Based on lessons learned, knowledge of the industry and customer challenges, we’ve identified 11 best practices to “bulk” up your email marketing program for a successful 2011.  You’re subscribers will be happy if you do.

Our suggestion on how to get started is to evaluate where you are currently then map out a process with a time line to improve your email marketing strategy.  If you need an extra hand, we’re always here to help.

1. Get permission!

Map out each customer touch point to identify opportunities for organic list growth in a comfortable environment (store front, call center, sales representative, website, social media, viral campaigns, etc.).   Compose a value statement of “why” they should subscribe and communicate that statement through each touch point.

2. Say hello.

Welcome your new subscriber to thank them, set expectations and enhance their experience.  Most email service providers have built- in automation to streamline this task.  Read More.

3. Mind your voice.

The tone or “voice” of all communication should reflect your corporate culture and your brand. I highly recommend the book “Delivering Happiness” to explore corporate culture, establish core values and create customer loyalty.  This book is excellent and easy-to-read.  I couldn’t put it down!

4. Listen.

Ask questions to get to know your subscriber to guide relevant communication.  This includes frequency.  Identify how often your subscriber would like to hear from you then honor that request.  Read More.

5. Segment.

Take the information obtained above and segment your audience to send relevant content.   Learn more.

6. Organize.

A marketing calendar and / or schedule not only makes your job easier but will keep fellow employees and vendors on task as well.

7. Set goals.

Set at least one goal for the campaign with a clear call-to-action.  Prior to send, double check that you met that goal.

8. Design.

Design goes beyond pretty pictures and performance-driven design will improve results.  Learn More.
Outlook, Yahoo and Gmail have made a few changes that challenge email marketers.   Learn More.
Incorporate social media into your email campaigns.  Learn More.

9. Test.

Test, test and retest.  Send a test to different email clients to make sure your campaign is rendering properly and your message is getting across.
Conduct and A/B Split Test prior to hitting send to enhance engagement.  ExactTarget is launching a new feature in a few weeks to simplify this important task.

10. Measure results.

Data leads to great insight that will only improve your email marketing program.  Listen to your customer.   If you add value to their lives, positive results will follow.

11 Automate.

Work smarter.Use automation to enhance the customer experience.  Automate to send relevant life cycle campaigns such as happy birthday, happy anniversary, customer service evaluations and reminders based off of purchase behavior.  Tie automation into your CRM or POS and wow!

Lisa Wester is the strategic marketing director for Inbox Orange, a passionate one to one marketing agency with offices in Kentucky and Missouri.

]]> http://www.serifgroup.com/blog/2011/01/happy-year/feed/ 0 http://www.serifgroup.com/blog/2010/10/relevancy-difference/ http://www.serifgroup.com/blog/2010/10/relevancy-difference/#comments Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:01:46 +0000 Lisa Wester http://www.serifgroup.com/blog/?p=373

As a permission-based email marketing agency we follow the philosophy that Subscriber’s Rule:

• Serve the individual.
  
• Honor each individual’s unique preferences with regard to communication,
  content, frequency, and channel.
• Deliver subscribers timely, relevant content that improves their lives.

In fact, Inbox Orange in partnership with our customer, Bluegrass Hospitality Group, received industry recognition last month for doing so with BHG Rewards.

Below are two examples of tracking data pulled from recent email newsletters; one within the B-to-B industry and one within B-to-C. The email campaign that offered relevant content based on profile data, purchase history or the relationship with the sender, tracked greater open and click-through results with substantially lower unsubscribes.

Becoming a one-to-one marketer takes time.  Simply asking your subscriber about their interest and frequency preference is a great start.  Being creative with contests or polls is another approach.  Utilizing features such as Smart Capture for Landing Pages or the survey tools incorporated within the email service provider we recommend, ExactTarget, offer a seamless approach to collecting data and storage.  Both the ExactTarget Core and Advanced accounts allow for 200 attributes (data fields) – that’s a minimum of 200 ways to segment your audience!

rel·e·van·cy = the relation of something
to the matter at hand.

Relevancy drives loyalty. Loyalty begins with trust.  Trust begins with creating an exceptional experience.  Maintaining trust involves listening to your audience.  Listening leads to growth and understanding.  Communicating with your audience through the preferred channel with the right message drives engagement and loyalty.

