Industry Update: February 2012

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 13 Feb 2012

2012 is well under way and we’ve been busy spreading fresh ideas and keeping tabs on exciting new developments in email marketing. In this pick of recent web articles, we’ve highlighted news of an important step forward in email security and some new thoughts on A/B split testing. Plus Loren McDonald from Silverpop’s two-part interview with Alchemy Worx CEO Dela Quist sees some typically trenchant opinions expressed on topics such as email frequency, subject line and ‘the nudge effect’.

Joining forces against phishing
An important new working group, DMARC.org, has been set up to further combat phishing by improving methods of blocking bad email. Sam Massiello, General Manager at Email Security Specialists Return Path, expresses his confidence that this coalition of companies, including AOL, Google, Microsoft and PayPal, will make email business more secure than ever.

Alchemy Worx view
It is no surprise to see the banks involved in this new standard. The reduction in phishing messages that this new working group aims to achieve should serve to further increase the confidence in email marketing.
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To remove or not to remove?
Is your organisation too quick to remove inactives from its database? In the second part of the Silverpop interview, Dela Quist tells Loren McDonald of his dismay at being removed from databases as a consumer himself, and how it highlights the importance of ‘the nudge effect’ in cultivating customers over a long period. He is also typically outspoken on the topic of subject lines, once again going against the accepted wisdom and arguing, “the shorter the subject line, the less likely you are to convey meaning.” He concludes with some strong words regarding marketers’ “visceral fear that the public hates getting email”. “Ecommerce thrives on email,” he says. “If we can get that message out, everyone would love what they do.”
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Is less really more?
In the first part of this interview with the Silverpop blog, Alchemy Worx CEO Dela Quist tells Loren McDonald why he still feels marketers should be sending more emails, not less. “The challenge is not ‘How do I send less?’,” Quist argues. “It’s ‘How do I get my list to tolerate more?’” He also challenges the trend among marketers towards reducing email volume, arguing that email frequency becomes less of a problem, the better the customer’s perception of the brand.
“How they feel about the email program is actually driven by how they feel about the brand,” he says. “Email is the tail, not the dog.”
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Testing, testing
How can your email campaigns best benefit from A/B split testing? That’s the question addressed by Alchemy Worx Marketing Director Riaz Kanani in this feature for the DMA website. In particular, he focuses on manual testing, which is often presumed to be costly and complex compared to automatic testing, but which can be far more useful if you have a specific need, or want to test something that is unique to your organisation. Kanani explains how different approaches are better suited to different amounts of data and sample sizes, and stresses the importance of being patient, letting your campaign run its course before you jump to conclusions.
Read the article

Why you should be investing in functional links

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 24 Jan 2012

Find out how the hidden functional links in your marketing emails could be driving a surprising amount of revenue…

For many, the role of email is to drive people to a company’s website. Then the site can do what it does best and convert prospects. Getting email recipients to click is the primary goal for many email campaigns.

So it’s not surprising that KPIs (key performance indicators) for email are often centred on click rates, with subject lines, creative, content and call to actions all crafted with maximum clicks in mind.

Why do clicks matter?

Clicks are one of our favourite metrics. For a start, they are much more reliable than open rates, and can be analysed in a variety of ways to provide a significant amount of insight. For example…

The absolute number of clicks shows the volume of direct traffic to a website, and allows your email to be compared to other traffic-generating activities.
Total and unique clicks are typically presented as a percentage of delivered and opened messages, and show the relevance of the content to targeted recipients.
Total clicks as a percentage of unique clicks (click quotient) is also used to measure how many times each user has clicked.
Clicks can be used to get up-to-date preference data on a subscriber’s interests and needs, which may have changed a lot since they registered to receive emails.
Clicks are used to qualify leads for follow up – which can be done either through triggered mailings to subscribers who have shown an interest in a particular product or service, or via other channels.

Functional vs. emotional links

To get a better understanding of this valuable metric, we have been looking more closely at links in our analysis. We’ve found that all links typically fall into 2 types – functional links and emotional links.

Functional links, like a navigation bar, a header or a company logo, provide subscribers with direct access to places they want to go to.

Emotional links are the more prominent, strategically written links that work much harder to encourage users to take an action. For example, ‘find out more’, ‘buy now’ or even simply ‘click here’.

