I recently posted a blog article about subscriber segmentation and how, using it thoughtfully can greatly benefit your email campaigns.  I have since come across this excellent case study on Marketing Sherpa. It highlights how TicketsNow.com, a US company specialising in online ticket sales, has increased their email marketing revenues by 322% -directly through segmentation!

The case study describes how the company changed their email marketing strategy to draw their customers more closely to the brand with the aim of optimising those of its subscriber/ customers with a history of being bigger spenders

They segmented their customers by spending habits and their interests, making them able to aim the newsletter in a much more focused way. 

They also introduced three customer loyalty programs:  Named ‘Preferred Customer Clubs’; customers gained automatic membership dependant on their annual spending $1,000+, $3,000+ or $8,000+.  Upon gaining membership they were sent consumer incentive offers such as free shipping or use of an exclusive customer support line. Members of these clubs received emails which were directly targeted to their membership level and even past click-throughs. In addition, they received more personalised emails reminding them of upcoming events that they had purchased tickets for, plus extra, related information, such as discounts available from restaurants close to the event. Following each event they sent out an email with reviews from other customers and offering the chance to submit their own revue, giving their customers the ability to not only engage with the brand on a more social level, but also to become part of a ‘community’ of loyal customers who interacted with each other with individual recommendations and reviews.

So, what began as a segmentation exercise resulted with enviable customer-relationships and loyal & interacting customers – plus that 322% increase in sales conversions! All achieved through their email marketing campaign and, as if that weren’t enough, their subscriber list grew by 87% and their complaint and unsubscribe rates fell too.

Mark Hodes, Senior Vice President of Customer Marketing for TicketsNow.com, said of the campaign: "I think it proves that more (targeted) email can only help keep people engaged and keep them more active as repeat customers.”

 
When it comes to the subjects of segmentation and targeted email marketing, campaign stands out as a perfect example of how to put it into practice.  Although it may sound intricate, all the tools to achieve this are sitting in your Graphicmail account just waiting to be used. Just refer to my previous article for the 1^st step – subscriber segmentation which shows you how to customise your subscription form and set the automated subscriber segmentation tool. Then, using TriggerMail you can setup event reminders such as those sent out from TicketsNow.com.

With a little thought you can combine both TriggerMail & segmentation to engage your customers within a campaign which they feel a part of and is relevant to them, making them more likely to respond to it

Remember the blog article that I posted about the power of social media?  Well maybe, as a result of that and the speed at which social media has grown in the online marketing world; you’re wondering ‘If that can be accomplished with just Facebook and Twitter, why do I need email Marketing?’

eMarketer recently reported that social media usage is on the increase and the new Marketing opportunities that are presented go a long way to explaining the attraction of Social Marketing. That said, it was less than a month ago when Marketing Sherpa’s weekly chart was indicating that marketers are still impressed by email marketing and believe it to be as rewarding as ever. Which begs the question; ‘Which is the most effective?’

Some find that it’s not the easiest question to answer, but this case study by MarketingVox, illustrates perfectly the effective differences between email and social media marketing.



Email marketing has the ability to convert twice as many sales as social media.

When all is said and done, the benefits gained from marketing a healthy brand and keeping it highly visible and well-recognised across all marketing channels, are not as useful as converting that interest into sales – that, after all, is where the money is!

How do they compare?

Mary Spio is a partner in Gen2Media, an agency in the music industry working with such big names as John Mayer and The Black Eyed Peas.  She studied two of their music artists, (she referred to them as A and B, so I’ll stay with that). She compared their different marketing approaches and how that effected their individual sales.

Artist A, got over 20 million views on the social network, YouTube - but showed no real interest in email marketing campaigns.  Artist B began by implementing an email campaign to enable direct contact with fans. Using a list of 2 million subscribers he launched a personalised email campaign over a full weekend which offered his subscribers exclusive tracks through iTunes.  In just those two days his email campaign raised $ 700,000.

