Essentially what he’s saying is that you can be as timely and relevant as possible, but if your message has no value, it’s missing the mark.  As he says, “Relevance is the cart and not the horse. Without value (significant and demonstrable) you may be on topic, but you cannot be relevant. So, do your email campaigns give value (a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money) or are they merely on topic?”

Dela has a great point we email marketers should take to heart. You can do your best to hit the timely and relevant mark through segmentation, affinity marketing, and behavioral triggers, but if your offer is not valuable, is it really compelling? So many retailers promote existing sales on their website via email… if your subscribers could get the same discount just by going directly to your site, what value is your email providing them, besides a reminder that said discount exists?

I don’t believe one should completely cast aside timeliness and relevance as email marketing goals, but I do agree that value should be the #1 goal ahead of them.  Timeliness has its importance – seasonality, customer lifecycles, time-sensitive offers, etc.  Relevance is obviously important – e.g.  J. Crew emailing me (a single and childless subscriber) their kids’ clothing promotions is a waste of their marketing dollars and a risk that I will unsubscribe from their regular women’s marketing emails. But you can’t be everything to everyone – it’s rare that a marketer has interest or preference data on every single subscriber in their house file.  So while relevance should still be a goal, the value of your message is more important.

What matters is your conversion rate, right? How effective was your message, how many people purchased, downloaded your whitepaper, or registered for your event? Opens and clicks are less relevant by default. I’m never going to open or click on J. Crew’s kids’ promos. Likewise, a consumer is not going to open a message with a subject line that promotes a product they have no interest in. Additionally, if you are promoting the same old 10, 15, 20% off sale they see in their inbox every other month from you, it loses value and they are trained to just wait for the next email promo when they want to buy. Check out Mark Brownlow’s eye-opening post on “the email that cried wolf” to further underscore this point.

So for 2010, I challenge you to re-evaluate your email program – does it add value for your subscribers?  Do they get exclusive offers, discounts or content that one can’t get elsewhere, or by just going to your site? “Email club” or VIP-type discounts and perks, birthday coupons or exclusive content are great ways to set your marketing apart from the rest, and give your customers real value.  Customers who see value will convert at a higher rate, and be more likely to stay subscribed and tell their friends – it’s a win/win!  Use A/B tests with different offers to find what your subscribers respond to most: dollars off versus percentage off sales, tiered offers (e.g. “spend $50, get 10% off; spend $75, get 15% off,”) versus a flat discount, and free shipping versus a percentage off are great tests to try. You may find that perceived value is different than actual value, and that it works to your bottom line’s benefit.

Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Our Email Marketing Strategists share thoughts on this precedent-setting ruling below:

Kimberly: The majority of email marketers will cringe at the precedent Maine has set for our industry moving forward. Decisions like this only create more potential obstacles for those following email marketing best practices. Companies looking for legal loop holes to glean more email addresses are not thinking about the state of our industry nor are they concerned with the future course of their actions. They are simply focused on the “quick fix” approach and truly don’t understand the hornet’s nest they are creating. As ISPs move their focus towards engagement based deliverability – a company like the one in question here will be faced with a serious deliverability dilemma (even more so than they will face today). “Quick fix” list acquisition practices will never garner healthy, engaged subscribers. Hence, these practices do not create a winning formula under engagement based deliverability. Ultimately, the “easy solution” to growing your subscription file may be the death to your ability of reaching the in box at all.

Kristen: The abuse potential in this scenario is clearly alarming. To me, this points out how we really may need to change email law to be permission-based. Hopefully, any organization that attempts to leverage lists of this sort will do the right thing and send only an opt-in campaign and enable the end reader to determine what email they receive.