As you would expect, the majority (78%) of clicks are generated by emotional links in B2C mailings. However, when revenue is included in the analysis, it is disproportionately skewed in favour of functional links. While typically generating an average of only 22% of the clicks, functional links tend to generate over 30% of an email campaign’s revenue.

Emotional links are typically a marketer’s main focus. A significant amount of time is invested in developing content that provides value to the subscriber while generating desire for certain products and services, and calls-to-action that are as visible and compelling as possible. We do whatever we can to fill our readers with a sense of urgency – they must click that link!

Meanwhile functional links – typically found in navigation bars and footers, are given little consideration once in a template, and at times are not included at all.

Investing in functional links

In order to get the most from campaigns, marketers should be sure to include both functional and emotional links in all mailings.

That way, subscribers who are ready to purchase can do so quickly and easily using functional links, while emotional links will cater for the needs of subscribers who need more convincing of the benefits. Knowing the difference, and analysing the revenue impact of these links for your own mailings will be likely to build a case for making sure functional links are always included – because typically they provide a very cheap and quick way of generating revenue.

Make sure your templates favour functional links

Navigation bars are often taken directly from a website. However, email marketers can maximise this opportunity by optimising the functional links that work best in their emails.

Testing can be used to identify the optimal structure and content of functional links within templates, so you can pick the best ones to drive the performance of future campaigns.

Timing matters

The length of time between when an email is deployed and when a user clicks through from it can also affect revenue. Clicks immediately after deployment, as well as those generated a significant period of time afterwards, tend to have a high click-to-purchase rate. We’ll be reporting more about this soon

What have you got planned for 2012?

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 11 Jan 2012

Marketers are often heard talking about strategic planning. It’s the task all of us mean to get around to, but rarely ever do. So with the whole year stretching out before you, it’s time to ask yourself some tough questions about your goals and priorities for 2012 – and formulate a strategy for the year ahead.

Analyzing your current activity will help you identify – and prioritize – opportunities to improve your email campaigns. And from this, your 2012 strategy is born.

Producing a well-defined plan makes it easier to ensure your regular mailings are deployed on schedule, and allows you to allocate time for implementing exciting new campaigns to meet your strategic objectives.

Give yourself an email health check

The first stage in developing a plan is to audit your current activities, and clearly set down your new objectives. It’s probably crystal clear in your head, but does anyone else understand your vision?

Begin by focusing on your campaign objectives for 2012. Consider primary as well as secondary objectives, and the tactics that will help you achieve them.

The next task is perhaps the toughest. When every sinew in your body is telling you to look forwards and think about the future, what you really need to do is look backward and answer searching questions about past performance. What did you do well last year? What worked and what didn’t? What were your biggest mistakes and regrets? Where were those missed opportunities?

Map out all the campaigns in your subscriber journey last year and for each mailing, make a note of the objectives the message was designed to meet. Consider your activity across all channels. Look at your triggered campaigns, plus service and marketing communications. Analyze your recurring mailings and focus on subject lines, creative, ‘from’ name, timing, and personalization and targeting.

Competitor analysis is also vital. How did you fare against your competitors? How well did your email campaigns stack up? And finally, where do you rank in your field? Are you market leaders, number 2 or bottom of the league? Asking yourself these honest questions will help formulate effective strategies for the coming year. You must resist the temptation to mimic or follow your competitors, however – particularly if you are leaders in your field.

Have an honest conversation – with yourself!

Once you’ve gathered and analyzed this information, it’s time to ask yourself some tough questions. How well did you perform in 2011 against expectations? What went wrong – and why? What went well – and why? This can be a painful process but one that’s also hugely rewarding. This is also the perfect time to set KPIs for the upcoming year.

Analysis of historic activity

You can add significant value to your 2012 plan by analyzing historic campaign performance. This means looking even further back, and your analysis should take in both recurring campaigns as well as your regular and ad-hoc mailings. It is worthwhile looking at each campaign’s overall performance as well as the specific types of content within each mailing. Including analysis of the timing of your mailings, such as day of the week or week of the month, will also help refine any testing required and ensure future campaigns are as effective as possible.

