Crumbs from the Scone
“Today’s online marketing world is full of lovely words like engagement and empowerment, communication and conversation, interaction and integration, friends, fans and followers,” writes Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports. “Many of these keywords go back to the age-old idea of building a strong relationship between your organization and the members of your audience.”
But here’s the problem with that: Marketers spend too much time talking about the relationship, and too little time having a relationship, Brownlow argues. The result, he notes, is common mistakes like these:
Speaking to your subscribers as if they’re all the same person. “I don’t talk to the postman like I do to my wife,” Brownlow says. “And I don’t talk to the postman now like I talked to him five years ago.” In the same way, you should consider various factors when speaking to a subscriber:
- How long has she been on your list?
- What kinds of purchases does she make?
- What does she open and click on?
- How does she browse at your site?
- How likely is she to share your content with others?
Assuming your subscriber considers your brand a BFF. We tend to think of the email marketing relationship as having a far stronger bond than actually exists, Brownlow says. “[F]or most subscribers it’s an extremely tenuous commitment. Marketers who forget this often assume unconditional love, meaning subscribers will always forgive the occasional (or regular) transgression.” Your most loyal customers might forgive you, but the majority of your list won’t have any trouble hitting the unsubscribe button, he cautions.
Come back down to earth. Don’t let all the nice theory about email relationships prevent you from seeing each one for what it really is—and interacting in a way that creates the most value for your customer.
Source: Email Marketing Reports.
Crumbs from the Scone
A recent edition of “Which Test Won” recounts an A/B test in which DIYthemes, a template system for WordPress, invited visitors to sign up for email newsletters. Version A used the headline “Get Email Updates (it’s free!),” and used social proof messaging to encourage registration: “Join 14,752 others and get free updates.” Below this was a box for an email address and a “join” button. Version B was identical, except that it omitted the line about 14,752 subscribers.
Voters at the site overwhelmingly chose Version A: 82% to 18%. But the majority was—in this case—wrong. “Version B, without the social proof messaging, got a 122% lift in email opt-ins,” Anne Holland notes.
So what happened? “Derek Halpern, Chief Persuasion Officer, DIYthemes, suggested that ‘joining 14,752 others’ just wasn’t compelling enough, or might have distracted visitors from the submit button below,” says Holland. “But we think another factor might be that the messaging didn’t clearly explain what kind of email updates the subscriber would receive—or the benefits of opting in.”
Whatever the case, it sparked a lively discussion in the comment section. Feedback from Holland’s readers included comments like these:
- “Maybe the ‘joining’ messaging misled people into believing they were signing up for a discussion list as opposed to the blog’s own updates?”
- “I think with the phrase ‘joining 14,752 others’ it seems to suggest that the sole reason to join is because 14,752 have joined.”
- “My own testing has shown that you should leave the reasons for joining to the Welcome Email. Every single extra character is one more reason to delay entering your email address and hitting Submit.”
There’s only one way to know for sure. Many experts had an opinion on this test—and most of them got it wrong. Even when the answer seems obvious, test and test and test again.
Source: Which Test Won.
Crumbs from the Scone
“Every industry has its own language,” writes DJ Waldow in an article at MarketingProfs. “The email marketing community, too, has its own jargon that sets it apart. And if you are unfamiliar with it, navigating the world of email marketing can be confusing.” Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been doing email campaigns for a while, it never hurts to have a concise email-marketing glossary on hand.
Waldow put one together for MarketingProfs, and it includes terms like these:
- Blacklist. A blacklist contains a set of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are suspected of sending out unsolicited email (spam). “If your sending IP has a high complaint rate, high hard-bounce rate, or a bunch of spamtrap addresses … you are more likely to be blacklisted,” Waldow notes.
- Hard bounce. A hard bounce is an email that does not reach the intended recipient because of a permanent error. Hard bounces can occur when an alias (username) or domain does not exist.
- Spamtrap/honeypot. These are old/inactive/unused email addresses that are intentionally set up to catch spammers. If you have spamtrap/honeypot email addresses on your list, it may be time to review your process for growing your email list, Waldow advises.
- Whitelist. A whitelist is a list of “approved” IP addresses and senders. If an Internet service provider (ISP) has whitelisted an IP address, it is more likely to accept incoming email from that address.
- CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Signed into law in December 2003 by President Bush, and updated in 2008, CAN-SPAM establishes the standards for sending commercial email in the United States.
Don’t forget the basics. Email marketing rewards those who know what they’re doing, and punishes those who do not. The first step to success is remembering what all the lingo means—and why it matters.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
In a post at the Lunch Pail blog, bride-to-be Casey Barto recounts a visit to a bridal expo. “On the day of the show with pen in hand, I scribbled my email address and name on the contact lists of vendors who interested me most,” she says. What happened next taught her a few best-practices about following up with prospects met at tradeshows.
Here are four key tips based on her experience:
Follow up promptly. “After the show was over, I was ready to receive at least a few welcome emails,” she says. “I checked my email throughout the first week after the show—nothing. Didn’t they want my business?” Then, nearly two weeks later, they flooded her inbox en masse. By the time she got all the messages, she had a hard time remembering who was who.
Explain why you’re making contact. Jog a recipient’s memory with a quick reminder of how you met or why you’re touching base. “I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received … that have gone in the junk folder because I didn’t remember talking to someone or signing up for something,” she notes.
Avoid industry clichés. In Barto’s case, the sentence “You’re getting married!” dominated subject lines and introductions. “Of course I’m getting married,” she says. “That’s why I signed up for your emails. Tell me something I don’t know, like why I should do business with you, or what features may interest me.”
Beware the opt-in faux pas. A vendor who was unavailable on Barto’s wedding day continued to send promotional email. “Not only have you made it obvious that you don’t know me as an individual,” she says, “but now you’ve annoyed me.”
Take notes. Don’t alienate tradeshow leads with an email campaign that treats them like they’re still just a face in the crowd. Personalize your follow-ups.
Source: Lunch Pail.
Crumbs from the Scone
You probably haven’t given much thought to alphabetical order since you said “present” as your high school teacher took attendance each morning. But in a post at the Neuromarketing blog, Roger Dooley reports on research suggesting you should. The reason? It seems that people whose surnames begin with letters between R and Z are more likely to respond—and respond speedily—when you give them urgent calls to action.
“We find that the later in the alphabet the first letter of one’s childhood surname is, the faster the person acquires items as an adult. We dub this the last name effect, and we propose that it stems from childhood ordering structures that put children with different names in different positions in lines,” write Kurt A. Carlson and Jacqueline M. Cona in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“In addition to responding quicker,” they continue, “we find that those with late alphabet names are more likely to acquire an item when response time is restricted and they find limited time offers more appealing than their early alphabet counterparts.”
In other words, notes Dooley, “a lifetime of being last in line (and getting the least-desirable slice of pizza or piece of cake) conditions these late-alphabet people to act quickly when they have the opportunity.”
But before you jump into a test campaign, he offers this caveat: “I’d guess that someone whose surname was acquired later in life, like a woman born an Adams but who became a Wilson via marriage, would not exhibit the same behavior. She wouldn’t have had the lifetime of conditioning that comes from always being last.”
Segmenting customers according to the first letter of their last name just might be the key to a quick sale.
Source: Neuromarketing.
“Today’s online marketing world is full of lovely words like engagement and empowerment, communication and conversation, interaction and integration, friends, fans and followers,” writes Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports. “Many of these keywords go back to the age-old idea of building a strong relationship between your organization and the members of your audience.”
