Bronto Blog

The holiday rush is about to begin – you should be prepared and have a clear holiday email campaign plan in place. Every business model is affected by the sheer volume of email being sent from October 15^th to December 31^st. As the Email Experience Council (EEC) reported, the biggest online retailers almost doubled their sending frequency during the last holiday season – a total increase of 47%. Do not let your messages get lost in the vast sea of the upcoming holiday madness.

Make sure your messages stand out and stand up against all the competition by following our holiday check list:

• It all begins or ends with the subject line. Take the time to create your subject line just as you do your design and layout – subject lines need to be part of your holiday planning process. The subject line must speak directly to your recipient with a specific call to action. Do not rely solely on “free shipping” and “% off” to draw attention. Be direct, relevant and clear as to what the message offers and why it matters to the recipient. Ask the question – “would this subject line make me want to open this message – does it speak to me?” My motto – if you spend less than five minutes creating your subject line spend five more to get it right.

• Don’t lose interest upon opening. Ensure your offer is viewed even when the images are turned off. Assume that your message is being viewed with images turned off by default. The EEC in January 2007 found one in five emails are ineffective due to blocked images. See an example of how a message renders with images turned off and no alternative text. Grab immediate attention by using alt text as a placeholder for images. Instead of opening a page of scattered blank white boxes your consumer will be provided text with a clear call to action and offer details without having to do anything. Keep in mind that alternative text is also critical if you want your message to be delivered to anyone on a Blackberry. MarketingSherpa, in partnership with SurveySampling (2007) found 64% of key decision makers are viewing your well designed messages on their BlackBerrys and other mobile devices.

• Increase frequency through segmentation. It is okay to send more email during the coming holiday season, just make sure they are targeted messages by utilizing Bronto’s segmentation tool. If you send more, send more relevant messages. Be direct. Create an offer for a specific portion of your house file not a generic offer that may only relate to a small percent of the mail file. For further insight into holiday segmentation planning read Bronto’s whitepaper Holiday
  Acquisition: Creating an Email Marketing Strategy. You can also re-mail to those recipients who did not open your last message by building a simple segment in Bronto and creating a more compelling subject line – see the first point again.

• Keep them clicking. If you want to drive traffic to your site the links must not only work but navigate to specific pages. One broken link or all links leading to only the home page will ensure immediate discontent between your company and the consumer. Your logo, header, navigation bar and images all need to link to relevant pages on your site. It is a simple mistake that costs a great deal – higher unsubscribe and complaints, lower clicks and conversions.

By being a better email marketer than the competition this holiday season, your campaign can meet or exceed plan but not at the cost of your most valuable asset – your subscriber file

Kimberly Snyder
Account Manager at Bronto

One of my favorite parts about being an Account Manager at Bronto (besides the rise of Bronto and Bronto’s 5th b-day) is that I get to brag about our clients. At our weekly company meetings, the Client Services Team shares “Bronto Love” - aka some of the cool things our clients say as well as email marketing best practices they are implementing. Well, the word is getting out - Bronto clients are darn good email marketers. But, hey, don’t ask us - we are biased - ask the folks over at Marketing Sherpa (specifically articles #1, #2, and #5).

Please note: Some of these case studies are “members only.” Have no fear…Bronto is here to help YOU become a better email marketer. Just ask us. We’ll provide the details.

Bronto Clients promoted by Marketing Sherpa:

• Chiasso: Brian Mehler explains how Chiasso transitioned catalog users to email to lift conversions 19%. [Also featured as Customer Email Showcase].
• Durham Bulls: Jon Bishop - Assistant General Manager of the Durham Bulls *and* email marketing guru. In this case study, Jon explains how testing HTML vs Text-Only led to a 262.23% lift.
• Trek: Casey Kohner prepped for his stellar performance in Vegas as Shop.org in August by providing the fodder for this article on the best product launch ever. [Also a featured Customer Email Showcase].

Go Bronto (Clients), Go Bronto (Clients)….

DJ Waldow
Account Manager at Bronto

If you remember back not too long ago, Bronto offered a $100 gift certificate to the most creative Vegas traveling Bronto picture.

