email marketing 7 steps

8/12/2019 Email Marketing 7 Steps

1/63

Email Marketing

Seven Steps to Success Guide

Dr Dave Chaffey

Published: November 2011

Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage


2/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives

Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.

7 Steps Guide to Successful Email Marketing

Email marketing

Seven Steps to Success Guide

Contents

03Introduction

12Step 1 Prioritise with the CRITICAL factors

18Step 2 Set your goals and build a quality list

25Step 3 Dening your email marketing proposition

30Step 4 Segmentation and targeting techniques

45Step 5 Dening your integrated email communications strategy

48Step 6 Creating effective email templates and creative

57Step 7 Test, learn and rene


3/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



3

IntroductionYour options for using email marketing to

grow your business

Email marketing is far from dead as some have suggested in this age of social networking!1

As well see in this section, you can use email marketing both for gaining new customers and

selling more to existing customers. In this guide well look at the options for each, but well

focus on using email as a customer communication tool, which is where it works best and

can integrate well with your social media marketing efforts.

Strategy Recommendation 1 Focus your email marketing efforts on customer retention

Email marketing tends to work best as a tool to improve customer retention and growth.

This is because your emails are received by a warm contact that is already aware of you.

Email doesnt work so well when its with a cold contact.

That said, there are a range of options to use email for customer acquisition and its worth

considering them. Lets start here.

Using email for customer acquisition

rQ. Have we reviewed our options for customer acquisition through email?

Although many just think of email as a customer acquisition tool there are still some great

options to use email marketing for acquiring new customers through reaching new prospects.

Checklist email acquisition options

These are the main options to review:

r 1. Rented list email

r 2. Co-branded email (and/or co-registration)

r 3. 3rdparty email newsletter

r 4. Viral email

r 5. Event-triggered email

r 6. House e-newsletter

Best Practice Tip 1 Dont miss the opportunities of advertising in others enewsletters

We highlight the 3rdoption as particularly worth considering, especially for business-to-

business marketing since the banner blindness that we see with display ads doesnt

occur to the same degree with enewsletters since visitors scan them.

To help you quickly review the options for acquisition using email marketing, this table shows

their benets, disadvantages and issues to consider to help manage.

1 Facebooks view on Email marketing


4/63


5/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



5

Using email for customer retention and growth

rQ. Have we reviewed our options for customer retention and growth through email?

Most marketers agree that email marketing works best as a relationship-building tool. Check

out the options in the table.

Checklist email retention options

These are the main options email acquisition options to review:

r1. House e-newsletter

r2. House campaign

r3. Triggered email

r4. Research email

r5. Service email

r6. Sales force email

r7. Integration with blogs, mobile and social media messaging

The table below summarises your options for communicating with existing customers via

email. You will see that some of these options such as event-triggered email and social

messaging are in common with acquisition.

Retention option What is it? Benets Issues

1. House

enewsletter

Still one of the best

digital marketing tools

to build a brand anddevelop relationships.

Add value, gain

response

Dening the best sell/

inform/entertain balance.

Integration with socialmedia. Resourcing.

2. House

campaign

A focused e-blast or

e-postcard on a single

offer often has better

response than an

enewsletter because of

its clarity

Permission-

based:

Responsive

Managing contact

strategies of frequency

so that the impact is not

reduced.

Targeting. Testing the

best template layouts and

offers.

3. Triggered emails Behavioural emailsfollowing up on

abandoned shopping

basket, search or

category browses

on site or interest

expressed through a

click on an email can be

a cost-effective way to

increase conversion to

sale

Low cost. There is growingcustomer distrust of

tracking so transparency

on this is required and

opt-in is essential.

4. Research email Research + Responsiveness Selection of sample.

Managing frequency


6/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



6

Retention option What is it? Benets Issues

5. Service email Service + Responsiveness Cross-selling

6. Sales force

email

Relationship build.

Sell.

Relationship Control

Integration

7. Blogs/RSS/

Social and mobilemessaging

Other alerting and

messaging toolsshould be made to

integrate with your email

marketing for efciency.

Brand and

relationshipbuilding

Adoption of different

networks by differentcustomers.

Permission-based email marketing

rQ. Is our email marketing permission-based?

Permission marketing, or gaining consent for marketing communications to be received,

is fundamental to successful email marketing. If you dont practice permission marketing,

customers will see you as a spammer and you may lose them forever. Then there are the

legal requirements in many countries which make permission marketing a must.

Strategy Recommendation 2 Ensure your email marketing is permission-based

Audit your email marketing to ensure that your email marketing is permission-based.

Since Email marketing underpins much of digital marketing, but especially email marketing,

lets take a look at whats involved. You will know most of this, but its worth checking.

Permission marketing

Permission marketing is an established approach that still gives a practical foundation for

CRM and online customer engagement. Permission marketing is a term coined by SethGodin way back in 1999, but its still valid and we think that many still dont work hard enough

to get permission.

