MediaContact.ie hosted a brilliant seminar this week, entitled, “How to build a tribe online”. It centred on the use of “political marketing to grow followers for your business”. It was a little vague in terms of its title, but the trainer and content were far from it. I was drawn to the seminar as I have seen Ewan McIntosh (the trainer), in action. As CEO of NoTosh, Ewan helps organisations engage with people, whether they’re voters, customers or kids in a classroom. McIntosh has played various roles in his career, from language teacher to National Advisor on Learning and Technology Futures for the government to the coordinator of the $100m, 4IP Fund for Channel 4.

What did I expect from the event?

I wanted to learn more about how the merging of traditional and digital channels can be balanced fairly, so that I can advise our clients better. At Circulator, it’s my job to assist with the integration of email marketing with our clients’ overall strategy. While our offer to each client is the same (email marketing), we offer tailored advice to each individual, depending on their needs. We believe that email marketing should be incorporated with a traditional marketing strategy, rather than replacing it and look forward to sharing any relevant information with you.

What I learned?

The seminar lasted only a few hours, but there was a wealth of information to absorb. I’ve highlighted the core points, which I feel are beneficial to those looking to use email marketing more effectively.

Identify the Ask

What are you asking your target audience to do? As an organisation, identify the main action you wish your clients to undertake. In a roundabout way, you are also rolling your offer into this “Ask”. For example, Circulator could use “Reach Your Customer”. We want our clients to increase engagement with their customers which will result in increased interaction rates and overall sales. We work with clients to ensure that their commercial goals are clearly outlined and achieved. It’s a rough example, to highlight how simple it can be. Ewan recommends that each “Ask” should start with a verb and highlighted Barack Obama’s campaign website as a great example. There are numerous “Asks” such as “Get involved, donate now, volunteer”, and “connect with the campaign”. These “Asks” can be likened to our “Call to Actions” in email marketing. These are a vital part of any campaign in order to facilitate interaction and solicit action from the subscriber.

Who is your ask for?

Understand your “Ask” and then apply it to the relevant audience. The right message, to the right audience is a sure winner, by increasing interaction and ultimately, helps you reach your goal, whether that’s sales, votes or brand awareness.

Reinforce the positive

When Ewan recommended a “winning attitude”, I couldn’t help but giggle a little, as it reminded me of Charlie Sheen’s #winning and #tigerblood rants, but that’s a whole other train of thought. Ewan’s advice is simple; always carry a positive message in communications and avoid implying a “presence in need of improvement”, i.e. implying that the current supplier, approach or proactive of the audience is in some way incorrect. Using Circulator again as an example, “Send Better Emails” is clearly implying a “presence” in need of improvement. This implies that the audience is doing something wrong or is flawed in some way and need of a new supplier to solve this issue. Avoid this and use a more positive approach instead. This would involve phrases such as “Energise Your Email Marketing”, (referring to Circulator), or using words such as “Proven, Achieve, Strong” etc.

Understanding that building a digital footprint, is a little like equity

Email Marketing is similar to other forms of media in certain respects – it takes time to achieve long term goals. Rather than expecting a return overnight, you must understand that a strong digital following will not happen overnight. It’s an organic process that needs to be nurtured rather than rushed. It requires strategy, time and effort. The main benefit of email marketing over other forms of digital is the ability to track a subscribers’ movement, from open rates, to click through – right through to purchase.

Identify your “Beachhead”

Ewan gave an animated example of a child rushing to a friend’s house and asking for the toilet, a drink and permission to play with toys, all in one breath. Rather than asking for all this in one go, we are told (from an early age), to identify the most important request first (usually a toilet break), and ask for it, before following up with the next one. Again, it goes back to the Ask. Once the first “ask” is identified, then the next “Ask” can be revealed and offered.

There are many other fantastic ideas that I’m looking forward to putting it into practice with our clients  to help them achieve their desired results – curious?  Get in touch now and we can explain more about our approach to email marketing.

Your first step to creating a list is to collate the email addresses of those you have been in contact with, over the last year. This means that the list will be familiar with you and the information will be relevant to them. Once you have the list, be sure to review it and break it down into a segmented list (the conditions will depend on your needs e.g. leads, customers etc).

Why Join the List?

Now you have a number of emails in your database, it’s time to look at increasing this. First off, you must ask yourself why a person would like to receive your email. Don’t look at them as a subscriber, but more as a customer or potential customer. You need to see the benefits of subscribing to your email marketing campaigns. The benefits could be monetary or informative – whatever the benefit, be sure to outline it clearly from the start.