When it is properly managed, Social media is a fantastic tool for attracting an audience of existing and potential customers to your brand but it is a mass-communication tool.  Yes, it’s also true that email is a mass-communication tool, but it is more personal! With email you take your communication to an individual follower, addressing them by name and through their own inbox. 

Which is the winning strategy?  As a firm believer in ‘Having your cake and eating it’, I prefer to have the best of both worlds.  The art is in knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and using them so that they complement each other.

As highlighted by this case study, it’s great to broaden your reach using social media but we must never lose sight of the fact that consumers respond much better when they are treated as individuals.

With email marketing you can target your subscribers individually, creating the foundation to build your own loyal customer base.  Not to mention, converting those sales.

Whether you are a casual follower or an ardent fan, you cannot fail to be aware of the forthcoming  WORLD CUP in South Africa. That also goes for your readers and you know us, ever on the ball ( yes, that pun WAS intended ) so we asked our Design Team to join our enthusiasm and create some themed templates to help us out – see below……..

So kick-off ( ! ) your past designs and set your goal ( oops, there we go again ) to engage your readers in your own version of soccer fever.

Are you one of the many Graphicmail users who diligently follow the links to our blog that we post on Twitter and Facebook? If you are, you may have already seen the blog article about the online revolution. If not, it’s worth checking out as is this video which contains some social media statistics that you may find interesting. It’s becoming more obvious every day that email is recognized as the top performing direct and online marketing channel so, it makes sense that combining email and social media is going to have a massive impact and to help with this we have released a new way to compliment them both.

Social share

This tool lets you publish your email newsletter straight to your Twitter account.  The newsletter title together with a link to your full newsletter will then automatically appear as a tweet – with no manual intervention form you!

As Twitter each Tweet to 140 characters, you will be delighted to hear that The Graphicmail Development Team have created another helpful gadget called GMtiny which is our very own URL abbreviator – it shortens your newsletter link, reducing that overlong and unsightly URL to just a few characters. How handy is that?

Not content with that, we have already begun work to extend this feature so that you will be able to publish across even more social networks. Next one; Facebook! Keep watching, we’ll notify you when this happens.

But, if you’re not already involved, don’t wait for that, start now by using our new social share tool to enhance your brand exposure online. Expand your subscriber audience and give your sales a boost by engaging more fully with these potential customers.

And, don’t forget – Graphicmail is also on Facebook and Twitter. Go there now, be a friend and follow us. We really enjoy reading about what our followers are doing.

Whilst you’re at it, check out the Graphicmail tools which you can use to insert social widgets in your footer – then, after your newsletter goes, check the social widget statistics section in your reports.

For those of you still unaware or unconvinced about the benefits of Social Media, here’s a really good article by Chris Moerdyk of BizCommunity reviewing Erik Qualman’s book; Socialnomics. Chris does an excellent job of summarising many of the important aspects regarding the development of  social media, some of which will maybe make you consider, as they did me………………..

If Facebook gets more traffic every week in the US than Google - and YouTube has become the second largest online search engine, then it’s more likely that your customers will locate the product they are seeking on a social site like Facebook or YouTube than they will on Google. Which begs the question………..” What happens if they can’t find your product when they are searching their social media? ”

Social media is the online version of what has traditionally been referred to as ‘word-of-mouth’ : Qualman states that, “whilst 78% of consumers trust recommendations from their peers, only 14% place their trust in advertisements”. So what happens when your peers aren’t recommending you through their new word-of-mouth (social media)?

Social search has grown to become the new online phenomenon: Search engines are now giving preference to companies based on their social mentions.  In Qualman’s opinion we will not, in future search for products or services as they will find us using social media.

But how does this link with email marketing?

