LATEST - 2012 -  a year of challenges ahead

More 2011 compelling and controversial blogs about email

My bell is jingling

Make it simple

Out-of-office

Mydomainname.xxx? How embarrassing!

No more emails from Facebook

Testing Testing One Two Three

A question of surveys

Why are you selling this?

That missing email!

Surround Sound Marketing

The non specific offer

Facing up to Facebook

Stats we like!

Poor timing kills email as well as jokes

2010 - More insightful and challenging blogs about email

2012 -  a year of challenges ahead

The pre, and to a lesser extent post-Christmas period saw an unprecedented deluge of marketing emails hit the inbox with all the subtlety of the Assyrian wolf coming down on the fold.

Desperate retailers with a poor understanding of recipient resilience reeled under the weight of unsubscribes that greeted their 7th email in as many days.

Consumers are suffering from sales fatigue in extremis; special offers have been thrust upon them via every available channel – TV, radio, magazines, the internet, email and Facebook. Supply led marketing of this kind may well have had its day as purchasers, squeezed by rising food and lifestyle prices are staring to place demand above deals where elective consumer goods are concerned.

We have come to expect, and to live with incessant advertising on entertainment media. Receiving it via Facebook or email is less acceptable, and of course much easier to opt out of.

Little wonder that so many smaller businesses, and quite a few big ones, are “rethinking” their Facebook strategies. For rethinking, read gradually abandoning. To the vast majority, Facebook is a network for communicating at a personal level, not a marketplace. You only have to look at the howls of protest that arise from users every time a rumour sweeps the market that Facebook is going to charge its users to understand this. Of course, with a planned flotation coming shortly, FB must develop more viable commerciality, but as with the early years of internet advertising, this is still way out of site.

The damage done to email databases by the Christmas madness cannot be overestimated. It has bred a mistrust of senders by recipients. Can it be repaired?

Email has, for some reason, always breached the gap between personal and public as a communication medium. Whilst email is generally used to conduct non verbal, 2 way conversations between parties, it is a regular feature of both personal and work life – perhaps why so many are happy to receive non-intrusive marketing messages through email.

But there has to exist a trust that it will not be abused, which trust is on the very edge of being eroded for many.

In consequence there lies a responsibility with email marketers in 2012 to repair this damage and rebuild that trust, the medium they find so simple, and hitherto cost effective, be eliminated for their marketing armoury altogether.

So how to go about it? Here are 5 basic steps that will help.

The first step will be to take a step back and recognize the value of email. It is low cost and can have a high impact as a direct response channel. So plan to use it carefully.

Next, marketers must appreciate the trust which led to recipients giving them their emails, and permission to use them, in the first place. That trust came from a degree of interest – so rather than bombard people with irrelevant offerings, capitalize on that interest and make it worth your audience’s while.

Thirdly, remember that email is a very personal dialogue – treat it as such. Communicate with, not at, using the personalization tools available. Make each marketing bulk email seem as though it is an individual and highly relevant communication for the recipient. And for God’s sake stop sending emails from no-reply addresses; encourage dialogue – if they are talking, they are interested.

Communication via email implies an element of personal relationship – highlight that. Remember the phrase exclusive to email? It’s even more valid today. “This deal is only available to you, because you are interested in what we have to offer, and you trust us to offer you what you want, in a form that is not available to the general public.”

Fourth, revisit the basics; are your subject lines engaging? What are you doing with the preview pane content – is it impact, or brand banner? Are you cleaning the error addresses off your database on a regular basis? Are you getting filtered due to poor content structure and image volume? When did you last check how your email rendered in a variety of browsers?

Finally, be precise. Email is the most precise mainstream medium available – in terms of statistical reporting, accountability and results. So do not approach it in a haphazard way – the consequences of everything you do are a consequence of everything you do.

Email can still work, can still be your most cost effective marketing ambassador for in 2012, but only if you get it right!

My bell is jingling

You may have noticed it is Christmas. In the absence of snow, persistent carol singers and the sight of Santa's sleigh winging it across the sky, there is one infallible way to recognize we are fast approaching the season of goodwill - the volume of very special Christmas offers hitting our inboxes.

The little bell that pings whenever a new missive hits the inbox has been ringing overtime as retailers across the country share their very special and unique Christmas offers with me.

Quite frankly, it's staggering. It's also formulaic, and not very thoughtful - a bit like the avalanche of similar emails I will get on January 2 announcing even better offers. And then there's the grouping emails, with their extraordinary offers which I get every day.

