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.

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

Make the most of your customer lifecycle

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 12 Oct 2009

From welcome to reactivation: taking advantage of your messaging milestones

Whatever your product or service, there are opportunities for every business to maximise revenue from your customer lifecycle. Once you set up your lifecycle emails as triggered messages, lifecycle programs will carry on working for you without additional resource requirements.

In this week’s Email-Worx we look at key messaging milestones you can turn to your advantage…

welcome messages
transactional messages
purchase provocation
reactivation emails

Welcome messages
The welcome phase in your cycle of email communication with subscribers is the point at which they are most engaged with your brand and your offering, and most disposed to interact with you further. A shame, then, if all they receive at this crucial juncture in a robotic-sounding transactional message with no warmth, benefit, messaging content or perceived value.

Welcome messages are easy to set up and easy to improve on. They can provide a significant lift to your overall programme by:

welcoming new subscribers to your programme in a warm, engaging voice
setting expectations for (and selling the value of) future message frequency and content
providing additional useful information about your products and services

The welcome phase doesn’t just have to be a single message either. You could use this opportunity to develop a welcome programme consisting of a series of staggered messages designed to set the scene for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship, by providing useful information showing your subscribers how to get the most out of your products/services.

Always consider the overall impact of your programmes too. For many businesses, a large proportion of new subscribers come from online purchases, so new subscribers are likely to receive a welcome message around the same time as their purchase confirmation. Best practice is for the message to reach the customer’s inbox as the same time as the completed transaction, giving customers the impression of a seamless and joined-up service.

Transactional messages
Transactional messages such as Purchase confirmation or Delivery status can go beyond the bare minimum to include timely, useful lifecycle information too. You can use these messages to:

provide information to subscribers on their recent activity
cross-promote relevant additional products and services

Purchase provocation
You can use lifecycle messages strategically to encourage regular purchases and generate additional purchases too. Here are 3 ways to use valuable, timely and relevant messages to get the most out of your existing customers…

Pre-empt your subscribers’ repeat purchases by sending them specific messages ahead of their regular purchase. This is particularly important for products with a pre-defined lifecycle (eg insurance) but can also be used for regular and seasonal sales, such as travel. Although there’s the opportunity here to test the impact of an incentive, often a simple reminder is sufficient.
Cross promote complementary products or accessories to customers who have recently purchased a particular product. If you sell printers, for instance, there’s an obvious opportunity to follow up a sale with a message promoting toner, paper and other peripherals.
Generate additional purchases from existing customers. Say you have a group of customers who typically buy from you once a year. Aim to double the revenue you generate from that group by sending a message 6 months after their last purchase, promoting other relevant products/services. Incentives often perform well here, especially as regular purchasers are likely to be more loyal over the longer term, so justifying the additional investment.

Reactivation emails
To maintain and protect your subscriber list, your programme is almost certain to benefit from a reactivation programme.

First, you need to work out when subscribers are likely to un-engage. To do this analyse your historic data, and set up a programme designed to keep your subscribers’ attention past the point at which they would usually drop out.

For instance, your analysis might show that fewer than 1% of subscribers ever open another message after not opening X concurrent messages. This will help show you the optimum moment to hit them with an engaging reactivation message.

To make sure you set up the most effective message possible, test a range of different incentives and messaging options.

Give your incentives a reality check

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 31 Aug 2009

Everyone wants a reason to purchase or interact with your brand online, so give them a little incentive…

Whether you choose to send specific and triggered messages within your email activity, or use them in your regular communications, incentives are a powerful tool to convince people to open your emails, click through from them, and ultimately make a purchase.

What can incentives do for you?

Done right, incentives offer true value and so are likely to increase response. And you can develop and measure specific incentive programmes designed to achieve specific goals:

increase open rates by working the incentive into the subject line
boost clickthrough rates by working the incentive into the subject line AND hosting all the details of the entry / redemption on a landing page
develop incentives that drive sales- typically through offers with a shelflife (“buy before August 31 and get £50 off”) or discounts on volume (eg “3 nights for 2″)
grow your list - incentivise your subscribers to forward your emails, and encourage new recipients to register
keep subscribers engagedwith an incentive as part of your welcome and/or regular incentives in your communications (all promoted as part of your subscription process, of course)
cut down on unsubscribes with regular incentives in your email programme

How NOT to incentivise

When developing your incentives programme, remember not to fall foul of these common pitfalls, any of which can quickly devalue what you’re offering:

DON’T offer too many incentives: This can adversely influence your subscriber’s purchase patterns. Once you stop incentivising them to purchase, they may not purchase at all. And you run the risk of incentivising purchases they would have made anyway.

DON’T attract too many price shoppers: If your whole subscription process is too heavily focused on incentives, you may end up with a subscriber base that’s very price focused. Subscribers attracted via incentives tend to be less profitable as they may be less likely to engage with your emails when there is no incentive, so lowering your open, click and purchase metrics in the longer term.

DON’T only reward bad behavior: Many consumers know that they can sometimes get offered a discount just by only partially completing an order or abandoning a shopping cart. But active, loyal subscribers can get annoyed when they see incentives aimed only at new or lazy subscribers, so make sure that you have incentives to reward your best customers too.