Julie: I am very disappointed to read about this, and frankly surprised that someone would go to such lengths to obtain email lists, going so far as to appeal to the Attorney General. I could see a greedy executive doing this — I’ve worked for that guy — but the Sportsman’s Alliance is a small nonprofit with an annual budget of $450,000. They obviously believe in quantity over quality, and don’t understand or respect permission-based best practices. My bet is they will use this list, then sell or rent it out to others to abuse. Sure, technically they are within the law since CAN-SPAM does not require permission… and one could liken this to direct marketers buying mailing lists and other public records for direct mail marketing. But where is the protection for consumers? Now that legal precedent has been set, we all could potentially be victims of this email abuse as this trend spreads to other states. Sure, these fishermen can unsubscribe, but is it already too late? Does the Alliance already have the list? It sounds like it. My only hope is that the sportsmen and women of Maine use their “mark as spam” complaint buttons liberally to hopefully impact these shady senders’ deliverability and overall success of any marketing campaigns. It seems like the only way to defend oneself if the courts are taking this stance.

Kelly: Ultimately, this ruling hurts not only Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, who was practicing clean email marketing practices, but the email marketing industry as a whole. Allowing this type of access erodes subscriber confidence and trust in organizations to whom they’ve provided permission and entrusted with their email privacy. In this case, the original organization is left with no leg to stand on and, essentially, no list that they’ve worked hard to cultivate and nurture.

What are your thoughts on the Freedom of Access Act and this ruling? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@KNLorenz

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This opens up a new opt-in channel for email marketers, but also could potentially step on the toes of their Facebook followers. I asked some of our Email Marketing Strategists to give their two cents on this exciting new development in the world of social media:

Kimberly Snyder: I am not surprised that Facebook is now offering this option to marketers. It is a natural next step in fully integrating marketing channels for retailers leveraging Facebook for SEO optimization, bringing their brand to life… Facebook’s draft policy is also very clean and clear (which I respect as an email marketer). However, I am not sure all companies will adhere to the first policy listed nor do I know how they plan to police this policy: “a. You must not give or sell users’ email addresses to any third party or affiliate.”

Hopefully the majority will play by the rules so this powerful medium can continue to help email marketers grow their email house file organically.

Kelly Lorenz: I think this is an interesting idea and certainly an expansion on the stand-alone sign-up form marketers could add to their Facebook pages. I’m glad to see that Facebook put their own permission marketing policies around adding this opt-in through apps, especially the one around making it clear how the users’ email address will be used. I also think the policy around emails originating from the same domain is a great step to prevent marketers from selling their lists and such.

Using Facebook to collect email addresses is also a great way to get cleaner, more active email addresses. What I mean by that is that the contacts are likely actively checking and engaging with the email address through which they use Facebook. This may mean you’ll get less sign-ups than through other means due to user fear of getting spam, but they’ll be more valid and likely more engaged.

I’m a little iffy on the mandatory auto-opt-in. I would imagine that would cause user frustration and aggravation toward the marketer and potentially have a high abandonment rate.

Julie Waite: I agree with both Kimberly and Kelly… my first reaction was “Awesome, but how on earth are they going to enforce it?”  The required opt-in gave me pause, and I think that yes, it may be a turn-off and cause abandonment, but it also might produce the most loyal list of subscribers.

What do other marketers think of this? If you have a Facebook app, are you implementing an optional or required opt-in? Please share your thoughts or experiences in the comments below.

Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Like many of you, Bronto desires to do whatever we can to support relief efforts, so we have partnered with the American Red Cross to launch the Free Emails for Haiti Relief campaign.  As an Email Service Provider, we are offering our customers an official Red Cross template and message as a way to reach out to subscribers and ask for support. In the next week, emails sent on behalf of the Red Cross will be credited to our customer’s accounts.

Bronto customers who feel like their audience would be receptive to such a message can take advantage of this opportunity.

Caroline Smith
Community Marketing Manager at Bronto
@Bronto

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What you may not know is that while CAN-SPAM (or other international email laws) directly relates to the distribution of bulk email and ways to go about not being relegated to the illegal ilk of spammers, there are other legal responsibilities email marketers have as well that fall outside the of scope of just email.