Graphicmail have for some time now, been providing a variety of ways to integrate your email marketing with social media because we want to help you and your business to be prepared for each new wave of online expansion.  Last year we provided social widgets for your email footer, allowing your subscribers to share your newsletters through their social network accounts. Now we’ve added a new social widget reporting tool allowing you to track those who shared what  with who and through which network they shared it.  Finally, we released our new social share feature in our newsletter

We’ve added to our reporting tools so you can now see reports on your Social Widgets activity

As you are by now aware, you can add social widgets to your email footer and link to social networks so your subscribers can now share your newsletter with their friends and connections using their own social profile – just by clicking on the widget.

So what’s in the social widget report?

The decision by your subscribers to share your newsletter within their profile on any of the social networks means that all of their friends and followers can view it too. This means of course that your newsletter and your brand are gaining exposure within an entirely new contacts network.

The report tells you the number of your subscribers who have clicked the widgets to share your newsletter, who they shared with and which network it was – providing you with an easy way to track the level of exposure that your campaigns are getting through social media and this media gets more and more in the spotlight, it is definitely one ‘bandwagon’ to climb aboard.

After you do, let us know your thoughts

Why does this matter?
It matters because it causes unwanted spaces to be added to your email marketing messages potentially breaking the layout of your HTML. Code that used to render perfectly may now render incorrectly.

The change appears to be affecting email marketing messages in Gmail webmail when viewed in Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari. However it does not appear to have any effect on HTML emails in Gmail webmail viewed in Internet Explorer.

The solution
This issue is similar to a long-standing Hotmail bug. However, although you can fix this by adding ” img {display:block} ” at the top of your email marketing messages in Hotmail, Gmail ignores this code so that fix will not work.

To ensure your HTML emails render the way they should in Gmail the following needs to be added to every image tag in your email marketing messages: ” <img style=”display:block” src=  ”

There is one exception: when you are displaying images directly alongside text, such as when you are wrapping text or putting images inside paragraphs.

Don’t forget your triggered and transactional messages
The change will not just affect new messages you create, it will also affect any triggered or transactional email templates you have already set up

originally posted by TheEmailGuide here

One of the main factors in achieving a positive result from your email marketing campaigns is the quality of your mailing list. So the art is to acquire the email addresses of those people who will consider your email to be of value. This “Opt-in” list will, of course, increase your response rate which enhances your reputation and prevents you being labeled as a spammer and, having a positive reputation is a sure pathway to increased business. The alternative, buying an “Opt-out” list which is comprised of people who receive a mailshot which they have not asked for with the ‘excuse’ that if it is unwanted they can “Opt-out” meaning they unsubscribe. As users of this “Scattergun (let’s pull the trigger and see if we hit something) Approach” have discovered; the vast majority of recipients DO NOT want to receive the message, the recipient’s ISP is NOT IMPRESSED and the sender waits an indeterminate period in the misplaced hope that some of those ‘hits’ will respond by buying ‘something……… anything ! ’.

So how do you go about complying with “Best practice” ?

First - spamming should be looked upon in a similar way to theft because, if someone gets an email that they have not opted-in to receive, this amounts to their email address having been ‘stolen’. As someone who is sending marketing emails, it makes sense to have a working knowledge of international spam laws – this, together with knowledge of local legislation helps to maintain your credibility. Whilst some countries legally require ‘Affirmative Consent’, in the USA the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 demands that all recipients have given their Express Consent to receive the message. According to this act, all bulk emails are considered to be SPAM when containing material which may be offensive to the recipient, it displays no unsubscribe option, the [from] address is not visible or not correct, has a subject line which is misleading or the recipient email address has been stolen from other websites or online locations.

