detail can always be put into a link to a more detailed web page, but I think that this can cause loss of focus once the reader clicks through to their web browser you have lost control. Question 5. Did you repeat yourself? This is a difficult one. Direct mail wisdom says repeat to reinforce. wisdom says the reader doesn t have the time to see information repeated. However, I think some repetition is desirable. Reinforcement of messages is effective in any media. We need to repeat and build on what is available in the subject line in the headline. Then, because the reader has scrolled, repeating the offer in the final call-to-action makes sense. Question 6. Which copy stands out? You have satisfied yourself that you can answer the other questions, but now, looking at the big picture, what will the scanner notice what techniques have you used to emphasise the key points in your ? In text s you have these options to make copy stand out: CAPITALISATION, particularly in text s, but don t overuse it. The SPACE before and after words and between lines is powerful in highlighting offers or calls-to-action. Bulleted lists using asterisks or dots. You can see that text s are limited. But in HTML s, we have much more scope for emphasis perhaps one of the reasons why in many markets, HTML s receive higher response rates. With HTML we can use the options for text s listed above, but also: Text formatting bold and italics. But take care since italics may be difficult to read in small point sizes. Never use an underline which looks like a hyperlink readers will try to click on it. Font sizes large font size as headings or separate messages work well for scanners. Font colour using a different copy from body copy using vibrant colours such as red and orange. Graphical animations of copy but make sure your animation doesn t prevent the message being viewed by scanners Hyperlinks blue underlined hyperlinks attract the eye online. 6 54

55 Question 7. Do we have a powerful headline? Many s do not have a title at all online copywriters seem to think they aren t necessary because that s what the subject line is for. Not so Headlines do help engagement if they build on the subject line to engage the reader. In his excellent book on Online Copywriting, Bob Bly recommends the following approaches that can be used for titles: 1. Get a teific benefit up-front 2. Appeal to personal self-interest 3. Get right sort of attention 4. Add news 5. Offer to teach 6. Ask a provocative question 7. Use Quotes Question 8. Will our copy achieve action? We finish our eight questions with the most important question whether our will achieve action. Arguably, this should be the first question, since then the whole copy can be structured around the outcomes we want to achieve Approaches that can help achieve action are: þ þ A text-based call-to-action in first screen (for the impulsive) and last screen (for those with the time to read). þ þ A time-limited offer which uses copy to encourage the reader to Click NOW þ þ Instructions such as forward to a friend or print this as a reminder can be other useful outcomes. þ þ Using hyperlinks to highlight the offer at the right position in the paragraph. As an example of highlighting the offer through a hyperlink, think of marketing to an IT manager to download a best practice guide. Which of these approaches do you think would be best? A. Click below to receive your complimentary guide to reducing Total Cost of Ownership: FREE guide to reducing TCO. Sign Off B. Click here to receive your complimentary guide to reducing Total Cost of Ownership. or C. To receive your complimentary guide to reducing Total Cost of Ownership, click here. or D. To help you lower the costs of running your IT infrastructure we have a prepared a complimentary guide to reducing Total Cost of Ownership. In A separating out the hyperlink on to a separate line does increase its prominence, but spoils the flow of the copy. I prefer B rather than C since it is more direct and the eye will be more naturally drawn towards the underlined hyperlink at the start of the sentence within the copy as a whole. 6 55

56 However, approach C can encourage the scanner to read the copy before the end of the sentence. Design practice for web pages would favour approach D, which makes the call-to-action part of the copy. While this may work best for web pages where we are perhaps not seeking the hard-sell. For simplicity and encouraging action approach B is best. Think carefully about the colour of the hyperlink. On the majority of web pages, Yahoo And Amazon, for example, users are used to seeing a blue hyperlink on a white background. You will get a higher response with this combination because of familiarity. If other colours are used, high contrast is essential. 6 56