Some questions to be sure you have an answer for…

1. Who are you sending to? Under commerce laws set by different arms of federal and state regulatory bodies, you must be cognizant of whom your intended audience is.  Are you sending to recipients in different countries?  If so, you should be aware of their laws such as Safe Harbor.  How about the age of the recipients you’re targeting?  Specific regulations around protected age classes exist (for example COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) for minors under the age of 13).  Are you ensuring compliancy with other protected classes covered under ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or EEOC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commision)?
2. What are you sending? Again, as with any retailer selling products, regardless of what channels they use to market through (email being one of potentially many), certain products or services are off limits.  Are you sure you’re not marketing anything illegal?  Even if it seems innocuous, you should be aware of commerce laws around certain items (ranging from DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to age restricted products).  Other items may have a higher level of scrutiny or certification bar, like anything related to an FDA (Food and Drug Administration) covered product or service.  Or, if you’re sending anything health care related, are you HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant?
3. Who do you go to? There’s a lot more to sending email than being CAN-SPAM compliant, as you can see.  However, what legal hoops and checks you need to comply with is entirely dependent upon you, the marketer. Your ESP can provide broad advice on the actual mechanics of using email and how the transmission of email itself remains legal.  If you’re a Bronto client, please contact us and we’ll be glad to discuss options although we, as most ESPs, have built in safeguards to catch CAN-SPAM pitfalls to help the client send email the right way.  However, we cannot provide legal advice on your actual line of business and what the letter of the law is in regards to what your particular offerings are (i.e., the creatives).  This is where you need to have a good resource lined up who can, from an authoritative perspective, give you the final word.  It may be in house counsel.  It may be outside counsel.  It may be your friend who sits on one of the government commissions.  But, you must have some entity to guide and coach you through what you need to be aware of when marketing.

Please note, this is not meant to scare you.  In fact, quite the opposite – this is a call to action for you, as the marketer, to rise above email for a moment and look at your business as a whole.  We want you to be successful, but no matter how successful an email marketing campaign may be, the success won’t last if the client doesn’t ensure their own house is in good legal order and gets shut down.  Also, it is a sign of great brand affinity and instills trust in your recipients/customers when they see you’re holistically in charge of staying up to date with whatever laws and regulations affect you, the marketer, as well as potentially your recipients.  Do I trust Walgreens with medications?  How about Kraft with my cheese?  Or H&R Block for tax purposes?  You bet I do.  While they may not be your vendor of choice, I know that by going to these purveyors, I’m not going to be receiving anything “sub par” according to government requirements or worry about them going out of business because of a government crackdown (at least I hope!).

Email marketing is an extension of a core product or service suite that you offer.  As such, you must ensure your business is protected by knowledge of and remediation around any regulatory auspices you fall under.  Email deliverability and best practices help position your campaign for maximum effect and success, but your offering drives the relationship with recipients.

Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability at Bronto
@ChrisAWheeler

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Deliverability – Do you currently have any true insight or real data into your deliverability of your transactional triggers being sent from an in-house solution? Does your system closely monitor hard bounces that can affect your sender reputation? Do you manage your reply messages to ensure that you are aware of any issues? Does your system sometimes fail – thus not sending these critical triggers in a timely manner?

Sending transactional triggers through an ESP will mitigate many of these issues. Your ESP should be constantly working with ISPs to ensure they are whitelisted. Deliverability matters to your ESP and they spend a great deal of man power and resources to ensure your triggers have the best chance of landing in your customer’s inbox.

Reporting – Can you currently track KPIs for each transaction trigger being sent via your in-house solution? Do you have visibility into how many consumers are engaged to shop again even after buying? You are sending these triggers to a very captive audience – they are anxiously awaiting these messages and open them with a fury (you may even be surprised by the strong response these triggers garner). If you transition these triggers to be sent through your ESP you will quickly gain all of this insight and more. Having detailed reporting at your fingertips for transaction triggers can provide invaluable insight into your best customers.

Optimization – Can you creatively optimize the layout and the elements within your order & shipping confirmation triggers? Does your current back-end email system enable you to optimize your trigger template on the fly? Can you include powerful email marketing elements like pre-headers, bullet proof buttons, a balance of text and images, email recommendations… within your current trigger templates? If you are unable to customize your trigger templates you limit your ability to entice, engage and attain additional clicks and conversions.

By utilizing your ESP to send these important triggers you gain flexibility around your template design and format. You can actually have control over the look and feel – you no longer need to settle by not capturing the essence of your brand through these triggers. More importantly you will see a dramatic increase in your KPIs as you continue to optimize these powerful transactional triggers.

