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In a post at Deliverability.com, Dennis Dayman tells the story of receiving a spam message that pitched—ironically enough—anti-spam products. He decided to investigate, and discovered it had come from a familiar email service provider. “I contacted a friend there and asked them to look into how this company [the author of the email] got my email address since it was not an opt-in email or a company I’d ever done business with,” he recounts.
The answer: At an anti-spam conference in 2008, Dayman had entered a contest by putting his business card in a fishbowl. “Yes,” he notes, “it took them three years to send me the first email.” Even without that strange delay, however, he would have taken issue with being added to the list, he says.
“Not once did I hear: ‘By registering for this free item you will get an email from us,'” he explains. “What I heard was: ‘Drop your business card in here to win an iPod.'”
His wife offered an alternative perspective: “You didn’t think they would ever spam you when you tried to win the Apple product by dropping your business card into the fishbowl?” she asked.
This goes to the heart of the opt-in debate. If you add people to your list without their explicit permission, some—like Dayman’s wife—will see it as a natural outcome and opt out if they don’t want your messages. But others won’t be so generous, and they’re rarely shy about hitting the spam button.
Assume permission with care and caution. “[U]nderstand that when I give you my business card, I am giving it to you so you can individually contact me, not so you can spam me,” Dayman advises.
Source: Deliverability.
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“If you bought a nice car two decades ago, would you expect it to still run well if you put in minimal maintenance?” asks Josh Nason in an article at MarketingProfs. “What about that house you bought two years ago? Lots of work, right?”
Well, your email marketing program requires upkeep as well, Nason notes: If you don’t take care of it, it won’t take care of you.
According to Nason, a basic maintenance plan must include action steps like these:
Hire an ESP (email service provider). “If you’re still sending emails from Outlook, give up,” says Nason. “That is the equivalent of using dial-up for your Internet connection—and you’ll deal with all manner of deliverability issues, lack of metrics, and blacklisting problems.” In other words, the cost of an ESP is worth it.
Build a custom template. “Generic templates often look like generic templates, so why are you using them?” he asks. “Your business is unique, so why squeeze yourself inside someone else’s creative box?”
Send messages on a regular basis. People don’t want too much email; nor do they want too little. If you go for weeks or months without sending a newsletter or an offer—something, anything—they might forget who you are and flag you as spam, he warns.
Study your reports. Your ESP can provide an extraordinary amount of data. “Open rates, click-through statistics, number of shares—it goes on and on,” Nason says. “But when was the last time you really delved into your reports to see what’s working and what isn’t?” There’s no time like the present.
If your emails are a flop, take a hard look in the mirror. As Nason puts it, “It’s pretty simple: Your email marketing is insufferable because you don’t care about it.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
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“Today’s online marketing world is full of lovely words like engagement and empowerment, communication and conversation, interaction and integration, friends, fans and followers,” writes Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports. “Many of these keywords go back to the age-old idea of building a strong relationship between your organization and the members of your audience.”
But here’s the problem with that: Marketers spend too much time talking about the relationship, and too little time having a relationship, Brownlow argues. The result, he notes, is common mistakes like these:
Speaking to your subscribers as if they’re all the same person. “I don’t talk to the postman like I do to my wife,” Brownlow says. “And I don’t talk to the postman now like I talked to him five years ago.” In the same way, you should consider various factors when speaking to a subscriber:
- How long has she been on your list?
- What kinds of purchases does she make?
- What does she open and click on?
- How does she browse at your site?
- How likely is she to share your content with others?
Assuming your subscriber considers your brand a BFF. We tend to think of the email marketing relationship as having a far stronger bond than actually exists, Brownlow says. “[F]or most subscribers it’s an extremely tenuous commitment. Marketers who forget this often assume unconditional love, meaning subscribers will always forgive the occasional (or regular) transgression.” Your most loyal customers might forgive you, but the majority of your list won’t have any trouble hitting the unsubscribe button, he cautions.
Come back down to earth. Don’t let all the nice theory about email relationships prevent you from seeing each one for what it really is—and interacting in a way that creates the most value for your customer.
Source: Email Marketing Reports.
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A recent edition of “Which Test Won” recounts an A/B test in which DIYthemes, a template system for WordPress, invited visitors to sign up for email newsletters. Version A used the headline “Get Email Updates (it’s free!),” and used social proof messaging to encourage registration: “Join 14,752 others and get free updates.” Below this was a box for an email address and a “join” button. Version B was identical, except that it omitted the line about 14,752 subscribers.
