I’m always telling you that email marketing is the top-performing direct marketing channel, or that it’s the most popular marketing channel.  Of course, we’ve been saying this for years now and you’re probably thinking “Sure, it was two years ago  - but a lot’s changed since then…”

So here are some the latest stats on email marketing usage.  (I found most of these through Mark Brownlow – an independent email marketing expert – and others from a range of international marketing organizations.)

•    According to the Radicati Group, a technical market research company (Email Statistics Report 2010 – 2014), there are over 2.9 billion active email accounts internationally – this figure is predicted to reach over 3.8 billion by 2014.
•    Email makes more revenue than any other direct marketing channel. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) determined that email marketing generated $42.08 for every dollar spent on it during 2010.
•    During the second half of 2010 the DMA also found that email was the most popular online marketing tool amongst US and Canadian marketers.
•    The Society of Digital Agencies conducted a 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook Survey.  According to the results, 70% of marketers planned on investing in email marketing.
•    Research by Merkle indicates that 74% of online adults prefer email for commercial communication.

Take a look at Mark’s full summary of email marketing statistics here.

Very.  Read the stats.

If you follow this blog on a regular basis, you’ll know that I’ve touched on social media, and the potential effects of combining email marketing and social media marketing, on various occasions.  Social media, after all, has received a great deal of attention in the digital marketing sphere.  eMarketer Daily and MarketingWeek both recently released some stats that I found very interesting – it indicates how well marketers have managed to integrate their email and social channels.


So how well does integrating email marketing and social media work?

According to eMarketer Daily, 34% of the respondents in their survey chose social media as the channel that, when integrated with email marketing, yields the best results.  Only 3% chose mobile marketing – I think we might see a rise in that percentage in the not-so-distant future. Overall, more than 54% of the respondents said that they saw some improvement, whether significant or marginal, when integrating their email and social media marketing.

Not surprisingly, most of these marketers integrated Facebook and Twitter into their campaigns – apparently, Facebook is the social network that gets the most positive results. MarketingWeek reported that 47% of email marketers integrate either Facebook, Twitter or both into their email campaigns.

Studies have shown that email subscribers are more engaged with a brand than social media followers, so converting people from Facebook or Twitter followers to signing up for your email newsletter generally represents a higher level of engagement, commitment or interest from their side.  Be sure to call out your Facebook and Twitter pages from your newsletter, but also use social media to let people know that you have an email newsletter they can sign up for.  While you’re at it, remember that you can also post a newsletter subscription form to your Facebook page.

Do you remember the social share feature we launched earlier this year?  Well, when you look at the above stats, I’m sure you realize why we said it was such an important tool to use!

To see all the different ways in which you can integrate social media with your email marketing efforts, watch this quick video.

I (and the rest of the email marketing community) have been preaching the importance of relevancy and subscriber engagement for some time now.  Bet at some point it’s had you wondering “So which is more important – growing my mailing list (i.e. extending my audience and client base), or focusing on engaging my existing subscribers?”

Of course, the answer is that both are pretty important things to focus on, but it is a tough issue.  You want to get the word out as much as possible, to attract new subscribers, yet you don’t want to risk losing loyal subscribers because you’re flooding them with emails.

Email marketers know that there are multiple benefits to email marketing – brand awareness, top-of-mind with your audience, web traffic and, most importantly, solid relationships with loyal customers who may go on to become some of your best brand ambassadors (word of mouth).  Unfortunately, top level management doesn’t always see the value of these benefits, nor the time and craft that goes into creating and managing such campaigns.  When you have a range of products or services to sell, you want to punt them all actively.  We want click-throughs and sales - which is fair enough, but not always worth the risk of losing your long-standing customer relationships. 

That’s where determining your subscriber value comes in.  Knowing how much your subscribers are worth can help you decide whether you want to focus on building brand awareness, or pushing sales and promotions.