57 Step 7 Test, learn and refine to increase efficiency In this section, we look at some of the more advanced techniques to get more from your. We will cover: Improving delivery Tracking campaigns Improving for mobile devices Improving delivery r Q. delivery techniques reviewed? delivery arguably isn t the most interesting part of for marketers. But since it can directly affect your results it s worthwhile knowing the right questions to ask. Since this is a specialist area I turned to my friend Tim Watson 11, who has spent many year optimising delivery for clients through his work as operations manager at services providers. How do ISPs identify spam? Spam is defined in the eye of the beholder. In the case of the ISPs and webmail services, they define spam as s that users don t want. So these are the that ISPs use to spot spammers: ýý Poor list hygiene. Often with limited ability or interest to receive and process bounces from botnets, bouncing addresses stay on spam lists. ýý High spam complaints. Users clicking the junk and report as spam button in their client. ýý Very low engagement. Low open rates and a high number of deletes without reading. No user reply s in response to a spam . ýý Campaigns sent across hundreds if not thousands of IP addresses. The IP addresses rapidly change and come and go as spammers use a botnet of zombie computers. The volume from each zombie IP address does not have smooth flow. It shows high peaks of activity. ýý Incomplete setup of technical criteria. The include DNS, reverse DNS, SPF and DKIM. (See Deliverability.com) for discussion of these. ýý Sending from a dynamic IP address. For example, those allocated to home ADSL connections. So, to not be treated as spam means to not look like spam with the above characteristics In the early days ISPs used content to filter spam, words such as Viagra were obvious choices. These techniques were crude and easily circumvented. The ISPs are clever people with large resources and have been moving closer and closer to measuring the metrics that are fundamental characteristics of the spammers business model. This is shrewd as it is something that spammers can t fake. So, what can we do to avoid being identified as a spammer? The today that are important to inbox placement are low bounce rates, low complaint rates, high engagement, coect technical setup, content validity and consistent volume flow. 11 Follow Tim s advice at:

58 Assessing your cuent delivery r Q. delivery optimisation reviewed? The delivery rate as provided by tools is the percentage of s that didn t bounce. If you are ing at least weekly to each address on your customer base and you have good list hygiene practices in place then your delivery rate should be over 98%, that is less than 2% of s sent are bounced. But delivery rate isn t the same as inbox delivery, ReturnPath have recently reported an average inbox placement as low 88%, even when the mailer has a good IP reputation as measured by a SenderScore 12 of over 91 By the way, if you haven t encountered bounce rate applied to, bounces are commonly categorised into hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard bounces are bounces due to a permanent eor; whereas soft bounces mean a temporary eor. As an example, a hard bounce will occur if someone terminated their account, whereas a soft bounce example could be if the person s inbox is full. If your delivered rate is lower than 90%, then your next step is to review and change list hygiene best practice and reduce your bounce rate before moving on to the guidance in this post. Deliverability, as opposed to delivery, is about more than just removing the bounces. Its about aiving to the inbox. Before the rise of spam and aggressive spam filters to counter it, just knowing an had not bounced was sufficient to be confident it was delivered to the inbox. Spam forced ISPs into additional filtering and the difference between deliverability and delivery arose. An ISP will do one of three things for s not bounced: ýý Place in the inbox ýý Place in the junk folder ýý Throw the away Unlike bounces issues, whereby the ISP tells you that you ve not reached the inbox box, there is not such notification to senders by ISPs if you are put in junk or deleted. The challenge then, is given the ISPs won t tell you, how do you monitor if your s are placed in the inbox? There are two main methods: 1 Delivery confirmation seed addresses. Delivery confirmation seed addresses are simply accounts you create with the ISPs and include on your mailing list. Once the campaign has been sent, log into each of the seed accounts you created and check if the aived to the inbox. The inference is that if the seed address got to the inbox you can expect the rest of the campaigns s for that ISP to have reached the inbox. This is generally a sound assumption. Thankfully, as creating seed accounts and manually checking inboxes is rather time consuming() this capability is automated and built into some ESP solutions or offered as a service by companies like ReturnPath. Using an automated service means you just need to read the reports as part of your campaign metrics review process. 2 Campaign metric changes. Your open, click, bounce and complaint rates also provide insight to inbox deliverability and alert you to a potential change in deliverability You can review your Senderscore at 58

59 Its not as simple as just looking at your average open or click rate and if it drops concluding there is a deliverability problem. There are so many other that could cause this such a conclusion is nonsensical. To use these campaign metrics you need to look at how these vary and trend across ISPs. The key is knowing what is normal for your list and campaigns. Here the ratio from Hotmail to Yahoo is 1.82 (4.04/2.21). If this ratio changes significantly it implies the deliverability has changed between Hotmail and Yahoo. So ask your service provider to do an analysis of this ratio. Best Practice Tip 19 Review delivery variation by platform delivery will vary by platform such as Gmail, Hotmail, etc. If you see a much lower delivery rate, then it may indicate a problem with delivery. Tim Watson recommends keeping spam complaint rates below 0.2% to ensure a good reputation and the lower the better. However, dropping spam complaint rates can be a sign of trouble too. If your open, click and spam rates all drop together it indicates you are not reaching the inbox. The spam complaint rates are dropping simply because no-one is seeing your and thus will no longer complain about it Two more tools to consider are blocklists and Hotmail SNDS. All ISP filtering includes use of block lists. These are lists of IP addresses which are considered to be sending spam. ISPs hold their own private lists as well as using the public lists. Use a service that will alert you if your IP address appears on a block list. If you are using a good ESP they should be doing this for you. Finally, Hotmail provide a service called SNDS 13. This shows you how Hotmail rate your IP addresses and is one of the few ways to find out if you are hitting spam traps. Assess engagement beyond the click through web analytics r Q. Effectiveness of beyond the click reviewed? For many years, it was difficult to track engagement of your visitors after they clickthrough on your through to the site. In more advanced systems you could, and still can, tag the conversion page such as a sales or subscription thank you page, but this was time consuming and now there s a better way. Best Practice Tip 20 Integrate web analytics campaign tracking You should define standard campaign tracking codes for different campaigns to enable you to review engagement against conversion to sale or other goals, otherwise s will be recorded within your analytics system as direct visits. If your site is a transactional site with a clear sales conversion goal then success in conversion will be shown by Ecommerce tracking. With the widespread adoption of web analytics and in particular Google Analytics for tracking pay per click Adwords campaigns, many vendors including smartmarketer echannel have made it easier for you to track after the click by automatically integrating Google Analytics campaign tracking into the hyperlink in your templates. Integration with other advanced web analytics systems such as Omniture and Coremetrics is also

