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

We are regularly told that one of the very best features of Graphicmail are the free, comprehensive reports available in our reports and statistics as it allows users to track & optimise their email campaigns. Now, guess what……? Our Development Team have been burning that midnight oil again and the fruits of their efforts means that you can now monitor the performance of your SMS/Text campaigns as well!

The SMS delivery statistics are very similar to the reports and statistics currently available to analyse email sends. So now, each time you send a mass SMS/mobile text message, you will be able to access a report to show you how many of your SMS sends were sent, how many are pending, how many were delivered and how many bounced. It also supplied a reason when your SMS doesn’t get through. It's just one other reason to use Graphicmail to ensure that your communications and campaigns work for you.

From 27th - 29th April inclusive GraphicMail will be exhibiting for it's 3rd year at InternetWorld

Internet World is Europe's longest running, best attended and biggest annual event for digital marketing and online business.

Now in its 18th year, it is the only event that brings you everything you need to formulate and implement your online strategy, from digital marketing to ecommerce, content management to hosting. It showcases the UK’s leading suppliers, delivers Europe’s biggest free education programme and brings together Europe’s largest collection of visionary individuals from marketing, IT, digital, ecommerce and agencies.

Find out more about Internet World

If you are in and around London Earl's Court 2 during these dates come in and see us. Not only are we the main sponsor for the online and offline show guide we will also be premiering our brand new and exciting exhibition stand layout which has been designed to reflect GraphicMail's versatility and constant development.

If you are unable to see us, don't worry we'll keep you posted on Twitter, Facebook and our Blog and upload some of the images of the stand and exhibition once we return.

If you are in the area and would like to talk to us about something specific, your wants or requirements or even an idea for some custom development please let us know when you will be visiting and we'll try to make some time (and room) on the stand for you

The question

With the advent of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, you would be forgiven for thinking that email marketing was becoming less popular as a marketing tool – but that would be way off the mark!

The dependability of Email marketing to help build trusted, reliable customer relationships has lead to it being taken for granted. leaving little or nothing to debate. Even Search Marketing Specialists, when asked about their strongest tactic in a survey by MarketingSherpa, gave highest votes to"email marketing to a house list". It is a fact that investment in email marketing is growing, although marketing budgets in general are being cut.

So Why The Success

So why is it that email marketing is so successful?

• People are able to interact with your email. They buy the products that you advertise, they click to register for events, they click to download information and view articles on your website and so on. All of this as a result of an email that you sent them.
• When an email contains content that is of value to the readers/subscribers, it promotes the building of trust and loyalty and cements customer relationships. In particular, it keeps your organisation at the top of the purchasing list when subscribers are in the market to buy.
• The Technology now available to you as an Email Marketer, allows you to target your email and customise it to the specific characteristics of each individual subscriber. Furthermore, you will receive a mass of useful statistics in return, following each email send. For example, you get an overview of how many of your readers clicked on each link in an email – plus a drill-down to see who they actually were. This reveals your subscriber’s interests, allowing you to address these in your future emails.
• Email is also a major tool to assist all your other Sales & Marketing efforts, you could, for instance, alert your readers to an upcoming an event in your Company / Store / Organisation or even pre-warn them that you have a promotion Voucher or Catalogue on the way to them in the post.

Of course, this kind of success doesn't happen overnight automatically. Your successful email marketing endeavour will always depend on the ongoing construction of your mailing list - a list of people who have asked you to send to them your compelling and valuable emails – supported by the technical infrastructure which ensures that your emails are dispatched and delivered reliably.

Get these basics right, and you will reap the rewards.

Even before the sound of those New Year Bells has subsided, people in their millions have already begun to break one or more of those resolutions that have become a familiar part of the season’s activities; the resurgent desire to improve upon the past year, be that our health, wealth or emotional standing. To be fair on ourselves, maybe some of those ‘promises’ were just too unattainable to be called ‘Resolutions’ but, at least the good intention was there. On that same theme, here is a short list of email resolutions that you may want to sustain. Hopefully, unlike the ones we’ve just talked about, you will find these easier to follow – mainly because they are more a recap of important email marketing advice

1. Wealth – cleanup your mailing list and save money

Don’t continue wasting your send credits on those recipients who don’t read your email. Some can’t be bothered to unsubscribe, others have forgotten their subscription and now consider you as spam. So now’s the time to check your Reports and Statistics and make that decision about which of those ‘offenders’ to delete. If you delete any that haven’t read your newsletter for 6-months but are truly interested, you can be sure they’ll track you down and re-subscribe
If you have become too attached to any and can’t let them go then send them a nicely worded email asking if the still want to receive your newsletter and if they don’t ask them for reasons that they don’t – you’ll probably pickup some great tips + hints – you may also retain some of them.