How to do it:
Look at how many new subscribers you’ve had over the past year.  Campaign subscriptions generally vary according to how long the campaign has been running, and lists fluctuate, so look at the average number of subscribers you had every month.
 If your email marketing account is integrated with your Google Analytics, you should be able to determine a rough conversion rate based on how many purchases have been made by subscribers who clicked through to your site from your emails. The number of conversions you had should help you determine how much money you made from your email marketing campaign.  Subtract your expenses (the money you spent on your email campaign – including account and credit cost, but also the money paid to employees for their time spent on the campaign) to get the net profit of your email campaign.  Divide this by the average number of subscribers you had to determine the value of each subscriber.

And now what?
The cost of getting a subscriber is low – they sign up for free, don’t they?  However if you spend more money on your email marketing than you make from it, you probably want to push your subscribers with a stronger sales call.  A clearer call-to-action or a promotional discount are good ways to drive more sales.

Most importantly, subscriber value also represents how much an unsubscribe is costing you – a good indicator of how strong a focus you should have on building reader engagement and subscriber loyalty!  It also gives you a benchmark figure to work from and compare against in future.

Don't forget:  When all's said and done, you'll get as much value from your subscribers as you give them.  Want to make more revenue off them?  Give them more valuable content.

Image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan.

Reflections on the Integrated Marketing Communications Conference 2010, Cape Town
 
Who would expect a marketing conference advising you to stop marketing? But this was exactly the core message at this year’s IMCC. Well, the conference title actually gives it  away- it was all about integrated marketing communications.
So if you’re not supposed to market, then what are you supposed to do?

This conference, hosted in Cape Town, South Africa, although focusing on a developing market also conveyed messages many of us might want to consider in our marketing strategies.  South Africa is only just engaging itself in social media, online networking, microblogging. Many smaller companies don’t yet have company blogs, Facebook pages or Twitter accounts.  (Twitter, in particular, is not nearly as possible in this market as Facebook.)  There are so many companies that have not started engaging their (potential) markets on a social level yet. And why? Because a mind-shift is needed!The IMCC focused heavily on advocating a shift in perspective and position. It’s not about what we think consumers need, but all about whether they need us or not, whether they want to engage with us or not.  The message, as we know so well,  listen and engage!

In comes branding. More important than ever before, it’s all about personality, leadership qualities, trendsetters. And who are the new trendsetters in marketing? You guessed right. It’s not the marketing professionals with years of experience and certificates on the wall, but the creative geniuses. The ones who think up cool stuff. The ones whose spark and motivation causes a ripple on a global level. Just think Old Spice hunk, or Nike phone - boot run.

The visual word of mouth
But let’s take it to the next level. It’s not even about these trendsetters. They might be the think-tank crazy creators, but they are nothing without you, the consumer. And we all are consumers – marketers included. It’s about how well we respond to their artwork, how much we feel like we’re part of it. Yes, here it comes again... engagement is the key! Start a conversation. Word has always spread like wild fire throughout the history of humanity, from when we beat the bush drums to gossiping about neighbours from behind our picket fences, to today’s gossip platform, social media. Well, gossip might be a bit of a strong word. Let’s call it word of mouth. Then again,  it’s more than that. It’s not just about “have you heard”, but more about “have you seen”.  We are getting more and more visual. Video, imagery, even holographic projections is what the modern mind seeks.  Numerous case studies attested to this trend – I can’t remember a single case study that wasn’t in a video format or supported by strong visual images at the IMCC.

