Category Archives: Email Marketing

‘Hi there valued customer no. 1756….’ – A look at email personalisation: its benefits, when it goes wrong and how to avoid it.

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With an ever increasing number of emails hitting our inboxes every day, customers’ expectations of email campaigns are higher than ever, and with more competition to get their emails noticed, businesses need to ensure their email are targeted, creative and personal (The Marketer, 2012 and Smith, 2014).

According to Smith (2014) 64% of people prefer emails that are personal, and one study found that personalised promotional emails are 6 times more likely to increase transaction rates than non-personalised. In addition, personalised emails are 29% more likely to be opened, however a massive 70% of brands still fail to utilise their customer data and personalise their emails (Durkin, 2014 and Gesenhues, 2014).

So with so much to gain from it, what’s putting them off?

If done well, personalisation can help to build a trusted relationship between your company and your customers, improving general satisfaction and enabling customer retention (Smith, 2011, Durkin, 2014 and The Marketer, 2015).

Arguably the simplest way to personalise an email is to include the receivers name in the subject line, which increases the open rate as users believe it has come from a trusted source (Durkin, 2014).

I recently received an email from CMI (shown below) which I think did this well, including my (correct) first name in both the subject line and introduction of the email.

CMI

Notice I emphasize the ‘correct’ name, having the right data is crucial to successful personalisation (Durkin, 2014) but so many companies have sent emails with either the wrong or a missing name, such as ‘Dear INSERT NAME HERE’, making them look super unprofessional!

But is using a customer’s first name really going to impress? Contradicting Durkin’s idea, Moth (2013) discussed a study that found a mega 63% of people said that they received so many marketing emails with their name in it that it no longer made a difference, and 42% of customers were neutral about the value of personalised product and service. It’s clear that limiting personalisation to just a name is not enough.

Research agrees that customers do respond to email personalisation, but it is about successful segmentation, knowing who and what you should leave out of your email, and with focus on making the consumer feel special and individual rather than just another ordinary customer (Smith, 2011, The Marketer, 2012, Eridon, 2013 and Durkin, 2014).

Personalised email content is a much more effective and subtle way of attracting customers, ensuring they pay more attention and engage with your brand, therefore ensuring relevant content should be a priority for all businesses using personalisation (Durkin, 2014). For example, Dropbox have set up a workflow that recognises when a user has logged into their account from multiple devices, and then emails them reminding them about a service they provide that helps multi device users (see below).

Eridon, 2013

Eridon, 2013

By using technology cleverly, Dropbox have tailored their content to very specific customers, which according to The Marketer (2012) can generate an increase in sales and open rates.

Another way of personalising email content is via purchase reminders and recommendations. Moth (2013) stated that 48% of people like to receive product recommendations based on their interests. I recently purchased a new railcard. I created an account but because I didn’t have the right photo to upload stopped half way through. Railcard saved all my information and application up to that point, and sent me the below email the next day reminding me about my purchase.

Railcard

This is also similar to recommendation emails based on previous behaviour or purchases, such as those that Amazon regularly send out or like this one I received from Twitter, helping to personalise the customer-business relationship further (Smith, 2011).

Twitter

Ultimately these emails should include a call to action that drives consumers to either make or resume their purchase, a tactic that is particularly useful when a product is running out of stock, creating a sense of urgency (Smith, 2014).

Another great piece of data businesses can utilize is customer’s date of birth. Restaurants such as Cafe Rouge regularly send their customers a birthday email wishing them happy birthday and a special voucher for them to use. This tactic is easy to do providing you have the data, and including a voucher makes the customer feel special whilst still driving sales (Smith, 2014 and Durkin, 2014).

However, a massive limitation in email personalisation that must be considered is the issue of privacy. Past research has found that consumers have developed negative attitudes towards the brands whose marketing they have considered intrusive and too personal (Smith, 2011). This concern is supported by Moth (2013) who asked people whether they agreed with the below statements.

Moth, 2013

Moth, 2013

As seen, 84% of people felt too many technologies were tracking and analysing their behaviour, whilst worryingly 63% said they found targeted advertising creepy! Therefore, before engaging in any sort of personalisation it is both good practice and a moral responsibility that companies must ensure they have the customers permission to contact them (The Marketer, 2015).

