Marketing Sherpa recently released the 2013 Marketing Benchmark report. It’s the latest and most comprehensive collection of email marketing research stats and insights in market.  We bought it and whilst we can’t reproduce it for you due to copyright reasons, we are happy to share some of the findings.  You can also get an excerpt of it here.

As Marketing Sherpa says, “email is a venerable tactic that is often dismissed as being too rudimentary for today’s focus on real-time information. Yet, email continues to endure, and even thrive, under such scrutiny, continually proving its worth through better delivery practices, more advanced design, and strategic integration with other channels”

A few of the key insights from the report are:

60% of organisations using email reported that email marketing is producing a positive return on their investment (ROI)

83% report they are involved with tracking, reporting and analysing their email metrics – yay – no ‘set and forgets’ around here! And the metrics that organisations track the most? Clickthrough rate and open rate are the most popular by far, both sitting at around 90% – the next most measured metric is unsubscribe rate at 75%.

It appears that content is still king – the most effective tactic of all is content and in particular for B2B marketers, whitepapers and other premium content was considered the most effective of all. As we have said before, it is still not worth sending an email unless there is content worth reading, sharing or discussing. And this is shown as a key goal as 67% report that the top goal for the next 12 months is to deliver highly relevant content.

And for the biggest question of all – which is the best day to send? Well the results are in! Tuesday (At 26%) and Wednesday (At 23%) were, by far, considered the most effective days to send overall.  We find that this depends on the business you are in to some degree – read our earlier analysis here.  Further, retail email with a mobile friendly design is showing good results when sent on a Saturday or Sunday.  We see that while the open rates may be slightly lower, the click through and action rates can be very strong indeed.

Despite the rise of ‘mobile’, 58% of people are still not designing emails to render differently on mobile, let alone mobile specific versions of their emails.  However that same 58% recognises the pervasiveness of smartphones and tablets and they expect that mobile will dramatically affect or change their email marketing program in the next 12 months.   And with the continuing rise of the use of mobile as our primary device, it is not surprising to hear most say that they realise all their email designs and strategies need to be revamped for mobile compatibility.

But mobile isn’t everything – Social Media is only 1% behind mobile at 57% as the next most important aspect, and most recognise social media as a primary communications tool and is becoming one of the main ways they interact and engage with their audience.

82% believe their list is growing slowly or not all.  Data ages, people change and your list shrinks.  Without a process for active planning for acquisition and a continual focus on growing your list, your list will shrink and the quality will deteriorate. Keep in mind that both paid search and co-registration programs performed poorly in comparison to other list growth tactics such as offering exclusive content or using the good old website registration page.

And in terms of improving your email deliverability? This area is lacking somewhat. 60% of you provide an easy unsubscribe process, (But that’s still 30% of you who don’t) And only 50% of you remove bounces, and worse still only 40% report they regularly clean their lists. There is some work to be done here!

What about triggered emails? This powerful area of email marketing often brings the greatest results however it is sorely underutilised. Just 50% of respondents report they deploy welcome emails. That is 50% of people who don’t! And most other types of triggered email activity are only being used by 19% – 35% of respondents. Overall, surveyed marketers did not appear to commonly re-engage subscribers, as just 15% indicated their organisations sent win-back emails, and just 9% sent shopping cart abandonment reminders. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

One of the biggest things that may be stopping people achieving all their email marketing goals is the fact that 54% report inadequate staffing resources, expertise or time, as noted in this comment: “Our greatest challenge is time. We have been doing email campaigning for about 18 months, so we are still learning. We have a robust database but lack time and resources to mine it like we could.”

One other area of concern that came out of this report was a lack of capability to properly segment and target recipients, as little more than half of respondents indicated they could segment their lists by email engagement behaviour (55%) or purchase history (53%), and just 38% said the same about user-declared personal preferences. Even fewer (28%) could segment based on user device habits. “This is telling, as it shows a distinct gap between marketer actions, and the wants and needs of subscribers”

So what’s the bottom line? “Email remains a marketer’s most effective tool in terms of content reach. But, even the widest-cast net won’t produce results if your readers aren’t compelled by your content, or, even worse, aren’t receiving it at all. Proper list growth and management, alongside engaging, consistently delivered content, are the keys to maximizing email effectiveness.”

Are birthday emails really as effective as you say they are?

Yes indeed, a really good birthday email can not only help you stand out, create a positive brand impression with your subscribers,  increase revenue and customer loyalty,  birthday emails on average get a 300% higher open rate and a 100% higher click through rate than normal email campaigns!

In the email marketing world we call this type of email ‘Event Driven Email’ because it’s triggered off a specific event or date. It’s also a marketer’s favorite type of email because the results speak for themselves.

So who is showering their subscribers with birthday love? 

ASOS for one.  Their angle? They are offering a 10% discount, which is very enticing, and the call to action button is straight forward and says ‘shop now’.  So it’s still a benefit to the recipient but their intent is clear. See their email below.

Event Driven emails can be sent for other reasons apart from birthdays. Think about other celebratory moments that could work just as well such as anniversaries.

It’s never too late to start gathering profile information about your subscribers. The key is to be smart about it and don’t be creepy….  Combine it with another offer or promotion and clearly explain what they will get either now or later and tell them straight up the what, why etc. For example I would be happy if you sent me an email that said ‘Do you like free cake? If you update your birthday information we will send you free cake on your birthday’

The other great thing is a birthday email is a great way to drive traffic to a store, shop, movie theater, restaurant…  Think about how many people head to Valentines for their birthday because they get to eat free!