Search going social
So how can you prepare yourself? Acknowledge that you’re not at the pinnacle of your marketing pyramid. You’re part of a wheel – together with consumers,  merging channels, creative minds, decision-makers, staff, global trends. Practically, it means, start engaging on multiple channels. Strong calls were made for more South African businesses to set up social profiles on Facebook or Twitter, even if they post once a week only at the start. Soon search will go social. Already Google is incorporating feeds and status updates into their search result pages. You want people to talk about you, to keep you top of mind and refer you. Or run you down – what a great opportunity to engage with them and find consensus.
Of course, from my perspective, email marketing is one of the most successful channels for lont-term engagement.  Whilst social reaches a wider audience, social followers are more distant from the brand – as opposed to email, which is a personal, one-on-one medium.  My inbox is a lot more private and intimate than my Facebook profile.  I have a greater level of trust for those brands I allow into my inbox than those I “like” on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Attendees were urged to keep up paid advertising (such as Google and Yahoo/ Bing pay-per-click campaigns) for their websites. Of course, SEO was also encouraged, and the benefits of optimizing through using benchmark keywords in social feeds, blog titles and press releases.However, I think websites, traditional search ranking and the PPC model will soon be something of the past. It often suffices to have a blog, or a social profile, or a great visual viral presence. As in the future, I think it’s all about who says what about whom. So a tip for those of you who want to be part of the new cool kids’ gang: make friends with top bloggers, social influencers, well connected individuals that have a strong presence on the web. (The good thing here: while it’s regarded as utterly unethical to bribe a journalist, it’s apparently absolutely fine to push some label clothing, island trips and champagne in a blogger’s direction).

Start shifting minds
So, to un-market ourselves just means to acknowledge these new trends and start shifting our minds and sharing control. Scary thought that, huh? But it’s the citizen journalist out there now – even if you don’t engage on a social level, your company will be spoken about. Postively and negatively. Marketers still have a duty to measure, forecast and coordinate. But who knows what will happen in 5 to 10 years’ time? Maybe today’s marketing duties will be handled by finance and CEOs, and marketers will become engagers, socialites, creative artists?  Maybe that is truly what we are. The one thing I can tell you, is that almost every attendee could be spotted sipping  some bubbly in the lobby after the panel discussions, engaging with other inspiring minds.
 
Barbara UImi, IMCC engager at GraphicMail

For a clearer image, view the original here. Thanks Flowtown!

eMarketer last week published research findings indicating that, when people share interesting content online with their friends, they prefer email as a sharing tool (rather than sharing content on Facebook, Twitter or other social networks).
Statistically more than 50% of internet users say they prefer to share info via email.

These statistics were measured according to which sharing widgets email readers prefer.  Generally, most email marketing emails have widgets or links allowing readers to share the newsletter with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social networks; as well as a Forward to a Friend or email widget, allowing them to forward the newsletter to contacts via email.

The research also indicated that social networks achieve higher click-through rates – but questioned whether that accurately reflects user interest. 

When content is shared via email, most of the information needed is included in the body of the email.  By contrast, social networks like Facebook and Twitter only post short teasers that require the reader to click through to another page in order to get the full picture.  Not surprisingly, this results in higher click-through rates.

Why this is good news: 

Readers who receive your newsletter from a friend via email are more likely to open and read it.   According to eMarketer, “Email shares lead to more engagement, including more pages viewed and, most important, more conversions.”
And, of course, the more people share your email newsletter the further your email marketing reach extends.  It spreads the word about your business even further. 

Good news on a Monday!

With inboxes filled with promotions, news, work emails, Facebook updates and spam, it takes some skill to get an email to stand out.  The most attention-grabbing emails are the ones filled with top-notch content.

Not a professional writer?  Here are nine tips to guide you through:

1.  What do you want to achieve with your email marketing?  Describe and outline a specific goal so you can work towards it. Bear in mind that email is best utilised for promoting and encouraging a follow-through action, so it works best catering to a very specific target market

2.   Without an engaging subject line, your email won’t be opened! Make sure your subject line is  is applicable, detailed and specific,  concise and intriguing. For tips, read this article posted on our South African blog recently on writing effective subject lines.