Ultimately, used in the right way there are still massive benefits to be had from utilizing email personalisation, but growth in other digital channels means that personalisation cannot be isolated to use in emails alone (The Marketer, 2015). For more insight into creating a totally personalised customer experience, check out these two articles:

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/jul/23/personalisation-marketing-online-brands

http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/customer-experience/retail-gets-personal-why-personalising-the-customer-experience-should-be-your-1-priority/1730

 

REFERENCES

Durkin, R. (2014) The importance of data personalisation and localisation. Econsultancy, 4th March 2014 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/64438-the-importance-of-data-personalisation-and-localisation/> [Accessed 22nd April 2015]

Eridon, C. (2013) 7 Excellent Examples of Email Personalization in Action. Hubspot, 6th February 2013 [Online] <http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34146/7-Excellent-Examples-of-Email-Personalization-in-Action.aspx> [Accessed 17th April 2015]

Gesenhues, A. (2014) Study: Personalised Emails Deliver 6X Higher Transaction Rates, But 70% of Brands Fail To Use Them. Marketing Land, 6th February 2014 [Online] <http://marketingland.com/study-70-brands-personalizing-emails-missing-higher-transaction-rates-revenue-73241> [Accessed 20th April 2015]

Moth, D. (2013) Consumers doubt the value of online personalisation: study. Econsultancy, 13th June 2013 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/62905-consumers-doubt-the-value-of-online-personalisation-study> [Accessed 20th April 2015]

Smith, D. (2014) Five Examples of Successful Personalised Email Marketing. Performance In, July 2014 [Online] <http://performancein.com/news/2014/07/16/five-examples-successful-personalised-email-marketing/> [Accessed 19th April 2015]

Smith, K.T. (2011) Digital marketing strategies that Millennials find appealing, motivating, or just annoying, Journal of Strategic Marketing. Vol 19, Issue 6, Pages 489-499

The Marketer (2012) The personal touch: why personalised marketing matters. The Marketer, 22nd August 2012 [Online] <http://www.themarketer.co.uk/archives/trends/personalised-marketing/> [Accessed 22nd April 2015]

The Marketer (2015) How to personalise your customer’s experience [Online] <http://www.themarketer.co.uk/how-to/masterclass/how-to-personalise-your-customers-experience/> [Accessed 22nd April 2015]

Email marketing frequency: Striking the right balance.

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In my last blog I had recently signed up to email marketing from fashion company Dorothy Perkins, and enjoyed the perk of a one off free delivery for doing so. But now, a few weeks later, I’m reaching for the unsubscribe button. So what went wrong?

Lets take a look at my inbox.

Inbox

In just one week they have sent me 9 emails. Frankly, I’m getting irritated everytime I see yet another email pop into my inbox with their name on it.

Dorothy Perkins has made what is arguably one of the most rooky mistakes when it comes to email marketing management. Email overkill.

Email marketing is an important marketing tool for companies to create and maintain effective relationships with customers (McCloskey, 2006, cited in Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2011) therefore it is imperative that firms get it right. According to Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty (2011), the frequency of sending emails is an important part of building customer relationships and finding a happy medium is difficult – too few could lose customers interest, whereas too many could irritate.

According to a survey by BlueHornet, 35.4% of people said they had unsubscribed at some point because of the frequency of emails received, compared to just under a third unsubscribing because of irrelevant content (Moth, 2014).

So just how do you strike the right balance?

There are many arguments for and against. Some, such as a study by Foreman (2013), believe that the more you email the customer, the more their level of engagement will decrease. Foreman’s study looked at how frequency of emails sent impacted on open rates, with a company example shown in the graph below.

Foreman (2013)

Foreman (2013)

Foreman found that frequency and engagement are negatively correlated, meaning that the more mail sent the less customers engage with each campaign (Foreman, 2013).

However not everyone agrees with this. Campanelli (2013) argues that in fact the more emails you send the more engaged people become. Sending emails frequently ensures your brand remains at the forefront of customer’s minds, and shows that your company cares about them. The idea is that the more you email your customers, the more sales and money you will make (Roe, 2013 and Reeves, 2013).

But is this really true? Frequent emailing may ensure your company is remembered by the customer, but Campanelli doesn’t discuss whether that association is a positive or negative one. In the case of Dorothy Perkins, they have become an irritant in my mind, certainly not the result that they were trying to achieve I’m sure!

