Kelly: Marketers should take this advice to heart if they truly want to hit upon those goals around relevancy and value. Building a community and army of brand advocates can only benefit to spread word of mouth and increase the “viralness” of brands. Thinking about how to message your brand, even if it’s plain-jane or a staple, by producing content that’s exciting and people are talking about is something every marketer should work towards.

Julie: I think content strategy is the key to keeping subscribers engaged and proving your email marketing program’s value.  In this time of inbox crowding, you have to stand out and keep them reading, viewing, clicking, and sharing. Focus groups and the online tools this blog post mentioned are a great way to pinpoint a need for content and then deliver it. There has even been tale of marketers tracking social media conversations around their product — a hotel, for example — and changing their email send times to capitalize on the most “chatter” around travel to their area. If you’ve got the time to do that, fantastic… I’m sure most marketers don’t. I would focus more on delivering consistent value, whether that be developing a video series, how-to guides, a community forum for sharing photos and anecdotal experience, or generating quality content on a topic of interest or cause that is directly tied to your product offering.

Kristen: Creating and sharing valuable content via email (rather than relying solely on simple promotions) that engages subscribers is a MAJOR brand and relationship-builder, with improved deliverability and viral potential as thrown-in bonuses. If you are a company with defined values, philosophies, standards of quality, interesting and ethical business practices and a personality to boot – creating this kind of content is your opportunity to reveal your principles, attract like-minded customers and establish loyalty.  Of course, creating dialogue doesn’t always mean talking about yourself or your product, as John mentions. Weaving in hot news topics that your subscribers would care about and responding to conversations that start in social media spaces (including your own) are very smart, more meaningful ways to connect.

What have been the most effective and engaging content strategies you’ve seen? On a highly entertaining note, Adventure Harley-Davidson recently caught my attention when they sent an email with the  subject line “Lookin’ Like a FOOL With Your Pants on the Ground? 25% off Jeans!”which referenced a very popular American Idol performance from this season and linked to the video. Silly? Yes. Effective? You bet!

Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@kristengreg

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Your landing page and subsequent welcome message are your first opportunities to create a positive impression of your brand, introduce your offerings and potentially make some money right off the bat. The last thing you want to do is miss the boat.

LANDING PAGE SECRETS TO SUCCESS:

No matter what, you need a subscription landing page. If you take subscribers right back to the home tab or simply refresh the page without confirming a successful sign-up, they will wonder what just happened and if, indeed, they are now on your list.

In addition to avoiding confusion, the subscription landing page is your opportunity to:

1) Thank the person for signing up.

2) Reiterate expectations. Remind them what you’ll be sending them, how often and maybe even lead to email examples or recent sends. If you are including a coupon or special prize in your welcome message, let them know they can find it in their first email from you.

3) Offer whitelisting instructions. (i.e. “Please add xyz@xyz.com to your address book to make sure you receive our exclusive subscriber-only offers.”)

4) Engage new sign-ups by introducing and linking to social media pages, product lines, blog, etc. At a minimum, encourage them to “Start shopping.”

Example: SHAPE FX – Minimalistic, but gets the basics done.

ShapeFX successfully tells subscribers to look for a special deal in a forthcoming email, offers whitelisting instructions and invites folks to start shopping.

Example: FRED FLARE

Fred Flare does a colorful job of welcoming subscribers into the “fred flare fan club” and introducing lots of fun ways to interact. Reiterating what subscribers will receive plus some whitelisting instructions could round out this page.

WELCOME MESSAGE BEST PRACTICES:

Lucky you! Welcome messages incorporate many, if not all, of the same best practices as landing pages! Make sure to incorporate the above suggestions into your email as well. For introductions and links, you can keep them exactly the same in both places or vary them if you like.

A couple of additional thoughts:
1) Make sure you’re sending your email from your brand name and not from “Customer Service” or marketing@xyz.com. Your recipient will not recognize you and your email will look somewhat amateurish.

2) Think about how to welcome subscribers into your community rather than thank them for joining a list. In other words, instead of saying “Thanks for joining our mailing list!” you can create a different customer experience through statements like “Welcome to our exclusive community!” or “We’re so happy that you’ve joined this very special group!” You get the idea.