3.  Personalizing marketing emails has become standard practice to ensure that your subscriber feels like more than just another email address. Also try to make the email more about them than about yourself; showing that the email is of value to them, rather than being all about yourself/making a sale/getting exposure etc. Your choice of language (formal, colloquial etc.) should also vary according to your intended audience.

4.   Stick to simple and concise. Keep sentences short, and the language easy to understand to avoid confusion.  Formatting, like breaks and sub-heads, will make your email easier to read. Be clear and specific with instructions while keeping it simple. Also, state your action plan and be sure to follow-through.

5.  Believe it or not, the only way your readers will know what to do with your email is if you tell them.  Your call to action (e.g. “Click here to sign up”, “Buy now!” or “Update your details”) needs to be very clear and stand out from the rest of your email.  Repeat it a few times to make sure it sticks… 
It may surprise you, but solid old-school writing techniques still work.  Conclude your email with a quick revisit to the most crucial points.  If nothing else, definitely repeat your call to action at the end of your email.

6.  Avoid using too many exclamation marks or WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.  This is crucial to avoid spam filters! Also, make sure you use good grammar and spelling so people do not classify your mail as spam when reading it. We also give you access to a spam checker – use it.  Run a spam check on your email before sending it.  You’re email will be rated with a spam score, giving you an indication of how likely it is to be caught in a spam filter. 

7.    Make sure your emails offer valuable content, such as  solutions and benefits. Giving subscribers something to relate to, like personal stories and case studies, will  absorb readers and build your credibility. 

8.  Optimize on the best delivery times! Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays work best; and mornings and early-to-mid afternoon are also good times. Avoid sending important emails after midday on a Friday, on weekends, and at night. Your message may get lost, forgotten, or removed as a result of a full mailbox.

9.  Always Do and Redo. Keep notes on what works best for you, and under which circumstances.  The only way to improve on your campaign is to monitor it and constantly improve on your results and weak points.

It may sound a bit “back to basics” to some of you, but with ISPs making it harder and harder for email marketers to achieve top priority in subscribers’ inboxes, it’s time to ensure your emails are solid – and, from time to time, that may mean being strict on yourself when it comes to the basics.

Image courtesy of Gregory Szarkiewicz.

The problem that sales departments are often faced with:  too many leads to follow up on, and no idea which lead is more likely to generate a sale.  If you’re a dedicated follower, you’ve probably read this post I did a while ago on how implementing an email marketing campaign can help you generate sales leads.  I outlined why email marketing can help your marketing department build the trusting relationship needed to convert a potential sale.

Quite a few people wanted to know how exactly to go about setting up a nurturing email campaign.  So here it is - the steps you need to take to set up such a campaign:

Clickz.com recently announced findings that long-term leads (those are leads that take longer to make a buying decision or be converted to a sale) generally form up to 80% of potential sales.  Unfortunately, these are also the leads most likely to be ignored by your sales team.

The purpose of a lead nurturing email marketing campaign is to both introduce the subscriber to your product or service, while at the same time gathering information from them.  That way you ready the recipient for the sales push, but the information you gathered on the recipient also gives the sales team insight into where that person is in the buying cycle and what their specific needs are.  This means your sales team can contact potential clients at the time when they are most likely to make a purchase.

What do you consider to be a valuable lead?
First of all, you’ll need to decide what your ideal lead looks like, so you know what kind of lead you’re trying to create.   (This is probably something that should be discussed between your marketing and sales teams.)  What sales leads would you consider to be worth following up on? 

When answering this question, consider whether or not your potential client really needs your product or service, and, if so, how urgently they’d be looking to make a purchase.  How big a client are the likely to become, i.e. how much and how often will they spend?  Make sure you’re dealing with the correct person – if you’re pitching your ice cream to the five-year old, remember that the real person you should be pitching to is his mom.  If it’s a B2B sale, you don’t want to market your product to a junior, but rather to an authoritative decision maker in the company.

