Driving ROI through email relevance

Driving ROI through email relevance Key tactics www.campaigner.com

With each new year comes renewed optimism. This informative white paper explores a number of powerful tactics that give businesses the ability to infuse relevance into their communications. We believe that the most important factor in generating a successful email marketing ROI is email relevance. So to all trying to drive sales through email marketing this coming year, remember the equation for email marketing success: Right person + Right message + Right time = ROI Campaigner powered by Protus 2

Contents Introduction...................................................................................... 4 The right person.................................................................................. 4 Permission Opt-in Subscription Segmentation The right message................................................................................ 6 Personalization Integration Testing The right time.................................................................................... 8 Deliverability Automation Reporting & Analysis Conclusions..................................................................................... 10 About Campaigner................................................................................ 12 Campaigner powered by Protus 3

Introduction The true promise of email marketing has always been increasing your marketing ROI. Today that promise is achievable only through relevance sending the right person, the right email message, at just the right time. A recent study on the ROI of Email Relevance by JupiterResearch found that engaging your audience in more relevant communications can increase net profits on average 18 times more than broadcast mailings. Additionally, relevant email generates 16 times more improvement in net profit. It s no surprise that industry experts agree the more relevance infused into a marketer s communications the stronger the ROI. Unfortunately, the reality is that only a third of business using offer-oriented email campaigns rank email relevance as their number one strategic goal. However, for those business owners who do, there has never been time to outperform the competition. So what can you do? Relevance-based email messaging drives 60% of all consumers who make impulse purchases online (Jupiter Research) The powerful tactics outlined in this white paper make your task easier. Followed diligently, they will inject relevance into your communications and help you achieve BIG returns on your email marketing investment! The 3-pronged approach: The right message The right time The right person The right person As margins shrink and competition increases, businesses realizing the better they know about their audience, the more they can give them what they want the more their audience will reward their effort with loyalty. Getting to know your audience boils down to capturing and collecting profile data. Without it, you will be relegated to ineffective email communications and the mediocre marketing return on investment that goes with it. With increased focus on email marketing ROI, knowing your audience is crucial. Here are three easy tactics you can use to get to know your audience better. Permission The effectiveness of your email program starts with an opt-in mailing list. Findings from IMT Strategies revealed that 76% of consumers will delete an unsolicited email compared to only 2% for permission email. Campaigner powered by Protus 4

Start by reviewing the permission practices across your website and all visitor contact points. Make it as easy as possible for your target audience to opt-in. Like any new relationship, provide full transparency to leverage credibility and trust. For example, give clear and concise details on your opt-in practices; supply links to allow them to submit and update preferences and permissions, and to the privacy policy. Full transparency with your target audience as the graph below shows builds credibility and trust allowing for a seamless transition to the next phase of the buyer/seller relationship. And, whether you like it or not, permission is no longer optional. How full transparency tactics encourage opt-ins Explanation of how I control what I get and when I get it An example of the emails I may receive Summary of privacy practices Overview of their communication philosophy Personal invitation to me via email or another method Testimonial from other subscribers 0% 73% 69% 50% 32% 15% 13% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Truverse, October 2005 Opt-in subscriptions Assuming you have been able to grow a substantial mailing list, the effectiveness of your email program now depends on how much you know about your opt-in list members. Remember, the better the data mined on your subscribers today, the more relevant your email messages and higher ROI tomorrow. So collect a wide range of customer profile and campaign preference information that you can leverage to send highly targeted emails to customers and prospects. Focus your attention on the custom sign-up forms and personalized welcome email follow-ups you used to collect relevant visitor site data and grow quality lists. A recent emarketer survey revealed that 46% of Internet users say that the commercial emails they receive are not targeted to their wants and needs critical success components to remaining welcome in a recipient s inbox. Next, when collecting data keep in mind that what makes you nervous about giving personal information probably makes your subscribers nervous as well. Take the time to enhance the data harvesting process for the benefit of the recipient and you ll stand a significantly better chance to build an opt-in list rich in relevant attributes. The more attributes, the more high value, high targeted one-to-one email campaigns with higher investment returns. Campaigner powered by Protus 5

Segmentation In today s volatile email environment, the number one cause for consumer complaints to Internet service providers (ISPs) is SPAM or generic Dear John one-size-fits-all messages that have little value. Here s where the valuable information harvested at sign-up plays a crucial role in how deep you re able cut into and segment your list with common recipient characteristics or interests. According to a recent JupiterResearch study, highly relevant email messages can generate nine times improvement in revenue and 32 times more improvement in net profit over non-segmented broadcast campaigns. Start by dividing your list based on where the recipient has signed up or their email behavior actions a recipient has taken in previous campaigns, gender, birthday, specific demographics or psychographics. This tactic will help you learn more about each group in your audience, so you can better tailor content to recipients in each segment. When it comes to success components that have a direct impact on email marketing ROI, segmentation is key. The right message With email volume in the U.S. alone expected to reach more than 158 billion and grow 63% to 258 billion in 2013, you have to identify how best to capture a recipient s attention. Sending the right message boils down to how much information you have collected on each subscriber. This allows you to anticipate and engage your audience with timely value-add communications. Here are three great tactics that empower you with the ability to capture attention by sending the right message. Personalization Now that your audience has been separated into segments you are ready to improve response and revenue through personalizing messages with the recipient s own data. For example, recognize and acknowledge each of your recipients by name, reference purchase history, or gender-based profiles to really elevate the value of your communications. If you give your audience what they want the more likely you ll be welcomed as a credible friend. Don t by shy about it, stroke egos by highlighting interests and actions to create messages recipients want to receive. Put the valuable data you ve worked so hard to harvest to good use by making your messages so valuable and personal the recipient has no choice but to open and respond. Bottom line? Any personalization is good for your ROI. Untargeted broadcast emails have, on average, open rates of 20%, click-throughs of 9.5%, conversions of 1.1% compared with, on the opposite end of the spectrum, targeted email campaigns with 33% average open rates, 14% click-through rates, and 3.9% conversion (JupiterResearch) Campaigner powered by Protus 6