Are you using your customer’s birth date to good effect? Read our previous post about how to use birth date fields in your database to send personal and relevant eDM’s to your clients…

And here is previous roundup of great birthday email marketing campaigns !  Share!  Tell your friends!  Happy birthday!

Following on from our last post on the art of the Welcome, we’ve gathered some examples here for you to look at, comment on, learn from and copy for your own welcome email program.

Also check other posts here like “You are not alone – 2 campaigns we love, and why” and one from right back in 2008 “Welcome Warmly“.  In all, there are 22 months of blog posts here at Jericho’s GetSmart Blog to help your email marketing performance.

Welcome messages are so important. A survey published in MarketingSherpa’s Best Practices in Email Marketing Handbook found that:
– 54% of respondents stated that they open and read transactional messages “very often or always.”
– Only 21% of respondents reported opening and reading other opt-in email with the same frequency.
Out-take: The Welcome email is 150% more likely to be opened and read than your email newsletter.

We have underlined key areas of each Welcome email, and each thumbnail links to a larger version of the email image.  Also each company name below links to their website.  (As we have said before one of the best ways to improve your email marketing is to spy!)

Whether it’s the first time someone registers for your e-newsletter, the first time they walk into your showroom, or their first online purchase, first impressions can make a huge difference to whether the prospect is ‘in’ or ‘out’ of your ongoing eDM program – and with lifetime value measurements, your ongoing revenue!

Example 1: A basic email that covers what it needs to and major subscriber engagement – works so well because of the style, and copy, really.  I’ve written about that before, so I’ll just link to that – Welcome to US.

Example 2: Another basic looking email with a value-add which incentivised the registration, The Whisky Shop from Auckland nails a great Welcome on a low budget.

Example 3: Alice.com – I wish we had this in New Zealand.  The shopping site where you can buy all your non-perishables, leaving you free to get your fresh supplies from your local markets.  The Alice.com Welcome email includes clear calls to action to get started – the best place to do this is in the welcome email.  Could improve: They mention emails they will send that are related to your activity, but no mention of what else they will send or how frequently.

Example 4: Anthropologie.com An office favourite here, our design and production teams love the gentle designs and copy in the Anthropologie emails.  The Welcome describes the frequency and content of the emails, benefits first is always good.  They also invite you to help the emails arrive with an action of your own – add to your address book.

Example 5: OldNavy.com An Welcome offer for your first purchase might be just what you are after.  If so, Old Navy is here to help with 20% off your first purchase.  They link to their family of brands, to their Social Media profiles, and offer T&C’s for the promo – BUT – no description of email frequency or content, and no way to share the email to our social network – missing out on the newly engaged readers propensity ot share right when they are most excited to meet you - a useful trick that is overlooked here.

Example 6: KNOW from Positively Wellington Tourism is a top quality e-newsletter that you should subscribe to.  The KNOW Welcome email is on the money in every way.  They set up the anticipation of frequency, describe the content type, remind you of the email address you used to register, invite you to follow and fan them, and link to key content areas with site-matching nav tabs - PLUS they invite you to share the email to your social networks, invite a friend to subscribe too, and they even link back to the subscribe page in case you forward this email – allowing a clear path to subscribe if the friend you forwarded it to wants to sign up too.    I can’t find a thing wrong with email, can you?  (Disclosure: KNOW is a client of our agency, Jericho).

Example 7: RachelZoe.com The Rachel Zoe website earns a special mention before we even examine the Welcome email.   That’s because as you’ll see if you visit the site, the home page is totally about the email registration.  It is unthinkable how many websites I find that force you to search to sign up for email.  The best email marketers (including the GAP family of sites) use the priority real estate of their home page to sell you to the sign up.  If you make money sending email (and you do if you do it right) then your number one goal should be to get the email address of your site visitor.  Sure you want them to look around, but if you get the email address you get the chance to make your case time and time again…  Next blog post = tricks to great subscription forms!  This Welcome email does a number of things right.  It welcomes warmly (she is ‘beyond excited’ to have you aboard).  She sets expectation of frequency, and content.  She covers the housekeeping with how to get the email delivered to you (‘imagine the disaster…’!), and tell your friends, and a nice obvious unsusbcribe too.

Example 8: Outstanding in the wrong way this welcome email misses the mark in almost every way.   Dull,  unengaging, confusing.  It was also sent in the small hours of the morning hours after I had subscribed.   This is a major Government department (the NZ equivalent of the IRS) and although we expect them to be a bit behind there is simply no excuse for emails like this leaving the building.  The newsletter it prefaces is a useful and important communication, let down by this welcome.  Check out the reply email address.  Not only am I unlikely to retain this email for future reference, as am I commanded to do, I am actually a little bit frightened of it!

We would like this to continue to grow into the best resource for welcome email examples on the blogosphere.  You can help!  Comment on these ones, and please send examples of emails you have recieved, good or bad, to us at getsmart@jericho.co.nz

Writing great content about emarketing takes time, and the more people who read it the better, so please help us to grow – and read our other posts – we have lots of original articles here.  Link to our blog, tell your friends about the GetSmart blog and use the SHARE links below to post to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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

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.