How does it work?
Think about past sales calls you’ve received, or pitches you’ve heard.  When these come out of the blue, we typically dismiss them.  Sometimes you’ll even find a few months later, when one of your friends have bought the product, that it is actually something that you want - but when you first received that call you had never heard of the product and so had absolutely no interest in it.

Your lead nurturing email campaign should slowly introduce potential customers to your product.  Remember, you don’t want to overwhelm them with an aggressive sales push; you simply want to slowly begin sending them emails containing short bits of valuable information, addressing their need and explaining how your product can offer a solution.

So, think about the questions your clients will want you to answer:  What’s in this for me? How will this product or service improve my life?  Do I really need it?  Can I afford it? Is this the best option, or will another company offer me a better deal?
Now set up your value-laden, informative email series and slowly supply them with answers to these questions.  (As I’ve mentioned in my previous article, TriggerMail could be ideal for this.)
Include useful elements, like discount coupons, links to articles or PDF downloads, or webinars – anything that might provide them with more information that could entice them to buy.

What now?
Once you’ve set up your nurturing campaign, you should see an increase in quality sales leads – which also means a higher sales conversion rate.  As with all your email campaigns, keep an eye on your reports and statistics (and, in this case, also follow up with your sales team) to track your progress.  If you run an effective lead nurturing campaign, and continually tweak it according to the trends you pick up among your subscribers, your campaign will eventually send through a constant flow of quality sales leads.

It takes the guesswork from your sales process – instead of being faced with masses of leads they know are unlikely to convert, your sales team will be able to hone in on those prospects that they know are ready buy.

When I’m at a party and tell people I work in email marketing, I’m immediately labeled the “spam devil”.  You see, even though email marketing has a sterling reputation among marketers as an effective marketing channel, the average Joe (even though he subscribes to a number of newsletters himself) associates email marketing with those countless “120% OFF!”, “Get a FREE iPad” and “Urgent: Get your 80% DISCOUNT NOW” emails cluttering up his inbox.

It’s the sales push.  Email marketing is definitely there to promote your product or service, but the fact of the matter is that no one constantly wants a sales pitch shoved down their inbox every five minutes.  I recently had to answer the question “What is an email newsletter?”, and while answering I realized again how much more there is to a newsletter than people expect.  An email newsletter is so much more than a promotion call-out.

Successful newsletters offer something of value to its subscribers; whether it’s product information, industry insights, or relevant news, updates or events regarding your business or product.  See, sales emails don’t build customer relationships.  Yes, they do drive sales; but a customer relationship ensures long term sales, rather than a once-off sale.  And your newsletter can build that relationship – by adding value to your recipient.

Yes, a promotion is always a good way to boost your newsletter response (and sales) – but not if you use the same cheap trick every time.  If you offer subscribers a 50% discount week after week, doesn’t that mean that the product is actually priced 50% higher than it should be, and that you’re simply selling it at “discount” to generate more sales? Similarly, if you punt a promotion on a particular product once a week, and it’s not a product your recipients need on a weekly basis, they might get fed up and unsubscribe.  At the very least they’ll begin to ignore your emails.

Promotions are more effective when sent occasionally.  So, by all means, intersperse your newsletters with the occasional sale, promotion or discount – everyone loves a freebie! – but make sure you also offer something more.  Push your sales in your newsletter, but try do it more subtly, or at least ensure that there is a balance between your sales push and some valuable content that will be of interest to your subscribers.
Sending quality newsletters will ensure that your recipients come to trust your emails, making them even more receptive to your occasional sales pitches.  In our own GraphicMail newsletter we do sometimes call out promotions, deals or competitions, but the newsletter primarily consists of tips on how our readers can improve their campaigns or updates on new features or changes that’s important for our clients to know.   (If you don’t subscribe to our newsletter yet, by the way, you can subscribe by scrolling right down to the bottom of this page and entering your email address in the subscribe field.) 