No wonder we are suffering from discount fatigue!

It's not the medium which is poor, it's the message. But the medium will suffer as a marketing channel. So come on NZ email marketers - put a little thought into your Christmas emails, please.

Keep it simple

I recently received an email inviting me to sign up for an email newsletter. Although it was uninvited, and therefore technically spam, it so happened that the subject was of interest, so I decided to go ahead and sign up for it.

As an aside, that's often what defines spam for many recipients - whether the subject matter is of interest or not (and at that specific time).

Anyway, proceeding through to the website, I began the sign up process. It wasn't too bad, only a small amount of superfluous information being requested.

Then it asked me to choose a password.

I duly submitted one of my standard passwords, only to have it rejected. The system then informed me that to be acceptable, my password had to contain at least one capital, one number and one special symbol. At this point I walked away.

I have 4 passwords - 2 for systems where I consider security is important, such as banking, and 2 for sites where security is not an issue, at least not for me.

I couldn't see why I should create a brand new, hard to remember password for this one specific site. It wasn't as if the subject needed security - it was about golf.

So they lost me - partly because they made the sign up process difficult, and partly because they made it opaque - if you have specific composition requirements for passwords, tell people beforehand.

I wondered after what percentage of those who had initially clicked through the sign up link had completed the process. Not 100%, I'll bet. And the business owners probably paid a premium for the super sophisticated secirity system as well. That's what I call the technology wagging the dog.

Out-of-office

Back in the day, as they say, which in this case I guess means the 80s, a fashion evolved for developing interesting answering messages for your telephone - a departure from the early model "I am not here leave a message" standard.

Some people were surprised by their own, previously unsuspected, creativity, and by quite how much an amusing or informative message engaged their callers. Answer messages grew in length as a result - engaged callers left longer, more detailed and informative messages.

Which brings me to the humble, boring and standard email out-of-office reply message. How often do you get a reply to: "I am away from my desk and will be back tomorrow"?

Now it could be argued that such a message it not meant to stimulate any response, and fair enough, but I think that's potentially missing a trick - after all, who knows who it is that is reading your message?

Let's assume it is an existing or potential client. What you say to them in your out of office message goes some way to defining you. For example:

"I am away from desk all day today at a series of client meetings, but will be checking emails between meetings and will respond as soon as possible"
could give an impression of business, being in demand, being keen to communicate, and generally a go-getter.

Then there's humour - a little chuckle never hurt anyone:

"I am away from my desk having been called up as a late replacement for the All Blacks and will only be able to take calls between training session until after the match on Saturday"

So next time you are away from your desk, have a think about how you tell your email correspondents, and maybe, just maybe you could do yourself a favour or two by being a little more creative or informative.

My domainname.xxx? How embarrassing!

I received an email today from a company that hosts some of our sites, offering us the chance to block out their .xxx domain names for the princely sum of $300 - to avoid embarrassment!  

Well call me picky, but I am sure that the .xxx domain suffix has had plenty of publicity, and anyone who lands on a site with one will know what they are getting.  

And $300? That seems like a bit of a take as well (especially as that is an application fee and success is not guaranteed!). If 50% of companies with a website take this measure to avoid embarrassment, then someone somewhere is going to be making a heap of money.

And if no-one takes up the offer, and we all end up getting embarrassed by our .xxx versions, then I am sure the powers that be will step in.  

So I think I will pass.

No more emails from Facebook

I received an email today from Facebook, telling me they are going to send me less email. Unless, they went on to say, I was happy to receive email notifications of posts on my wall and conversations I was involved in etc.

Now it would be nice to think that Facebook is worried about the volume of (non work) email I might receive during the day, but somehow, and call me Mr Cynical if you like, I suspect they have less altruistic motives.

In fact I reckon this is all about increasing site visits, which statistic can then be trumpeted to advertisers, in the process helping to increase ad revenues ahead of their probable IPO.

From that perspective it will probably work. Not getting Facebook email alerts makes me feel out of the loop - I have already visited the site 10 times today, and I may well leave it open from now on - I have that luxury as I work for myself.

But it might be a blow for those companies who have seen Facebook as a wonderful way of freely emailing their Likers every time they post on their page. Because let's be honest - there's a world of difference between liking Paul's Pizza and checking their page every ten minutes in case they have posted a new recipe or a special offer for tonight.

If we make the assumption, and it's not guaranteed, that this move will decrease the effective exposure of company and promotional pages to likers, then has Facebook made a statement here?