What is it? Permission marketing

Customers agree (opt in) to be involved in an organizations marketing activities by email,

social networks or traditional channels in return for the value offered.

The classic exchange is based on information or entertainment a B2B site can offer a free

report in exchange for a customer sharing their e-mail address and details, while a B2C site

can offer a newsletter or company Facebook page with valuable content and offers. This is

stage 2 in the classic permission marketing process shown in the next diagram.


7/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



7

Its worthwhile optimising this process to ensure youre using the best engagement devices,

messaging and placement to maximise lead generation.

What is it? Engagement devices

A call-to-action that encourages visitors to the site to interact. If these also enable capture

of leads, these are lead-generation devices.

To improve the effectiveness of your permission marketing, ask these questions:

E-permission marketing checklist - how effective are our engagement devices?

r Appeal and range of devices? How effective compared to competitors?

r Balance of lead-generation and non-lead generation devices

r Placement and call-to-action?

r Ability to track (see our article on campaign tracking2, the section Assess engagement

beyond the click through web analytics on page 59 or the guidance on event tracking

in our Google Analytics guide)

r Type of engagement device

r Videos

r Content download

r Poll, survey or interactive quiz

r Social recommendation (share through social networks or email)

Strategy Recommendation 3 Review engagement and lead-generation devices

Check that you have the best methods of generating leads within your budget. Review

the range of engagement devices you have against competitors. Use testing to review

the messaging and placement of offers to maximise conversion. Its best to use a mix

of engagement devices that include both those that include lead generation and do notrequire registration to maximise reach.

2 Campaign tracking for email guide


8/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



8

Common customer prole

Your options to target your email list will be based on your customer knowledge. Since we

are looking to learn more through time, we need a structured approach to customer data

capture. This can be achieved through a common customer prole.

What is it? Common customer prole

A denition of all the database elds that are relevant to the marketer in order tounderstand and target the customer with a relevant offering. It is best if different levels,1-3

of prole can be dened to encourage more customers to sign-up.

Once dened, the common customer prole can then be used as a means of

structuring e-permission marketing and rening understanding about the customer. A plan

with targets for each level can be created about how to learn more about the customer.

Best Practice Tip 2 Identify key prole elds

Identify the prole elds you really need to be able to understand your audience and target

them with future messages. These are level 1 or 2 of the common customer prole.

A structured approach to customer data capture is needed otherwise some data will be

missed, as is the case with the utility company that collected 80,000 e-mail addresses, but

forgot to ask for the postcode for geo-targeting!

The customer prole can have different levels to set targets for data quality:

Level 1 is contact details and key prole elds only

Level 2 includes preferences

Level 3 includes full purchase and response behaviour

E-CRM and data proling approach reviewed?

rQ. E-CRM and data proling approach reviewed?

We can rene Seth Godins permission marketing ideas, which have been described in the

previous steps, to make them more practical to apply to retention marketing.

Permission marketing E-permission marketing

Opt-in Selective opt-in

Opt-out Selective opt-out

Initial proling Communications preferences

Continued proling Sense

Targeted communications & Respond

These are some of the key features of E-CRM implementation we suggest you work through

for your organisation.

r 1. Offer selective opt-in to communications. Offer choice in communications

preferences to the customer to ensure more relevant communications. Some customers

may not want a weekly e-newsletter, rather they may only want to hear about new

product releases. Remember opt-in and providing opt-out is a legal requirement in mostcountries.


9/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



9

Four key opt-in options, selected by tick-box are:

r Content News, products, offers, events

r Frequency weekly, monthly, quarterly, or alerts

r Channel Email, direct mail, phone or SMS

r Format Text vs HTML vs Mobile and now a choice of mobile as Amazon have in

their preference centre

This is an example of a preference centre or customer prole. Although many mega-brands

use these, they are now within the reach of smaller companies through low-cost E-CRM

tools, IF they have a strategy that acknowledges their importance.

Best Practice Tip 3 Create a customer communications preferences centre

A preference centre enables customers to adjust the frequency and type of

communications so increasing the likelihood of engagement.

r 2. Create a common customer prole. Following on from the idea of a preferences

centre. A structured approach to customer data capture is needed otherwise key data is

needed for delivering targeted e-mails will be missed. You dont want to ask for lots of

details straightaway, so a preference centre enables you to gradually add data. Today, big

brands such as Sears3are using social sign to integrate customer prole information with

email and CRM database information.

What is it? Social sign-on

Site visitors log-in to site services through their preferred social network account such as

Facebook or Twitter. Optionally this process can be integrated with additional prole elds

which are stored in a customer database.

3 An example of how Sears use Social signon


10/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



0

r 3. Dont make opt-out too easy (selective opt-out). A bit radical, but my view is that

we often make it too easy to unsubscribe. Yes, providing a straightforward opt-out is part

of permission marketing and in many countries, a legal requirement. Although offering

some form of opt-out is now a legal requirement in many countries due to privacy laws,

a single click to unsubscribe is arguably making it too easy. Instead, wise e-permission

marketers use the concept of My Prole. Instead of unsubscribe, they offer a link to

a web form to update a prole, which includes the option to unsubscribe to some orpotentially all communications. Amazons communications preferences page is a good

example of this approach.

