Dove sent their email newsletter to me late last week.  It looked pretty, but on closer inspection, I saw that the email made 5 errors that are each easy to make and easy to avoid.  These include consideration for blocked images, copywriting, calls to action and social media integration.

Mistake 1. The blocked image version.  In this email, everything good is blocked including headlines, sub-heads, and calls to action.  Read earlier posts about this bad example and good example – they are clearly easy to avoid.

Fix: Tell the client/Marketing Manager to chill on the ‘headings as images’ instruction and use normal type in web-friendly fonts for all the heading and sub-heads you can.  Don’t send an email that has all your calls to action as images – they vanish and you’ve just wasted hundreds (or I bet in Dove’s case) many thousands of dollars.  Use pre-header text to describe the content and best deals in the newsletter.

Mistake 2:  The email newsletter itself. This email is confusing and suffers from poor copywriting.  Generic and dull, the biggest error is the copy ‘Sign up for the latest Dove news’ but: no instruction on the process of sign up, and no link to sign up.  No consequence if I don’t.  Invisible call to action.  Lack of direction.  Flat design elements.  AND it’s from ‘noreply@’ again.  See our last post on this and why it’s a terrible idea.

Fix: Use engaging clever copy.  Hyperlink all places you expect an action.   Be clear and describe what you want them to do, when, how, and why.  And describe what will happen if I don’t,  ‘If you don’t register for My Dove, we will never email you again’.  Bring the call to action up from Antarctica and make it clearly part of the pathway through the email.  Have more than one call to action too if you want to get maximum clicks.

Mistake 3:  A truly arduous registration process, and lack of explanation of why I need to go through this.  You already have my email address and permission to use it or I wouldn’t have this email – so what’s ‘My Dove’ and why aren’t I on it?  I had to try three times to get the form to submit…  and THEN I got the second page…!  Although relevance and targeting are great, asking for this much information will lower completion rates and impact on database size just at the wrong time – when you want me to like you.

Fix: I’d suggest you first get me on board, then thrill me for a couple of issues, THEN ask me to fill out your forms to collect preferences once you’ve earned my time.

Sign Up Page One

Sign up step two

Mistake 4:  Where’s your social media?

Fix: For a brand using a digital agency with strong social media preference and nearly 400,000 likes on Facebook, there is a big hole here.  Two way sharing – join us on Facebook and Twitter, and Share this to your own Network, would brighten, modernise and provide more ways to get Dove in front of a wider audience.  See other posts on ways to do this:

SWYN and other ways to share your email

Facebook email marketing sharing

Mistake 5:  The online version has a confusing URL – this is not a Mens Survey! (http://dove-mens-survey.hollersydney.com.au/email/january/promo/?online=1) and malfunctioning personalisation.

Fix: It’s simple to create a single instance of the campaign that is minus personalisation and link to that.  You can use that one as the archive link on your website too if you need one there.

That’s a wrap, look forward to lots of comments and more examples of campaign you love and loath.  And why.

Need a robust, experienced, trusted email marketing team on your side to help you get this stuff right, no matter where you are in the world?

In a Social Media-mad marketplace, newsletters are largely regarded as like so totally 1998.  They’re so not.  Your organisations clients deserve to be the first to know about what’s going on. Many of you will even have a contracted or legal obligation to keep them up to date.  Newsletters can add real value to your clients lives, and to your brand, and are right on the money for many audiences.  Do you want to improve yours?  Or maybe just start doing one, finally?  Here is the first of my top 3 no-brainer ways to make sure the YourCo newsletter is the one your recipient looks forward to, and acts on.  The next 2 will follow over the next week right here at the GetSmart Blog.

#1 – Spy

You should receive the email newsletters from at least 10 other businesses like yours,  from at least three different continents.  This is my number one advised, most obvious, most effective and least used tactic.

Aim

It’s likely YourCo has dozens, hundreds or thousands of  ‘twins’ around the world and many of them have Marketing Managers with more experience and bigger budgets than you do.  You are looking for two things.  The world’s best YourCo registration process, and the world’s best YourCo email program.  In a nutshell, you want to be aware of businesses just like yours in Europe, in North America, and in Asia-Pacific, and how they use email marketing in relation to:

1. What they do that you should be doing
2. What they do that you should not be doing

You will be looking to offer your readers really useful  regular mandatory sections of content, ‘guest star’ type content, promotions both one off and ongoing, so look out for all of this.

Plan

Block out 2 hours in your diary for a solid start. Write a list of your key known competitors and comparable businesses locally and around the world.  Who are the award winners, the ones you aspire to be?

Next, write out search terms that describe your business – i.e. ‘modern art museum’. Register a webmail account for the purpose, and note the login details so you can pass them on if you need to, as this is research on behalf of your role (YourCoMarketingATgmail.com) not you.

Power up, and start by searching for the businesses you know/admire/relate to.

Register

Follow their registration process for email news.  Make notes about what you like and what you don’t.  Is it easy to find the registration form?   Is it in several places on the website?
Does it make you feel wanted/safe/special?  Does it clearly describe expectations and the benefits of joining? Do they ask too much or not enough information? Do they ask you to ‘submit’ or is the button labeled a more user friendly ‘join’ or ‘go’? Do they offer ‘preferences’ so you can pick your own areas of interest, frequency etc.? Do you receive an attractive and clever welcome email?

Rate

As the emails start to come in make a note of what works for you and what doesn’t it.  Make a list of things to check against.  Get your colleagues to rate them too.  What works for YourCo in tone, content, relevance, personalisation?  Which ones would you refer to others?  Why?