2. Emotional - make use of the advanced features and Save time,
Take full advantage of the powerful advanced features on the GraphicMail system - they’ll save you time and make your life a great deal easier.

Some of the advanced features are :
a)  Subscriber Segmentation: A powerful tool which allows you to profile your customers according to criteria you have set. Use the tools that allow you, for instance, to send a newsletter about animals to just subscribers who are interested in animals. You’ll need to test it to find out more!

b)  Connecting to an external datasource: This allows you to link to your database and pull out information needed for your email campaign. With this function you don’t need to upload your datasets and maintain your data in more than one place.

3. Emotional - Stay "cool" - integrate your email newsletters with social media
For those of who you do not have a social media strategy in place – now is the time to get one! You can start with the two most basic & popular websites – Twitter and  Facebook. With GraphicMail you are can easily integrate your subscription form onto your Facebook page. By Including social media links in your email marketing message you can gain subscribers through your own social media pages.  These are two free reach extenders that will yield fantastic results. The rumour is that 2010 will be the year of the application and social media, even more-so than 2009 so now is a good time to start and tweak your current campaigns.

4. Emotional - Save face, monitor your Reports & Stats, check for hard bounces and make improvements

Being marked as a spammer will get you get a bad reputation. To avoid this nasty label spend some time deleting old subscribers from your mailing lists - they could be marking you as spam. Time spent analysing your stats carefully and studying ways to improve your open rates is never wasted. Personalise your subject lines making sure you avoid using use key spam terms with words such as "free", "bonus" or "order now". The only way you could possibly get away with using these words is if you combine them with strong keywords – or maybe create an image to display to word instead of text. And NEVER, NEVER put your subject line in capital letters. I also advise that you ensure that your recipient/s know who the email is from. Do this by amending the “from” line.
Analyse the design of your email to improve click-through rates. Do your links stand out? Are they clear? Do they look like links? Do they give your reader a reason to click them – use words of encouragement, even enticement!

5.  More Emotion - Check your image, engage your subscribers

There are lots of ways to engage your subscribers – you just need to think outside the box! Focus on the content. Is it well written and funny? Or is it long and dreary? You need to grab your audience straight away – your readers will not waste time reading a newsletter that is uninteresting or boring, so use bold headings in articles and use bullet points as they’re easier on the eye and more simple to read. When using images, use strong and emotive ones; a stretched, pixilated image looks very poor and unprofessional – also ensure that you have a good balance of both text and images.

Conduct a few tests. Send out one newsletter with a quirky subject line and look at your stats. The next time you send, use a longer subject line and cross compare the two.

Think about other aspects : the time of day you send your newsletter. Are people going to open your newsletter at 5 pm on a Friday? No! The most faithful of your subscribers is probably halfway out the door by then - and come Monday morning your newsletter is lost amongst the hundreds of emails that have made their way onto his monitor screen ( probably to be deleted on the basis that “If it’s important they’ll send again” ) they won’t have the time to read a newsletter. Any later than that and they have forgotten about it!

So - spend some rewarding time working on that subject line!

6. Wealth – Make savings - use new metrics such as the ROI calculator

Use GraphicMail ROI calculator to determine the Return On your Investment from each campaign. All you need to do is fill in the fields in the calculator; and the more accurate your numbers, the more realistic and meaningful will be your result.

7. Wealth - Retain your popularity - Get more subscribers

Offer competitions, promotions and viral campaigns to draw in the masses. Promote these on your website to build your own brand awareness.  The result will be an increase in your readership !

8. Health – Save your sanity – set reminders
This is a really good idea ( which also works well for other lifestyle activities ) - Enter an aide-memoire notes within your diary– at 3-month intervals, “Re-read my email Resolutions list” – this will just give you a nudge which will make sure you at the top of your game with these ‘Resolutions’ 

Good luck - Make 2010 your year!

Our email practices have been audited and approved by Return Path.

We are part of the largest, most respected whitelist program in the industry.

As a program member, we are part of a network of trust that covers more than 1.3 billion mailboxes!

Along with concise content and good timing, choosing a good subject line for your email is one of the most crucial things to consider. Email marketing is a convenient, yet problematic way of promoting your website or product.

The email subject line must grab the reader’s attention and keep retain it - meaning it has to be catchy and interesting enough for the recipient to take time to open and read your mail. On the basis that ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression’, the subject line is very often the only impression an email makes upon a customer - so mastering the magical one-liner is essential.