Campaign planning

The performance of each campaign, together with the objectives of your campaigns, will help focus your activities on the areas that present the biggest opportunities. This process will enable you to:

Rationalize your current campaigns
Highlight campaigns that would benefit from improvements and
Identify additional contact opportunities such as reactivation mailings,
cross-sell, up-sell or a series of on-boarding mailings

You can then create an updated version of your subscriber journey, including any changes you plan to make throughout the year.

Testing can have a significant impact on the resources required to develop campaigns – particularly design, content and frequency-based tests. Be sure to include any upcoming testing in your plan so you can resource accordingly. A separate test plan may also be beneficial as it enables you to build over time on the things you’ve learned.

Content

Ensuring that each of your mailings contains content that is valuable to your subscribers can be one of the most challenging aspects of developing and optimizing campaigns. Yet it’s also one of the most important. Planning the content for your regular mailings will make it easier to generate new content. It may also identify opportunities to increase the frequency of interactions by serializing content and including teasers of upcoming content.

Think about the customer journey for all your subscribers – from new subscribers who have registered on your site, and new customers who opted in during their purchasing process, to regular customers and inactive subscribers. And be sure to include contact from all channels in order to get an accurate picture of what your subscribers will be experiencing. Are you communicating everything your subscribers need to know? Are you missing any opportunities to strengthen your relationship with your subscribers? Or perhaps there is duplication that can be streamlined? Or any content that can be more cost effectively migrated online?

Seasonality and key events within your sector can also provide direction for content planning. It can also be very effective when used in conjunction with analysis of the types of content your subscribers have interacted with in the past.

Your content plan doesn’t need to include the entire 2012 calendar – quarterly plans can be the most effective as they enable you to include more recent analysis, including the findings from any testing.

Finally, don’t forget to include subject lines in your plan. Your subject lines can have a significant impact on your campaign’s effectiveness, and by looking back you can easily identify what worked last year, and what didn’t for individual campaigns. The beauty of email is the ability to see which campaigns worked, and to back this up with hard facts. But don’t forget about ‘non-openers’! Your subject lines may be the only part of your communications that these subscribers see. Your subject line strategy should communicate your brand’s key values – and build a story over time in order to maximize their effectiveness.

Our favorite emails of 2011

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 20 Dec 2011

The debating is over and the judging complete.
It’s time to reveal our favorite emails of 2011.

As the year draws to a close, we thought we’d have a bit of fun here at Alchemy Worx. And in our world, evaluating email creative counts as fun (sad, we know!). So here are 4 emails that blew us away this year, and the reasons why we love them.

Reckon you’ve spotted a better one? Don’t keep it to yourself. Forward it to us, and remember to tell us why you like it.

Submit your favorites here

Best Newsletter Creative
Winner: notonthehighstreet.com

notonthehighstreet email

Why we chose it

The bold yet understated imagery is a great embodiment of the brand, while a creative use of typography and new images each week maintains a fresh feel to this regular mailing. The magazine styling only adds to the email’s sumptuous appeal. It’s also a great example of email best practice, effectively addressing the crucial Who, What and Why questions.

Why it’s great

Uses clear branding for the company and content. Couples the ‘wedding’ message with the brand logo (both displayed in the top-left corner to where the eye is first drawn) making it easy for subscribers to decide whether they want to interact.
The first section features two clear CTAs to visit the store and to forward to ‘someone getting married’. These CTAs continue throughout the mailing, reminding recipients what they’re being asked to do. The ‘Buy’ icons act as effective secondary CTAs, drawing the eye to specific products.
Strong imagery is used to great effect to generate interest and desire across a wide range of wedding-related products. Plus separate sections highlight services not immediately associated with the brand, like gift lists. The creative team goes beyond the formulaic display of social media icons to incentivize interaction, such as ‘weekly updates’.

Best Single-Proposition Creative
Winner: Mulberry

mulberry email

Why we chose it

We wouldn’t normally recommend removing your navbar from the email header. But in this instance, the use of a simple logo gives the email an elegant look and feel, and reinforces the main CTA.

Beautifully stylized typography hints at great care and effort, while the simple colour palette keeps the focus on content and generates strong copy standout. And rather than repeat the same CTA, each one invites you to experience a different aspect of Mulberry’s London Fashion Week.

Personalized language and simple delivery convey the feeling of an exclusive invite, particularly the way messages are contained in intimate speech bubbles. The whole thing feels like you’re overhearing a secret conversation.