Every person in your organisation must be prepared to sell your next campaign – encouraging shop assistants to collect data or the receptionist to mention the informative email that is sent regularly etc. No one person should be in charge of collecting this data and it is imperative that the staff of your organisation understand this.

Reward your reader!

Beware of Purchased Lists

I’ve often come across companies touting “qualified” email marketing lists. While list buying is permitted in the UK, an organisation would be in breach of data protection laws in Ireland, if they engaged in similar behaviour. We always discourage list buying for the simple reason that the lists are often unqualified, irrelevant and out of date. It’s best to build your own list from scratch – which is easier and less time consuming that you would think.

Lists don’t have to be large to be effective. Targeting large lists with blanket email campaigns is often referred to as “email blasts” – something which most email marketing firms distance themselves from. Often a small but relevant email marketing lists can reap higher returns, because the message is tailored specifically to the needs and desires of that targeted group.  I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, which you can read on our blog.

Growing your Database

Having an automated sign up form will give you the opportunity to open up the chances of being found. Why make your subscriber sign up option difficult to find? Email addresses can be collected from a number of sources, including:

• Website or blog
• Reception or counter
• Email signature
• Postcards
• Events (business cards)

Placing your online subscriber form in numerous locations, will increase the likelihood of an increase in the size of your database. Always ensure you list the source of your data internally, so that it can be referenced if needs be.

Ensure you have an Auto Responder in place to thank subscribers and remind them of the benefits available to them, now that they have registered their details. I’ve already outlined some of the very useful uses of an auto responder.

What Information to Collect

Gaining a better understanding of your market will help you tailor your email newsletter to them. Knowing what is deemed relevant by your audience does not involve mind reading capabilities; simply ask them what they want from your newsletter. Is it merely special offers, or knowledge that can not get anywhere else?
Collect as much information from your audience as possible. If directing your potential subscriber to an online sign up page, be sure to limit the number of compulsory fields. We generally recommend that first name, last name and email address is a great start – remember: “The more you ask your audience to do, the less they’ll actually do.”

What information do you ACTUALLY need?

No company needs a target customer’s life story but they do need enough information to send targeted, relevant information that will stir the reader to action. So what information will make the difference? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this conundrum. Depending on the needs of your client, the nature of your business, the information you collect will widely differ and will affect the outcome of your newsletter can widely. At Circulator, we advise our customers carefully on the information that they need, so that they can collect relevant data to send targeted emails to their lists. There are many options out there, but the first priority (after an email address, obviously), is the first and last name of the individual. Addressing an email to a specific individual has two main results:

1) It’s personal: The email and the message is personal by virtue of the salutation and content. The recipient is no longer a faceless subscriber and feels closer to your brand as a result.

2) It’s reassuring: The fact that the email is personal, assures the recipient that it’s not a SPAM message, and information was collected legitimately.

Qualify and Motivate

Now you have the list compiled, be sure to send them relevant information. This may involve qualifying the needs of the database and can not always be completed on registration. Use a quick survey to find out what motivates your subscriber database and work from there. Monitoring link activity and other reporting features within Circulator will help you assess which articles or offers are more relevant – pay attention to this data and base your next campaign on this information.

“It’s Good to Talk”

We have numerous clients how have used Circulator to integrate with their in house systems (e.g. CRM), enabling the data held on clients in the company system to be exchanged with Circulator. It makes it a lot easier to track activity, push customised information to a relevant audience and more.

Start Building a List Now

Talk to a member of our team – we’ve got lots more to tell you about email marketing, databases and integration. Get in touch now…and don’t forget to join our mailing list too!

Social Media is changing the face of communications.  It can not be avoided, nor should you hide from it. Instead, harness the power of social media and benefit, taking your message to a wider audience. Email has never been about one to one communication – if the content is relevant, it will always be shared. Having said that, social media has increased the speed at which you can share.  Instead of forwarding an email to a select number of contacts, readers can now use in built social sharing options to post content, for their friends and followers to view. Facebook states that the average user on the platform has 131 friends – following this logic, sharing your email will reach a large and wide range of potential customers, which can benefit your campaign.

The Drawbacks

There are numerous books and papers relating to “Return on Investment” (ROI), of social. It is difficult to quantify the profits and potential of this market.  Social Media is current, meaning that your message may get lost as more and more information is filtered through, for example, Twitter works on the basis of what is happening “right now” and anything that was Tweeted about previously is lost (unless someone decides to share the message).

