He may be a Spuds Spurs fan, but Red C Account Director Steve White is not completely useless. He knows an awful lot about Email Marketing for one thing. So when he gave me a 700-page document from MarketingSherpa called Best Practices in Email Marketing I thought to myself, this is probably worth reading.*

MarketingSherpa is a research firm that specializes in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) Their goal: to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their email marketing results.

According to their Research Manager Stefan Tornquist this guide was written “to provide one-stop guidance on building a ‘best in class’ email program, whether you’re managing an enterprise level marketing department or a small business.”

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Here’s a scary fact for you.  20% of legitimate email never actually reaches its intended destination; the inbox.  Can you imagine if the Royal Mail only delivered 80% of its mail?   Mmmm actually, let’s not go there!  Anyway, you understand the point I’m attempting to make.  Deliverability is a big issue.

The culprits for this statistic have to be the ISPs, right?  Wrong!  Well, they are partly to blame as they are certainly making things harder for legitimate email marketers like you and I.  However, when 90% of all email is spam then they really do have quite a job on their hands if they want to keep one step ahead of the spammers. I’m afraid if there is any doubt as to the legitimacy of your email messages then you are going to be spammed.  You can’t blame them can you?  When 9 out of 10 emails are spam then they’re bound to lean on the side of caution.

But the real culprit for this frightening statistic is you and I.  We are to blame.   It’s our sending practices that determine whether our email message reaches their intended destinations.  However, with blame comes responsibility and with responsibility comes the ability to change and improve.  We have the power to control our deliverability rates.

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No... not that kind of Trigger!

Back in November 2009, I promised a series of blog articles detailing why I enjoy being an email marketer.  In my first article I outlined the brilliance that is heat map analysis and how potentially rewarding it can be.  This time I’m tackling something that is viewed by many as the next big thing in email marketing: triggered emails.

There are two types of retail focused emails:

1. The trunch email – These are emails sent to batches in batches.

or

2. The triggered (or automated) email– These are targeted emails sent out based on a customer’s action, either positive or negative.

The triggered email has been around for a while, an order confirmation email sent after you’ve made an online purchase is a good example. However, as we become more sophisticated with our email marketing, this type of email has a more important part to play in email marketing strategies.

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Loadsa Money!!!

I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is you are only a few short words from success in your next email campaign.  The bad news is that establishing what those “few short words” should be is a task that takes a great deal of deliberation and consideration.  Well, it certainly should be. Subject lines can literally make or break an email’s performance – influencing everything from the opening rate to the click through rate. Obviously there are other contributing factors – the day and time of send to name but two – but without a doubt the key influencer has to be those “few short words”.

Now, I’ll be up front with you.  I’m not going to give you a magic formula for “can’t fail subject lines.” For one thing I don’t believe such a one-size-fits-all solution actually exists.  However, what I am going to give you is a series of tips and factors that you should always consider, when trying to establish what works for your audience.  Bear in mind this is not a something you will complete in an afternoon.  It will take a great deal of time and patience, but the rewards can be substantial.

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We’re extremely proud of our work on the Swinton Mystery Tipper, especially as it has garnered the agency an armful of awards from two DMA Awards to two ISP Awards and two IPA Effectiveness Awards. We’ve had quite a few people ask to see our winning entry form… so here it is!

CONTEXT AND MARKET BACKGROUND

The insurance sector is a complex and increasingly challenging marketplace. For most of us, insurance has always been a distress purchase – something we grudgingly concede we need to have, and resent the increasing premiums. Three key innovations in the last decade have had a significant impact on the broader market. The launch of Direct Line’s online insurance offer, in 1999, following the formula of its breakthrough approach to offering insurance by telephone a decade earlier, forced every insurer and broker to reassess their approach – here was a company that made buying insurance simple and fuss-free, cutting out the middle man and talking everyday language. This sparked an extended period of discounting in the sector that still has ramifications today.

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Spurs 5 - Arsenal 1. Get in!

My school years are long behind me now, but I still have one or two memories of those days that I recall with fondness, now and again.  Bunking off double geography with Sarah Kirsopp when I was 16 is one. The other is a conversation I had with the 6^th Form’s Career Officer, Mr Kennedy.

The conversation started with a question we’ve all probably been asked.

“What do you want to do when you leave school?”

My enthusiastic response wasn’t greeted with the warmth or indeed excitement that I anticipated.

“Don’t be ridiculous White!  How on earth do you expect to be centre forward for Tottenham Hotspur?”

I left that meeting thinking to myself, “I’ll prove Mr Kennedy wrong, I’ll show you.  Mark my words”.

To be fair, whilst I haven’t completely given up on the dream, I have to admit it looks like Mr Kennedy was right.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  Today I have actually found something I genuinely like doing.

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On 28th May 2009, Google announced its grand vision for the future of internet communication. By harnessing the power of HTML 5 – the next major revision to the core language of the World Wide Web – Google is putting the final touches to a brand new “personal communication and collaboration tool” for a brand new era. It’s called Google Wave.

As a real-time communication platform, Google Wave combines email, instant messaging, web chat, wikis, social networking and project management (among other things) in one elegant, in-browser communication client. With a release scheduled in late 2009, it is already being hailed by some as the ‘next generation’ of email. Read more…

Direct mail may still hold a slender lead as the most dominant form of Direct Marketing, but things are definitely changing. Recent technological developments are giving marketers more and more opportunities to get their message directly to their audience. In years to come both mobile marketing and social networking may be the most effective forms of Direct Marketing, but right now the biggest rival to the DM pack is undoubtedly email marketing.

The practice of contacting customers and prospects through email has really taken off in recent years. In fact, The Direct Marketing Association estimated that US firms alone spent over $400 million on email marketing in 2006 – and the technique has only grown in popularity since. The reason for this is simple… email marketing has a number of benefits over traditional DM and door drops. Read more…

Success in marketing, and certainly direct marketing, depends on one factor above all others… reaching the right people with a timely and relevant message. And that’s why data, and certainly quality data, is valued so highly.

Ever since the introduction of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), where a company has tools to track and organise its contacts with its current and prospective customers, there has been talk of allowing the consumer to manage the data that companies hold about them.

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For customer engagement, e-mail is fast becoming the most powerful channel available to marketers.  Growing penetration of e-mail addresses on our customer databases, the environmental backlash against direct mail, the increasing preference of customers for online dialogue, the exceptional richness of response data from email – just some of the reasons why UK marketers should be exploiting every opportunity to capture addresses and permissions.  Yet I am surprised by the lack of attention and thought that is going into the sign-up process, especially in these recessionary times. Read more…