Second - It would be pointless to spend hours creating an email newsletter without a list to send to which makes it essential to create your own ‘houselist’. The very best and safest way to gather new subscribers is to create a signup form and direct people to it. It is very acceptable to incentivise this, which can be done very cost effectively if you offer one of your own products or services which has a much lower cost to high retail value. It is recommended that you go for the double opt-in ( DOI ) process. This means that the subscription application will generate a confirmation request email which they need to click to activate their subscription and by following this simple system you will avoid falling foul of the ISPs. Another good idea is to add a { signup to our newsletter } link in the email signature of everyone in your Company, also have it printed on the bottom of your quotes and invoices and posted to a company blog. Why not collect email addresses over the phone to add them as subscribers ? If you do this, put a column in the data specifying the date, time and who took their details,  in case you need to provide the “ OPT-IN “ proof

Third – as more than 80 percent of participants prefer to do business with organisations that use the opt-in, permission-based system to send them emails it is essential to provide a clear link to the privacy policy in your signup form. This optimization can be further enhanced by use of a ‘thankyou’ page or a pop-up displayed to new subscribers – it can also be used to welcome them and point them toward the newest release or tell them when to expect their first email / newsletter. If you are using double opt-in, this page can supply the link to click and confirm their subscription and once subscribed you can direct these confirmed subscribers to a ‘confirmed page’ to see incentives such as a promo-code, corporate gifts and vouchers.

What to avoid when gathering email addresses - 5 DON'Ts 

1 – Don't opt-in to the opt-out approach

Financial pressures can convince otherwise law abiding marketers to consider sending bulk emails to those who have not agreed to receiving emails from them. This is a big mistake as the emails are usually not relevant or valuable to the recipient. Big lists do not mean good lists. The problems that this ‘opt-out process’ causes are not immediately obvious but they can have a very long-term detrimental effect on your company’s brand and deliverability. Recipients of emails that they have not agreed to may not make their complaint directly to the sender but may make their complaint directly to their ISP or, even their social network; Facebook and Twitter are great platforms for posting such complaints.

2 - Don't buy lists of email addresses

The list you are intending to buy may have been collected from a Market Research Exercise, from financial institutions or even obtained from websites by ‘automated crawlers’. These bought-in lists most often result in SPAM complaints which damage your reputation with both the ISPs and prospective clients. Email marketing is all about building up long-term relationships not just one blast, so it’s imperative that you have the patience to build up a quality list.

3 – Don’t overlook those non-active addresses

It’s after your houselist is compiled and you have sent out your first couple of campaigns that the real fun of tracking begins! As you check your reports & statistics you will notice a number of recipients who haven’t ‘joined in’– no interaction; no purchasing, no opens, no clicks. Doing this task regularly will highlight those in your list who haven’t taken any action over a long period, so it’s important to be aware of them and to take action; it’s important that your list is maintained and kept clean as some of the older, inactive ones may lead to blocking or filtering by ISPs, so best to act before you are labeled a Spammer. In a recent survey by the Messaging Anti-abuse Working Group, 22% of users admit that emails that they once asked for but no longer want, they now treat as Spam. Your action can be to either remove them or start some retention marketing which could result in reactivating them, so send them a quality ‘special offer’, a survey or a specially targeted message. Maybe don’t email them as often and spend a bit more time personalising the content for that particular audience. The secret is to segment your database so that you can easily contact active and/or inactive addresses as required.

4 – Don't expect instant results

Your list is comprised of subscribers who have agreed that they want to hear from you but don’t expect a flood of activity from day one! Your list is not a target for a major sales drive, it will need to be tested constantly to cement your customer’s loyalty to your brand. Seek advice from experts, pay attention to what your peers have to say and check what the competition is doing. Sending a generic message could give a response of 0.3% whereas a well thought-out message sent to a highly-targeted, segmented niche list could score in the region of 50%.

5 – Don't separate your email campaign from your overall marketing strategy

When considering growing your database and online community it’s best to integrate your email campaign within your overall marketing strategy. Pull together all the alternative marketing opportunities; press releases, competitions, event sponsorship and attending trade shows.

In conclusion; it is always worth remembering that it is more costly to acquire new customers than it is to look after the existing ones. It always makes sense, and much more so in the current economic climate, to encourage your existing customers to remain loyal to your brand