The Messaging Times

Email marketers spend so much time analyzing delivery times, link placement, HTML designs, open rates, click-through rates and subject line copy that they often overlook a key ingredient of successful email campaigns – value. That’s not to say that the analytical side of email isn’t important. But optimizing the mechanics of an email campaign doesn’t actually provide any real value to recipients, so it will only get you so far. In the end, email recipients are looking for one thing. Value.

What real value do you offer to your email subscribers? Are they getting something that they can’t get from your website? Is your offer sufficiently attractive to make them actually look forward to receiving your next email? Have they told their friends, family and colleagues about it?

Email-only sales add value to your message because they provide an offer that is only available to those receiving the email. This will serve to persuade recipients to stay on your list and, more importantly, read your messages to see what’s on offer each week or month. Of course, this will only work if the email-only offers that you provide are attractive enough to your recipients so that they look forward to receiving them. Just because an offer is only available to email recipients doesn’t mean that it is of any great value.

My deleted items folder is a virtual wasteland of promotional messages offering 30-day trials, 20 dollar vouchers and 10 percent discounts. These promotions are so rote that we become desensitized to them very quickly. With so many competing offers, it is getting harder and harder to get email recipients to take notice and even harder to persuade them to take action.

Recently, I received an email-only offer from a local hotel for two free nights accommodation. That’s value. But how do they win? Well, my wife and I will probably have dinner there both nights, some spa treatments and, most importantly, spread the word to others. Empty beds earn them nothing. Good value earned them our attention and business.

By offering real value to your existing subscribers, you have a good chance of keeping them on your list, generating more wallet share and simultaneously creating buzz agents who will promote your brand. Seth Godin calls this flipping the funnel. Getting your existing customers to market your brand, products and services for you is something that brand managers dream of. To make it a reality, you just have to offer something of value that is worth talking about.

When you are analyzing your next email campaign, step back from the statistical figures and ask yourself one simple question. What great value did we offer our recipients during this campaign?

A recent Forrester report suggests that including a video element in your email campaigns can raise click-through rates up to 300%.

“…Interviews with marketing executives revealed that using compressed video without sound, with animated gifs, and clickable screen shots of videos can result in click-through rates that are two to three times the usual rate.

Some 9% of marketers are currently experimenting with video in email, and another 21% plan on including video in their email marketing efforts in the next 12 months, according to a July 2008 JupiterResearch/ClickZ survey of 286 email executives…” continue reading

This supports a recent Nielsen Online study confirming that online video remains a popular and growing online activity.

“…Nielsen Online provided overall online video usage data for April 2009, which shows that approximately 119 billion unique viewers watched seven trillion total streams during the month. The numbers reveal that year-over-year, total streams are up 24%, streams per viewer are up 27% and time per viewer is up 58% percent…” continue reading

Of course, embedding video in email is still problematic. Not only does it increase your message weight and affect delivery speeds, but it is often (if not usually) blocked by ISPs and email security systems as are other executable files.

But all is not lost. You can still achieve higher click-through rates by using video screen captures in your message as an image link, which recipients can click on and be brought to the video hosted online. Some email marketers are also experimenting with animated gifs in their messages and using certified video email systems.

Have you used video in your email campaigns yet? What was your experience?

Mark Brownlow has a very insightful post about email sending frequency.

As the marketing world (re)discovers email, many people are asking if they can send out more email to keep sales/responses flowing through difficult times.

Experts are skeptical, citing the risks of increased spam complaints, unsubscribes and list fatigue. Short-term response boosts can come at the cost of delivery problems, damage to your brand, and long-term loss of sales/responses … [continue reading]

While more might mean initial increases in open, click-through and conversion rates; it can also mean increases in fatigue, frustration, unsubscribe requests and even spam perception (especially if someone signed up to receive your monthly email and they are now hearing from you every week.)

Sometimes, even the most interesting guest becomes a pest when they visit too often.

Email marketing enjoys the best Return on Investment (ROI) of any online marketing channel. In 2007, the average ROI for email was around $49 dollars for each dollar spent. In 2006, it was around $52 and in 2005 it was as high as $57 on average. While the ROI for email seems to be dipping year after year, it continues to be a reliable earner and a solid investment.

But why is the ROI dipping year after year?

Spam could certainly have something to do with it. The increase in email filtering systems and other anti-spam mechanisms make it more difficult to get messages delivered to inboxes today, affecting delivery rates. And when delivery rates are affected, so too are opens, click-throughs and conversions. But there is another reason why the average ROI in email isn’t moving in the other direction.

It’s too easy.

And when something is too easy, we often tend not to work hard at it. By taking the easy road and continuing with the batch and blast mentality of the 20th century, we fail to capitalize on the opportunity that email marketing offers. By not investing adequate time and resources in developing effective email marketing strategies and practices, we are accepting sub-par performance.

Stephanie Miller discusses how our complacency with email marketing today can lead to problems in the future – not only in terms of ROI, but with our brand, reputation and trust.

“…Here’s the challenge. We send out a message, we get revenue. That’s good! But that isn’t the end of the story. Sending out messages that are irrelevant to most of your file has other costs. Look at your unsubscribe rate. Check the complaint rate (subscribers clicking the “this is spam” button). Both will rise when you send irrelevant or too frequent messages. The cost to replace these subscribers and maintain your file accuracy will cut into that incremental boost. Plus, in every case we’ve seen, the non-responder rate (subscribers with no opens or clicks) also goes up dramatically.

It’s not so hard to see why. When we abuse the trust that subscribers give us and send boring messages or more email than could possibly be relevant, subscribers tune all our messages out. They may not actually unsubscribe or complain to the ISPs, but they “emotionally unsubscribe.” They unsubscribe with their delete button. These subscribers are now lost to us.

Add up all that collateral damage, and your ROI may be much less or even negative…”

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There’s no reason that your email marketing ROI isn’t $85 for each dollar spent. Just like other benchmarks, you aren’t bound by annual ROI averages – unless you accept them as good enough.

We have discussed how email subject lines can impact response rates. Knowing how important a Subject line can be, it is worth testing the effectiveness of different Subject lines. Does a shorter or longer one yield better results? Are there certain keywords that trigger a better response? So many questions. But what measurement do you use to determine which Subject line is more effective? Do you look at open rates? Click-throughs? Conversions?

Media Post’s Email Insider ponders which metric to use when testing email subject lines.

“…There is no “right” answer. It varies by business, by situation, and by intent of the test being conducted. Each of these metrics measures something different and it is critically important to understand what is-in fact-being measured when each of these metrics is used to evaluate subject line A/B split tests…” continue reading

One thing is certain, it is worth paying attention to the Subject line of your email. It’s the first thing that your recipients see. And you know what they say about first im