If you’re not sure whether the content in your campaign is too salesy, why not sign up to a few good campaigns to view examples of impressive, well-received newsletters.  Also, think about which newsletters you subscribe to yourself, and why it is that you never unsubscribe from them.

All in all, the key is to keep your content balanced and think about what you can offer your subscribers that will keep them coming back for more.

Has your campaign stagnated?  Your open rate seems lower than you’d like and it just stays the same, no matter what you try to improve on it.  The problem might be your mailing list…

I’ve said a lot about mailing list management in the past, but recently a new focus has come up – both in the industry and on our own mailing lists:  What to do about inactive subscribers?

We all have them – those subscribers who repeatedly receive your newsletter, but never react to it.  They don’t open it or click on your links, but they don’t unsubscribe or launch a spam complaint against you either.  They’re either not interested in your news or products anymore and just too lazy or unaffected to unsubscribe; or they just haven’t been interested in your product of late but know that they may want to purchase or do business with you again in future.

Question is:  What do you do about them?  Should you do anything about these passive recipients?

Yes!  Inactive subscribers make it difficult to track how well your campaign is doing.  If they’re just temporarily inactive it’s worth keeping them on your list till a later date, but if they’re going to remain inactive they’re lowering your open, click-through and social share rates and negating the positive effects of your campaign.  Of course, even though emails are low-cost, it also means you’re wasting send credits on subscribers from whom you might never generate any revenue.

Not only that, but ISPs are taking steps to take recipient engagement into consideration when filtering spam.  This means that, when you do bulk sends and a very low percentage of your recipients respond to the email in any way, it raises the risk of your emails being spam trapped.

However, just because someone doesn’t open every single one of your newsletters doesn’t mean they never will…so how do you know whether they should still be on your mailing list?

A few things to try…

Revamp!  Perhaps a subscriber doesn’t engage with your campaign anymore because their needs have evolved – but it could also be that your content is no longer relevant because your newsletters have shifted focus. 
Review your newsletter content to ensure that it’s relevant to your subscribers and test variations of your newsletter or subject line to see what works best for your mailing list.  Try some new ways to get them interested again: Ask them to update their details on your system (that way if they’re really no longer interested, they might just unsubscribe out of their own); launch a promotion or promote other channels they might follow you on, like Facebook, Twitter or SMS updates, as these might provide them with an easier alternative if they no longer prefer email.

If this still doesn’t work it’s time to…

Get brutal.  Once you’ve done your best to get inactive subscribers involved again, it’s time to start making some cuts on those who still show no interest.  Now, I’m not a fan of hacking at a list that might still contain some recipients who are future potential clients, so I advise you to think carefully about who needs to go.  Rather than cutting someone who hasn’t been active over your last two or three sends, set up a timeframe that suits your business.  For instance, if you run a guest house it’s likely that past guests feature quite heavily on your list.  Your time frame might be one of a few years – after all, not everyone revisits the same holiday spot every year, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to come back in four years’ time. 

Which brings me to my next point – look at past purchase history.  If you run a business where subscribers tend to make purchases on a more regular basis, you might want to cut subscribers who haven’t reacted to your mailings in six months or a year.  People who have purchased from you in the past or also more likely to come back for more at some point than those who’ve never bought your products; even if they have been inactive of late.  Also keep in mind that, if you send out a weekly mailer, your periods of inactivity should be shorter than if you send out a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter.

If you want to be absolutely sure whether or not it’s worth deleting an address, you can also look at other channels of activity, for instance Facebook, Twitter or your Support/Customer service logs.  If someone has recently contacted you through one of these channels it shows that they are still actively participating with your brand, even though they haven’t read recent emails.

Subscribers, as precious as they are, can be detrimental to your campaign if they don’t show enough interest.  Take some time to consider how best to go about getting rid of inactive subscribers.  In the end, hacking at your list a bit will actually benefit your campaign.  And wouldn’t it be nice to see your open rates rise?