Integration To shift your business into top gear and blast ROI to new heights, integrating your email marketing program with other database systems is the key to your program s success. Not to overstate the obvious, but the foundation of an effective and efficient email program is built on how much information you know about your target audience to anticipate their next purchasing move; and how you use this information to better tailor your communications to trigger a sale. Integration allows you to marry email marketing campaigns to actionable up-to-date data across other database systems like customer relationship management (CRM) using your organization s application programming interface (API). When asked about email marketing, benchmark companies with 50 million or more in revenues ranked lack of integrated customer data as a top challenge (JupiterResearch) This functionality increases the degree of real-time data and depth of accessible customer-centric knowledge. And when driving sales to optimize an ROI, anticipating the customer s next move is crucial. Finally, integration injects a stronger one-to-one component to all email campaigns by giving a business the ability to collect and share data across many channels. Integration is crucial to an email marketing program s success. Testing A well-maintained testing program can keep your profitability at optimum levels. And despite the extra time it takes to implement a sound testing program it will allow you to make objective decisions based on factual data as opposed to subjective, It looks good I like it decisions. Take the challenge to be proactive and test: delivery rendering, personal attributes, day of the week that draws the heaviest opens and clicks, which subject line tags drive higher response, and frequency thresholds. Food for thought: only 40% of marketers employ email testing strategies on a regular basis. Conversely, marketers using testing and other sophisticated tactics are almost twice as likely to enjoy conversion rates three times higher than marketers who do not. (JupiterResearch) To keep pace with the competition refresh email programs on a consistent basis. What you think is working could be far from the truth. So begin small and work your way up. For example, start with classic A/B split testing methodologies to quickly identify the best combination of variables to increase your conversion rates because testing yields significant results. Campaigner powered by Protus 7

The right time Universally, getting email to the inbox at just the right time remains a magic bullet for businesses trying to boost ROI through relevance. Remember the following: timing of your communications is the critical component if you re looking to boost customer loyalty and campaign response. Here are three best practices to ensure you send timely messages your recipients want. As the graph below illustrates, well-timed offers drive sales and ROI. Promotional email purchase drivers Immediate purchasers Deferred purchasers Clickers Promotional email purchase drivers Featured a sale price Featured free or discounted shipping Contained product I was already considering Featured a special offer (i.e., gift) Contained product similar to one I was already considering 73% 76% 47% 67% 70% 39% 60% 58% 36% 39% 36% 22% 38% 38% 22% Contained product I had not considered 17% 17% 9% Contained product similar to previous purchase 16% 15% 8% Subject line was personalized 9% 8% 4% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Consumers receiving offers through email JupiterResearch, 2005 Campaigner powered by Protus 8

Deliverability The reality online is that users are lazy. As a result, many recipients will click the report as SPAM button instead of the unsubscribe button. So even if your message is permission-based and avoids spam filters, ad blockers, and excess noise on the way to the, its still miles from the finish line. 51% of best-in-class companies garnered customer satisfaction levels that exceeded 70% as compared to only 10% of other benchmarked groups (JupiterResearch.) That s because your message does not resonate with a relevant what s in it for me subject line, customer-centric article or profile related product they may get flagged as SPAM by the recipient s ISP. In that case, you risk the ISP blocking the communication or blacklisting the IP address damaging email reputation. Assuming you have maintained a well-managed list (one that ensures you message only people who want to hear from you), relevant content, specific to a recipient s online behavior will yield BIG dividends. Like any solid relationship it s about respect. If you expect recipients to take the time to open, read, and act on your email, you must go the extra mile to make that communication as valuable as possible. What s in it for me value-added content equals WIN-WIN for the sender and recipient, and business WIN-WIN spells strong ROI. As the graph below illustrates, if your message does not resonate, you risk low deliverability and low ROI. How recipients deal with the increase in irrelevant holiday emails Just detected the additional emails 60.1% No impact on my habits Unsubscribe from emails that came too often 28.3% 27.1% Hit the `This is Spam button 23.4% Spend more time with email overall Spent less time with each email to accommodate the excess 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 8.8% 7.7% Return Path, Holiday Email Survey, January 2005 Campaigner powered by Protus 9