Why it’s great

Placed front and center, the Mulberry logo makes it easy for recipients to quickly identify the sender. The oversized header font also clearly highlights the mailing’s topic.
The colour and shape of CTAs ensure stand out, while underlined words make it easy for skim readers. The use of HTML for all links and header copy delivers the message even when images are turned off in the email client.
Fashion mailings typically benefit from the inclusion of photography. Yet it’s the lack of images that makes this mailing stand out, giving recipients just enough reason to click through by teasing the fun aspects of the show and playing on Mulberry’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox/English countryside’ motifs.

Best Festive Concept
Winner: Boden

Why we chose it

The animated GIF is back in 2011, and it’s bigger than ever! This email from online catalogue company Boden shows why. Animated lights are used to eye-catching effect. This clever device also complements the gently humorous headline. A prominent CTA features high up the message to aid navigation, and benefits from great standout against the red. The email is rounded off with the use of further animation around the central CTA, and even the snippet is used to convey the core message – great for reading on a mobile.

Why it’s great

Both the Boden branding and the Christmas content are clearly identifiable as soon as this mailing is opened.
Clear CTA directs subscribers to Boden’s specially-themed Christmas Shop.
The prominent offer uses colour (or lack of it) to enhance standout. The bottom banner makes it easy for subscribers to retrieve their offer, and reinforces the value of being a subscriber to Boden emails while incentivizing click-throughs.

Best Use of Data
Winner: LinkedIn

Why we chose it

The design is beautifully simple, the messaging clear. But it’s the clever use of personal data that swung it for us. Many marketers are guilty of over-analyzing their customer data, or being too clever in the way they use it. Here, LinkedIn get it just right. They prove how a few simple touches can be highly effective in drawing recipients into your messages. Going beyond the formulaic use of first-name data, the email features recent information about your LinkedIn activity, and entices you to find out more about your contacts by updating you on their news. The use of member images is arresting, and effectively conveys the community dimension of the professional networking site.

Why it’s great

The LinkedIn logo and introductory copy make it easy for recipients to see who the mailing is from. Subscribers will recognize some of the photos of their connections on LinkedIn, reinforcing this connection.
There are multiple CTAs to view user’s profiles, supported by an explanatory note above the images and a final reminder to update your own profile in the footer.
The personal dimension, delivered by images of real connections, is a very compelling reason to interact with this mailing.

Industry Update: November 2011

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 23 Nov 2011

In your festive round-up of the smartest articles online, we learn how too much data can be dangerous. We challenge conventional wisdom about crowded inboxes, and there’s a guide to writing effective email copy.

Chasing the tail that wags the dog
Marketers can access more sophisticated customer data than ever. But if you don’t impose your agenda on it, it’ll lead you on a merry dance, argues David Baker.

Alchemy Worx view
While social media and mobile increase our understanding of consumers, only constructing campaigns to satisfy every nuance of their behaviour is folly.
Read the article

The tranquil inbox
Organisations are scared to send more email because they think the average inbox is already full to bursting. They’re wrong, argues journalist Mark Brownlow.

Alchemy Worx view
As we discovered recently in our joint research with the DMA, the inbox is a more tranquil place than you imagine.
Read the article

Winning words
Why have I been sent this? Who cares? What’s in it for me? Don’t leave your audience guessing with this five-point guide to writing effective sales messages.

Alchemy Worx view
When your head’s in the clouds trying to produce inventive email copy, it’s easy to forget the fundamentals. The AIDCA checklist is a great tool to bring you back down to earth.
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Inactive subscribers – waste of time or gold mine?

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 10 Nov 2011

Why you shouldn’t write off your unresponsive email subscribers

Conventional marketing wisdom tells us removing inactive subscribers from your mailing list is good practice – but is it? Here, we turn that wisdom on its head. Find out why inactive subscribers are still valuable to your business and explore how you can reactivate them.

Dela’s story

Our CEO’s story provides an example of what can happen when marketers presume email addresses are inactive.

Dela was recently removed from Dell’s mailing list despite spending around $40,000 a year with them online for the past few years.

In Dell’s eyes however, Dela was inactive. He hadn’t opened any of their emails for some time and so their marketing department had purged him from the list.

But the fact a customer hasn’t opened your emails doesn’t mean they’re not engaged with your brand. In Dela’s case, he simply hadn’t needed to open his email to buy any new computer equipment for a while.