Remember though, that offering opt-out that works is a legal requirement. Many opt-out

processes still dont work so instead subscribers may report as spam which can hit your

overall deliverability. Still, we still think theres some merit in what we said way back:

The use of My Prole can be tied to the principle of selective opt-in you could call it

selective opt-out. Put the My prole option in the e-mail prompt the user to keep their

contact details up-to-date.

r 4. Watch dont ask use Sense and Respond. The need to ask interruptive

questions to better prole customers can be reduced through the use of monitoring of

clicks to better understand customer needs and to trigger follow-up communications or

Sense and Respond. Some examples of personalisation through this technique include:

Monitoring click-through to different types of content or offer. The interests of individual

list members can be assessed through monitoring what they click through to. Lastminute.

com reputedly tailor their newsletters to many different template types according to

content clickthrough. For example, if you click through to theatres or city-breaks, then you

will receive more of this type of content in future.

Monitoring the engagement of individual customers with e-mail communications. This

is achieved by monitoring trends of opening and click-through by individual customer.

These metrics indicate the level of interest of individual customers and we can monitorhow these vary through time and use follow-up communications. For example, perhaps

a buying signal is suggested by a customer who has not previously responded to e-mails

who starts clicking through to the web site more frequently. This could be followed up by a

tailored e-mail communication or a phone call.

Follow-up of response to a specic e-mail. If a B2B vendor offers information about a

new product launch which encourages click through to a landing page then they have two

main choices of follow-up. First, the form could contain a question asking about the future

buying intentions or whether contact from a sales rep is required. Alternatively, if there

is a capability to monitor an individual who has clicked through to a page, then it may be

best to use this to prompt a call from an account manager or sales person. The secondapproach may result in more sales, but of course there is a danger that the customer may

react negatively to monitoring or stalking of this type and it is arguably not permission

marketing.

How is this guide structured?

In this section we have introduced the concept of permission marketing and showed how it

can be applied to using email for gaining new customers and communicating with existing

customers. In Step 1 we will show how to prioritise your email activities using the CRITICAL

factors. We then cover each of these in more detail in the next steps of the guide.


11/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



1

What makes our guides different?

Weve created our guides to be your constant companion as you learn, review and improve your

approach to digital marketing. We know youre busy and under-pressure to get results so theyre

written to help you do just that by taking you through the questions you should be asking to im-

prove performance and suggesting the right approaches for you. Our Ebooks are all created to

help you:

Improve results. A focus on getting the best results from your digital marketing.

Review your current approach. A unique workbook format helps identify priorities.

Apply analytics. Inegrated advice on using Google Analytics to improve performance.

Learn best practice. Strategy recommendations and practical tips highlighted throughout.

How will the guides help you?

Our Ebooks are designed to help you and your team if you are actively managing digital market-

ing. They are also packed full of practical advice if youre working hands-on on a company website

or campaigns like search, email or social media marketing. This is how our guides are designed tohelp create different types of people:

Company owners and marketing managers. We help you create a plan so you can invest in

the approaches that matter. We help you set goals and put in place a system to measure and

improve since all our guides cover how to get more from Google Analytics.

Digital marketing and Ecommerce managers. We help you get more from each of the key

digital marketing channels plus your web and social presences through reviewing your ap-

proach using using our comprehensive workbook templates.

Digital marketing specialists. Whether you work on social media marketing, SEO, PPC,

email marketing or conversion rate optimisation for the website we have a guide to help you

boost your approach. Consultants and agencies. Many consultants and agencies use our guides to check and

rene their approach and recommendations to clients on digital marketing. Theyre also used

to help educate team members on the latest digital marketing best practice and techniques.

Guide features

All our guides include these features to help you improve:

Checklists of questions to ask to review your marketing approach

Guidance on using Google Analytics to improve performance

Colour-coded denitions, key strategy recommendationsand best practice tips

Diagrams giving frameworks to develop your strategy

Lots of examples of best practice through mini case studies and screen captures

Tell us what you think

Dave Chaffey and team have developed these guides based on working with many types of

companies and in training. But improvements are always possible, so wed be grateful if you could

email: [email protected] with your comments, good or bad. In particular, were interest-

ed in ideas on improving these guides or for other guides you would nd useful. Thanks!


12/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



2

1

Step 1Prioritise your email marketing efforts

with the CRITICAL factors

A review of the CRITICAL success factors for email marketing is a useful place to start yourjourney to improved email marketing. CRITICAL summarises the main factors which will

determine whether youre successful with your email marketing.

Lets now briey review each of the eight CRITICAL success factors. Well look at some

examples of good practice to learn from along the way and cover them in more detail later in

this guide.

Conversation

rQ. Is our email marketing two-way are we engaging visitors in a dialogue or just pushing

content?