If you want to advertise, pay us. If not, don't expect great exposure and direct communication for free.

Facebook is of course a business, however much we like to think of it as our property. In the run up to the IPO, and most certainly beyond, expect more hard headed, commercial initiatives such as this. Quite what their long term impact will be, I don't know. But it will be interesting.

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Testing Testing One Two Three

What's the fastest way to get someone's attention? Email, Facebook or Twitter? It depends, of course, on who you are and your relationship with them.

Let's assume you are a business and they are a customer.

You want to let them know about a special one day sale tomorrow. An online sale. You are hoping for some really significant results. God knows you need them.

It's the first time you have tried this sort of exercise, so you have no experience on which to base your decision.

Do you segment? Do you go with your gut instinct? Use all 3? Think "which would work best on me" and assume your entire database is the same as you?

Well, there's no smart answer. Every database varies in character, and in relationship with the database owner. Some may respond better to email, some to Facebook. I suppose it is even possible some may be more accessable via Twitter.

The real asnwer is that anyone who waits until a really important marketing push to find out about their carefully and expensively garned audience has probably missed their true vocation - as a professional stable door shutter

Generally in digital marketing, wheh we say testing, we mean 2 things: checking functionality, and analysing your ability to communicate with and impact upon your audience utilising different tactics, strategies and channels.

If you are communicating effectively, then by the time the important marketing drive comes around, you should have a good idea, based on intelligence gathered, of how to communicate it.

So don't guess. Test. Then learn.

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A question of surveys

I seem to be getting a lot of surveys right now - all prompted by email. In principle, I think that's a good thing - customer interaction logically follows customer engagement, and if you have dialogue via email, why not make the most of it.

But, and it is a big but, without exception, all of these emails have left me cold. Why? Because they are without exception from emailers who have never engaged me - companies from who's lists I am simply too lethargic to unsubscribe.

And to compound matters, they seem to recognise this - by trying, and I use the word in it's broadest sense, to incentivise me to take part in their survey.

Now, again, in principle I am all in favour of this - incentives are great. But they must be good incentives, or they actually disenfranchise readers.

Complete our really boring survey and go into the draw to win one of 3 $50 vouchers. Whoopy-do!

And it gets worse. For some reason, companies outsource not only the mechanics of the survey, but also the wording of it. These surveys completely fail to continue the dialogue style of email which can be so engaging. Impersonal barely covers it. Inadequate is about right. They certainly don't inspire you to eagerly await the next.

So if you have a well engaged database, and you want to interrogate them, do it properly - make the incentive worthwhile, write the survey questions yourself, and then you might get some decent results.

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Why are you selling this?

Many retailers who use email as a marketing channel send their customers a weekly shot of offers. I like the idea. In principle.

But their is a perception danger which seems to get overlooked, especially when those offers appear very good. "Why are you selling these, and how come they are available at such good prices"

In other words, is this just a load of unsold crap you need to offload quickly on us poor unsuspecting punters?

Now that may very well be the case, but it's not advisable to say so. Rather than giving the impression this is something you want to sell, you have to presnt your weekly offers in such a way as to craete demand, and highlight yourself as a valued supplier to that demand.

There are three basic strategies for doing this:

1. With every email, emphasise and re-emphasise your mission - to deliver great product at great prices to your favourite customers - you email ones

2. Underline that these offers are only available by email and to email recipients

3. Theme the offers - provide a reason for them to appear in this weeks email.

It should be marketing 101, but for some reason many email markeetrs ignore it, and give their audience the entirely wrong impression - every week.

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That missing email!

Sorry, it ended up in my spam folder!

This is now in line for the most overused and underbelieved excuse of 2011.

Three times last week I heard this - from three separate clients, none of whom had ever previously had an email of mine land in their spam folder before.

By some strange quirk of fate, all 3 emails dealt with a similar subject - invoices, and remarkably all were overdue, unpaid invoices.

It falls into the "cheque's in the post" class of excuses, and curiously enough that's what two of these clients went on to claim.

In short, it is now so unbelievable that everyone automatically assumes it is a lie. I mean, nothing, especially from a trusted source, goes into the spam folder now, does it?

We have to presume spam filters work, at least to a degree, don't we?

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Surround Sound Marketing

I have just heard the greatest phrase since sliced bread - Surround Sound Marketing - which basically means screaming at your audience via email, mobile and social media.

