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Talk to any email marketing expert and they’ll tell you your emails need to be more relevant.
No arguments there.
But what does that really mean? And how do you actually do it?
Those two questions are often met with unhelpful answers.
“Relevant! You know…send people stuff that’s relevant to their needs. It’s not rocket science.”
“You just have to segment your customer database based on existing records, prior email interactions and preference center data…then distribute dynamic content and offers…implement trigger emails based on website behavior and product lifecycles…and make sensible use of personalization.”
See your ESP or software provider for details.
Now all that is true. These tactics can deliver great results.
Trouble is a lot of us are just grateful to get that monthly newsletter written or a quick sales promo finished up. We may not have the time, tools or resources to take the technology route to relevancy.
So what can you do?
Here a few ideas to think about…please do suggest your own in the comments.
The term “relevancy” has been reduced to the idea of matching offers to what people want to buy and content topics to what people are likely interested in.
Which sounds good, but brings two problems.
First, it only addresses a few of those “people needs”. Our lives (thank goodness) are not dedicated solely to the acquisition of goods and factual information.
Second, relevancy is not really the goal. It’s not enough, since it says nothing about whether the message has any worth beyond being “on-topic”. You actually want to send emails that offer people some kind of value…that resonate…that drive a response. That’s not the same as being relevant.
So think in terms of sending email that people want to get. The value you offer is the foundation on which everything else is built. And even the prettiest house collapses if the foundations aren’t solid.
As Simms Jenkins notes:
“Compelling content that provides value to your subscribers is the best way to ensure they stay engaged with your e-mail program”
Part of sending “wanted email” is indeed sending “relevant” offers and/or content. But the concept also frees you to think more creatively about what people might enjoy receiving.
The classic example is the idea of emotional value covered in detail in a recent post. Personality, humor, fun, quirkiness, uniqueness, creative design, creative writing, etc. are all ways to actually make your message more relevant/valuable, even if the main offer or content isn’t.
As we wring our hands and bemoan the missing preference center or database integration capacity (or just a missing database), we forget that subscribers already have a good way to tell us what they want and don’t want.
It’s called a click.
Standard email campaign reports will show you what offers or topics get the most response. For example, I assign the articles featured in my newsletter to a particular topic category and then review the responses each content category gets across past issues.
A word of warning though.
When comparing responses across a set of emails, it’s not just the offer or content topic that might explain different response rates. You need to take a host of other factors into account too, as this article explains.
And you can always ask subscribers what they want to hear/learn about: send them a survey and use the results to guide future content or offer development.
I used to get emails from a golf ball supplier. Just a long stream of offers on golf balls. Which is fine. Every now and then I’ll want to buy some balls and they give themselves a chance that I’ll buy from them.
These kinds of email programs are solid, but uninspiring…and typical of senders with a limited range of products or services to push. In such circumstances, it’s hard to build email value through offer variety, so why not boost that value with content?
Suppose some of those emails showed me how to choose the right ball for my kind of golf? Or explained the differences between ball types? Or offered tips on ball care?
And since they know a potential golf ball purchaser is probably a golfer, that opens up a whole slew of possibilities for valuable content.
Now the emails have a better chance of getting my attention and the sender has a better chance of getting the sale.
Chocolatier Nicole Leffer sends prospects and customers candy-molding lessons by email. The result?
“The open rates have been very good…and the course has definitely led to new sales (from new customers), as well as improved our relationship with our customers.” (See the case study)
The main constraint to using content to boost email value is the cost (in time or money) of producing that content. But it need not be high.
This article gives the case for marketing through content and outlines six ways to produce this content at little cost. Those stuck for ideas can also draw inspiration here.
The content approach to lift relevancy reflects the idea of marketing through service.
Helpful content drives responses indirectly by increasing loyalty, awareness etc. And directly, when related promotions are placed within or near that valuable content.
We’ve been trained to think of marketing emails, despite the opt-in, as somehow intrusive…imposing. It’s a direct marketing mindset that partly explains the narrow view of emails as a vehicle to push promotion after promotion after promotion.
Even ignoring the fact that people volunteer to join a list because they want those promotions or content, it can help to switch mindset and see emails as a service, not an imposition or intrusion.
A service mentality opens up new avenues to relevancy.
Transactional emails (like order confirmations) are by definition relevant, since they’re a vital part of a process the recipient is going through.
Trigger emails are also intrinsically relevant as they go out as a direct result of a specified action, like an email reminder if a shopping cart is abandoned.
This built-in relevancy is why many experts see these kinds of messages as a cornerstone of email marketing’s future.
Loren McDonald, for example, has an excellent overview of the potential here. And a recent study found that offers placed within shipping confirmations produced over three times the revenue per email garnered by standard promotional mailings.
Many senders ignore these “service-oriented” messages, because we assume they require sophisticated databases and integration with web analytics to achieve their potential.