Email works best when its part of a wider dialogue encouraging user participation and

interaction with a brand. Its easy to just treat email marketing as a substitute for direct

marketing. But it works best when it encourages interactions, for example through:

Polls or surveys (for an e-newsletter)

Reviews and ratings on products (for an e-retailer)

Competitions which are announced in several emails

Sharing of whats hot in the social channels like Facebook and Twitter

Heres an example from the CIPD B2B Enewsletter showing how a poll is integrated:

Relevance

rQ. Is our email marketing targeted? Are we segmenting sufciently?

It will be no surprise to direct marketers that response rates for emails will be higher if they

are targeted to the interests of individual recipients.

In the section on targeting well review 6 options to targeting which cover both traditional


13/63


14/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



4

1

Best Practice Tip 2 Highlight your incentives through formatting

Highlight your incentives in headlines, image text and call-to-action.

This example shows how the WIIFM is included within the call-to-action buttons.

Timing

rQ.Are we sending our emails at the right time?

Timing refers to when the email is sent or received; the time of day, day of the week, point inthe month and even time of year. It is usually thought that B2B emails are best sent so that

the recipient receives them during the working day or midweek. All of us have a full in-box to

work through rst thing in the morning, often containing SPAM and newsletters. It can help

your email stand out if it arrives during the day.

However, only testing can show this for sure some email marketers get good results on

Friday, when ofce workers are winding down for the weekend.

Test the timing that works best for your audience by assessing the open rates for HTML

emails at different times of the day and week. Read our posts on timing for more ideas.4

Timing also means the context of when the email is received relative to user interactions the sense and response approach we mentioned above.

4 Best time of week to send an email. Best time of day to send an email.


15/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



5

1

Integration

rQ.Are our emails integrated with other channels?

This is looking at email as part of your integrated marketing communications. How it

integrates with social media, websites and if you still use it, direct mail, are all important to

getting your message across.

Questions to ask include: Are the creative and copy consistent with my brand?

Does the message reinforce other communications?

Does the timing of the email campaign t with ofine communications?

Do we encourage social interactions?

Creative and copy

rQ.Are our creative and copy engaging enough?

Creative refers to the overall design of the email including layout, use of colour, images and

copy.

Best Practice Tip 3 Make your offer clear up-front

Avoid the direct mail approach of saving the best to last. Email is an impulsive medium

where visitors will scan it quickly, so if the recipient likes your offer from the subject line

and the opening paragraph, then they should be able to click through straightaway. So

in general, emails should always have a link in the rst three or four lines and then this

call-to-action should be repeated in the close.

Heres an example of an up-front offer repeated in the subject line, images and editorial text -

which almost always receives a good clickthrough rate:


16/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



6

1

Key issues to consider are:

How is the email structured? Are layouts commonly used in direct mail appropriate for

email?

Where are the calls-to-action? What are the best positions for calls-to-action and how can

clickthroughs be encouraged? Up-front is best.

How is the email branded? How should email campaigns and newsletters support theestablished brand and when should brand variants be used.

Is the tone of voice right for the email?

Attributes (of the email)

rQ.Are our creative and copy engaging enough?

The attributes of the email header which can all determine campaign success include the

subject line, from address, to address, date/time of receipt and format (HTML or text). Of

these, subject line, from address and format are most important in inuencing response.

The attributes also include:

Deliverability Delivery will fail if your email is assessed as a spam email

Renderability Your creative and email wont be effective if it isnt easy to read in the

inbox

Well look at more tips on subject lines later, but for now, heres one - shorter can often work

best. The lesson from this reseach from Mailer-Mailer5is clear.

Landing page (or microsite)

rQ. Do we send readers to the right pages to engage them?

There may be a temptation when experimenting with email to encourage click through to a

web page that is already part of the site, such as the home page or a product page.

However you will get a much better result from a landing page focused on achieving action.

Landing page is the term given for the page(s) reached after the recipient clicks on a link in

the email.

5 http://www.mailermailer.com/resources/metrics/index.rwp


17/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



7

1

Typically, with a B2B email, on clickthrough, the recipient will be presented with an online

form to prole or learn more about them. Designing the page so that the form is easy to

complete and reassuring about how their personal data will be used can affect the overall

success of the campaign.

The conversion rate on the landing page can make a dramatic difference to the success of

an email campaign, yet this is often overlooked in favour of the email creative. Testing and

improving landing pages can pay dividends.

This is the landing page for the Eurofce email earlier in this section. You can see the

customer journey is nicely integrated, encouraging fullment of the offer.


18/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



8

3

Step 2Set your goals and build a quality

list for email marketing

You probably know that interaction with email campaigns is measured through open andclickthrough rates. While its great to review email response in this way, if this is all you

measure, youre missing the bigger picture of how valuable email is to your company and its

customers.

Dene current value of your email marketing to customers

To assess how valuable email is to customers its best to measure the quality of their

engagement how engaged are they?

rQ. How well do we measure engagement of our subscribers?