Nudging customers towards your brand

Even unread, those emails were still a nudge towards the Dell brand. They were still performing a valuable marketing function whether it was in the form of an engaging subject line with the latest offers, or keeping the brand at the front of Dela’s mind. And in Dela’s case, they were working.

Our research has shown that customers often buy a product or service through another channel within 24 hours of receiving an email. That’s why we provide clients with reports where we overlay the timing of emails sent with the timing of sales from other channels such as in-store, online, through call centers, pay per click and affiliates. Marrying together these data sets is crucial if you want to get a true impression of your recipients’ buying patterns. And it’s even more important when deciding whether to bump them off your subscriber list.

Email marketing can create a powerful stimulus which prompts purchases even if the emails themselves aren’t being read.

Inactive subscribers are still engaged

Inactive subscribers are still valuable to your brand and can generate a significant amount of revenue.

It makes perfect sense to stop emailing someone you know would never buy your products again or who actively dislikes receiving your emails.

But long-term inactivity isn’t a good indicator of whether someone falls into that category. There are 5 reasons why your subscribers may be – or appear to be – inactive:

They want your email, but haven’t needed your product for a while.

You’re receiving false negatives – your email is optimized to be read with image blocking on, so some subscribers could be opening it without you knowing.

The subscriber doesn’t want your email, but doesn’t care enough to unsubscribe.

Email address churn – the subscriber no longer uses or rarely checks that email address.

They don’t see your email because it goes into the junk folder.
By far the largest group is the first one – we call these people the unemotionally subscribed. They will happily ignore your emails until they’re ready to buy, because it’s easier than unsubscribing and having to remember your URL or Google you later.

We’ve gathered plenty of evidence on this group and demonstrated that while they might not read an email, they’re still a very important customer base.

One of our clients generated $120,000 from subscribers who had not opened or clicked on the previous 25 to 40 emails.

Another saw 14% of revenue generated by subscribers who did not open or click a single email.

Common marketing advice would have been to delete those subscribers after a year’s inactivity. But by retaining unemotionally subscribed addresses, the client brought in a significant amount of additional revenue.

When to remove email addresses

We have developed a simple strategy to help you decide if, and when, to remove an email address from your list.

Follow these 4 steps to establish which addresses are truly inactive, and which fall into the unemotionally subscribed group.

Start a reactivation campaign: try to re-engage anyone who hasn’t opened an email for more than 6, or even 12 months.

Separate your lists: anyone who still hasn’t opened an email after the reactivation campaign should be placed on a separate list to your active recipients.

Send the same email to each list and focus on activity: the active list will now show a truer representation of engagement and your results will not be dragged down by the dead email list. After every mailing (or month), move anyone who becomes active again to your active list, and anyone on the active list that now qualifies as inactive by your definition to the inactive list. You can now clearly identify how much revenue is generated by emailing the dead addresses versus how much it is costing you.

Analyze over time before deleting anyone: Within 6 to 12 months you’ll have a much better sense of how long you should continue to email an unresponsive email address before removing it from the list. We have generally found it to be the point at which almost every person who opens an email for the first time in a while goes on to unsubscribe.
Reactivating your inactive subscribers

For tried-and-tested ways of reactivating your subscribers, look out for future issues of Email Worx (you can subscribe on the right!).

And if you want to explore the issue of inactives further, Dela will be taking part in a panel discussion on the subject at the Email Insider Summit in Park City, Utah on December 5.

Festive foul-up or seasonal success – which way are you heading?

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 27 Oct 2011

Make your seasonal strategy sing with our tips for devising festive email campaigns.

The festive season provides marketers with a range of opportunities, both for generating revenue and for getting creative juices flowing. But if past years are anything to go by, competition in the inbox will be fierce, so you’ll need to make your messages work even harder if you’re going to get a share of your subscribers’ seasonal spend.

Here are some of our top tips to help you take advantage of the year’s peak retail period:

1. Plan your messaging strategy

Plan the entire customer journey, and develop the story you want to communicate along the way. Map out each interaction from the subscribers’ perspective, and be sure to include service and transactional messages to make the journey complete. Once done, it will be easier to identify additional opportunities for certain groups of subscribers based on their preferences and patterns of activity. Identifying opportunities to send a higher frequency of messages targeted at specific subscribers can have a significant impact on your revenue.