Screen & Purge

Keep an eye on which emails are helping you out and which are just a distraction. When you realise your are receiving something that is a total waste of time, then unsubscribe from it, noting the unsubscribe process too.  Is it easy?  Trustworthy?  Pleasant?  What might you like to use from the way it worked?

I doubt I need to do this but anyway: Let me disclaim here.  I’m not suggesting you plagerise, copy, rip off, or mirror other’s work.  Rather, spying is a great way to learn from others and apply the best of what you see to your own communications.  You can use spying to travel the world, do a competitive analysis and bring to YourCo’s customers the best or the rest.

Repeat this process every 6-12 months making sure you have the best, including newcomers.

Remember to keep it doable.  Get the basics right then review the whole inbox again when you have a particular idea to implement, such as a seasonal promotion, a list growth goal, or a competition to launch.

So that’s the 1st of this series of 3, the next 2 are on their way over the coming week.

Until then, comments always welcomed.

We think that the email marketing industry needs standard reporting and metrics.

Right now, it’s impossible to compare and benchmark response and deliverability rates across the industry because marketers get reports with different terms based on different calculations.

Technological barriers (more on this below) mean that some of the numbers are imperfect metrics but we could all make sure that the name of the  imperfect report is accurate.

Inaccurate or inconsistent metrics impact the credibility of email marketers.  If our metrics cannot conform to benchmarks, we lessen our ability to convince our management and our colleagues of our program’s success.  And that makes it harder to negotiate for resources.

The EEC is the US DMA’s email arm, and their metrics round table has produced a set of standardised metrics they want all email marketers to adopt.  The latest definitions are here.

There are lots of people (okay email freaks/geeks like me) who feel strongly about this.  This article and the comments below about Open Rates are the best kind of argument – considered, intelligent, experienced and a little bit argy-bargy… Which reports are most useful to you?  What do you think they should be called?  You can have your say below.

Loren starts off on the OPEN RATE (proposed rename = RENDER RATE)
“Here are some real-world examples of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies of email opens:
· The email is “opened” (launched), but images are blocked: not counted as an open
· The email is not opened (launched), but images are enabled and is read in the preview pane: counted as an open
· The text version of a multi-part message is read on a BlackBerry. The HTML version (with images blocked) is later opened in Gmail (or other email service/client). The email has been opened and read twice — but zero opens are recorded.
· A text version is opened and read but not clicked: not counted as an open
· A text version is opened and read, but the user clicks a link: not counted as an open with some email software. Others assign an open because the email was clicked on, which assumes an open.

…I think you get my point. With marketers increasingly being held accountable for their marketing spends and actions, do they really want to base performance reports and marketing decisions on such a flawed and inconsistent metric?
Further, the open rate is a process metric that does not measure return on investment or how well the campaign helped you achieve a strategic initiative for your company. Showing how much email contributes to the bottom line, not how many people opened your email, will help you secure a bigger share of the marketing budget.”

In response, we get comments like this from John Calder:

“I have to disagree that clicks are a better open indicator. Subject lines cause a message to be opened and read. Value proposition and call to action cause a link to be clicked. What happens after the click causes conversion.
Therefore, a weak subject line with a good value proposition and strong call to action may get more clicks even though fewer people have ‘read’ the message, than a good subject line where more people have ‘read’ the message with a weak value proposition and call to action. From that, which is the better subject line?
The people who buy from you or read your newsletter and really want what you have to offer will turn images on. They will show open rates along with click rates. These people are a good indicator of what people like them are interested in, and if that’s your target market I’d say that there’s some pretty good intelligence to be had there.”

This is a big subject and we’re doing a lot of work on it now.  What is most important to measure and benchmark, how should it be calculated and what should it be called?

I’d love to hear your thoughts with comments here on the GetSmart blog.  We will take all of these into account when we review our reporting layouts.  Our clients and our teams are pleased with our reporting now, but we’d love to be the first ESP in the world with the new standard names and calculations for all our reports.

This year we are 10 years old, and we have been asking… How has the email environment shifted over the last decade? This article shares, very clearly, the 10 valuable lessons we have learned that affect the success of email marketing.  Keys points:

Acquisition is important, but retention is where the money is
Email is all about the conversation again.
The ISPs are not the enemy
An email message is its own creation, not a repurposed web page
Email has broken free from the desktop
“What’s in it for me?” still rule
One size does not fit all
A marketer can’t claim success until it’s measured the right way.
Email can go social.
It’s time to blow up the silo
Read the article at iMedia, here.

I enjoyed reading this timely article on eMarketer; being smarter with the tools you have  is all you need to do a better job than the next guy.   And your customers will notice who’s doing a better job from what they see slip into the inbox, so we’ve built all these features into our newest version of SmartMail – Smartmail Pro.

As I’ve said recently, Email marketing is getting smarter.  We’re seeing an increasing number of clients looking to grow additional revenue streams to counter fall off as their customers change habits.  Planning List Acquisition programs is important to ensure that the quantity and quality of your databases improve.  Offering options is a wise move too, and so Preference Centres rather than all or nothing opt in / opt out mechanisms are becoming the rule.

Sticking to the tried and true is less of a workable option when your business demands ROI from each strategy and campaign, and ‘branding’ on its own is not enough.  Extending the reach of your emails is easy using existing technology like your website, customised landing pages, share to social links, and you can measure all this with click tracking through to conversion (using Google Analytics for example).