To explore how Inbox Orange can assist with data collection, segmentation, campaign development and analysis, please contact us at info@inboxorange.com.

The Bluegrass Hospitality Group (BHG) and Inbox Orange were recognized on screen Wednesday at the 2010 ExactTarget Connections Convention as a nominee for a Subscriber’s Rule Award. Best Buy took home the award but what a great honor to be in the same space!

Best Buy does an amazing job with sending relevant and targeted emails. If you are looking to follow a company that does it right, sign up to receive their email communication through Best Buy Reward Zone. Recently I purchased a new printer and within 24 hours I received a thank you email asking me if my questions were answered, directed me to the Geek Squad for assistance on set up and a link to a survey to evaluate customer service. Timely and relevant.

Best Buy is a proven leader in our industry and we’re proud to be a close contender!

Read our case study to learn more >

Yesterday I received this unique 15% off “gift” from my favorite store, Anthropologie, wishing me a happy birthday. I must say it stood out and has remained front and center on my desk since. I admire the uniqueness and relish the value of this customer touch point.

Not only was the gift timely, relevant and personal but it reminded me of the experience I enjoy each time I visit the store, and the satisfaction I’ve had with each purchase.

Next week Bill and I head to Indy for the ExactTarget Connections convention. I’m not a huge shopper, especially when it comes to clothing, however my plans for this weekend will include a visit to the St. Louis Galleria Anthropologie store. I need a new outfit for the convention and this unique gift has intrigued my interest to see what’s new. You can bet the color orange will be somewhere in the mix and I’ll be wearing my new Happy Birthday / candle necklace as an accessory.

Facebook rolled out ‘Places’ to users last week and so far, mark me down as not very impressed. I’m not sure what I expected, but Facebook Places leaves a lot to be desired. I’m not sure I get why they added it, when it doesn’t really add any value to the user experience–if anything–it adds to the noise in my news feed.

I have used, some more than others, location-based services (LBS) by Yelp, Facebook, Gowalla, Whrrl, Foursquare, BrightKite, and Rally Up. SCVNGR and Loopt have found a way on to my phone, but I have not used them.

With that being said, what makes a good LBS experience?

• I like the ability to check-in easily. (Partly because I am a freak when it comes to these LBS apps – using at least 4 of them for a while) After launching the app I don’t want to touch 5 screens to let people know where I am. I also would prefer not to “add’ a place, but as an early adopter I understand that comes with the territory. In my opinion, Whrrl has this down.

• I want to be able to take a picture and post a comment easily. That’s truly sharing an experience, why else would I post my ‘check-in’ to Facebook or Twitter? Maybe this is the marketer in me coming out and not the end-user. Whrrl also has this down, making it more of a way to scrapbook your experience.

• I want my other social friends to be using the platform. Foursquare almost has this down, but this is the only edge I give to Facebook in the LBS space. Unless they improve their other features quickly, most of the general public won’t see the point of why anyone would want to check-in anywhere.

• As much as I cringe to see myself typing this–I want some sort of scoring system. I kinda like how Foursquare has the points thing going. I also love the idea of badges. It makes much more sense to me than Gowalla’s items. And the mayors? That’s fun. Even my two kids get into the mayor thing. Asking me “hey daddy, are you the mayor of this place?” when the see me checking in on my phone.

If you can’t tell already, I love Whrrl. If you haven’t tried it, please do. Foursquare will likely win out, since it has a lead with user adoption. But let’s hope Facebook starts going places with it’s attempt at a LBS, because if it doesn’t it may just kill the public confidence in why one can be helpful for both social consumers and social marketers.

Jackie and Bill, the marketing minds behind the Lexington agency Serif Group, have been wild about each other since their Wildcat days. The two met in 1994 as UK advertising students, married in 1997, and today share life, office space, two sons (ages five and nine) and a commitment to community, volunteering their time together at Lighthouse Ministries.

Jackie: “Bill is my knight in shining armor. His chivalry makes me feel special, and his interaction with our boys melts my heart. I’m so blessed to have found my perfect match.”

Bill: “Jackie is my best friend. I love spending time with her and I’m blessed that I get to work with her. I remember the first time I met her—it was love at first sight.”

