Crumbs from the Scone
Just because something is currently labeled a best-practice doesn’t mean it’s written in stone, says DJ Waldow in an article at MarketingProfs. “[W]e can find and spit back best-practices for most email-marketing-related questions; however, I nearly always find marketers who ‘break the rules’ with tremendous success,” he explains.
Here are a couple of commonly held best-practices, and the reason they might not be the best thing for your campaigns, according to Waldow:
“Don’t use ALL CAPS in your subject line.” Overstock.com breaks this rule on a consistent basis, and for a good reason: It works for the company’s audience. “I had the chance to meet a member of the Overstock email-marketing team,” reports Waldow, “and he informed me that they have done (and continue to do) extensive subject-line testing.” Contrary to conventional wisdom, those emails that use all capital letters significantly outperform those that do not, he says.
“Don’t use one large image, especially if there isn’t alt text.” Despite the omnipresence of image blocking, Apple’s email messages unapologetically defy these edicts. “So, what gives?” asks Waldow. “How does Apple get away with that?” In a conversation with the men responsible for the company’s email marketing campaign, he discovered some tweaks were planned, but that the campaigns worked because customers’ high level of trust of Apple emails meant subscribers were more likely to auto-enable images.
There are exceptions to every rule. Best-practices exist to guide your campaigns—not to dictate what they must or must not do. The best solution for finding what works for your subscribers is still to test, test and test again.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
You have a great product or service, and you do your best to create an exceptional customer experience. Despite your efforts, though, you encounter difficult customers with more frequency than you’d expect. What gives? In a post at the Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni suggests 10 reasons this might be happening. Here are a few:
Your customers resent that you’re the only game in town, or one of their limited options. “You may feel you have a captive audience,” she says, “but realize that it takes a special effort not to be arrogant in those [sic] circumstance, and your customers don’t like the treatment.”
You’re telling your customers which questions to ask. You steer the conversation in a certain direction, but it isn’t where the customer wants to go. “If you were in court,” she says, “they might say you were leading the witness. Allow customers to say what they want to say. Maybe ask clarifying questions.”
You don’t follow up on feedback. If you acknowledge a customer’s feedback but seem to sit on the information, it’s going to create friction.
No matter what you do, you’ll always have to deal with difficult customers. “It’s not personal,” says Maltoni, “let’s face it, there may not be a way of pleasing them. Does that mean you should stop trying?”
Source: Conversation Agent.
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You’ve probably made a practice of asking customers to review your products, but are you using their praise to its full advantage? “Recently,” says Kelly Lorenz at the Bronto blog, “I have seen an uptick in retailers utilizing customer reviews to sell products in their emails.”
Why? Because user-generated reviews create a more personal connection. They’re especially effective, Lorenz argues, because they counteract the inherent detachment of the online experience. “When people make a purchase online,” she notes, “they lose that sense of touch and interaction with the product, which can cause some hesitation.” Lorenz points to a series of Cooking.com email messages that highlight positive feedback in ways like these:
- Placing reviews directly beside a product shot and description.
- Noting the percentage of customers who recommend the product.
- Displaying customer ratings on a 5-star scale.
- Providing an easy link to all of a product’s reviews.
As impressed as she is by the company’s use of customer reviews, Lorenz argues it still has room for improvement. “Cooking.com may also consider adding a ‘review this product’ call-to-action next to the reviews in the email as well,” she says.
Accentuate the positive. Turning a fence-sitter into a customer might be as simple as letting your existing clientele speak for you in your emails and sing the praises of your products.
Source: Bronto.
Crumbs from the Scone
Especially for those of us trying to reduce our negative impact on the planet, the volume of waste generated by food packaging is discouraging. Cardboard cartons, plastic bottles and vacuum-sealed pouches—a single meal might produce a pile of trash. You can recycle, certainly, but it would be nicer to limit what winds up in a bin of any color.
That’s why luncheon meats sold by Hillshire Farms hold special appeal, not because of the product itself but because of the standard-issue Gladware it comes in. Simply peel the label off of the lid, and you have small storage container—branded as Glad—that can be used again and again.