2. Festive look and feel

Although time-honoured design elements like Santas, sleighs-bells and snow come in for much criticism, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with opting for a traditional approach – particularly if it fits with your overall brand identity. Moreover, a tongue-in-cheek or humorous approach can be highly effective when well delivered. It all depends on your chosen festive strategy, and the way in which your individual emails feed into it.

Your strategy should inform all aspects of your campaign, and if you devise one early enough you have the golden opportunity to produce a well-organised series of emails, perhaps ramping up the festive content gradually as you move towards December 25. Just make sure your content is on-brand at all times, and try to avoid lurching from one piece of creative to the next by planning well in advance.

And if you do take the conventional approach, don’t just paint a festive theme on top of an otherwise ordinary email. Embrace it fully, perhaps honing in on one aspect of the holidays like ‘celebration’ or ‘party’, or tie in give-aways and competitions with the season, ensuring prizes complement the theme.

Another classic mistake is to limit creativity by buying into arbitrary rules and guidelines for seasonal content. Color is a good example, and many designers seem to feel that festive campaigns must feature lots of red and green. As the creatives behind Bordeaux wine’s innovative campaign have shown, however, breaking the mould can be highly effective.

3. Develop a seasonal subject line strategy

Subject lines are an excellent way to communicate the story or concept you’ve developed. So don’t leave them to the last minute – develop them in line with your seasonal strategy to make full use of the space. Your subject lines can be used to reinforce brand values, promote USPs or alert customers to cut-off dates for delivery.

4. Frame your discounts

If discounts form part of your seasonal strategy – and if you’ve devised your campaign early enough – ensure your audience is aware of the full price of your items before the discounts kick in. We’re talking here about more than just displaying the old price next to the new in a single email.

Use subject lines wisely. If you intend to introduce generous discounts on big-ticket items, for example, consider sending a series of emails where the full prices are displayed in the subject lines, and repeat them again in the email copy. That way, when you start to promote your sale, recipients will be more likely to appreciate the depth of your discounts, and your emails may have greater impact. Framing discounts is a proven formula, but it’s only possible if you plan your strategy in advance.

5. Frequency, urgency and repetition

Don’t be afraid to increase the frequency of your emails at this time of year. In our experience, peoples’ expectations and tolerance levels change during the festive season. Consumers shop and buy more during this period, so it stands to reason that they want to hear about more offers and opportunities, and will be more receptive to store invites or inspiring ideas. Of course you should continue tracking metrics just as you would normally, and it’s worth being extra fastidious with unsubscribes.

Think about replicating the shopping experience in email format by displaying lots of products, and by keeping copy to a bare minimum. When consumers are crashing up to the festive deadline and they just need to buy things, stacks of copy and very few products in your emails are going to be as off-putting as those annoyingly over-attentive shop assistants on the high street.

Remember also that consumers will be spending most of their weekends in November and December shopping, so your campaigns are likely to have added impact. Use email subject lines to repeat key offers on a regular – perhaps even daily – basis. And look to drive footfall through your retail sites by highlighting exclusive in-store deals and bargains, paying particular attention to emails sent at the latter end of the week and those classic Friday/3pm mailings.

Finally, consider ways to generate a sense of urgency. Time-limited offers are particularly powerful at this time of year, as are daily countdowns. Again, if you’ve planned out your seasonal strategy well in advance, you’re in a position to stagger subject lines and key messages so their intensity increases towards the end of your campaign.

6. Use your data

During this period, subscribers’ preferences and purchasing patterns may be dramatically different from those witnessed throughout the rest of the year. But this doesn’t mean your data is obsolete when devising festive campaigns. You could, for example, analyze data from past holidays. This will help you assess the shopping patterns of your subscribers, allowing you to identify opportunities for time-based segmentation and targeting. You can also look at which content, message layouts and frequencies have worked best in the past to get a head start on any testing you’ve scheduled. Don’t forget to include online and off-line revenue stats to give you the full picture.