Unlike social media, email is constant – once delivered to the recipient, the message is available at any stage and the source is identifiable and easily reached. It gives you the power to control the list of recipients and ensure it is tailored to their interests.

In summary, email is constant and social media is a great bolt on for email but social can not stand alone in delivering your message to your audience.  There must be a balance, and this is catered for by incorporating sharing options in your email messages.

At Circulator, we work with your organisation, to ensure that the sharing options are placed in strategic points throughout the email. This is an important aspect of design to increase the viral aspect of your email marketing campaign.

Image based content is not only bad for business, but it’s bad for SEO too! SEO is the organic method of increasing a sites visibility in search engine rankings, meaning that it will appear higher on the search results of an engine.  This implies that your site will see an increase in the number of visitors from the search engine’s users, due to its location in the search results.

SEO & Email Marketing

Archiving previous issues of your email marketing campaigns on your website will increase your SEO. It’s a fact that many overlook, but using relevant content in your email campaigns and uploading them to your site increases your SEO and this engaging content suddenly becomes available to a wider audience.

Circulator has a number of methods which will help with your SEO, in terms of email marketing. Why not get in touch for more information.

Segment your database

Every customer on your list is different and while you can’t segment your list contact by contact, a brief segmented list is better than a “one size fits all” email campaign. Emails, like gifts, are better received when a little thought is added.

Design for Zero Attention

Information overload is a frequently used phrase but it’s true nevertheless.  Your customers have more choice and less time than ever and it’s for this reason that you need to make your message relevant, targeted and easy to digest.   The average user spends a mere 51 seconds skimming one — and needs only 90 seconds to unsubscribe, so make your message snappy and meaningful.

Planning

If you can register your customers’ milestones within your email marketing campaign, you will have caught their attention.  Boots have completed this effectively with their “Parenting Club”.  On registering, the customer is asked to enter the date of birth for their child. At selected milestones in the child’s development, an email is triggered with content that matches the lifecycle of the child e.g. Teething issues etc.  This captures the attention of the customer who identity’s with the message Boots.com is sending. What’s more, the email cleverly “recommends” helpful products and the content provides a effective “push” to the customer to respond to this call to action.

Social Media

What’s more personal than social media?  It has not been the death knell for email marketing, on the contrary – it’s emergence has invigorated the who industry, adding another facet to the communication channel.

Mobile in Mind

The mobile has become the safe haven for the lone diner, when you are on your own, waiting on the train home – or when you just want to kill a few minutes. For whatever reason, email needs to be designed with mobile in mind.  Over 200 million active users use mobile to access Facebook – with a figure like that, it’s clear that mobile is personal.

Engagement

Our customers want to hear from us.  For every one customer that wants to hear from us, there are many people who don’t. Bear this in mind when communicating with customers who want to engage with you – forget the rest that don’t.  Create a two way dialogue with your audience and remember email marketing isn’t the same as a billboard.  2011 is about engagement and it’s up to you to start the conversation.

Eavesdropping is a good thing

Utilise the reporting functionality available. This will allow you to measure the success of your campaign against your objectives.  The functionality will also allow you to see what works and what doesn’t.

Breadcrumbs

Snippets of information over time are more effective than a long email as a once off.  This has been showcased effectively by some insurance providers. They mapped out the customer lifecycle and based their email marketing strategy on the customer, rather than their marketing aims.

We always advise our customers to avoid using image based email marketing. While it may look very attractive, by default, most email programmes do not download image based emails.  This policy has been in place for a very long time, due to the rise of spammers trying to fool spam filters (as spam filters scan text to determine what is spam and what is legitimate email communication).   Image based emails are particularly popular with designers who are new to email marketing, but the results can be seen in low delivery and interaction rates.

Email clients are the only systems to consider when putting an email marketing campaign together.  The number of mobiles with access to email is growing rapidly. Morgan Stanley predicts that Western Europe will lead the market in terms of smart phone penetration, with an estimated 92% of users by 2014.  This is followed closely by North America with 74% market penetration. Now, more than ever, we need to be considering mobile when creating email campaigns.

Planning

Circulator always recommends that imagery in email is maintained at 30% approximately and all our clients have a customised template that reflects this 70:30 rule.  Our designers avoid placing key “Call to Actions” within images, as these will not download automatically for the majority of their target audience.