Voters at the site overwhelmingly chose Version A: 82% to 18%. But the majority was—in this case—wrong. “Version B, without the social proof messaging, got a 122% lift in email opt-ins,” Anne Holland notes.
So what happened? “Derek Halpern, Chief Persuasion Officer, DIYthemes, suggested that ‘joining 14,752 others’ just wasn’t compelling enough, or might have distracted visitors from the submit button below,” says Holland. “But we think another factor might be that the messaging didn’t clearly explain what kind of email updates the subscriber would receive—or the benefits of opting in.”
Whatever the case, it sparked a lively discussion in the comment section. Feedback from Holland’s readers included comments like these:
- “Maybe the ‘joining’ messaging misled people into believing they were signing up for a discussion list as opposed to the blog’s own updates?”
- “I think with the phrase ‘joining 14,752 others’ it seems to suggest that the sole reason to join is because 14,752 have joined.”
- “My own testing has shown that you should leave the reasons for joining to the Welcome Email. Every single extra character is one more reason to delay entering your email address and hitting Submit.”
There’s only one way to know for sure. Many experts had an opinion on this test—and most of them got it wrong. Even when the answer seems obvious, test and test and test again.
Source: Which Test Won.
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“Every industry has its own language,” writes DJ Waldow in an article at MarketingProfs. “The email marketing community, too, has its own jargon that sets it apart. And if you are unfamiliar with it, navigating the world of email marketing can be confusing.” Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been doing email campaigns for a while, it never hurts to have a concise email-marketing glossary on hand.
Waldow put one together for MarketingProfs, and it includes terms like these:
- Blacklist. A blacklist contains a set of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are suspected of sending out unsolicited email (spam). “If your sending IP has a high complaint rate, high hard-bounce rate, or a bunch of spamtrap addresses … you are more likely to be blacklisted,” Waldow notes.
- Hard bounce. A hard bounce is an email that does not reach the intended recipient because of a permanent error. Hard bounces can occur when an alias (username) or domain does not exist.
- Spamtrap/honeypot. These are old/inactive/unused email addresses that are intentionally set up to catch spammers. If you have spamtrap/honeypot email addresses on your list, it may be time to review your process for growing your email list, Waldow advises.
- Whitelist. A whitelist is a list of “approved” IP addresses and senders. If an Internet service provider (ISP) has whitelisted an IP address, it is more likely to accept incoming email from that address.
- CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Signed into law in December 2003 by President Bush, and updated in 2008, CAN-SPAM establishes the standards for sending commercial email in the United States.
Don’t forget the basics. Email marketing rewards those who know what they’re doing, and punishes those who do not. The first step to success is remembering what all the lingo means—and why it matters.
Source: MarketingProfs.
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In a post at the Lunch Pail blog, bride-to-be Casey Barto recounts a visit to a bridal expo. “On the day of the show with pen in hand, I scribbled my email address and name on the contact lists of vendors who interested me most,” she says. What happened next taught her a few best-practices about following up with prospects met at tradeshows.
Here are four key tips based on her experience:
Follow up promptly. “After the show was over, I was ready to receive at least a few welcome emails,” she says. “I checked my email throughout the first week after the show—nothing. Didn’t they want my business?” Then, nearly two weeks later, they flooded her inbox en masse. By the time she got all the messages, she had a hard time remembering who was who.
Explain why you’re making contact. Jog a recipient’s memory with a quick reminder of how you met or why you’re touching base. “I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received … that have gone in the junk folder because I didn’t remember talking to someone or signing up for something,” she notes.
Avoid industry clichés. In Barto’s case, the sentence “You’re getting married!” dominated subject lines and introductions. “Of course I’m getting married,” she says. “That’s why I signed up for your emails. Tell me something I don’t know, like why I should do business with you, or what features may interest me.”
Beware the opt-in faux pas. A vendor who was unavailable on Barto’s wedding day continued to send promotional email. “Not only have you made it obvious that you don’t know me as an individual,” she says, “but now you’ve annoyed me.”
Take notes. Don’t alienate tradeshow leads with an email campaign that treats them like they’re still just a face in the crowd. Personalize your follow-ups.
Source: Lunch Pail.
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You probably haven’t given much thought to alphabetical order since you said “present” as your high school teacher took attendance each morning. But in a post at the Neuromarketing blog, Roger Dooley reports on research suggesting you should. The reason? It seems that people whose surnames begin with letters between R and Z are more likely to respond—and respond speedily—when you give them urgent calls to action.
