Engagement Marketing Blog (EMEA)

Email Marketing Works Because…

By Riaz Kanani, on 14 September, 2009

Tamara Gielen, an expert in email marketing and based in Belgium, asked her Twitter followers to finish the sentence “Email marketing works because…”. The result has been a great list of reasons why email marketing is an important part of the mix for any marketer today.

Here are my fave five:

- @marcmunier: Email marketing works because people spend more time at their inbox than any other online activity

- @djwaldow: “Email Mktg works b/c it has a proven, measurable, ROI; easy to test; “Long” track record; digital glue of SM

- @jewelss: bc it’s cost-effective & allows u to form a personal relationship w/ a consumer by way of their inbox!

- @thecmunzproject: Email marketing works because it opens up a conversation that otherwise you could not have with your members.

- @LorenMcDonald: Email marketing works because when done correctly no marketing comms channel resonates more w/ subscribers & delivers higher ROI

You can see the full list on Tamara’s blog here.

Dealing with 9000 marketing emails a year

By Riaz Kanani, on 22 June, 2009

Forrester have released a report predicting that individuals are are going to receive 9000 email marketing messages a year. That’s is nearly 25 marketing emails a day.

Already today, email marketers are being advised to engage with their recipients rather than just trying to target them. If your recipients are going to be receiving that many emails everyday, engagement is going to be critical. Let’s face it, most of those emails are not going to be opened.

Dela Quist wrote on the DMA’s email marketing blog last week about recipients being “unemotionally subscribed”. These are those users that make up the majority of your list – the ones that are not always opening and reading your emails. They stay subscribed preferring instead to ignore your emails because there might be a use for them another time. Unsubscribing now would mean the hassle of trying to find the website again when I actually want to read the email. I am defintely guilty of this – though likewise a subject line might temporarily sway me from locating the delete button immediately.

So how can you stand out from the pack and engage with your audience?

Before you can engage with your list, you first need to listen and understand your audience. Here are 3 ways to start engaging more with your list.

Use behavioural information from website tracking or through share-to-social type tools to add one level of understanding; as well as surveys, replies or other tools to obtain more specific responses.

Use techniques like Silverpop’s send time optimisation feature to deliver your message at a time when the recipient is more likely to be in front of their computer.

Once you have a deeper understanding of your list, you are then able to split your list up into 4 categories and look at reports based on these groups.

1. “unemotionally subscribed” – see above

2. “engaged” – those who have opened, clicked etc

3. “engaged to buy” – showed a desire to purchase or have purchased

4. “engaged to influence” – those who are virally spreading your brand to others

More to come on this, as being engaged with your list is going to become more critical over time!

Further resources:

Webinar: Maximise Results with Engagement Marketing Technologies

Whitepaper: Engagement Marketing: Partnering With Your Customers for Success

Case Study: National Express

[image credit: quinn.anya]

Design tips for B2B marketers

By Riaz Kanani, on 3 June, 2009

At Silverpop’s recent Masterclass, I was asked Do you have any design tips for B2B marketers? I thought this was worth postiing here as well.

The first is to remember that whether it is B2B or B2C marketing you’re in – the recipient is an individual and should be treated as such. You can do this in a number of ways such as using personalisation or personalised messaging that targets their preferences or responds to their behaviour in previous emails or online.

Also, think about the kind of emails you enjoy reading and consider putting some personality into your content, maybe even creating an editorial voice for your newsletters. In our creative study, we found that B2B recipients responded well to text based layouts, but they are increasingly busy with overloaded inboxes so you need to make sure the text is easy to scan in a few seconds using bullet points and/or bold or coloured text to highlight key points. This doesn’t mean you should stop using images, but use them wisely and keep them relevant and not in the top left corner. Consider coloured backgrounds rather than massive images if you are looking to make an impact and break up the email (Texas Instruments do this well).

Finally consider your mobile audience and include a quality text version of your email but also think about how people use their mobiles for email. I know that I often look at my inbox on the way in to work, deciding what messages I need to follow up on later and often deleting emails I don’t have time for or am not sure what the message is. I don’t have an iPhone, so it is the first 20-25 characters of the subject line as well as the first 3-5 sentences of text that allow me to make a decision. A link to an online version which is part of a website that takes ages to download doesn’t interest me and neither does an article snippet that goes through to a web site that renders the entire article as part of an entire webpage that I can barely read on my phone because of the navigation and other content. However, a compelling offer I can identify as interesting straight away will get saved for later and an article I can read whilst on the train will hold my attention (and keep me busy on the train) and mean I’ll have another look at the email and act on it when I get to my computer.