7. Take the chance to collect up-to-date preferences

Consumers’ interests change, particularly around this time of year, so developing content that will generate clicks is a great way to collect data for additional segmentation and targeting. Value-added content can be particularly effective, especially when it doesn’t have an overt sales message. Buyers’ guides and gift finders can help you identify what your subscribers are interested in, plus these are useful tools that can generate interest. Meanwhile, a well-developed ‘Wish-list’ campaign can generate interest from new customers and help to expand your subscriber base. If you plan on using inferred preferences, be sure to check that your privacy policy reflects this.

8. Don’t forget about transactional mailings

If this is a peak sales period for you, your subscription process and transactional messages are likely to achieve more reach. It’s worth undertaking an audit of all your processes and triggered mailings – from welcome messages to sales confirmations and post-purchase surveys – to make sure they are all up to date and functioning properly. And if you’re planning to increase your frequency over this period, why not give your subscribers the chance to opt out of your festive mailings separately. That way your subscribers can avoid this content specifically, but remain in touch once the season is over.

Festive treats
Need some more inspiration? Here are some of our favorite festive campaigns:
View animated email

Inventive use of wintery colours replaces conventional greens and reds
Perfect marriage of copy and animation plays cleverly on the word ‘flurry’
Details seal the deal. From the quivering copy to the dog’s tongue, you notice something new each time

View animated email

Refreshing take on a traditional Christmas email
Atypical colourway combines effectively with bold, simple messaging
Snowflakes constructed ingeniously using the letter P from the Prezzo logo

Clean, engaging and impactful – a wonderful effort by Australian PR firm Clarity
Proves you don’t need to over-engineer emails to hit the mark
Basic animated colour change combined with a series of clever, punchy copy lines delivers variety and keeps recipients engaged without going overboard

Industry Update: September 2011

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 26 Sep 2011

From copy length on landing pages to creating an engagement index, we’ve selected the pick of articles on the web to help you work more effectively. Plus tips on the best email marketing resources online and how to get a generous discount on this season’s key conference.

How long?
What works better for landing pages – long or short copy? Daniel Burstein explains how guidelines produced by MECLABS director Bob Kemper identify which is most effective.

Alchemy Worx view
Knowing what kind of copy will sell when customers arrive at your site is key. The same approach won’t necessarily work for both designer shoes and insurance. Test results show that short copy works for emotional purchases and longer copy for complex products. See where your products fit on the matrix.
Read the article

Is your audience engaged?
It is vital to understand how effective your emails are – for each mailing but also over time. Take a look at this suggestion from David Daniels about how to create an engagement index.

Alchemy Worx view
The simplicity of the index is its main selling point but also its biggest weakness. Seeing scores over time is helpful, especially as it uses a wide range of metrics. But it can also make it harder to diagnose deeper problems and move the focus away from the goal of greater interaction.
Read the article

Finger on the pulse
There are lots of email marketing resources out there but the trick is finding the best. Mark Brownlow has put together his personal recommendations of the most valuable sources of insights and advice.

Alchemy Worx view
A worthwhile and interesting list (and thanks to Mark for the Alchemy Worx mention). It demonstrates how healthy the debate around email marketing currently is. Blogs, community and Twitter are all included.
Read the article

How to develop an email test plan in 5 easy steps

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 31 Aug 2011

Clearly defined testing programmes are the benchmark of accurate, finely-tuned email campaigns. They help increase the revenue you can generate from your email marketing activities, which is, after all, the ultimate goal.

To ensure your testing continues to pay off in the long run, follow these 5 simple steps to help you develop an effective programme.

1. Define your hypothesis

Investing the time up front to clearly define what you’re hoping to achieve through testing helps focus your efforts, and will keep you on track throughout the process. At this stage, don’t be constrained by practical issues. You can consider the restrictions of resources, data and technology later – at this point just focus on your ideals.

Once you have a clear idea of your objectives, brainstorm the influential factors you feel could have an impact on them.

Your email objectives might be defined by:

Opens
Clicks
Purchases
Revenue
Unsubscribes

Your influential factors could include anything from:

Day of the week the email is sent
Week of the month the email is sent
Subject line length
Keywords in the subject line
Types of content
Message frequency
Email design and images

The combination of these two lists will form the basis of your hypothesis.

If you want more of a steer, there’s plenty of material available online that can help – from research to case studies. By all means have a look at these, but it’s important you try testing influential factors for yourself. No two brands have the same market, selling points or subscriber base, so it’s important not to rely too heavily on the findings of others.

Tip: Involve as many stakeholders as you can at this early, defining stage.