3) Also avoid subject lines like “Email Marketing Confirmation.” First, that sounds very stiff and non-personal. Secondly, a statement like that makes me wonder, is this saying I’m confirmed or that I still need to confirm?

4) Consider a welcome coupon or incentive to start shopping/interacting right away.

Example: SEGWAY

Minus the very large welcome masthead area that could be minimized to allow for the main message to live higher in the email, Segway does a truly fantastic job of including best practices.  They welcome subscribers into not just a newsletter but a green “movement,” reiterate expectations, offer a coupon, encourage dialogue and invite subscribers to engage with their various social media sites.

All of these elements  – a visible, info-gathering sign-up, subscription landing page and welcome message -  together create a pleasant and clear sign-up process that builds a positive first impression with your brand.

If you haven’t evaluated your sign-up in some time or are relaunching your site, I encourage you to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this optimization series and get started today. You could find yourself with a nice boost in subscribers and revenue.

How have your sign-up tweaks impacted your results? Please share your success stories!

Kristen Gregory
Email Strategist at Bronto
@kristengreg

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Dylan challenges the current approach of most email marketers by acknowledging, “…this is not very marketer centric, but in the end it should not be. It should be about the subscriber giving them the instant ability to pause a relationship for 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, etc”.

We all immediately found ourselves thinking through the benefits and potential pitfalls of offering a “pause” button.  Enjoy the discussion that this reflective post spawned:

Kelly: This is a neat idea, and a few retailers are actually implementing the “pause button” today. I think this could provide another opportunity for the subscriber to disengage, temporarily, and then have the opportunity to re-engage automatically when they’re ready. My biggest question mark is whether the subscriber really knows or pays attention to when they’re in the market. What I mean by that is, with seasonal products, it’d probably be very easy to determine when and how long to pause emails during the off-season.

On the other hand, for marketers with products that can be purchased year-round or those that count on impulse buys, a pause button may not make sense for either the marketer or end user. Also, subscribers that pause could forget that they did so and when they start getting emails again, may potentially complain that the marketer is spamming them. Overall, though, I believe it’s worth testing (as most things are in email marketing). Perhaps take a slice of the list and send them this option than closely monitor behavior and performance to determine whether a full-list roll-out is worthwhile.

Kristen: Logistics/technology issues aside, this sounds like a good idea to some extent and I agree that you should end up with higher conversion and engagement rates if you enable this kind of option.

Of course, I worry (as I think most marketers would) that if folks “paused” their email marketing from you that they might not remember or choose to “unpause.” Would it be reasonable for marketers to send out some kind of reminder to those who are paused, say once a month or every other month (this would depend on your send frequency) to let them know that they are still paused and maybe even clue them in to what kind of deals they missed during that time? I think that might be helpful…however, end users may feel that this is too much contact when they’ve told the business they want to take a break. It would be worth testing!

Of course, the pausing option, if someone chose to use it, could reduce the amount of impulse buys for those who are relatively inactive but could be swayed by something if the offer was right.

Kimberly: I truly appreciate Dylan’s testing approach to providing a “pause” button for subscribers by presenting “…this to those that are not converting or interacting with the past X campaigns. Not those that are always engaged, shopping, or displaying interest through actions”.  By testing those that are already disengaged or on the cusp of unsubscribing the wins may be much greater than one realizes. List attrition and overall engagement ratios could benefit greatly by providing a simple yet very powerful “pause” button.

Kimberly Snyder
Team Lead Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@kimberlysnyder

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First up is Amazon.com’s order confirmation email (click to see full size).

As great as they are at telling shoppers what other customers who viewed a particular product also purchased on the website, their order confirmation falls short on cross-selling. The only thing they’re offering are gift cards. They already have that recommendation data; why not include it in this message? Additionally, this ad is buried further down in the message, and I typically don’t scroll that far. I make sure the order is correct and stop, so they’re not capitalizing on prime real estate. You always want to stick to the 80/20 rule when it comes to marketing in transactional messages, but a sidebar ad that can be seen above the fold would probably garner more response.