A review of campaign open, clickthrough and conversion rates is a natural place to startto improve engagement. Trends in overall response rates are a good starting point, but a

capable email marketing system will give you more insight. For a more detailed analysis, you

should review:

Checklist measuring engagement with email marketing

r Click to open rates (CTOR) these will enable you to see how engaging your creative

and offer is

r Open and clickthrough rates by segment engagement will vary by segment depending

upon the targeting and relevance of your content or offers, so be sure to assess this.

r Open and clickthrough rates based on delivery time time of day and day of the week ortime in month still make a signicant difference so advanced email marketers are moving

to target according to time when individual subscribers are most engaged.

r Engagement at different points in the customer lifecycle it is natural that engagement

will decline through time and some subscribers will become inactive. So you need to work

to engage visitors through time, for example through a welcome strategy, or if necessary

reactivate them. Reviewing hurdle rates at different lengths of time from original subscrip-

tion can help assess the success of these strategies.

r Engagement with different types of offer and message different types of promotion or

message will also vary in popularity, so you need a way of tagging offer-type to analyse

what is effective. Some email marketers tag specic types of links in different positionsin the template to know which part of their template is most effective, for example, there

could be a standard link for hero product or featured category in an email.

r Hurdle rates of engagement over a longer period this assesses engagement over a six

or nine month period to set goals to review how active your subscribers are measured

through open, click or purchase rates.

This is the big one! If you have to choose just one measure to assess customer

engagement, let this be it!


19/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



9

3

Strategy Recommendation 4 Measure longer-term engagement through hurdle rates

To analyse longer-term engagement, you can use the type of analysis shown in the table

below, which shows a diagnostic for longer-term engagement with email marketing.

This analysis can often shows that over half of your audience is not engaged, so this gives

you a hurdle rate to benchmark your engagement efforts against.

These types of hurdle rates should be used to set goals for list quality and engagement and

can also be broken down by subscriber segment or offer type.

Dene value of email marketing activity to your company

rQ. How well do we measure value generated from our email marketing?

In the previous section on customer value we looked at value to the customer. But what

about company value? To assess this we need to know about the marketing outcomes

generated that lead to sales.

So we suggest you set these as primary goals for your email marketing and how to trackthem. You can look at the efciency from the point of view of emails sent which shows you

overall campaign effectiveness or visits to the site from email that helps you assess the

efciency of your web conversion.

Checklist measuring value generated from email marketing

r Outcomes (goals) per 1000 (or per 100) emails sent

r Revenue (prot) per 1000 (or per 100) emails sent

r You divide by 1000 to normalise value to make it easier to interpret, but its not essential

r

Outcomes (goals) from email marketing per website visit from emailr Revenue (prot) from email marketing per website visit from email

This will be tracked through your analytics package. To implement your tracking to check

whether you have achieved these goals you will need to tag your emails as described in Step

7.

Best Practice Tip 4 Use a conversion funnel model to set goals for your email marketing

Through creating a simple conversion model for your email campaign you can set realistic

goals for your email marketing with an agency. You can also set expectations amongst

colleagues since the multi-step response means that response may not be as much as

they expect.


20/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



20

3

A conversion model to edit is available for members6.

Success refers to achieving the objectives set for the campaign does the campaign deliver

the required outcomes? The success of direct response campaigns is often talked about in

terms of clickthroughs the number of recipients who follow a link from the email through to

the organisations

website. But what really matters are results in terms of your original objectives how many

recipients click through and then take the follow-up action on the site such as purchasing

a product, agreeing to attend an event, receiving a visit from a sales rep or entering a

competition.

Growing our list

rQ. Do we have a structured process for growing our email list?

If you dont have a plan to grow your email list then it will still grow, but not as fast as you

would like since you will be missing opportunities from different touchpoints.

A simple starting point to establish how well this is working is to assess is your current gure

for the proportion of current customers for which you have email addresses. You can then

set targets for this metric and devise techniques to increase this gure. When devising these

techniques dont only think quantity, but also think quality. What procedures can you use

to maximise the number of valid email addresses? Email addresses which have just onecharacter wrong are no good to anyone since you wont usually know which is the miscreant

character. A further aspect of quality is opt-in. Just because you have obtained an email

address from the customer doesnt necessarily mean it is opt-in and you have permission to

use it.

It is only opt-in if the customer has proactively agreed, and expects to receive email

communications. Perhaps there are a range of email communications available to the

customer such as different e-newsletters or email alerts. Which have they agreed to receive

or is there the expectation that they will receive all of them?

6 Download Email campaign calculator.


21/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



21

3

Strategy Recommendation 5 Set an allowable cost of email acquisition

It is useful to have an allowable cost of email address acquisition which is a target gure

for addresses from new prospects since it can help control spend on media such as paid

search. Examples include a B2B software company who places an allowable cost of email

acquisition of 0.40 per email and a recruitment company who placed an allowable cost of

email address (as part of a job application) at 0.70.

rQ. Do we have an allowable cost of e-mail address acquisition (for non-customers) to help

control the costs of list-building?