So how do you know when enough is enough?

Campanelli (2013) argues that it’s simple, if you send too much email you can always rein it back in if it doesn’t work. However, to me this seems like a dangerous approach. Customers can be stubborn creatures, and once a negative experience has occurred it can be difficult to win them back. A survey by Zendesk (2013) found that over half of respondents stopped buying from a company after a negative experience, and nearly 40% continued to avoid a company for two or more years after that bad experience. Some companies think that losing a few customers along the way is not an issue, as they can simply attract others, but according to Marketing Metrics (cited in Shaw, 2013) the probability of making a sale to an existing customer is between 60 to 70%, whereas the probability of attracting a new customer is just 5-20%. It can also take up to 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative experience (Newell-Legner, cited in Shaw, 2013), therefore keeping your current customers happy is much more important and an effective use of time than you may think. Clearly, a haphazard approach to your email marketing strategy can have longlasting negative effects.

To get the right balance, experts argue that businesses need to understand that frequency isn’t about sending more or less emails to everybody, but sending the right amount of emails to the right people (Roe, 2013). Reeves (2013) adds that there is a fine line between communicating frequently and adding value, and once you’re no longer adding value the customer becomes unengaged.

This is where the importance of targeting and segmentation come into play. According to Moth (2014), email frequency should be influenced by targeting and segmentation, and with consideration for the industry, overall business strategy and seasonal factors. You can segment your email database in a number of ways, but a good way to start is to look at the number of purchases they’ve made or their individual open rate. When looking to increase your email frequency, Roe (2013) suggests targeting your most responsive customers first, i.e. ones that opened an email from you in the past week, as targeting these customers is more likely to return a good response rate as they appear open to engagement.

It is also agreed that tailoring content to your email marketing segments is the way to go, as different segments have different needs and therefore require different content (Roe, 2013 and Moth, 2014).

Finally, if you do want to experiment with increasing your email marketing, there are steps you can take to limit the risk of that customer unsubscribing if you get the balance wrong. The BlueHornet survey (Moth, 2014) discovered that given the opportunity to opt down on the number of emails received rather than unsubscribe altogether, nearly half of those asked would take that option, therefore it is definitely recommended to make this option available to your email database.

To find out more about getting the right frequency for your email marketing campaigns, check out this BlueHornet webinar – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X12JL7D9HZw

 

REFERENCES

Campanelli, M. (2013) Dela Quist on Increasing Email List Size and Frequency. Emarketing and Commerce, 20th March 2013 [Online] <http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/dela-quist-increasing-email-list-size-frequency/1#> [Accessed 3rd April]

Ellis-Chadwick, F. & Doherty, N.F. (2011) Web advertising: The role of e-mail marketing, Journal of Business Research. Vol 65, Issue 6, Pages 843-848

Foreman, J. (2013) Sending Frequency: More Is Not Always Better! Mailchimp, 23rd April 2013 [Online] <http://blog.mailchimp.com/sending-frequency-more-is-not-always-better/> [Accessed 3rd April 2015]

Moth, D. (2014) Email frequency: how much is too much? Econsultancy, 20th January 2014 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/64165-email-frequency-how-much-is-too-much/> [Accessed 3rd April 2015]

Reeves, J. (2013) Email Marketing: The Cold Hard Truth About Frequency. The Daily Egg, 13th March 2013 [Online] <http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/03/13/email-marketing-frequency/> [Accessed 8th April 2015]

Roe, T. (2013) Send more email, make more money? Econsultancy, 4th July 2013 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/62997-send-more-email-make-more-money> [Accessed 3rd April]

Shaw, C. (2013) 15 Statistics That Should Change The Business World – But Haven’t [Online] <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130604134550-284615-15-statistics-that-should-change-the-business-world-but-haven-t> [Accessed 8th April 2015]

Zendesk (2013) The impact of customer service on customer lifetime value [Online] <https://www.zendesk.com/resources/customer-service-and-lifetime-customer-value/> [Accessed 8th April 2015]

 

 

The importance of email subject lines – Is it make or break for your email marketing campaign?