Sounds great (no pun intended) in isolation, but give the very low barriers to entry, if any, presumable, if it catches on as a defined concept, then most recipients are going to start turning the volume down where many of their surround sound marketers are concerned -in other words, unsubscribe, lest they be deafened.

It's yet another example of how shallow marketing is nowadays - it should not be about the loudest noise, it should be about the most actute message delivered by the most appropriate medium.

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The non specific offer

There seems to be a rather disturbing trend developing in NZ email marketing - I feel safe being specific about the location because I have not seen it anywhere else.

I call it the non specific offer (NSO) - and I have had 4 or 5 of them this week. NSO emails all seem to look the same - a lot of preview pane real estate taken up with branding, and then an offer without details - usually along the lines of click here to learn more.

It is often as non specific as telling you no more than the identity of the retailer and some general details - 15% off special deals this month, for example.

Putting aside the obvious accusation of laziness as a reson for it, I wonder if it is good practice - I mean, presumably some though has gone into it as a strategy?

Conventional wisdom says that emails and related calls to action should be focussed - well, it's certainly that. But I think it lacks engagement. And it's too assumptive - there's no bait on the hook, not really.

It seems to me the sort of marketing that might work better on Facebook or the like. It's reactive. Emaio is a very personal level of dialogue, and the NSO seems to leave that behind - sending a flyer isn't personal.

So I don't think it will work. But it will be interesting to see if it catches on.

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Facing up to Facebook

An email newsletter from a digital media agency landed in my inbox today. It urged my business to get a Facebook page, extolled the many virtues and benefits of so doing, and then helpfully advised me that if needed, they could help me set it up. I presume a fee would be involved.

My first reaction was to say that the sort of companies who need help setting up a Facebook page have no place in the digital media arena. Then I reread their list of great reasons to have one. At the end of this highly tenuous and often desperate list, I wondered whether any company should bother.

A year ago the airwaves were full of digital marketers banging on about ROI and how Facebook would be a contributing factor, nay, a leading one in your digital campaign. Now they are talking about ROR - return of relationship, an as yet undefined and again highly tenuous concept which presumably means their is no ROI, but if we invent something called ROR then that will go someway to making up for the disappointment of not getting any ROI.

Then of course there are the many reasons why a company Facebook page can actually severely damage your customer relationships. Facebook takes what could / should be a private conversation between company and customers and brings it into the public domain. When those comments turn negative, enormous damage can result. Sure, you can moderate it, but who monitors their facebook page 24/7 - only those who can afford to have someone 24/7 keeping tabs on what the people say. Then there';s the old dwindling content factor - running out of interesting posts, because lets face it, there really not that much great and interesting news to keep your hordes of likers interested. And now that every company they do business with has a Facebook page, and they are being heavily incentivised to like them all, it's practically a full time job just following the posts of the companies you do business with. Then when are you going to read their tweets?

The biggest reason that Facebook is still around is that it is worth billions, and it is worth billions because some heavyweight institutions have lent it a lot of money, and their only chance right now of getting it out is to say it's value just keeps increasing and hope someone takes it off them.

Remember the early days of the web - Elephants graveyard of poorly conceived websites. FB is / will be the same.

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Stats we like!

Statistics / metrics are a major part of online marketing - their exactness humbles traditional media.

Below are a few just released that we find particularly noteworthy:

In 2010, 30% of total email time was devoted to commercial emails, compared to 17% in 2005. (Merkle)

90-100% of Millennials (Ages 18-33) engage in email as an online activity. (Pew Research Center)

90% of adults internet users in every age group subscribed to emails from brands, while significantly fewer "liked" companies on Facebook or followed them on Twitter. (ExactTarget)

What conclusions can we draw from these - pretty much what we want, as with all stats, but I think the following are inescapable:

1. Facebook and Twitter will never replace email - just complement it

2. Email is a channel that demands, and achieves attention

3. Tomorrows customers are highly emailcentric - always remember this, because they are your future.

It's good to see stats suppoirting our belief that email is alive and well, and growing, not shrinking in significance.

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Timing

Today is the day after the Christchurch earthquake. A nation reels in shock and horror as the full extent of the disaster is revealed. It is hard to focus on anything else, just as it is hard to gain a sense of perspective on what has happened.

Today I have also received no less than 16 marketing emails, not spam, but legitimate ones from lists to which I am subscribed.

I am staggered. Is it stupidity, or just a plain lack of sensitivety?

Either way it is wrong. This is not a day for email marketing. I have unsubscribed from all of them. I hope, if you get them, you do too.

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