“We find that the later in the alphabet the first letter of one’s childhood surname is, the faster the person acquires items as an adult. We dub this the last name effect, and we propose that it stems from childhood ordering structures that put children with different names in different positions in lines,” write Kurt A. Carlson and Jacqueline M. Cona in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“In addition to responding quicker,” they continue, “we find that those with late alphabet names are more likely to acquire an item when response time is restricted and they find limited time offers more appealing than their early alphabet counterparts.”
In other words, notes Dooley, “a lifetime of being last in line (and getting the least-desirable slice of pizza or piece of cake) conditions these late-alphabet people to act quickly when they have the opportunity.”
But before you jump into a test campaign, he offers this caveat: “I’d guess that someone whose surname was acquired later in life, like a woman born an Adams but who became a Wilson via marriage, would not exhibit the same behavior. She wouldn’t have had the lifetime of conditioning that comes from always being last.”
Segmenting customers according to the first letter of their last name just might be the key to a quick sale.
Source: Neuromarketing.
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Frequency has become an increasingly hot topic for email marketers. A recent article in The New York Times, for instance, reports research results from marketing firm Responsys that show large retailers sent an average of 152 messages per subscriber in 2010—a 15-percent boost in email volume from 2009.
Sounds like a good argument for you, too, to send more promos out, right? Well, hold on a minute.
Megan Feltes, writing at the Emma blog, warns against the knee-jerk reaction of sending even more emails in the hopes of making even more profit after successful results from an increase in frequency. “While email marketing remains the most cost-effective, most trackable direct marketing method and is still the champ when it comes to marketing ROI, those juicy returns only come with forethought to strategy and smart implementation,” she cautions.
To help you gain the benefits of increased frequency without alienating your audience, Feltes offers pointers like these:
Be sure your audience knows what to expect. A sudden switch from once-a-week mailings to two or three times a week, for instance, might feel like an ambush. “Encourage your recipients to update their preferences or answer a survey prior to increasing your volume,” she advises.
Segment your audience and target appropriately. “Gone are the days of the mass e-blast (or as I call it, the e-bludgeon),” she says. Your best customers might love the additional access to offers and content; those who make one purchase a year might, however, resent the intrusion.
Consider non-holiday opportunities for extra messages. Subscribers are more receptive to increased frequency when content is tied to a special event or product launch, she notes.
The Po!nt: More isn’t always better. If you increase frequency without laying the right groundwork, you might find yourself sending more and more emails to fewer and fewer recipients.
Source: Emma.
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Any successful B2B marketing strategy “involves the integration of email marketing,” Maria Pergolino asserts in a post at the Marketo blog. Whether designed for lead generation or nurturing leads and repeat buyers, carefully crafted email campaigns and messages can still achieve optimal results, she notes.
To help B2B marketers keep email as a vital component of their marketing mix, Pergolino offers seven best-practices that “alleviate common issues and ensure each email will not only reach the targeted recipient, but also compel the reader to open it.” Among her recommendations:
Start with a clear objective. “Is it to send out an email newsletter purely for informational purposes?” she asks. “Is it for lead generation or to share information to solve a customer’s problem?” Never send an email without knowing what you want to achieve, and how the message will help you reach that goal.
Choose a “from” name the recipient will recognize. That might be the name of your company rather than a person she has never met. “Having a trusted from name encourages higher open rates,” Pergolino notes.
Time delivery for optimal open rates. “Many believe sending email on Tuesday is optimal while Fridays are the worst day to send out B2B messaging,” she explains. However, others argue for weekend delivery. The key is determining when your customers are most likely to open your messages.
Use analytics to improve every aspect of a campaign. Gathering strong analytics data helps marketers understand success and failure, and “iterate accordingly,” Pergolino notes.
Email is still a player. But terrific open rates won’t happen on their own: It’s up to you to apply tactics that will help make your B2B e-messages effective—and downright irresistible.
Source: Marketo.
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So this has been something that has occupied a unique space in my mind for quite some time. I have spoken with so many clients who ring me and ask to if I can help them get their business “found” on the internet in a less expensive way. My first response (being curious as to what they are paying for) is “what are you doing now?” They tell me they are with “the phone company” or the “yellow pages people” and that they are paying hundreds of dollars a month for their “Search Engine Optimization” and/or “Search Engine Marketing” (I promise not to use so many quotes for the rest of the post… honest!).
When asked if any new business is coming in, some say yes (a bit) but almost all of the people I have spoken with have mentioned that they do not feel as though the ROI (Return On Investment) is worth it.