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Whilst shopping online for a new bag this month I signed up to email marketing from Dorothy Perkins – lured in by the offer of free delivery if I did so – and their subsequent marketing emails have got me thinking. They wasted no time in utilising my data, sending me no less than 6 emails in the last 2 weeks, but what really got me fascinated was the attention grabbing subject lines they used.

The importance of an effective subject line in email marketing is believed to potentially make or break a campaign, but the question of just how you achieve it has been pondered by marketing managers since the introduction of email, and with an increasingly crowded inbox, a great subject line has never been so important (Gardner, 2013, Popick, 2014, Marr, 2014 and Ratcliff, 2014).

So just how do you ensure your customers open your email?

Well first lets take a look at a selection of the marketing emails I’ve received in the past week, including some of the ones from Dorothy Perkins.

Inbox

There are a few different opinions on what creates the best subject line out there, but below is summary of the fundementals of attracting that all important open:

  • CAPITILISATION! – not neccessarily for the whole subject line, but can help the important words stand out in the right way! And whilst we’re at it, a good use of exclamation points can help!! (Gardner, 2013). Dorothy Perkins email subjects use capitalization strategically to create urgency (Popick, 2014), increasing the chance the receiver will open the email.
  •  Include a call-to-action (CTA) – CTAs encourage the reader to do something, therefore inticing them to open the email (Popick, 2014 and Marr, 2014)
  • Personalisation – As seen above in the emails from Amazon and CMI, use of the recipients name in the subject line can grab attention, however Popick (2014) and Ratcliff (2014) also suggest using personalisation within the email body too so that it feels more natural to the reader. Likewise its a must to make sure your data is right! Getting an email to Rachel when your name is Jane is going to be mighty irritating (Ratcliff, 2014)
  • Pay attention to the types of words you use, terms such as ‘sale’ or ‘free’ can be great for attracting the bargain hunters out there, but can also trigger SPAM filters, so a balance is needed (Clapham, 2011). You also want to try mixing it up with different email subjects, content and offers to stop your customer becoming bored (Ratcliff, 2014) – Dorothy Perkins need to be careful they don’t over do the ‘reminders’ for the same offer as this could get annoying very quickly!
  • Think about length. There’s inconclusive opinions on whether the amount of characters in a subject line affects the open rates, Ratcliff (2014) recommends keeping it down to 50 characters or less, whereas Alchemy (2013) says that’s a myth, and that using over 70 characters actually increases click through rates. So don’t be tied to keeping your subject lines within character limits, keep a balance, and maybe experiment to see what works best for your customers

Finally, I spotted another interesting tactic from Brighton and Hove Buses in my inbox, with the email headed ‘Win 2 tickets to the opening night of Saturday Night Fever’. The email was their newsletter, containing the usual information and updates about their services, but the competition was also part of that newsletter. Email subject lines should be honest in telling the reader what the email contains (Gardner, 2013) but in this case the company wasn’t lying, and it worked! I opened the email, entered the competition, and had a quick scan of the rest of the content. Clever little tactic there!

If you want more on ways to improve your subject lines, then check out 45 words to avoid in your email marketing subject lines

References

Alchemy Worx (2013) Debunking the 7 myths of email marketing – infographic. Alchemy Worx, 24th October 2013 [Online] <http://www.alchemyworx.com/emailworx/2013/strategy/subject-lines/debunking-the-7-myths-of-email-marketing-%E2%80%93-infographic> [Accessed 28th February 2015]

Clapham, P. (2011) Email Marketing, The Optician. Vol. 241, p32

Gardner, O. (2013) How to write the perfect email subject line. Unbounce, 23rd January 2013 [Online] <http://unbounce.com/email-marketing/perfect-subject-line/> [Accessed 26th February 2015]

Marr, M. (2014) The 9 Best Email Subject Line Styles to Increase Your Open Rates. WordStream, 31st March 2014 [Online] <http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/31/email-subject-lines>[Accessed 28th February 2015]

Popick, J. (2014) 6 Subject Line Essentials for Your Next Email Campaign. Inc, 26th February 2015 [Online]<http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/women-tech-leaders-share-their-monday-morning-ritual.html> [Accessed 27th February 2015]

Ratcliff, C. (2014) Email marketing subject lines: why best practice matters. Econsultancy, 10th March 2014 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/64476-email-marketing-subject-lines-why-best-practice-matters/> [Accessed 28th February 2015]