Next, let’s check out the shipping confirmation email.

Plain text and no marketing whatsoever? What a missed opportunity.  Let’s look at drugstore.com in comparison. Here’s an order confirmation email.

This email is very nice – a clean layout with a sidebar for promotions, as well as a note in the body about redeeming my drugstore.com dollars. In the sidebar they have chosen to promote their pharmacy services, followed by partner ads. The partner ads are a bit of a turn-off – while I do wear contacts, this site doesn’t know that, so I assume this is a blanket ad that won’t resonate with customers who don’t wear them.  I would have like to have seen promotions related to my purchase. For example, I bought Luna protein bars, so perhaps I’d be interested in other flavors Luna offers, or other supplement or nutrition related products.

And finally, here is their shipping confirmation.

They’re promoting the drugstore.com dollars and pharmacy services again, which is nice, but that’s it, and they’re buried at the bottom. I’ve seen this as fairly common amongst internet retailers. Why no marketing in shipping confirmations? Perhaps marketers assume once the item has shipped, the customer is out of shopping mode and wouldn’t be interested? Or perhaps they’re overlooking  another hot touch point where they could earn more dollars? What do you think?

Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Julie: This “Enhanced Email” test is very cool, and could definitely help to engage customers, but I wonder about the potential downsides. One impact it could have would be reducing website traffic, where behavior is more easily tracked from initial click to the shopping cart checkout. My first question would be, how are clicks and page turns tracked in this special section? Do you know who clicks on what, how deep they go, etc.? I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon that it will revolutionize how consumers behave in their inboxes. In order for video in email, or purchasing-from-the-inbox functionality to work, the ISPs have to make some big changes to their interfaces. Those changes would involve a lot of time and money, and open up vulnerabilities as well (hence why they don’t allow them now), so proving the value of this functionality to the ISPs would be challenging.

Kristen: I think going down this technology path has the potential to really change email marketing and will clearly effect the amount of time we spend looking and playing with messages.

I’m particularly excited to see that this test populated the products for browsing upon the time of the email open rather than send. This can help us alleviate the advertisement of sold-out products or potentially adjust recommendations based on customer behavior since time of send.

Kimberly: As an email marketer my mind hums with the endless options for personalized product recommendations within a message via the potential new Google offering called “Enhanced Email.” The power of this tool could add a significantly meaningful lift to your Gmail subscribers lifetime value by enabling browsing to occur within an email viewed via Gmail. This new offering will require unique campaigns created only for Gmail subscribers – which will pay for itself quickly given the ability to serve products for each subscriber’s affinity.

Takeaways: Initial test results are skewing positive for Sears, but the net impact has yet to be seen. There are some potential downsides around reducing website traffic and time on site and there are some potential opportunities to increase relevancy and personalization. Do you think this new feature will enhance subscriber experience? Tell us what you think!

Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@KNLorenz

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Now that you know what whitelisting is, why is it important? Whitelisting provides an additional opportunity to hit the end user’s inbox. Is it failsafe? No, but really, what is in deliverability? A sender can get whitelisted if they are labeled as a safe sender by the subscriber and their ISP. Marketers will want to contact the major ISPs to determine if they have a whitelist set up and if they can get added. Bronto’s IPs, for instance, are whitelisted at all major ISPs. This post will focus on the second inbox placement opportunity: Whitelisting by the end user. By whitelisting your address, a subscriber is saying “I’ve determined that your content is valuable enough for me to make sure I receive it in my inbox.” It also means that your images are more likely to be displayed as the default versus images off.

There are several opportunities, especially at the start of an email relationship, to push subscribers to whitelist. This includes on the sign-up form and thank you page, in the welcome message, in the preheader and so on. For tips and advice on how to get subscribers to whitelist through these traditional means, please see this post.

I’d like to explore where there are additional, potentially out of the box, opportunities to encourage whitelisting.