Not necessarily.
For example, when people talk about piggy-backing marketing messages in transactional emails, they usually refer to related offers inserted automatically based on the products or services purchased. You bought this…you might like this. Like Amazon and iTunes do.
But you can start simply. You can, for example:
Turn standardized system messages put together by software engineers into well-written, clear communications.Insert a generic offer, promotion, sales message, event announcement, or informational note into the footer or sidebar of each outgoing order confirmation. One you can swap out easily as necessary.Get your system to send follow-up emails asking for feedback, a product review or similar.Sophisticated trigger emails are just the grown up version of the age-old autoresponder. Consider, for example, the lowly welcome message.
That’s a trigger email that all software and ESPs should offer and you should make use of. Consider the numbers for my own newsletter:
Open rate on welcome messages: over double the rate for a typical newsletter issueClick rate on welcome messages: over three times the rate for a typical newsletter issueFor tips on making more of welcome messages, see here.
Relevancy/value is raised where you can draw a meaningful connection to what’s going on elsewhere and right now.
We acknowledge this implicitly with end-of-year holiday emails: a banal offer in February gains meaning when it becomes “a gift for dad” in a message featuring appropriate seasonal imagery.
The concept is easily extended to:
Other holidaysSeasons (summer)WeatherMajor events (elections, sporting events, TV events, etc.)It’s not just about finding a promotion that fits, like pushing umbrellas when the country is covered by cloud and rain. It can be as little as drawing a logical connection between the message and the wider world:
“Stuck indoors with all this rain? Here are some new books to read…”“Tired of all those political ads? Bury yourself in a new novel…”“Didn’t get the right books under the Christmas tree? Try these recommendations…”The trick is not to make the connection so contrived that it’s painful: some products really don’t make ideal holiday gifts.
A big problem with relevancy is that you often only have one shot at it in an email. If you’re sending out a single offer or article, you have to hope it hits the mark. And it usually doesn’t.
Some senders hedge their relevancy bets by cramming the email full of different offers or topics…a shotgun approach that hopes that something somewhere will match the subscriber’s needs or interests.
The danger is that too much information, choice or clutter simply dilutes the message and causes recipients to switch off entirely. Equally, not everyone has a swathe of offers or content to draw on.
A useful compromise is to have an email feature one or two key offers or articles, but include secondary calls to action that might pick up clicks when the main focus is not relevant. Examples include:
Sidebar/footer links to other promotions or contentWebsite links (often in a navigation bar) leading to popular areas of your websiteA link to your website search formI got a sustainable lift in clicks just by adding links to the previous issue’s content at the bottom of each new newsletter issue.
The introduction to this post featured the kind of targeting tools available to those with deeper pockets than most.
But that’s not entirely fair.
If you assume that your value-priced ESP or off-the-shelf software doesn’t support advanced segmentation and such like, then take another look just to be sure.
Go on…take a fresh look at the manual or help files. You might be surprised at just how easy they make it to send “more relevant emails” with the press of a few buttons.
So, just a few ideas for you…any other suggestions for the time and resource-poor marketer to try?
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Administrative messages are the unloved stepchild of email marketing.
The order confirmation, shipping notices, welcome emails etc. are often setup using default designs and text written by a software engineer…and never looked at again.
Which is a lost opportunity when you consider just how much attention these emails get.
We’re all excited about building behavior-based trigger messages, like cart abandonment mails, but forget that traditional confirmation and welcome emails have long followed that model.
After all, if customers make a purchase, they get an order confirmation…if they sign-up to your list, they get a welcome message.
Consider some real-world numbers:
A study by Experian CheetahMail revealed that welcome messages get four times the opens, five times the CTR and over eight times the revenue per email of typical promotional emailsTafford Uniforms discovered post-purchase survey emails got 20% more revenue per email than their standard broadcast messagesRetailer Isabella found that clicks on product recommendations in order confirmation emails converted at more than double the rate of clicks from standard emailsThree areas that often let senders down with these messages are inbox recognition, clarity of communication and optimization for marketing. Let’s explore each, with the help of an Amazon.co.uk order confirmation email.
The typical transactional message already has a crucial head start in the inbox.
People expect to get some kind of confirmation after placing an order or signing up to a list. Indeed, many actively seek out this confirmation (we all want to be sure the order went through OK).
That heightened awareness makes it easier to grab attention.
You simply need to give people what they’re looking for: a sender and subject line that clearly identifies the source and the contents of the mail…there is no pressing need to think up clever, intriguing headers.
Here some examples:
The trap for the unwary is to assume the expectation of an email is all that matters.
You still need recognition cues in the sender and subject line, specifically brand/site names and a reference to the behavior that triggered the administrative email (like “order” or “welcome”).