Dene objectives for email list building and list quality?

Setting specic SMART objectives for your list can help grow the list faster, giving more

opportunities to generate sales.

rQ. SMART objectives for email list set?

Checklist email list size and quality

Here are some examples of objectives for list-building for you to review including:

r List size. Aim to increase the size of list over a particular time period, e.g. add 5,000 sub-

scribers to an e-newsletter in a year

r Email address coverage. Aim to increase coverage of email addresses in customer base

you may have 15% of customers opted into an e-newsletter, but you want to increase

this to 35% over the next year

r Email address quality proportion of valid or active email addresses on your list (i.e.

those that dont bounce back or the percentage of customers who are email active i.e.

they open or clickthrough on emails within a dened period)

r Email permission quality. Although you may have collected email addresses, you may not

have explicit permission to use them, which is required by laws in many countries. Also

have you got permission to send the full-range of e-communications, or just some, e.g.

alerts and e-newsletter?

r List value value generated per 1000 or list members in terms of sales/leads in a time

period.

r Targeting quality increase proportion of subscribers qualied for your products who you

have collected proling information about.

r Data quality proportion of specic prole elds held about individuals (see 2 below)

This section describes a range of ofine and online techniques to increase e-mail address

capture and make sure that the accuracy is a high as possible.

Review touchpoints to improve email marketing

rQ.All touchpoints for collecting and updating email addresses reviewed?

It is important to have a structured approach to collecting and maintaining customer data. A

good way to review all the possible methods of capturing email addresses is for marketers to

brainstorm alternative methods for capturing email addresses by thinking about opportunities

for capture which are:

Online Ofine


22/63


23/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



23

2

protection law require you to send an email offering the referred person the option to opt-

in before further communications are sent.

r 7. Any other forms of online trafc-building not mentioned above. Examples include

graphical online ads or Pay Per Click text search engine ads.

r 8. E-mail appending services. US companies such as Freshaddress (www.freshaddess.

com) or Email Movers (www.emailmovers.com) in the UK can be used to identify likely

email addresses from existing customers who have not yet supplied their address, e.g.

John Smith at IBM is [email protected] (perhaps not the best example). Similar ser-

vices can also attempt to correct email addresses with typos.

Checklist ofine methods to build your house list

Ofine opportunities are the full-range of customer touch-points. Here are eight more:

r 1. Any form of paper registration or order form. But be sure to check the form of word-

ing such that an opt-in to all forms of future communications is achieved.

r 2. Visit from sales representatives. Can be used for opt-in either on paper, or through

subscribing online.r 3. A phone contact at a call centre. For example a bank could ask customers whether

they have an e-mail address during a routine phone enquiry.

r 4. Telemarketing. This can be specically to capture email addresses, but is more cost-

effective if it is part of a telemarketing campaign.

r 5. Point-of-sale. For a retail context.

r 6. Trade show or conference. For example from a prize draw collecting business cards

(but care with the opt-in).

r 7. Paper response to a direct mail offer. Traditional direct response.

r 8. Phone response to direct mail or ad. Again traditional direct response.

When email addresses are captured ofine, a common problem is the level of errors in the

address this can often reach a double gure percentage. So plan to control this also staff

should be trained in the importance of getting the email address correct and how to check

for an invalid address format. Some call centres have even incentivised staff according to

the number of valid email addresses they collect. When collecting addresses on paper, some

practical steps can help such as allowing sufcient space for the email address and asking

for it to be written in CAPS.

Techniques for list maintenanceAs with maintaining any customer database, maintaining a list can be a major headache. For

email or mobile-related lists the headache can be more intense since:

1. With permission-based email, the customer can opt-out or unsubscribe at any time

2. Email addresses tend to change more frequently than postal addresses

3. Multiple email addresses are held, often to counter spam.

If your e-newsletter or email campaigns are good quality, then the unsubscribe rate shouldnt

be too much of a problem. A typical rate for unsubscribes is 1% or below per broadcast for a

house list.

All the forms of collecting email addresses online and ofine that were mentioned in the

previous section can also be used to keep email addresses fresh since the most recent email


24/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



24

2

address can be collected. This particularly applies to the ofine methods where employees

talk directly to customers and prospects. Since it is annoying to be constantly asked is your

email contact address still correct? it is best if this is only asked when an address becomes

inactive as described in the section below.

Encouraging self-service through an online prole or permission centre should also be used.

Direct mail promotions also give opportunities for gaining email addresses. In fact, whenever

a prospect or customer has to ll in a form this is an opportunity. Collecting the email address

should be an inbuilt part of the sales process.

Another approach to nd out more about customers where you havent collected their data

directly is to use information available from registration on other sites like social networks.

This approach is a service available from Rapleaf.com.


25/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



25

3

Step 3Dening your email marketing proposition

rQ. We have dened how our email communications offer differential value?