A post at the Recipeeps 4 Us blog notes that the decision to purchase Hillshire Farms ham and turkey was cinched by the container. “I liked the idea of being able to reuse the packaging instead of just throwing it away,” the writer says, “plus I needed some more Gladware that size anyway. The price was right in line with all the rest of the lunch meat, as well.”
Hillshire Farms delivers Marketing Inspiration by giving customers an added incentive to choose its products; they not only cut down on waste, they get a brand-name item that’s probably next to the cold cuts on their shopping list.
Crumbs from the Scone
Some time ago, we highlighted a MarketingProfs article in which Michael Antman cautioned against making word-of-mouth (WOM) strategies the primary element in your marketing mix. “He raises reasonable points about the limitations of WOM,” says Deborah Eastman in her response. “[A]fter all, it can’t completely replace other forms of marketing communications. However, we would be remiss to ignore the impact of WOM.”
Here are some of the reasons she considers peer recommendations indispensable:
- While WOM can’t be controlled, it can be managed. “The root of WOM is the customer experience,” says Eastman, “therefore, it is most effective when a part of a customer-centric culture focused on building customer loyalty.”
- The WOM from customers who are loyal—not simply satisfied—cannot be easily subverted. “Loyalty is more than satisfaction,” she says. “It stems from ordinary services delivered exceptionally well or exceptional services delivered well.”
- Social media has given WOM limitless reach. “[B]usinesses thrive on referrals,” she notes, “and online media allows referrals to spread from across the block to across the world.”
- WOM adds to your bottom line. According to Eastman, each “promoter” in the computer hardware industry spends more than and helps to acquire half of a new customer; a “detractor,” however, can lose a business one new customer.
“It’s important to remember,” argues Eastman, “that WOM isn’t meant to replace advertising, public relations, and other marketing efforts—instead, it’s one integral element of an effective marketing strategy.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Crumbs from the Scone
While most retailers have experienced various degrees of tumult during this recession, the picture isn’t entirely gloomy. A recent survey by Internet Retailer, for instance, shows many online-only businesses have maintained—or are improving—their email marketing conversion rates. Of the 275 retailers surveyed:
- 56.4 percent report their typical sales conversion rate for an email marketing campaign remains about the same as last year.
- 22.8 percent say conversion is up slightly; 3.7 percent say it’s up significantly.
- 13.7 percent say conversion is down slightly; 3.3 percent say it’s down significantly.
“[The fact that] more than one quarter [26.5 percent] of retailers [improved] on conversion during a severe economic recession may surprise some in the industry,” notes Bill Siwicki of Internet Retailer. But he offers a caveat: “[S]ome email marketing experts say customers on email lists are still buying, [but] not as much.”
Still, these results demonstrate that email marketing is “a solid tool to drive as much revenue as is possible as consumers tighten their belts,” Siwicki says. The survey respondents apparently agree: more than half intend to increase their email programs, and 43.7 percent plan to maintain them at current levels; only 4.7 percent are scaling back.
Fire up that email campaign! “Even though consumers are spending carefully,” says Siwicki, “retail marketers can still count on email marketing to perform.”
Source: Internet Retailer.
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Brainstorming a steady stream of ideas for your blog can be a challenge—especially when you’re short on time and have already covered obvious topics. If you’re facing writer’s block, Michael Martine suggests several ways to update your blog and keeping readers engaged. Here are a few:
- Create a “greatest hits” list with five of your blog’s most popular posts. If your archive is large enough, focus on a material from a specific category or theme.
- Talk about three blogs you like. There’s no need for in-depth analysis—simply link to an outstanding post at each site with a line explaining why it’s worth your readers’ time.
- Ask a question and invite replies in the comment section. Martine recommends an either/or approach—e.g., Mac or PC?—that draws strong opinions. “Your readers do all the work on this one,” he says, but adds the caveat, “Don’t do this too often, but once in a while, people will love it.”
- Talk up a cool new friend and link to her blog. “It’s good for you, good for the other person, and good for both your audiences,” he says.
