In follow up to the two earlier posts (it’s not my birthday, and it is my birthday)! about the opportunity to use date fields in your database to send personal and relevant eDM’s to your clients, I am here to report that a grand total of 2 organisations have used my birthday for an email campaign.

Robin Judkins is from New Zealand, the longstanding master of the Speights Coast to Coast.  Robin’s email is personalised in great detail (click on it to see detail), focuses on the fact that birthdays are a good time to review and set goals, and he reminds me that I haven’t re-registered for my second shot at the world’s most gruelling multi-sport race.  Simple, effective, personal and appreciated.  (P.S. I’m planning for a repeat in 2012 if you’re up for it?)

Banana Republic is from the USA.

I only subscribe becuase a lot of our clients are retailers and we like to get the best form the rest to be continually able to offer tips and advice as well as examples of best practise.  I haven’t ever purchased online from them, but they clearly have a triggered date program that sent this to me.

No personalisation as such other than they sent it in November which is my birthday month, but it’s better to do something than nothing, and this is a something.

I’m sad to say none of our own clients sent a birthday campaign, automated manual or otherwise, clearly we have a lot of work to do to convince them that this is worth doing or they would be doing it, surely?

Hey retailers? Suppliers? Ecommerce websites? Professional services?  You have my birthdate on file, why not use it and see how much money you can get me to spoil myself with – it’s only once a year and you might just find out that I’m worth it.

I’m so sure this is a great opportunity that I’m happy to talk to you and get something started as soon as you are ready – let m know.

Conversely – if you don’t do birthday or anniversary eDM campaigns and you think you have a good reason why not – tell us why in the comments below, please.

Lastly – there is NO linking or promoting to Social Media going on here… when I know for a fact that most people who do know its my birthday find our via a Facebook update.  There is the perfect and relevant opportunity to wish your customers the happiest of days, and also encourage them to share the wishes with their networks, allowing you a branding opportunity that will reach as wide as their peer group does.  Now that’s bang for your buck.  For other posts about this type of sharing see SWYN, and Free Money.

I’ve got a year to get some action round these parts – how hard can it be?

See this post in the same topic http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=151226

Back in July I wrote a post about my birthday even though it wasn’t actually my birthday. You might remember it.  In fact I hope you do, because it offered a really simple, actionable tip for you.  Here it is again ‘Happy Birthday to meee’.

Well, now it really is my birthday so I thought I’d offer up myself as an experiment.  I’m on dozens, hundreds of databases around the world, and a great many have my date of birth.  Lots of them have quite a bit of my cash, as I have purchased things from them. And most have active email marketing programs.  A number of them tell me when it’s their birthday – and they ask me to get in on the action by spending money with them!

So I wonder how many of them will take the opportunity to make me feel known and appreciated, with a simple triggered Birthday email, and get themselves seen too as I post them here for you to see?

They have four days.  Tick, tick, tick…

Watch this space.

I know we’ve talked about this before  (along with every blogger and ESP in existence!) but clients keep calling me and asking me.  Yes it’s true.  Sending your email on the right day, at the right time, can have a HUGE impact on the success of your campaign.

Unfortunately!

I mean that ‘unfortunately’.  It’s really annoying that you can’t just build your brand, get the copy right, and the offer right, and get your call centre staff all chirpy on the phone, and your bricks’n'mortar’ all looking beautiful… why can’t it be enough to just get all of the elements all perfect and then send it any old time?

There are many factors involved in a successful campaign.  None of them (or very few) are black or white.  Most involve a good part of all of science, maths, technology, intuition, experience and art!  And add anthropology too.