2. Mine your historical data

Your historical data contains a wealth of information that will help you achieve your test objectives. To pick an example: if you’re trying to find out which days of the week have the biggest impact on the revenue your newsletter campaign generates, analyze your data over the past 12 months. Chances are you’ll have sent mailings on different days throughout the year, and this data could help minimize the number of tests you need to carry out.

You may discover that, say, Wednesdays are your best weekday, so you’ll probably only need to test this against Saturday and Sunday to reveal your optimal day of the week overall.

Diving into your historical data can also be a quick way to identify potentially influential factors that you haven’t even considered. You may find, as we did here at Alchemy Worx, that there is a significant relationship between subject line length and your click-to-open rate – and this presented us with another opportunity to fine-tune our hypothesis.

Tip: If you’re able to analyze your historical data at an individual subscriber level, you may be able to identify segments of subscribers who behave in similar ways. Finding significant groups of subscribers with the same behaviour patterns for purchase and engagement is likely to present strong opportunities – but only if you carry out a few tests on them.

3. Design your test plan

The next stage is to set out your test methodology. Are you carrying out A/B-split tests, multi-variant tests, or test-and-send? And what’s your test schedule going to look like?

We have found the best way to approach this is to take a long-term view. We therefore recommend developing a test plan that entails making small, regular changes to your campaign, then only producing analysis after a long period. This will give you more reliable results.

We also recommend splitting your campaign into test cells, then analyzing the results well after the activity has finished as the first actions are typically not representative of the whole list.

Keep in mind the potential gains versus the resources required to implement your tests. Testing often means duplicating the amount of work required when sending each campaign, depending on the type of test. A creative test, for example, will be much more time-consuming than a data or timing test, and it’s essential to consider practicalities at this stage.

Once you have prioritized your test factors, you will need to define your sample size. This will dictate how many factors can be tested each week, month and year.

Tip: You may be able to achieve efficiencies in the testing process by using dynamic content, personalization or triggered campaigns based on a date field in your data. But remember, this may require additional data work up front, and make reporting more time consuming.

4. Deploy your campaigns

Having taken any resource constraints into account during the planning stages, you can now deploy your campaigns using the schedule you have produced in your test plan.

Tip: Develop a naming structure for your test campaigns, which will ensure your post-campaign analysis will be as easy as possible. Keep in mind that your campaign code may be visible to recipients on your hosted version, image locations or file names.

5. Analyze your results

Wait as long as you can after the campaign has been deployed to analyze the results. Two weeks afterwards is a good starting point, but a month is better, depending on your brand and subscriber purchasing patterns.

Use your original hypothesis as the benchmark for analysis – and conversely the process of analysis might cause you to question some of your thinking in the hypothesis. And so the process goes full circle.

It’s not over yet, though. The results from each of your tests can now be used to fine-tune your hypothesis, give you fresh ideas for looking into your historical data and possibly re-prioritise your test plan. So it’s back to step one to start the cycle all over again.

Industry Update: August 2011

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 18 Aug 2011

From split tests to customer engagement, we’ve scoured the web this month to bring you our take on the smartest email thinking online. We discuss articles by Tim Watson, Jeanne Jennings and Mark Brownlow, while Alchemy Worx CEO Dela Quist takes a fresh look at subject lines in his latest seminar.

Split Decisions
Tim Watson tells us how to decide on test cell sample size for split tests without the need for complex formulas.

Alchemy Worx view
Testing is a critical aspect of email marketing, but you need to be patient. By waiting as long as you can to analyse results, you’re more likely to know what to expect when you eventually roll out your campaign.
Read the article.

Tracking revenue per email
Jeanne Jennings discusses the value of calculating RPE, and asks why so few organisations are prepared to do the maths.

Alchemy Worx view
When calculating ROI is too problematic, RPE is an effective way to evaluate the success of your campaigns and to set stretch targets for future performance.
Read the article

Attention please!
Want ideas on how to remove attention barriers from your email campaigns? Mark Brownlow serves up an excellent list of tactics to ensure your recipients remain engaged.

Alchemy Worx view
Setting expectations during the sign-up process – and then meeting them – is the key to maintaining engagement. Yet when recipients fail to open four messages in a row, less than 1% will re-engage and a reactivation campaign should be considered.
Read the article