Panache without the Price

There are many sites online that sell imagery which are affordable and useful.  However, for those organisations who lack a budget but need images with impact?  We always recommend Flickr and Creative Commons (CC).  CC “is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright”.  Users on Flickr have chosen to licence their work under Creative Commons, allowing anyone online to browse and use imagery under the various types of licence.  Please be aware that there are different types of licence and ensure that if you do decide to use this valuable resource, you credit the photographer accordingly.

Auto-responders are as flexible as the content used within them and if used properly, can become a valuable asset to your organisation and a point of interest to your customers.  They should be designed with your brand guidelines in mind with the flexibility to modify the content as frequently as your market sees fit.

The Customer Life Cycle

When someone subscribes to your email marketing list, the auto-responder performs a simple, yet effective function. It acknowledges the subscription and reminds the subscriber they have signed up.  It can also form  part of the customer life cycle, triggered communication at different stages of the journey.  Boot.com’s Parenting Club do this very effectively by matching the child’s’ life cycle with the organisations communication to the parent. The communication is full of tips on parenting and useful products – with a link to the Boots.com website.   A great use of the Call to Action.

Promotions

An auto –responder can be modified to include special offers, coupons or discount codes.  This is very useful for product or service based industries.  By including an attractive incentive on your auto-responder, you are more likely to hit the right note with your new subscriber. They are already on your site and actively thinking about your organisation – why not prompt them to make a purchase?

Increase Popularity

Include links to the most popular areas of your site to engage with the subscriber and increase traffic to your blog. It’s also a great way to give a taster of your content.

Cross Selling

If you have sold a product online, use the receipt of purchase to acknowledge the sale and use the opportunity to cross sell other items and service that may be of interest to the customer.  Dynamic content can be used to push through details of special offers and encourage traffic towards your website.

Instructions

If you have sold a technical products or tickets for events, use your auto responder to send instructions on the product, directions to the event etc. An auto-responder can also be used to promote your organisation as a thought leader in the industry by including very short snippets of text that will engage the customer.

In short use your auto-responder to the advantage and benefit of both your customer and your organisation.

There are many different emails that are considered Spam.  Just because you are a legitimate organisation, it doesn’t mean that you can’t fall foul of your customers spam filters.   Any unsolicited or undesired mail can be considered as spam – whether the individual chose to receive emails from your organisation or not, they still have the option of marketing your email as Spam.

Who governs it?

It depends where your subscribers are based. Before you send an email to a subscriber who is based abroad, you must obey that countries spam laws – the onus is on your organisation to ensure you are acting within the law.

Ireland works within the guidelines and regulations set down by the EU.  Our Data Protection Commissioner enforces the data protection aspects of the Regulations and the Commission for the Communications Regulation (ComReg), is responsible for ensuring compliance with some technical and practical elements of implementing the Regulations.

So what if a few hundred people mark my email as spam?

Without going through the various technical aspects of how to get blacklisted, it’s important to remember that IT MIGHT ONLY TAKE one person in every thousand emails you send for an ISP to blacklist your organisation. “If a recipient says it’s spam (even if they opted in for it), then it’s spam. End of story.”

Know who your friends are:

Buying a database from a supplier is no way to engage with prospective leads. The biggest issue with these lists stem from the method in which they were collected often by crawling through websites and collecting data at random.  The other issues include the age of the data, the legal aspects of buying a list where the subscribers have not opted to share their data and the number of generic emails such as info@, web@, support@ etc.

Never just round up all your contacts and add them to your marketing list. First off, do you have permission? Legally, your database should consist of contacts that have opted into your list. This can also be said of the sales team – some may see it as their chance to “reignite” with failed prospects – or worse, previous clients! Be wary of where your data comes from and how you plan to use it.

Send Regular updates:

We’ve come across many subscriber lists that contain contacts who have opted in to receive email notifications……..two years ago and not received a single email. That just won’t work! You may have spent time collating all this data, but recipients have most likely forgotten what they signed up for and when they do get that “blast email” (a word we all hate), they flag the message as spam. Before you start sending emails to the list, why not re-introduce yourself with a short quick reminder of who you are and what you will be contacting them about.

Don’t make an exhibition of yourself :

Exhibition lists and data from membership organisations might be more relevant and current, but ultimately, buying in these lists is far from clever. Remember to ask yourself why you are contacting this audience and is your message relevant. It’s a good start to a better email marketing practice.