Not only have we been overwhelmed with the number of pictures submitted, the Brontos in charge of picking the winning picture have truly enjoyed seeing our inflatable Bronto, in…uh…a lot of interesting locations around Vegas.

The winning picture appropriately titled “Bronto hits the slots” taken by the lovely ladies from Rapunzel’s Closet who allowed Bronto to hypothetically let down his/her hair and enjoy a fun game of slots.

If Bronto won anything that day at the slots, we certainly haven’t seen the cash. However, given all the long hours that Bronto dedicates to making the email marketing world a better place, play on Bronto, play on.

DJ Waldow
Account Manager at Bronto

– Update – see below

Forward to a Friend is nice feature to include in your email. It usually doesn’t provide a wealth of clicks - often times from 0.1%-2% based on your audience, but for those looking to expand their target audience base with similarly profiled individuals, it’s nice to include it. We recently made an update to Bronto’s forward to a friend functionality, allowing you to customize the introduction message that is included at the top of the message.

This change allows you to easily include some text specific to your mailing, and more importantly, you can place a link to a sign up form right there above the fold, in the perfect place to get a new contact to click it.

Including a signup link in your forwarded emails is definitely a good idea, but this only helps if your original recipients can find the forward to a friend link within the message. In order to get your current contacts to start forwarding messages you should consider placing a forward to a friend link at the top of your email as well. This can fit in well with a top navigational bar, or even placed in the top corner of your email.If your forwarding link is just text it may work alright in a menu of other links, but it could blend in with your legal disclaimer or link to a privacy policy, especially at the bottom of your message. Making the link an eye catching graphic can help as well. Nothing too catchy, but not just plain text. Here are some examples of forward to a friend links (borrowed from some major name email newsletters & promos) that stand out from the rest of the email. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s not how pretty your link is, or where you place it, but how compelling your content is. If you provide quality relevant content, then your recipients will be more likely to invite their friends to sign up. So while you should put some thought into how and where you place your forward to a friend link, never forget that relevant content is of paramount importance.Update 10.12: As I sit here and munch on Candy Corns myself, Chad White’s Retail Email Blog (over at the Email Experience Council, of which Bronto is a proud member) points out a really fun way to bring the holidays into your Forward to a Friend link. eBags, who always does a great job with their email campaigns, put a great spin on the image.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

While you sit alone in your office, do you often ponder “what is the best day to send our weekly newsletter?” or maybe “what type of subject line would most entice my contacts to open the message?”

The answers to these questions are “it depends”. I know you hate this answer but there are many factors to consider, such as the composition of your audience, your sending frequency, and content. Getting to know your audience through testing will be more useful than any general survey. Only by testing your email campaigns, and analyzing the results, will you actually determine what works best for your audience and provide valuable insight into your email marketing.

A truly accurate test is simple to create, monitor and track. Remember, testing is not difficult unless you make it difficult. So, start planning your first test today by following these straight forward guidelines:
• Create two versions of your message that are exactly alike except for the one variable you’re trying to test (don’t change your subject line and your sending time at once or you won’t be able to determine the value of each). You might want to consider testing things such as send time and day, subject line, from name, best type of call to action, etc.
• Clearly label each message in the test so that you can easily and accurately determine the results of the test.
• Build the sending lists by randomly splitting your intended recipients in half.

Your results must provide enough data to be analyzed. The size of your test list should be large enough to elicit a large enough response that the results are statistically valid. For example, if you are normally sending to 100,000 contacts, 100 responses in your test send are not enough to go on.

Now, give your data a hug! By that I mean embrace the data by taking the time to analyze the results and apply your findings to your next email. The data should indicate a measurable lift over the control message in order to apply the new variable to your next email. For instance, if you tested sending your message on Thursday against the regularly scheduled Tuesday and the results had only a 2% increase in clicks you may want to continue to test another sending day against your control.

Remember to keep testing, because whether your metrics are below average or stellar, there is always room to grow.

Kimberly Snyder
Account Manager at Bronto