• Replies – In some major ISPs an email address is automatically added or saved to a user’s contact list if the user has emailed that address (it varies by number of replies as well). What that means is that as a sender, you can, and should, be encouraging subscribers to reply to your messages. You can do this through a contest or promotion that pushes the reply (eg, If you’re Disney, you could do something like: “The first 50 subscribers to reply with their biggest wish are entered to win a trip to Disney!”). ISPs are also factoring replies into the new engagement-based deliverability metric, making it that much more of an incentive to ask. The caveat here is that you should use one reply-to address for all your marketing (and potentially even your transactional) messages. Please don’t make it a do not reply and contradict the purpose. If you are asking subscribers to reply, you should monitor the address and do the same.
• In-store/Mobile – If you have a brick and mortar presence, what if you had instructions around how to whitelist on or next to your sign-up form? Smart phone users can sync their contacts with their email client’s list, so there’s an opportunity to request subscribers add your address to their mobile contacts list (perhaps with the local store number and location as well).
• Incentives – This is a tough one as whitelisting is near to, if not, impossible to measure. Really, the only tools you have to measure are your deliverability and inbox placement numbers and engagement metrics, but it’s not a direct correlation. But, think outside the box here: could you have subscribers take a screenshot of your email address in their contact list? Will many subscribers do this? Probably not, but it’s worth trying.
• Out of stock product pages – When products are out of stock, it’s a best practice to have potential customers sign-up for back-in-stock alerts to secure a better chance of the conversion. What if you also included your whitelisting instructions on these pages as well as if the customer were signing up for your marketing messages?
• Social networks – Leverage multi-channel synergy by incorporating sign-ups for marketing messages on your social profiles and vice versa. Right on the email sign-up call-out, consider adding whitelisting instructions while you’re top of mind.

Social networks provide some intriguing emerging opportunities for email marketers. Whitelisting, if taken from a marketing channel holistic view, may need to be modified to “In Network”. Whitelisting on social sites ensures that your brand is within the trusted circle of customers and brand advocates. It gives you more visability, trust and engagement with your customers.

Emerging opportunities to become “In Network”

• Google Buzz – Recently launched, there’s been a lot of buzz about Buzz and the impact on email marketing. Very similar to an end user following your brand on Twitter or becoming a fan on Facebook, Buzz allows Gmail users to receive a feed showing activity by their contacts. This could mean that your emails, Tweets, YouTube feeds and blog posts make it to the top of the pile and breaks out from the typical inbox clutter. The practicality and adoption of Buzz is still being determined, but it’s worth exploring and testing a push around subscribers adding you to their contacts list.
• Facebook’s Project Titan – The Email Marketing Strategists here at Bronto discussed this new Facebook feature in a recent Round Table and what it means for email marketers. From a whitelisting perspective, Project Titan provides yet another avenue to put your brand front and center and break through the average inbox clutter. If you make it to the inner circle, you have ample opportunity to create brand advocates out of your Facebook fans.
• Yahoo/Twitter partnership – Yahoo just announced a partnership with Twitter integrating Twitter with it’s global platform, including Facebook, very similar to Google Buzz. Getting on subscribers’ networks and contacts list will once again allow you to rise to the top of the pile. Just don’t forget to put content out there, talk, converse and share on these social sites so you remain top of mind.

Whitelisting shouldn’t be viewed as just a deliverability must-have, it should also be viewed as an opportunity to become a trusted member of a subscriber’s network. Do you have any out of the box ideas on whitelisting? Share below!

Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@KNLorenz

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Kristen: I’m all about revamping templates as subscribers mature. I agree wholeheartedly that seasoned subscribers don’t need hand-holding in terms of things like permission reminders and whitelisting instructions. I think those can naturally be dropped after a few emails.  What’s the best way to handle this kind of adjustment based on age? I’d say through segmenting alone via separate sends or, in an ideal world, through dynamic content dependent on subscriber age.

While switching up template elements could potentially hurt you if subscribers use a specific format to identify you and quickly figure out what you have to offer, I would also argue that doing “the same old, same old” email after email can cause a glazing of the eyes. Fresh new looks/content can bring new spark into your relationship.  In the end, it comes down to testing to determine what’s best.