As you design your emails, think about your own behaviour on emails and ask friends, colleagues and user base what they like in the business emails they receive. Focus on ensuring the message is instantly clear (in the preview pane and without images) and making an impact in a few short seconds whatever the recipient’s platform.

Julie Joseph

eMarketing Strategy Consultant

(Image courtesy of daviddesign)

European spam levels update

By Riaz Kanani, on 27 May, 2009

SPAM Symantec (now owner of MessageLabs) has released their latest report showing that spam levels have actually fallen in the UK to 90.3%. Unfortunately for those of us in the United Kingdom, this still makes us the 3rd most spammed country in the world.

Elsewhere in Europe, Germany’s spam rate reached 84.8% of all email whilst the Netherlands climbed to 82.4%. Globally spam hit a 20 month high in May, increasing by 5.1% on last month.

May spam statistics

Spam is something that ISPs have to deal with everyday and Silverpop of course works closely with these ISPs to ensure our clients have excellent deliverability rates. Here are 5 simple steps you can follow to further aid your ability to enter the inbox:

1. Don’t send unexpected email. If subscribers opted in to receive your “Tips & Tricks” newsletter, don’t suddenly start sending them your pure product promotion emails, unless they clearly requested them.

2. Choose your sender/from name carefully. Use your most recognisable and expected brand as part of the name.

3. Don’t over-email. Stick to a frequency that you promised during the opt-in process or that is consistent with what most recipients would expect.

4. Avoid overaggressive language and spammy-looking content such as very large fonts, big red letters—anything that looks unprofessional and could be confused with a true spam email.

5. Make it extremely easy to unsubscribe.

Other resources:

Whitepaper: Email Delivery Rates Above 95%: 16 Must Dos to Make It Happen

Webinar: Deliverability Questions: From A to Z in 30 Minutes

What is the level of disengagement from your emails?

By Riaz Kanani, on 18 May, 2009

The majority of our clients are very focused on how they are engaging with recipients. Whether it is looking at open rates, click rates or effective rates across one mailing or multiple mailings the focus is very much on the activity levels on their emails. These are all very valuable and important metrics.

However, even without all the research that has been done on this topic, we all know that up to 80% of people do not engage with your emails and that recipients are becoming increasingly frustrated with irrelevant emails sent to them too often. As a result the question now being asked is:

What is the level of disengagement from your emails?

As email marketing gains greater visibility within companies, pressure is increasingly being placed on email marketers to send out more mails – especially given the provable uplift in revenue generated from each campaign.

Often the timelines get shortened and before you know it you’re expected to send out twice as many mailings which leads to less targeted and less thought out campaigns. This will almost certainly work the first time but quickly the engagement and conversion metrics will start to decrease. How many recipients are unsubscribing as frequency increases? What impact does a less targeted campaign have on opt outs and abuse rates?

As pressure mounts make sure you monitor all your metrics closely, and track not only the level of engagement but the disengagement some activities may result in. Customers are increasingly fickle (Brits are more likely than other Europeans to change their minds after researching online according to a MediaScope Europe survey) and with a plethora of companies vying for every piece of business it’s important to minimise activities which may lead to the long term decline in your ability to re-engage with your audience (and a significant reduction in the number of people you can engage with!).

Julie Joseph

eMarketing Strategy Consultant

(Image courtesy of AliceNWondrlnd)

Silverpop Masterclass 2009

By Riaz Kanani, on 8 May, 2009

Silverpop is hosting its 5th Annual Masterclass event next week for B2B and B2C marketers. The event is aimed at helping marketers boost results and prove their value to the bottom line, which is obviously important to us marketers in today’s environment!

The day is split into two, with a focus on B2B in the morning followed by a more broader look at Engagement Marketing in the afternoon. You can see the agenda below and also see all the presentations from the event.