Discussions of how to engage email audiences often start with reviewing creative or theoffers presented to subscribers, but in our view, a better starting point is the customers

needs. Email is like any other digital channel, whether its a social media presence like

Twitter or Facebook, Adwords in Google or mobile marketing

To be successful in comparison with the other channels each channel like email marketing

must offer its own unique form of value that is distinct from other channels. Every channel

needs a distinctive online value proposition (OVP) to succeed. This denes how the digital

channel supports the core brand values but addsits own unique value. Within email

marketing, this is particularly important for an e-newsletter.

Review these examples of the types of value that will engage subscribers and improve

perception about a brand and see which is most relevant for you:

r Engaging text content that makes the subscriber feel happy, angry or as if they

are learning

r Engaging non-text or rich media content such as videos, podcasts, presentations, blog

posts, photos, etc

r More in-depth content or alternately a summary of content

r Sharing of other subscriber views and opinions through votes, product ratings and polls

r Exclusive discounts or coupons only available through the channel.

What is the focus of what this campaign is looking to achieve, i.e. focus on acquisition /

retention/awareness/brand building/ROI?

Write down different types of value that you do offer or could offer:

Do offer? Competitors offer? Should offer?

1.

2

3.

4.

5.

6.


26/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



26

3

Dene the value offered through our email marketing communications

rQ. Do we get the sell-inform-entertain-share balance right?

Achieving the correct balance between using your newsletters or other email communications

as a sales tool and adding other types of value is key to their success.

You will denitely have seen examples of overselling, but maybe also underselling where thecall-to-action or connections to products is too limited.

Remember that this relates through to the structure also the most enticing content needs

to be above the fold when the email is opened. Start with what you feel are the strongest

articles for your audience. Have regular features plus new, topical, articles separate in each

issue.

As well as different types of feature, think about how you can use your e-newsletter to give a

sense of community and engage the audience.

Write down your assessment of the types of value you offer through your e-communications:

Sell (___/10)

__________________________________________________________________________

Inform (___/10)

__________________________________________________________________________

Entertain (___/10)

__________________________________________________________________________

Share (___/10)

__________________________________________________________________________

Dene email value proposition

rQ. We communicate our email value proposition effectively?

Having clear goals around the value you want to offer will help internal copywriters focus and

can also be dened on the website to encourage signup.

For business-to-business e-newsletters, think about how you can add value by acting as a

lter for information about your market sectors.

Your e-newsletters can potentially Alert, Aggregateand Distilinformation through market

alerts, industry trends and in-depth best practice case studies. But to deliver this information-

based value will not be cheap as the content will have to be up-to-date, relevant, accurate,

concise and clearly presented.


27/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



27

3

Best Practice Tip 6 Dene and communicate value of your e-newsletter or email

programme

You should explain your newsletter proposition, i.e. how it will deliver value to subscribers,

for example, through:

Saving time. By providing a single, up-to-date source.

Learning. Increasing knowledge and solving day-to-day problems.

Saving money. For instance through exclusive offers or offering new ways of working

through a companys products.

Entertaining. All newsletters can and should be fun for their audiences this is not

only the preserve of consumer newsletters.

Sharing. Sharing information about your organisation or facilitating sharing of content

from customers.

To achieve engagement, you should review how the newsletter delivers value and try to

incorporate these into the e-newsletter. You should answer these questions and emphasise

them through the design of the e-newsletter.

B2B Proposition B2C Proposition

Make my work easier Make my life easier

Help me develop Help me learn/have fun

Make me look good Make me look good

Give me a great deal Give me a great deal

The example below gives a great business-to-business example of the value an email can

offer:


28/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



28

3

And here is an example for an engaging newsletter for a consumer brand focus not around

product or offer but customer need and interest. Sales offers are below the fold:

Integrating value into social media marketing communications

rQ. Do we show the value we offer from our email marketing in our social media

communications ?

With the rise and rise in popularity of social media, email faces competitors for customer

attention, like Twitter and Facebook which are increasingly offering similar types of value. So

the email channel needs to compete with or complement with these to stay relevant. Think

how email marketing can be more valuable compared to these other media?

Alternatively, it can be argued that a company simply needs to offer choice and many

customers will prefer email for its lower frequency and richer media. Email can help thetime-poor audience by ltering or summarizing the high frequency messages from blogs and

social networks.

In the example below, the retailer is using email to promote an exclusive campaign offer

available through Twitter, but equally, the campaign could work in reverse.

Best Practice Tip 7 Enable share to social options

A Share-to-Social feature allows email marketers to include links from the email so

recipients can easily post emails to their social network prole page, where friends can see

the message, make comments and even post the email on their own prole pages.

Speaking about the Share-to-Social concept, Matt Lindenberg, assistant director of marketing

for Diapers.com, explained the benets thus:


29/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



29

3

Social networks are all about communication. This feature empowers our customers to

communicate with each other, and therefore allows our messages to move beyond our email

list. One of our emails was posted on 50 different social network prole pages. That kind of

customer endorsement turns our email push marketing into a powerful pull campaign .