Kelly: Building custom templates as subscribers age makes a lot of sense. Absolutely worth testing. You might also consider taking a look at what elements consistently work or really don’t work at all (the dogs of the group) by reviewing your click and conversion reports. Then, incorporate the learnings from these reports into the lifecycle templates and test performance.

Kimberly: As an Email Marketing Manager, I focused a great deal of my team’s time and effort on not re-purposing templates over and over to any subscriber (new or old). However, I was in a unique situation having two if not three designers and an email coder available and ready to build fresh templates week after week based on a layout map I provided. If I was a team of one I would definitely want to leverage at least three unique templates to ensure the look and feel was as fresh as possible. I really like the idea of building and testing one of the templates for the older segment within my subscription house file. If bandwidth enabled me to pursue this option I would be very intrigued to test the impact.

Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Start by outlining all the possible “big wins” your company can offer a subscriber. Brainstorm with multiple departments to uncover all the benefits and programs available to customers. Spend time with your customer service team to understand your customer’s continuing needs or desires. Often this type of research will expose unique opportunities to feature within your welcome series campaign.

Next cherry pick the top twelve overarching programs and/or benefits to be showcased throughout the series. Build a campaign plan which maps out each monthly highlight. Here are a few examples to get the wheels turning:

Month 1: Initial Welcome Message - promote the “big wins” of subscribing and setting proper expectation around cadence, offers, sneak peeks…

Month 2: Our Customer Service Team Message – ensure subscribers know how to access your top-notch customer service team. Educate subscribers on their in-depth product knowledge, constant availability and true desire to meet your customers’ needs.

Month 3: Other Ways to Connect Message – provide examples of how other subscribers are engaging with your company via social sites like Twitter, Facebook and now Google Buzz. Showcase the unique content available through each social channel.

Month 4: VIP Program Message - entice your potential VIP customers by offering an exclusive program to customers who order X number of times in the first year. Reward these vital customers with special perks like super low 2-day shipping for life, 100% guarantee on any order without question…

Month 5: We Give Back Message – keep your brand presence top of mind by promoting your company’s efforts to make a difference. Give your subscribers a chance to offer a helping hand as well in your charge to make a change.

Month 6: Share Your Thoughts Message - send a simple yet savvy survey asking subscribers to provide ideas around ways to improve specific areas on your site, product offerings, shipping options…

With your campaign plan intact, begin the effort of developing each email template within the series. Allocate time to the creative process, give thought to each template, in an effort not to re-purpose the same layout and format month over month. Thoroughly test each template to ensure it renders and is triggered in accordance to your touch strategy timeline. This upfront investment will continue to give back and move your company forward by building a strong and healthy relationship with each new subscriber.

Kimberly Snyder
Team Lead Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@kimberlysnyder

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Some marketers are already nicknaming Facebook’s system “Gmail Killer” and sounding the alarms that the email game is changing.  What kind of effect will Facebook really have on email marketing and how we communicate? Bronto’s strategists weigh in:

Kelly: I think Project Titan has promise to mold our email communications in some ways, but at the same time I don’t believe it will truly be a “game changer.”  Reason being, think about all the ways I use email. I don’t just message friends and family – I also talk to companies I have a transactional relationship with (and how would THAT work with Facebook requiring explicit opt-in? Would it require that you whitelist the company’s FB account prior to completing the transaction?), with people I’ve met recently (am I required to immediately add them as friends?), and so on.

And what of the cap on friends? Do I have to trim up my friends list in order to add marketers or others in? Not likely to happen.

For these reasons and more, I believe Project Titan will allow for a better email experience within FB, but I don’t believe it will cause the demise of a traditional personal email account. I don’t foresee it having any impact at all on business email addresses because through my business email address I talk to all different people daily, which is the case for most (if not all) business accounts.

Julie: I’m not sure why people are crying wolf that this means the death of Gmail.  Facebook having their own mail app and giving users their own @facebook.com address means competition for all web clients – Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, et al. Why would Gmail in particular be hurt the most? More importantly, do consumers really want yet another email address to keep up with? That remains to be seen, and I think therein lies the answer to the threat question.  I’m more concerned with the potential for spammers and not-so-honest marketers to abuse these @facebook.com inboxes by scraping Facebook and the web for vanity URLs. How can honest marketers for big brands protect themselves from being spoofed?