Email Blasts can blow up in your face….

We hate the phrase “email blast”, and everything associated with the unstructured and unplanned method of sending email. This is a sure way to boost your chance of being flagged as Spam, so avoid it at all costs. Email marketing is about targeting customers, who want to receive relevant content from an email service / sender that they have opted into.

When the recipient opens the message, the tracking image is referenced. When they click a link or open an attachment, another tracking code is activated. In each case a separate tracking event is recorded by the system. These response events accumulate over time in a database, enabled the email marketing software to report metrics such as open-rate and click-through rates.

What is the new legislation and what does it mean for me?

The latest directive from the EU’s Privacy and Communication body requires that users give their consent before an organisation can activate and access cookies on the user’s equipment.    The regulations have seen a very slow take up from member states, so don’t expect changes to occur overnight.

According the BBC : “Microsoft’s IE9 and the latest version of Mozilla’s Firefox already offer a setting to protect users from services which collect and harvest browser data and Google is working at integrating so-called ‘Do Not Track’ technologies into their Chrome browser.”

In summary – the full implications of this new regulation has not fully been assessed, with some welcoming the developments and others fearing that it could make using the web complicated and cumbersome, as the consumer opts in and out of each site or before any action can be taken online.

What do I do now?

There’s no immediate need to start worrying about cookies, with the legal system proving (once again), that it is unable to keep up with the developments of doing business online.  In the meantime, it’s important to keep an eye on what is happening with the legislation or simply let us worry about that side of things while you focus on the business of making sales and engaging with your market.

Who has issued the legislation?

The Data Protection Commissioner enforces the data protection aspects of the Regulations and the Commission for the Communications Regulation (ComReg), is responsible for ensuring compliance with some technical and practical elements of implementing the Regulations.

Why is this important?

The Commission has the power to prosecute those who commit offences (that’s fines of up to €5,000 – per message in the case of unsolicited marketing), so it’s important to stay within the law – not only that, but if your organisation stays within the law it will prove beneficial to your organisation in terms of marketing.

Who does the legislation apply to?

If you are reading this, there is a fair chance that it applies to you. In short, the regulation applies to organisations that use electronic methods (telephone, email, via a website etc), to communicate with previous or target customers.

 So, what’s the skinny?

Data security is a hot topic at the moment, especially with the latest security breaches, including the Epsilon security failure, possibly the largest name and email address breach in history of the internet. On March 30^th, there was “an incident” where by a number of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorised entry into their email system, (handling more than 40 billion email annually and over 2,200 global brands, that’s quite “an incident”).

Keep the data safe and secure

This includes protecting the data from accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss or alteration and unauthorised access, processing or disclosure.  Ensure that the data can only be accessed by authorised personnel for legally authorised purposes.  Any breach in security must be reported to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.  Make sure that it is accurate, relevant and not excessive – only ask for what you need.

When holding information on a contact, it must not be excessive – only ask for what you need.  If you go on to contact the person, remember that the rules are more restrictive in the case of marketing by electronic mail of individuals who are not customers. In our 2011 Digital Marketing Survey, we found that 49% of customers would regard an unsolicited email with irrelevant content to be SPAM.

Remember that the sender of an e-mail or SMS must include the name of the organisation / sender and a valid address at which they can be contacted. This is a legal requirement and must be included in every communication.

As a minimum, an individual must be given a right to refuse such use of their personal data both at the time the data is collected (an “opt-out”) and, in the case of direct marketing by electronic means, on every subsequent marketing message.  The “opt-out” right must be free of charge.  Don’t try to trick your customers – make the unsubscribe link easy to find.

If an individual is not a customer, electronic mail may not be used to send a marketing message to their contact address unless the prior opt-in consent of that individual has been obtained to the receipt of such messages – a consent that can be withdrawn at any time.

 What if they are your customers?

In instances where the data has been collected at a point of sale, it may only be used for direct marketing via email if the following conditions are met:

• The product or service is of a kind similar to that which was sold to the customer at the time their contact details were obtained.

• When these details were collected, the customer was given the opportunity to object at that time, in an easy manner and without charge, to their use for marketing purposes.

• The customer must be given the right to unsubscribe to further messages, in each email.

• The details were collected within the previous 12 months or the subscriber has received a marketing electronic mail within the previous 12 months to which they did not unsubscribe using the cost free means provided to them by the direct marketer

The “opt – in” consent expires after twelve months, so be sure to keep in regular contact with your database.