60 possible. To find more about campaign tracking in Google Analytics see our 7 Step Guide to using Google Analytics or try using the Google Analytics URL builder 14 that shows how the Google Analytics tracking tag is introduced. Here is an example tagged URL (split across several lines): utm_campaign=enewsnov &utm_medium= &utm_source=houselist &utm_term=editorial-link &utm_content=header For marketing the parameters (* are optional) I recommend are: utm_medium medium used for marketing, i.e. utm_campaign campaign name, e.g. EnewsNovember utm_source This is usually the media owner, but for can be used to specify the source of list, e.g. HouseList or the name of external list providers/ Newsletter ads þ þ * utm_term In AdWords used to identify the keyword used to trigger the ad, can be used in to identify individual links (optional), e.g. Offer1, can be based on click text summary þ þ * utm_content Used to track an individual or segments response (optional), this could be based on any field in database, e.g. user-id, user , etc. If your site is not transactional, then you should define other conversion goals for engagement with the site. In both cases you can define an actual or nominal monetary value for conversion. In Google Analytics this will enable you to compare campaign effectiveness according to $Index value or total value. Best Practice Tip 21 Review web analytics bounce rates Compare landing page bounce rates (for the site not hard bounces for the campaign) for evaluating the relevance of the landing page content. If you find the bounce rate for the landing page is relatively high, you can be sure you are directing your visitor to a less relevant page from your . You can also compare landing pages on duration, number of pages subsequently viewed and conversion to goals pre-defined in the analytics system. Improving for mobile devices r Q. Use of on mobile devices reviewed The reading of s on mobile devices and particularly on smartphones and tablets is an important part of the future of. This is suggested by this data as&src=cb&lev=topic 60

61 The source of the data is Sydney-based Service provider Campaign Monitor it s based on 3 billion s delivered for its clients in The Campaign Monitor data also shows data for different mobile platforms: So, we ve seen the industry trends, but you still need to check to see how important mobile is for you. I m hearing figures of 5-15% quoted quite often now, but these are still the exception. Best Practice Tip 22 Define the target platforms for mobile You should decide which platforms your s should work on and then take steps to evaluate how effectively these work. To find your mobile usage levels take a look in your Google Analytics at the Visits, Mobile Devices. You ll be able to see the main types of devices you need to support: 7 61

62 Target mobile devices selected targeted and reviewed r Q. Effectiveness of on target mobile devices reviewed? You can create separate versions of your for HTML and mobile in your preference centre and then let people choose between the two. But most won t select their preference, so a more common approach is to actively target recipients who your analytics or software indicates are using a mobile, then send them the mobile-optimised version. Fortunately Internet-enabled phones now include browsers and clients that are based on the WebKit rendering engine, which has fantastic HTML and CSS support. This includes the iphone, Android devices, webos, Samsung s Dolfin browser and the the most recent versions of RIM s browser for Blackbey. This is an example of the approach. You can read more about how this is achieved through media queries 15 So design and code an that works on the desktop, and you can be fairly certain that it will render faithfully on all these devices. All the best for the future Overview of media queries 62

63 What, where next? We hope you have found this workbook interesting and most of all useful? We d love to know how you have found working through it - good points and bad The benefi t of Ebooks is that we can update based on feedback much quicker than printed books so, so do tell us what you think - please [email protected]. Thanks, Dave Chaffey and the Smart Insights team More in-depth advice You can fi nd further guidance at Our workbooks, online training and Word plus Excel templates are designed to help companies get better returns from their marketing by: Reaching more þ Digital marketing strategy þ SEO þ Google Adwords / Pay Per Click þ Display advertising Act and Convert more þ Improving results from your website þ Landing page conversion þ Content marketing þ Using Google Analytics to improve online marketing Engage more þ Building online communities þ marketing þ Online PR and infl uencer marketing þ Social media marketing 7 63