Results for Email by Day of the Week

So, sticking to just one question – which day is the best day to send email? Our Jericho Email Marketing Report this year (download it free here) showed some interesting results.  We looked at the volume of email sent on each day of the week, and which days performed best for opens, and click throughs recorded and… drum roll please…

Top Open Rate Days of the Week:  Monday & Friday
Top Click Through Days of the Week: Saturday & Monday
Worst day for Open Rate and Click Through Rates: Sunday

Perhaps all those years of us recommending Tuesday and Thursday meant that they and Wednesday ended with more volume, and therefore less response.  Monday and Friday have been abandoned to an extent by marketers, so there’s opportunity to get organised and snatch those opens and clicks…   and then there’s Saturday – that dark horse that gets more than it’s fair share of clicks.  So, what’s the best day to send my email campaign?  The long answer is that there are more questions! Are you talking to consumers or other businesses? Are you providing information or asking for a sale? Is it time critical or general update?  Is it a one off, or a regular campaign?  There is no doubt that Mum and Dad at home (B2C) are more likely to read their email during the weekend than an office worker (B2B).

TIP
Put yourself in your recipient’s shoes. When would you be most open to receiving, opening, and responding to the email?  One of the simplest ways to decide is to test it! Split your database in two, then send the same campaign to each half at each of your selected times.  Compare the response metrics.

Remember that a good platform like ours at www.smartmailpro.com will let you set up A/B testing yourself, as well as schedule sends so that even if you are not there on Monday (or Friday) your email marketing can get the best results possible.  Good luck – and let me know how it goes )

As you know, Email, Facebook and Twitter are what everyone is doing  online right now.  See this post about the state of social media in New Zealand.  And, the role of marketing is to increase the consumers’ propensity to buy something from you.

So, how do the most popular online activities influence the likelihood that you will sell something?

Recent market reports (linked below) show that consumers who engage with you on Email and Twitter are more likely to buy from you than those who don’t.

As you can see from the graph here, although the Twitter user is more likely to ‘agree’, the balance at neutral is the same.  So if we assume that neutral means they are more or less likely to buy, we’ll call them equal.   The influence of Facebook drags behind a little.

One reason for that difference might be that when someone makes you a Facebook ‘fan’ or ‘friend’, they are already likely to buy from you.  Hence the act of being a fan doesn’t INCREASE their likelihood to buy.

So whilst email and Twitter are equal, Twitter is still a tiny minority of consumers – especially b2c ones (approx 6%) … so clearly email is still your best bet for developing relationships that lead to sales.

As you’ve seen in earlier posts, Jericho is talking with many of our clients about the place that share with your network (SWYN) has in the email campaign. Many of these clients, and wider business in general, have not implemented an active social media strategy yet – no bustling Facebook pages, no Twitter account, and sometimes a blog that’s mostly dead! For these clients especially, as well as making it easy for your customers share their favourite bits of your campaigns, SWYN is a great way to use social media without having to have your own company pages.

In good email, like all direct marketing, it’s important to think about your aims and make sure you have a clear message with the right calls to action, in each communication. You have to balance that with the ‘real estate’ available in your email too of course. Do you use the premium areas for ‘friending’ or for selling?

Friend get friend is still a great strategy. It’s aims are different – it is asking people to recommend others who should be a part of your email marketing communications database(s). As you know continually growing your email database is critical as the list naturally ‘churns’ over time, and as the email channel is much more powerful in terms of getting ‘permission’ to talk to as many people as possible is critical! One thing that is showing up loud and clear is that subscribers need to be bribed or rewarded quite a lot to bother to ‘share’ invites, and rewarding the invitees equally, is important too.

It also needs to be balanced with the legal ‘grey area’ around refer a friend or friend get friend read more including our most popular post ever, on that here.

As I said, Email, Facebook and Twitter offer unique strengths to marketers and consumers alike.

There has been a lot of great research recently on how each channel affects the recipients propensity to purchase:

How Effective Is Sharing via Email vs. Social Media?
Users still sharing by email
Fans, Followers or Subscribers – how do you meet their needs?

One thing is for sure that this is a dynamic area and it’s a moving target requiring part a lot art, part a ton science!

To read our weekly blog posts for the most comprehensive posts on emarketing, and email marketing in New Zealand, click the JERICHO logo at the top of the post here, and pick through the menu on the right hand side, or use the Search box.