Some of the important points you should consider when writing your email subject line for a marketing campaign are:

Use the Recipient’s Name
Try to observe your own reactions when you’re reading the subject lines of emails that you’ve received, the ones that are sure to grab your attention are the ones with your name in the subject line.  Adding the recipient’s name gives conveys the impression that the email was sent personally to the reader. It’s important to note, however, that appending names on every email that has nothing else personalised in it, is a little too gimmicky. So be sure to include something personalised for the customer in the body of the email, otherwise don’t use their names to personalise the subject line.

Solution-Oriented Subject
Rather than using a brand or product name on the subject line, consider writing your subject to propose a solution. For instance, a website that sells and is promoting, antivirus software could have the following subject line; “How to get your computer protected from all viruses” rather than a product oriented subject such as “Brand New Antivirus software released”.

Keep it Intriguing
Leave the customers hanging by putting ellipsis on the subject line(...). This suggests that there is a continuation on the topic, thereby arousing curiosity.
Restrict information to Top ten lists

There is something interesting and attention grabbing about a top ten list because readers tend to like to see valuable information in scannable, bite-size chunks. A concise, informative list delivers more value than endless paragraphs - even if they contain the same amount of information.

KISS – Keep it Short and Simple
The ‘KISS Principle’ is well known in the field of marketing but seems harder to achieve in email marketing. Try to get your message across in two words rather than half-a-dozen as this will allow it to stand out from the rest of the content in the customer’s inbox.

The above points are just some of the basic guidelines you need to follow to create an email marketing campaign that is effective and won’t end up on the recipient’s trash folder. Try to keep in mind that choosing and using the right combination of words is vital in creating that all important, attention-grabbing, email subject line.

Picture this - you have everything in place - a good marketing campaign, you’ve built up a subscriber list, formed the perfect subject line with irresistible content and you even have the click tracking software in place to monitor results. You’ve tested it to a small group of people and received a positive response. These efforts however, will be wasted if you don’t successfully deliver it to the recipient. Email deliverability refers to the success of actually getting your emails delivered to the right person. In the world of email marketing, ‘almost’ is just not enough. Unless your email gets to the recipient, then your job is not done.

If you’re new to the world of email marketing, then you might wonder what the problem of email deliverability might be. You make an email and enter an email address and expect it to be delivered successfully. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in email marketing; you send to hundreds, even thousands of recipients but not everyone will get your email. In fact, 10% will most likely not.

There are various reasons why your emails are not reaching the intended destinations. The email boxes of the people you’re sending are first assessing your emails and then classifying if it will be sent to your inbox, marked as spam, or automatically deleted.

In order to ensure a high rate of email deliverability you should not try to beat spam filters but rather learn how to work with them.

If you’re hiring the services of a company to manage your email marketing solution, then they must be able to monitor the number of emails that went out and the ones that bounced back due to issues such as full inboxes or bad email addresses.

Aside from these, there are organisations that follow blocking policies and all emails from blocked IP addresses are automatically deleted. Some use blacklist software to identify emails that need to be blocked. There is nothing you can do when your emails are blocked or deleted,. However, there are methods to improve your email marketing campaign in order to reach a far greater number of targeted readers. This is where an email tracking service comes in handy.

This can tremendously help improve your email marketing campaign and can identify other issues that affect email deliverability - such as Content Filters where certain phrases must be avoided so as not to be tagged as spam - and Permission Filters where all emails that didn’t originate from an authorised source are blocked immediately.
All your hard work creating an email marketing campaign and establishing your contact list will be wasted if you don’t track and monitor the deliverability of your email.

Hi everyone! Here’s just a quick blog entry to advise you that we have updated our case study section. This can be found in the top navigation under the resources tab. There is so much misinformation on the internet today that it becomes difficult to know which company to trust. When I’m planning to travel I want to read reviews about specific areas and I want personal accounts of the places that I want to go; as well as what to avoid. Honest accounts, case studies and reviews from users are always helpful in making a more informed decision.   

Bearing this in mind, the GraphicMail team has sent out a comprehensive questionnaire to a variety of clients across a range of industries. The case studies section was designed to convey the many ways in which GraphicMail has assisted many companies across a variety of industries to increase their online exposure. It also provides readers with honest reviews from our reputable clients.  Many of our clients were pleased to go into some detail about which functionalities they found most useful; and how email marketing has increased their overall return on investment. These GraphicMail case studies prove that you don't have to be confined to specific industries to benefit from email marketing campaigns. Read our case studies to find out how a company within YOUR industry has benefited from the GraphicMail product.

Thus far, we have case studies in the following industry:

• Email marketing for financial institutions
• Email marketing for the tourism industry
• Email marketing for the advertising and pubishing industry

If you hold an account with GraphicMail and would like to partake in the case study questionnaire, then please contact us.