Here some poor sender names from my “transactional” folder:
The preview pane also plays a role in ensuring recognition. Amazon.co.uk’s order confirmation email, for example, contains a logo at the top left and the words “Thanks for your order, Mark Brownlow”:
Given the sender address features amazon.co.uk and the subject is “Your order with amazon.co.uk”, it would be hard not to recognize this email instantly for what it is.
It doesn’t matter whether I check the sender or subject line or use a vertical or horizontal preview pane…I can immediately see that this is an email about the order I just placed with Amazon’s UK site.
When we talk about the marketing value of administrative and transactional email, we forget the top priority is to clearly communicate the transactional information the recipient wants to know.
Consider the Amazon.co.uk confirmation. It tells me…
My order has been takenWhat was orderedWhere it will be sent and who gets chargedHow much it costWhen it’s likely to reach me
A welcome email could, for example:
Confirm the subscriptionIndicate how subscription preferences can be modifiedRemind the recipient of likely content and frequencyProvide a feedback optionExplain how to ensure the emails get delivered to the inbox…all before we get into any “marketing” text or features.
We might also give some thought to the order of this information…just as we think deeply about the order of text, images and calls to action in promotional emails.
An order confirmation can contain many key information points: shouldn’t we also consider ordering these to reflect recipient and communication priorities?
Two thoughts from the Amazon.co.uk email:
1. They make me scroll down quite a way to find out which items are being confirmed by an order. Yet a key concern for me is whether the right item got ordered. Also, it’s a pain when reviewing order confirmations a little later.
2. It takes seven clicks on the scroll bar (in my preview pane) to find the information that the reply-to address accepts no incoming email. The info is buried below returns policies and contract legalese. (The rights and wrongs of do-not-reply addresses is a topic for another day).
Every email you send is an interaction point. And every interaction leaves an impression on the recipient. So every email you send is a marketing email, whether you like it or not.
1. Marketing – the experience
Your image or brand in the eyes of each individual reflects their cumulative experience when interacting with your brand or organization. And that includes each email.
If the message is clear and addresses all my informational needs, then I come away with a positive impression of the sender.
To this we can add whether the email’s design, style or personality reinforces your desired “corporate image” or confuses it.
Does a badly written text-only shipping notice chip away at the modern, dynamic image you built through a powerful HTML template for your promotional emails?
Should a transactional email take a functional style (like Amazon’s) or should you add flair and personality (like CDBaby’s famous shipping confirmation)?
Are your confirmations and welcome messages delivered instantly (exploiting the power of the moment) or do they arrive days later when nobody’s looking for them anymore?
At the very least, don’t rely on the stock wording typically used in default e-commerce and email marketing software installations. Software designers are great at designing software, not so great at copywriting.
2. Opportunity for further interaction
Once I see a confirmation or welcome email, it’s not impossible that I may want to change something about the order or subscription. Equally, it may simply stimulate me to return to the website to search for more information or purchases.
So it makes sense to include links to popular site destinations to smooth the path to further online interaction.
Amazon’s message header includes links to common transaction-related destinations, like the shopping basket, help section or wishlist. The logo is linked to the index page:
Two issues, though. If the header is viewed with images blocked, those menu links don’t show up at all in, for example, Thunderbird:
…nor is there an explicit “home” link to follow as a catch all. Not everyone knows to click on a logo.
3. Upsells, cross-sells, offers
Quite rightly, the bulk of a transactional email deals with the actual transaction. But sidebars provide an opportunity to present offers and other marketing links without distracting from the main purpose of the message.
This is especially important if you want to stay within the boundaries of what the law defines as a transactional email.
Amazon, like the iTunes store (see left) and others, use clever software to populate this space with upsells and cross-sells based on user purchasing patterns.
The rest of us without clever software can still use the space for more generic promotions, advance notice of sales or events…or any other marketing message.
Given the transactional environment, one tactic is to pitch these marketing links as a service, rather than a(nother) promotion. Amazon, for example, talks about “Recommendations for your next visit” and includes the catch-all “See all your recommendations” link in case the showcase products aren’t quite right.
4. Social integration and user-generated content
Again, we’re all excited about adding “share with your network” (SWYN) links to promotions and newsletter content. Why not to transactional emails?
This approach might also work in follow-up emails. We’re already seeing dedicated emails requesting reviews…why not combine that with opportunities to “recommend the purchase to others”.
The ultimate trigger email program might send a dedicated “recommend to your friends” email only if the recipient bought the product and posted a 4 or 5 star review in a follow-up…
Anyone doubting whether product purchases are shareworthy enough to deserve SWYN links should simply search Twitter for the phrase “just bought”.
The above ideas and concepts are not set in stone, but simply a catalyst to get you thinking more about those “throwaway” admin mails.
In researching the post, I dug out an old Amazon order confirmation email from 2001 which I thought you might enjoy. Fascinating how the priority back then was educating people on what they can do with their account!
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