And Kelli Patrick mentioned that first meeting in her From the Editor segment on page 10:

“Jackie Powell remembers the second time she met the man who’d become her husband and how she complimented his “photogenic” memory because he remembered her name (she was mortified the next morning to realize she’d meant “photographic”).”

With a background and a passion for graphic design, I often share in the joke with other designers that knowing how to use the software doesn’t make you a designer. Sometimes you can pass as a designer because you pleased the person who hired you, but your design may not have worked effectively.

What’s a designer to do? Nothing, really. All we can do is educate our clients and the public on the value of good, professional graphic design. Although your customers may not ask for it, they react to it. And if done with good commercial sense, your business will benefit from it.

When it comes to social media, many of the arguments are similar. Using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for business does make you a social media marketer—but it doesn’t necessarily make you an effective one. Knowing the tools will help you be an effective social media marketer.

And while knowing the tools is an important aspect of social media marketing, using good engagement practices and solid marketing principles will go much further than knowing how to upload a link to your Facebook page. Fortune 500 companies and small mom-and-pop corner stores alike are using these social platforms to reach new and existing prospects. But are they doing it effectively?

Sales Pitch

So I had to be going somewhere with this, right? Yes, I admit this is a sales pitch, but my pitch won’t be for everyone. After all, my personalized session for social media consulting is an on-site session—here in Lexington. For those reading this who aren’t willing to travel in for the on-site session, I encourage you to look for a marketing agency in your area that can help you navigate the tools of social media, and educate you on the best practices. Or, contact me and we can organize a Skype session.

And for those of you who live here or are coming to Lexington, Kentucky in the near future I hope you would consider scheduling a time I can advise you on using the social media tools effectively and introduce you to best practices. Find out more information about my social media jumpstart session.

2.    Email early and consistently.

3.    Add an incentive.

4.    Include a clear call to action.

5.    Send a holiday greeting.

A day or two after writing my previous post about the upload trick for a Facebook page, Facebook’s recently updated iPhone app’s newest feature gives page admins the ability to update from their iPhone and even post pictures. I had been investigating that problem for a few days and had no success finding any other blog or forum that had an answer.

I consider myself a novice blogger, a little too ADD to concentrate long enough to establish my point in writing. Combine my creative randomness with my perfectionist nature, and it’s nearly impossible to write. With practice, I can only get better.

Facebook pages are like nesting dolls. Everytime I think I figured it out, there is something new. My latest interests are polls, the new @ mentions in updates and SMS (texting) with Facebook.

SMS with Facebook

Did you know that someone on Facebook can become a fan of your page without internet access? I didn’t until I started investigating the page’s customization features. To become a fan of my company’s Facebook page just text ‘fan serifgroup’ to FBOOK (32665) – standard text rates apply, but the service via Facebook is free. Status updates from our ‘serifgroup’ page will then come to your phone as SMS messages. Of course you can always opt out of this feature, but you will still be a fan until you reply ‘unsub’ to FBOOK.

I find this extremely appealing for companies who want to capture a younger crowd who use text as a key communication platform. Build your fan base and nurture those fans into another channel whether it be email or an existing text campaign.

I noticed that you need to have activated the mobile feature on your Facebook preferences to have it reconcile who wants to ‘fan’ a page, but if someone is in the ‘texting’ target, they have probably already done this.

Polls

As a design and marketing firm, we like to do a little informal research on what people think about projects we’re working on. Since we have a handful of fans on our Serif Group Facebook page we thought we would ask their opinion. We looked into a few polling apps for our page and found two different apps that had what we wanted, but only if we could combine them. We want to be able to add a Poll tab or even a url link to a poll that has the ability to use images in the questions. The one we found has the ability to use images, but it is only available as a box in the boxes tab. The other one is limited to text only, but integrates well into a page. If I could develop a poll app that could combine the two, it would be a great tool for any fan page.

Facebook @ mentions

There has been a lot of talk about how Facebook has copied Twitter by using the @ feature to mention people. I don’t get it. Although Facebook did use the Twitter @ symbol, does Twitter own exclusive rights to that symbol? Didn’t email own that first? The most common element of the new feature is the ability to reference others and have it appear in their stream. Although this was an inevitable maturation of the product, I’m not convinced the Facebook developers got this idea from Twitter–but that’s just my opinion.