Automation Let s face it, in today s competitive market space, organizations are often spread thin on core functions that would allow them to drive lead nurturing efforts. When you consider that it can take up to 14 encounters with a potential prospect to convert a sale, spread thin just won t cut it. Automation lets you set up lead nurturing campaigns to run on their own when your customer s buying interest is at its peak. And timely communications in email marketing equals relevant communications that further nurture the buyer/seller relationship. Marketers using life cycle campaigns (strings of messages sent at predetermined intervals) and triggered campaign tactics are almost three times as likely to attain conversation rates that exceed the industry average of 3% (JupiterResearch) Automation allows you to reduce manual processes and cycle times so you can focus your efforts on core marketing and automate the rest. This saves time and increases productivity overall to provide a better ROI. And that s why automation ranks as a key email marketing tactic for top organizations. Reporting & Analysis As any statistician will attest numbers rarely lie. So, you should consider the number.0033 - the percentage of advertising messages a consumer reacts to on a daily basis. So before your next email campaign, ask yourself if your email communications factor into that.0033 percentile. If not, advanced reports that track customer response rates (open rates, click rates, referral rates) will tell you a lot about why not. Advanced reporting and analysis provides valuable information you can use to tailor subsequent communications, refine messages, grow your audience, revise delivery time, increase message frequency, or simply adjust the salutation. The more you analyze previous email efforts, the greater the chance you ll identify and repair the weak links. Never overlook or underestimate the power of advanced reporting and analysis as top success components in your email program and benchmark against top-of-class players in your space to see where you rank. The demand for on-demand Without a doubt, a well-run email marketing program will enable you to significantly improve ROI. However, because email marketing is still new to many, implementing the best practices detailed in this white paper can be challenging. Add to that the ever-changing complexities involved in executing an efficient email program, and you can understand why demanding an on-demand email marketing application is a highly attractive avenue. The Email Service Provider With the largest chunk of consumer dollars shifting online, businesses looking to infuse relevance into their email programs are intensifying their focus on leading ESPs who offer on-demand email marketing applications and deliver software over the Internet. Campaigner powered by Protus 10

Why? Even when compared to search marketing, email is still the most efficient marketing tactic to acquire new customers, build loyalty with existing customers and generate an outstanding ROI at a much lower cost. As the graph below illustrates, almost half of businesses rate email as more effective than other marketing, with another quarter rating it as highly effective. That s why more and more businesses are demanding on-demand applications, and turning to leading email service providers. Business cases demonstrate time and again that leading ESPs deliver stronger and more consistent results over the long-term than those managed entirely in-house in areas of deliverability, cost-effectiveness, personalization and availability. eretail marketers compare email to other marketing tactics 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 20% 29% 24% 10% 9% Much more effective Somewhat more effective About the same Somewhat less effective Much less effective Internet Retailer, E-Retail Survey Report, February 2005 For example, let s look at leading service provider Protus and their Web-based Campaigner application. Its advanced features without the expense and complexity of a large technology investment exemplify why more organizations are moving away from internal email programs to leading ESPs like Campaigner. On-demand applications like Campaigner make sophisticated email marketing tasks easy, by bringing together components that empower an organization with: - Opt-in list building to gain trust. - List management to ensure credibility. - List segmentation wizards to improve response. - WYSIWYG content editors to grow revenue. - Dedicated delivery services to achieve industry leading standards. - Out-of-box integration with leading CRM systems like Salesforce.com. - Reporting and analysis to improve delivery and response. Campaigner powered by Protus 11

Conclusions As the saying goes: a promise made is a promise kept if sending to the right person, the right email message, at just the right time, the promise for steadily increased email relevance is a dramatic ROI! Follow the best practices detailed in this white paper and in no time you ll be sending highly relevant email communications and reaping the rewards of a healthy ROI. Start by gaining as much insight as possible about your target audience, then tailor the content in your emails to suit the specific demographic, behavioral and buying profiles of your recipients and you ll quickly become a welcome credible sender. Affordable on-demand Web-based applications like Campaigner gives businesses the greatest ability to achieve all the above and more by automating highly personalized one-to-one targeted email communications simply and easily. About Campaigner Campaigner is an industry-leading email marketing service that makes it simple for small businesses and organizations new to email marketing to create sophisticated one-to-one email campaigns that result in profitable relationships with customers. Campaigner s proven email marketing functionality includes list segmentation, personalized messaging, automation, and Salesforce integration. Campaigner improves email marketing ROI and performance by helping small businesses create and send professional e-newsletters, grow opt-in lists, and improve permission-based marketing results. Campaigner includes automatic CAN-SPAM compliance and on demand online access for a low monthly fee. Campaigner resources Campaigner offers a variety of educational materials for the public. Find recent articles, tips, online product and educational webinars, customer case studies, and more. Additional information for Campaigner is available at www.campaigner.com. Toll-free: 1-866-358-6355 International: 1-613-216-7423 Email: support@campaigner.com 2009 Protus IP Solutions. All rights reserved. Protus, MyFax, my1voice, Campaigner are trademarks of Protus. Other trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. Customers are solely responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance. CPWP0209 Campaigner powered by Protus 12