Recently I have had a couple of perspective clients ask my opinion flat-out as to whether or not they should sign up for one of these accounts. Now, in the past I have given the anecdotal evidence and let the client make their own decisions. But lately, in an effort to better serve my clients, to educate them with more specific information and to also enlighten myself as to the current state of affairs, I decided to spend some time nosing around forums and such to get a better idea of what the dominant outlook is on the whole “yellow pages as a marketing/SEO tool” issue (see… only one set of quotes in that paragraph!)
Here are some samples of what I have found:
From an article on the Site Revamp Blog:
“If you have ever talked with a salesperson from your local Yellow Pages company, you can feel how desperate the industry is. In the old days when most consumers relied on the Yellow Pages for business information, every company had to have a presence in the Yellow Pages. The way to gain dominance on the Yellow pages is to print larger, more colorful ads. In most locations, businesses pay at least $5,000 per month for a half-page ad, and $10,000 per month for a full-page ad. That is $60,000 – $120,000 a year!
As search engines like Google and Yahoo become the place for people to search for products, services and information, smart businesses are investing their money into search engine optimization to make their web sites more visible to searchers. When it comes to the cost, SEO costs only a fraction of that of the Yellow Pages advertisement. Unlike the Yellow Pages that charges a fixed price over 12 months regardless of the results, SEO can be very scalable. You can increase or decrease your SEO spending based on your business cycle, seasonal cycle and search marketing results. The SEO cost can be varied based on the business’ needs. Even spending $5,000 on a one-time search engine optimization service can produce great, long-lasting results.
If you are a business owner and you are skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO, here is a question you should ask: if SEO doesn’t work, why are your competitors doing it? Based on the experience of our clients, those who used to advertise on the Yellow Pages had all stopped after they started with our SEO service. In terms of the return on investment, SEO outperforms the Yellow Pages by 5-10 times.”
A quote from the Wall Street Journal (November 17, 2008):
“The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines. In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web – flocking to sites like Google – the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation.
But that strategy hasn’t panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.
The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.
Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses – the industry’s bread and butter – find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.”
And an article on the Switchfast website: (september 4th, 2009)
“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” – Bill Gates (Seattle Times, 2007)
There was a time when the phone book, specifically the “yellow pages,” was the premiere directory listing for businesses. Thanks to the world-changing advent of the internet, this is no longer the case. Over the past decade, usage of the traditional and online versions of the yellow pages has declined sharply, showing no signs of a comeback. But how are people finding businesses if they aren’t using the yellow pages? The answer is internet search.
According to an annual study by ComScore, yellow pages usage dropped 3% from 2007 to 2008 alone, a number that’s very substantial considering usage already dropped 6.8% in 2006. In fact, 2008 marks the first year that internet search has eclipsed all forms of the yellow pages in usage, claiming a massive 31% of all local business search queries and trending upward.
Predictably, this is bad news for the future of the yellow pages. Wachovia expects print and online ad spending on yellow pages to decline 6.3% next year, and a devastating 39% over the next four years. If the trend continues, the yellow pages won’t be around much longer at all. Search engine marketing spending, on the other hand, is expected to continue growing from 17.7% of budgets to 20.3% over the next five years, reaching $23.4 billion by 2013, according to eMarketer.
All this, and the average national cost of a half page ad in the yellow pages remains $17,100, a figure that increases greatly in larger markets. By comparison, search engine optimization (SEO) pricing varies greatly depending upon your business’s size and industry, but the cost to get started in most situations is a fraction of $17,100.
So if you haven’t already, it’s probably time to move the yellow pages budget somewhere else – like SEO.
And if you want something more substantial than articles or blog entries there are many sites like SearchEngineLand and SEOMOZ who provide actual trending data.
In my marginally humble opinion the cost for the “Yellow Pages” solutions far outweighs any substantial benefit to online marketing and/or SEO. Especially considering the rise in relevance of social media assets and online reputation building. Yes, proper SEO and SEM techniques and campaigns cost money however, as the title of this post says, my bottom line is that the “smart money” (could not resist one more set of quotes) will be spent on more direct, measurable and uniquely customized SEO techniques and not on blanket one-size-fits-all yellow page based solutions.
Take care,
Skip
In a post at Deliverability.com, Dennis Dayman tells the story of receiving a spam message that pitched—ironically enough—anti-spam products. He decided to investigate, and discovered it had come from a familiar email service provider. “I contacted a friend there and asked them to look into how this company [the author of the email] got my email address since it was not an opt-in email or a company I’d ever done business with,” he recounts.