Kimberly Snyder
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Heck, what even qualifies as semi-engaged subscriber? I believe this would vary depending on your business. For example, if I send weekly, perhaps I consider a subscriber “more engaged” if they open/click on anywhere from 1 to 6 emails in a 6-week time frame.  Maybe I consider anyone who hasn’t opened in a 20-week time frame to be inactive and everything in-between is semi-engaged.

One intriguing idea for interacting with semi-engaged subscribers is mentioned in “The rules of email engagement,” a post written late last week by Matthew Kelleher on the eConsultancy blog. Kelleher suggests that marketers slow down the frequency of emails to have a bigger brand impact upon subsequent sends.

This makes perfect sense to me, as you may be sending too frequently for this audience to begin with (as illustrated by the ignoring of most emails and the sporadic interaction with them). I would caution, however, to not send too infrequently (i.e. you’ve been sending weekly and suddenly don’t send for three months) as this can cause complaints if folks somehow forget that they’ve opted into your mail. You also risk losing their attention altogether if you take too long to contact them again.

I believe this is also an opportunity, if possible, for you to take a look at what these folks HAVE responded to in the past. Did they react well to specific types of offers or products featured that you don’t cover regularly? For example, if Barnes and Noble paid attention to my email behavior they would know to only send me 15% and 20% coupons and leave me off all the newsletters. They’d also realize I’ve repeatedly only purchased books on childbirth (as I study to be a doula on the side) and come at me with emails covering new resource suggestions in that category.

Don’t have a lot of time or resources for in-depth targeting and segmentation? Just take respondents to some very specific emails and exclude folks who have engaged with the past “X” number of emails. Then send a similar or related campaign/offer to those people again.

This is also a prime audience to line up surveys for, offer requests and rewards for updating preferences and tempt/engage with social media contests.

Again, if constraints keep you from executing on all of the above, simply test out a lower frequency as Kelleher suggests.

What are your thoughts on managing/influencing semi-engaged subscribers?

Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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We’ll do a deep dive into each of these areas and provide some examples to inspire you.

PART 1: STAND OUT AND ENTICE

If you want to get the most opt-ins possible, make your sign-up obvious and visible. Do NOT make people search.  While this is very common-sense advice, I’m surprised at how many businesses do not prioritize this lead generator and make finding the sign-up difficult, or in some cases, impossible.

Additionally, highly consider moving the sign-up to the top part of the page.  Clearly, you can always test this against other locations – like the bottom – to be sure this is the best fit.

Use tactics like bolding, different color font, graphic buttons with a stand-out background color, nearby animation and/or white space around the call-to-action to help give the sign-up prompt more visual punch and draw the eye to it.

Here are some examples of sign-up prompts that I believe stand out on their own and they are all set up differently. Tell me if you can find them as easily as I did:

Fred Flare – While further down on the page, I believe the large font, white background and right side location helped this call-to-action stand out.

Kirkland’s – Using a graphic at the very top of the page makes the sign-up one of the first things you see.

ShapeFX – Simple text at the top with adequate space around it helps you notice this CTA.

JBPet.com -  Notice how JB Pet has a simple text-based link at the top, then a nice small banner on the left column area as well as another large banner area at the very bottom. This is a smart tactic: no matter where you look, you’ll find a sign-up.

Express – WOW! I immediately noticed the sign-up prompt in the top right corner, but not because there anything special about it – maybe because it was clean-looking amongst lots of graphics. Then, a second later a huge pop-up sign-up form took over the page offering 15% off my next purchase. Now that’s grabbing attention! There’s no way I could miss this offer.

In addition to the tips above, it’s also a good idea to enable your sign-up to live on every page of your site, so it can be seen no matter where people enter. Don’t limit yourself to just the home page.

Beyond being visible and easily located, it’s also really important that you sell the sign-up! Simple requests like “sign up for email” or “sign-up for our newsletter” don’t really tell me much about what I’m getting, why I should care and how often I’ll be receiving mail.