Silverpop Masterclass 2009 – B2B Engagement Marketing

9:30am Don’t Let Leads Slip Through Your Fingers – Engagement Marketing and Lead Management

Will Schnabel, Silverpop

Engagement marketing has moved to the forefront of the B2B marketing vernacular,

and with it, the robust strategy of integrated lead management has finally come

of age. For the B2B sales and marketing world, it is no longer a luxury, but an

imperative, to be able to nurture and score leads until they are ready for

sales. In this presentation, we will discuss the newest findings in lead

generation and management, including:

- The newest strategies used in developing a modern lead-generation process

- The key components of a robust lead nurturing strategy

- Aligning sales and marketing to maximize the benefits of lead management efforts

- The newest innovations in marketing automation to support integrated lead management

10:45 am Panel Discussion: Crossing the Chasm: Best-in-Class Sales and Marketing Integration

Sally Hewitt, Pitney Bowes Stephanie Robotham,Salesforce.com, Adrian James, Curious Group

Moderated by Joel Harrison, B2B Marketing Magazine

World-class demand generation and lead management now requires a much tighter

and higher level of integration between sales and marketing than ever before. Do

the efforts and costs involved with the alignment between these functions

pay-off in terms of increased efficiencies and improved revenues? Experts on

both sides of the divide discuss the benefits and pitfalls of incorporating a

lead-management integration program into your marketing efforts. Panellists will

discuss:

- How to build the business case to initiative a sales and marketing integration program

- The best places to start in initiating a lead-management program for your organisation

- How you can measure the impact of lead management on sales effectiveness

- Key lessons learned from best-in-class companies that focus on performance through integration

11:30 am Measuring Up in the Downturn

Stuart Small, Industry Leader for B2B & Public Sector, Google

Insights from Google into how to drive leads using information available online to marketers.

Silverpop Masterclass 2009 – Engagement Marketing

2:00pm Six Steps to More Engaged Subscribers,

Loren McDonald, Silverpop

Understand the key to delivering unprecedented ROI and gain insights into

achieving this with engagement email marketing.

3:30pm Measuring Success with Social Marketing,

Tom Nixon, Nixon McInnes

Examining successful real world social marketing techniques and the metrics used

to understand success

4:15 pm Panel: Engagement Email Marketing Problems Solved.

Adrian James, Curious Group, Noorin Virani, Visit London, Alex Powell, STA Travel

Moderated by Riaz Kanani, Silverpop

Success stories and techniques from implementing advanced engagement marketing

techniques such as Shopping Basket Abandonment, "share to social" and Send-Time Optimisation.

Improving your Lead Nurturing Programs

By Riaz Kanani, on 30 April, 2009

Image courtesy piermario This week I presented at Internet World on behalf of the IDM on the benefits of using Lead Scoring and Lead Nurturing as strategies that can help B2B marketers to efficiently qualify and manage leads from first click to lifetime customer.

One of the biggest advantages of an effective lead nurturing campaign is the ability to use automated communications to enable you to work on prospect lifecycles offering truly relevant and timely information. However, sending information at the right time isn’t enough. You also need to make sure the content you are sending remains relevant to the individuals you are speaking to. One of the easiest ways to do this is using simple dynamic content based on the information you have collected as part of the lead management process. For example, when sending case studies as part of your program – instead of sending a generic case study to everyone – target the email by industry sector and send them something they can really identify with. If you have a number of products then send out information on those that are most suitable based on information you have collected previously. Examples of these could be company size, industry sector, number of sales staff etc.

Good marketing is about providing relevant information at the right time. Technology today is a great facilitator of email communications that enable you to take part in a conversation with your customers and prospects, listening to what they want and responding accordingly.

Julie Joseph

eMarketing Consultant, Silverpop EMEA

(Image courtesy of piermario)

Silverpop at Internet World 2009

By Riaz Kanani, on 27 April, 2009

Silverpop is going to have plenty of presence at Internet World this week with no less than three people holding sessions at the show as well as our stand at E7087.

Look out for the following sessions from the EMEA team:

Engagement Marketing – anticipation instead of interruption:Discussion of key trends that are greatly affecting the ability of email marketers to succeed.

Will Schnabel – VP, General Manager EMEA

Email, Mobile Marketing & Analytics Theatre: Tuesday 28th April, 10:40-11:10am

Engagement through email: How to improve efficiencies through lead scoring and nuturing and managing the sales and marketing relationship better. Actionable tips and advice for getting started.

Julie Joseph, eMarketing Strategy Consultant

Email, Mobile Marketing & Analytics Theatre: Wednesday 29th April, 16:00-16:30am

Panel Debate: DMA Council

As the recession bites, marketers are often pressured into sending more email. What will be the impact of this now and in the longer term?

- What is the impact of this on ROI?

- How do you cut through the clutter?

- Is the situation different for B2B?

- Will volumes change again when the economy improves?

Riaz Kanani, Director, Product Marketing-Internationl

Email, Mobile Marketing & Analytics Theatre: Tuesday 28th April, 16:00-16:30am

We will be Twittering away during the event as well – you can follow us at @Silverpop. There is also a hashtag to allow you to follow the event (#iwexpo) here.

See you there!

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