Kristen: I think Facebook’s move to launch an email system is a big deal (though I’m skeptical about it killing other inboxes). Millions of users spend a lot of free time using Facebook, which offers that inbox (and those mailing to it) an advantage over others. I see this also as a move that takes us more toward a truly integrated channel – where search, email, social, etc. reside together and where the idea of a master preference center could ultimately live.

I would hope that there would be some kind of permission granted before an institution could email you at a Facebook address – and really there NEEDS to be, as there would never be an easier way to harvest addresses and spam people.

That being said, this is clearly a time for businesses to start thinking about how they are interacting on Facebook, creating an identity there and potentially using existing email programs to build a fan base. I would argue, though, that just as with email, your presence on Facebook has to provide some kind of value for end success, so you need to actually be prepared to fulfill that.

What do you think Facebook’s new email system will mean for marketers? Let us know!

Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@kristengreg

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THE FORMAT:
Most businesses typically create sign-up forms that follow one of three paths:

1) The simple email-only sign up.
Examples: Harry and David, Zazzle (bottom, right corners)
This format enables a quick and easy sign-up, but doesn’t give you any additional information about the contact that you can use to better target your messages.

2) The separate page, multiple-field form.
Example: Bloom’s Today
This page is usually led to by a text link or graphic banner. By asking for additional information, you can send more relevant messages to the recipient. Blooms Today’s reminder sign-up will allow them to send specific, personalized emails in a very timely fashion, making it likely that they will see great conversions off those messages.

3) The two-part sign-up: the simple email request that leads to a fuller form.
Examples: Carolina Biological, Uncommon Goods (page 2 after simple sign-up), Dale and Thomas Popcorn (sign up via short form on left-side bottom and experience the small browser pop-up)
Clearly, this scenario allows for the best of both worlds. Want to just give us your email and move on? No problem. But giving subscribers the ability to let you know what kind of message they want to receive, how often, an opportunity to receive special birthday deals and so on, sends the message that you are listening as a brand and care about being relevant.

GATHERING CRITICAL DATA:
If you’ve decided you would like to gather more information on your subscribers, what should you request? Ask yourself what kind of data you can actually use to send more targeted and/or automated messages that will make an impact. Here are some ideas that may make sense for your business:

• First name
• Last name
• Zip code or state – Do you have brick and mortar stores where you can drive traffic? Do you sell seasonal products that would vary depending on state?
• Product interest – Providing checkbox fields can keep you on target with a subscriber’s interests and keep them engaged. For example, if you are an outdoor sports retailer, you might break down interests by hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, fishing, etc.
• Gender
• Birthday(s) – Send special deals on their birthday or for those of loved ones, as Paw’s Choice and Estella offer.
• Desired frequency
• Skill level – Are you selling products to pilots or scrapbookers? You could send product suggestions and informational content/videos that are more aligned with subscriber experience and skill level to make a bigger impact.

Ultimately, you know best what information could be used for segmentation and personalization. Asking for it at sign-up time helps you start your relationship on the right foot with the right focus.

OTHER SIGN-UP SUGGESTIONS:
1. Be sure to reiterate expectations at the top of the form. Let subscribers know what they are signing up for, how often they should expect to receive email and even link to sample messages if possible.

2 . Keep all non-critical information (usually everything but email address) optional to share in order to create the least amount of sign-up friction. Also, be careful not to overwhelm your reader with way too many questions that make the sign-up process daunting.

3. Make it clear why you are asking for something if it seems odd or could make people hesitate. This Hot Topic sign-up does a great job providing an explanation for a birth date request via a “Why are we asking?” link.

4. Consider asking subscribers to enter their email address twice to avoid capturing bad addresses due to fat fingers. Examples: Gap (using the simple format), Shapefx

So what happens after you hit submit? Stay tuned for the last post of the sign-up series that will cover important considerations for your subscription landing page and the quintessential welcome message.

Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@kristengreg

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