Take a look at some of your favorite blogs—we’ll bet you see lots of thought leaders who use ideas like these to keep their content fresh and relevant.
Source: Remarkablogger.
Crumbs from the Scone
It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book, and one of the most persistent: parents who assume everyone else will share an equally enraptured fascination with the accomplishments of their toddlers. As if no other child in the history of mankind has ever taken his or her first step! Now, in a post at the Email Marketing Reports blog, Mark Brownlow discusses how misguided email marketers use a similar, flawed assumption when arguing the merits of opt-out email subscriptions.
“Every proponent of opt-out I’ve ever talked to overestimates the value and relevancy of their email,” he says. “Every single one was convinced that their product or service was so good that people would be grateful to hear about it.”
He illustrates their error with results from a survey that asked, “On a scale of 1-10, how relevant and valuable is this opt-out email?” Not unsurprisingly, senders gave a ringing endorsement of 9.5; recipients, however, gave the email’s relevance and value a stingy 0.5, and ISPs, meanwhile, were even less generous.
The lesson for marketers here? You can try to convince yourself that an opt-out program will work—and perhaps, in certain ways, it will. But opt-in is still the best bet to deliver better results, more reliably.
Stick with the opt-in option. Why? Because your subscribers know best. “However much data you may have,” says Brownlow, “you cannot know enough to accurately guess what I’m interested in.”
Source: Email Marketing Reports.
Crumbs from the Scone
We hear lots of advice about maintaining a clean list, and much of it centers on how to handle subscribers who seem uninterested in your messages. At a certain point, you might decide it’s time to take them off your list. Before you do, though, consider these four “hidden” segments identified by Chip House in a post at the Email Experience blog:
- Subscribers who open and read messages with blocked images.
- Subscribers who use mobile devices that don’t render images.
- Subscribers who don’t click on anything or take action online, but who shop at your bricks-and-mortar store.
- Subscribers who forward your messages to friends, but don’t use your forwarding feature.
His advice for identifying such segments includes steps like these:
Offer a variety of trackable message-sharing options. “Provide a number of ways that recipients can share [your] emails with their friends,” he advises, “either [through] standard viral links or via new technologies allowing sharing with social networks.”
Send offers with tracking codes. Sending coupons with embedded codes to potential offline shoppers is one great way to determine who they are and what they’re buying.
Careful where you cut! In your efforts to maintain a clean list, you might dump customers who want to receive your messages. “[Be aware] of these hidden, engaged subscribers, and develop strategies to make them visible,” House advises.
Source: Email Experience Council.
Crumbs from the Scone
It’s a bit of a craze these days: “Oops!” email subject lines that purport to apologize for a mistake, when they’re really nothing more than tricks to get you to click. Inside, the messages say something like, “We’re sorry, we sent you the wrong ad yesterday! Please accept 10% off!” Whatever.
But what if a customer points out that your company really did make a mistake? Should you own up to it? A recent post at the Service Untitled blog says “Yes!” and then offers some reasons why it’s best to admit when you slip up:
Customers are sometimes surprised by your honesty. Let’s face it: customers who complain expect an argument. Imagine their pleasant surprise when you say, “Yes, we made a mistake. I apologize for the error.”
Honesty implies accountability. “Accountability tends to be reassuring, especially to customers who were just witness to a mistake/screw-up,” SU notes.
SU also refers to one of its previous posts, which offers how-to tips for mea culpas. Among them:
- Explain why the mistake happened. (Do not make excuses.)
- Explain why it won’t happen again.
- Offer appropriate service credit, compensation, etc.
- Provide the customer with your direct contact information.
- Thank the customer for his or her understanding.
- Follow up in five days with another apology and offer of help.
Just admit it. Nothing serves customers better than a little honesty following a faux pas.
Source: Service Untitled.
Just because something is currently labeled a best-practice doesn’t mean it’s written in stone, says DJ Waldow in an article at MarketingProfs. “[W]e can find and spit back best-practices for most email-marketing-related questions; however, I nearly always find marketers who ‘break the rules’ with tremendous success,” he explains.