For best results, explain the benefits of signing up and set expectations:

• mention frequency
• explain what will be sent
  
• link to an example newsletter or email if possible
• consider offering an incentive (coupon/contest entrance) with sign-up

Do a shortened version by your sign-up prompt. Example: “Sign up for our exclusive weekly promotions and get an instant 10% coupon!” Consider a more detailed explanation at the sign-up form – if you’re asking for more than just email address.

Stay tuned for the next part of the series that will discuss the sign-up form itself, what information to consider asking for and how this form can impact your bottom line.

In the meantime, let me know if you’ve seen other very effective, stand-out sign-ups. Also, where have YOU found the sign-up to be most effective? I’d love to hear your stories.

Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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We openly discuss with customers, on a daily basis, how to tie social media into their email marketing programs. Thus, when I saw the enclosed video post I found myself asking a question most of our clients will be faced with in the near future:

Should companies create social media policies for their employees?

Enjoy watching this very short but interesting video blog by Aden Hepburn on digitalbuzz regarding Coca-Cola launching their new social media policy. Think about the good, the bad and the potential ugly of it all.

I asked the same of our Email Marketing Strategist Team and found we all had slightly different takeaways, concerns, fears… that any corporation promoting their employees to be part of the social media mix needs to deal with sooner than later.

Kelly Lorenz: What’s interesting here, and what Adam Brown touches on briefly in the video, is if employees find something on social sites that interest them to talk about it. I’m wondering what the impact would be, then, on employee’s personal social networks. If I tweet on behalf of Coke during the week, but on the weekend utilize my own personal Facebook account, what are the implications? Am I still held to the 20 principles? I would think as the 3-page document touches on the topic of personal accounts the answer is yes, which has to be a bit scary for Coke employees as it would seem as if “Big Brother” watches and monitors all of their interactions.

It must also be a bit frighting for Coke (and probably why it took so long to push through) to allow this type of “free-flowing” communication from all ranks in the company. I think trying to control to this level could cause some great social media proponents within the company to be unwilling to participate for fear of potential consequences. There are so many potential land mines that if I were a Coke employee, I’d pass on this “opportunity.”

There are a lot of companies that do social media well (hello, @Zappos) and it seems that they often have the CEO engaging, perhaps to set an example. I’m sure most companies with a social presence have some rules and regulations in place, but when you create a more welcoming and engaging environment, it really shows with your customers and has the potential to create true brand advocates out of your employees as they see that you trust them to speak freely.

Julie Waite: This reminds me of the hubbub on the internet in recent years about employees blogging about their jobs (anonymously or not) and being fired for negative or inappropriate content. Ultimately, the employers always won and the employee lost the freedom of speech argument. Similarly, there have been plenty of stories of people getting fired over Facebook and social networking site snafus, for example when they call in sick and meanwhile have photos posted of last night’s raging party.

Can you be an individual, be yourself and also belong to a corporate organization, even if you don’t “represent” them officially in the media? Methinks not, based on this evidence.

Kristen Gregory: I think when you opt to take a position as an Online Spokesperson for a company; it makes sense that you should have some kind of guidelines around your online activity. Obviously, as an official representative, your words and actions are visible to many, many people at once and records of any mistakes can more easily haunt you. I think it’s valuable for Coca-Cola to offer some kind of support/best practices/codes of conduct in the social arena to these individuals.

As for other Coca-Cola employees, I also think it makes sense to ask that if they encounter situations online that involve the Coca-Cola brand, that they are careful to handle those scenarios appropriately. I do, however, get a bit concerned about big business forcing other non-brand-related behavior guidelines around social media.

Ultimately, the challenge with social media and with ourselves is that we are multi-faceted beings. I don’t always want to wear my work hat, but I also have to be aware that people may be watching. At the same time, don’t I have rights to my own personal accounts and freedom of speech in more private arenas (i.e. potentially Facebook where you choose your friends)?

At the end of the day, can you be the real you online without consequence? This is the struggle we face as we move to an online world.

I believe, without a doubt, that companies can and probably should ask employees to take specific types of actions when involved in brand conversations. Beyond that, I’d tread lightly.

Now share your takeaways.

Kimberly Snyder
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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