Top tips for developing an incentive programme

Check if you really need to offer incentives
There are other ways to add value to your subscribers that may do the job just as well, such as a poll or survey, which are cheaper but also protect your brand. Before rolling an incentivised campaign out, test the impact of the incentive against alternatives. In your analysis make sure you include your profit, and leave enough time for all subscribers to respond – the results after a few hours can be very different from those after a few days.

Make sure your incentives are appropriate
If you’re incentivizing to grow your email list, make sure you offer relevant products or discounts. If you sell sportswear, a competition to win football tickets will generate more relevant subscribers than one providing tickets to a cookery class…

Make sure your incentives are unique to your email
Customers will appreciate the value of an incentive – and the value of subscribing – more if they understand that the incentive is available via you, and your email programme, alone.

Be prepared if your incentive goes viral
Make sure to develop terms and conditions protect you, and that you have the capability to honor your incentive. If your incentive is tailored or specific, you don’t want to take the risk of having special codes or offers posted on voucher websites. Build a mechanism that collects user data and permissions before the discount can be used, or alternatively create a special personalised codes or vouchers to avoid duplication purchases.

Making the most of triggered emails

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 23 Aug 2009

Setting up triggered emails is an easy way to ensure your communications are relevant and timely as they’re based on your subscriber’s recent interactions with your brand, product or service. For instance, there may be simple actions or changes in customer behaviour that you can use as the basis for new triggered activity that complements your existing messaging.

But you can also work outside the box for an even greater sense of the personal touch. Here we show you how…

Are you making the most of triggered emails?

Have you thoroughly explored all your potential email trigger programmes? Bear these points in mind:

triggers can be very effective just because of their impeccable timing, and don’t always need to include an offer
test different creative ideas before you set up your trigger campaign, timings and approaches to determine the most effective approach for your own list
refresh your creativeregularly
check your triggers are still functioning properly every month or so

Basic types of triggered emails

Triggered emails offer endless possibilities. They can be fashioned to suit any type of customer behaviour criteria. Typically, triggered emails take advantage of moments in the customer lifecycle. Here are the most common and effective triggered messages:

Confirmation messages: Immediately confirm any changes subscribers make, including subscription initialisation (welcome email), unsubscription (farewell email), first purchase, future purchases etc
Follow up messages: Additional messages based on particular content you have sent – such as a targeted offer to subscribers who opened a particular message, or clicked on an offer
Purchase / conversion based: Cross-sell and /or up-sell complementary products; Send reminders for past customers to renew products that have a certain life eg annual purchases, a contract ending soon, a product with a short life span like a cosmetic product; Abandoned shopping cart -remind someone they still have items in their cart and encourage them to purchase these items plus others offered at a discount; Send frequent purchaser messages to your most important/valuable subscribers
Personal Messages: Birthday offers- send to customers on or just before their birthday; Anniversary of customer / membership of loyalty programme – thank people for their membership / purchase history
Reactivation: To reduce the number of your subscribers becoming inactive, make a decision about when your subscribers are likely to become unengaged: you can do this by calculating your frequency and recencyof opened messages.; Set up an incentivised, triggered message just before your estimated engagement cut-off

Get creative with your triggered emails

Once you’ve covered the basic triggered options, start thinking outside the box for even better returns:

consider developing a full Welcome email programmewith a series of messages that build on each other
remind past customers to make their regular purchase based on their individual historic purchasing frequency and timing- eg an insurance renewal
send offers to generate additional salesfrom certain subscribers, eg to turn subscribers who usually buy once a year, to twice-a-year buyers
send a survey message to subscribers who have recently purchased or unsubscribed to find out their opinions and make sure they know you’re listening
update your purchasers on the progress of their order

The possibilities are endless…

Are you making the most of your welcome messages?

Posted by: Alchemy Worx | 4 Apr 2009

Welcome messages arrive in subscribers’ in-boxes at the very moment they are most engaged with your email program.

Done right, they’re a great chance to cement your relationship with new names, encourage image downloading and improve inbox delivery. So are yours working as hard as they could?

Welcome messages offer email marketers huge opportunities. They give you a great chance to do all of these things:

get your address added to your subscribers address books, thereby bypassing the spam filter
get your images enabled in future mailings
promote cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
request additional subscriber data / preferences (see Issue 4)
generate list-building activity by encouraging subscribers to forward the email to a friend

If you’re using double opt-in, they also enable you to confirm your subscriber’s address.

HTML or text?

There’s a popular belief that all welcome messages should be text only, but we’re not so sure.

True, text has a higher chance of getting delivered, but using text also means you miss out on most of the opportunities highlighted above. If you use text only, you can’t check open rates, which is a big disadvantage when you consider that subscription is the time that people are most engaged with you.

We’d suggest at least testing delivery rates for HTML with a small sample from your list. You might very well be surprised by the results.

Think long term

A welcome or confirmation shouldn’t just be a single communication that goes out and gets forgotten about. Think about the welcome process as an email program consisting of a series of targeted messages sent out over time.

Typically your welcome program might include:

a welcome message when someone signs up, reminding subscribers of the benefits of subscribing
a targeted special offer sent a week later (with a short valid period)
a timely reminder to use the offer before it expires

Things to remember

Maximise the effectiveness of your welcome messages by following these quick tips:

Be sure to set your welcome message program up as a triggered message so that the initial welcome or confirmation message is deployed moments after someone registers.
Test the use of HTML rather than text only
Send your welcome message from the same address as future messages will come from – especially if you ask users to add you to their address book, or download images