Finally, a simple, but effective approach is to include more reference to customer ratings

within email as this example campaign encouraging purchase based on customer-picks

shows:


30/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



30

4

Step 4Segmentation and targeting techniques

rQ. Strategic approaches to segmentation and targeting reviewed and selected?

There are many different levels in sophistication of targeting, some of which may or may notbe worthwhile according to the size of your list. But its still useful to review the segmentation

and targeting approach used by the top e-retailers to deliver relevance. Typically, these are

based upon ve layered segmentation options used to develop a more effective targeting.

Best Practice Tip 8 Different targeting options can be combined through

layering the segmentation approaches

A layered segmentation approach summarising the segmentation approach used by eBay

UK is shown below.

Here, Ill outline the ve segmentation approaches that you could use.

Checklist 5 email targeting approaches

r 1. Customer prole characteristics (demographics).

r 2. Customer value (current and future).

r 3. Customer lifecycle groups.

r 4. Customer behaviour in response and purchase (observed and predicted).

r 5. Customer multi-channel behaviour (channel preference).

r 6. Customer personas including psychographics.

Best Practice Tip 9 Using event-triggered emails and dynamic content insertion to deliver

really relevant emails

To implement this level of email marketing needs a capable email marketing system that

supports event-triggered marketing and dynamic content insertion where rules are used to

drop different offers and email messages into a container as described in this post: http://

www.smartinsights.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategy/how-to-plan-event-triggered-email-

campaigns/.


31/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



31

4

Targeting option 1. Customer prole characteristics(demographics).

This is where most will start; based on their traditional strategic customer segmentation

based on the type of customer recorded in the elds of their prole.

For B2C e-retailers this will include age, sex and geography. For B2B companies, this will

include size of company and the industry sector or application they operate in. This example

shows a girls and boys creative with the tone and style varying in line with their preferences.

Best Practice Tip 10 Test different targeting optionsUse the lower cost of e-mail creative and broadcast to test different targeting to create

more relevant emails for your audience.

Many B2B companies target according to industry sector, but do not also look at job role.

Different messages can be developed for people with more strategic interest (e.g. for a

senior manager the benets of a new printer may be reduced costs, while for an IT manager

it may be ease of administration or throughput). Similarly, many B2C companies may conduct

national campaigns, but with email can add a regional element perhaps using the postcode

to determine different parts of the country and then give different messages according to

region or airport they will y from (for a travel company).

Best Practice Tip 11 Consider tone and style preference

Some demographics will naturally respond differently to different types of message. Some

customers may like a more rational appeal in which case a detailed email explaining

the benets of the offer may work best. Others will prefer an emotional appeal based on

images and with warmer, less formal copy.

Sophisticated companies will test for this in customers or infer it using prole characteris-

tics and response behaviour and then develop different creative treatments accordingly.

Companies that use polls can potentially use this to infer style preferences.


32/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



32

4

Targeting option 2. Current and predicted value

Retailers work hard to understand their most valuable customers so that they can develop

loyalty in this group. A useful way of thinking about customer value is these three groups,

originally identied by Peppers and Rogers:

1 Most-valuable customers (MVCs)

These are the customers who contribute the most prot and are typically a small proportionof the total customer base as suggested by their position in the pyramid. These customers

will likely have purchased more or higher-value products.

The strategy for these customers focuses on retention rather than extension. In the case of

a bank, personal relationship managers would be appointed for customers in this category to

provide them with guidance and advice and to make sure they remain loyal.

Often this strategy will work best using direct personal contact as the primary communication

channel, but using online marketing for support where the customer has a propensity to use

online channels.

2 Most-growable customers (MGCs)Customers who show potential to become more valuable customers. They are protable

when assessed in terms of lifetime value, but the number of product holdings or lifetime value

is relatively low compared with the MVCs.

Strategies for these customers centre on extension, through making recommendations about

relevant products based on previous purchases. Encouraging similar re-purchases could also

be part of this.

Online marketing offers great opportunities to make personalised recommendations through

the web site and email.

3 Below-zero customers (BZCs)BZCs are simply unprotable customers. The strategy for these customers may vary

they can be encouraged to develop towards MGCs, but more typically expenditure will be

minimised if it is felt that it will be difcult to change their loyalty behaviour or the source of

their being unprotable. Again, digital media can be used as a lower-cost form of marketing

expenditure to encourage these customers to make repeat purchases or to allow them to

self-serve online.

When considering loyalty-based segmentation, its useful to compare current against future

value, and its best to visualise this within a matrix. Heres an example presented by Chris

Poad of retail group Otto to an E-consultancy Masterclass.


33/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



33

4

Heres a creative for a VIP mailing sent to highest value segment. ESP eCircle shared that

the average performance was 5 times higher than the regular newsletter:

Targeting option 3. Customer lifecycle groups.

As visitors use online services they can potentially pass through several stages, often known

as the online loyalty ladder.

Once you have dened these groups and setup the customer relationship management

infrastructure to categorise customers in this way, you can then deliver targeted messages,either by personalized on-site messaging or through emails that are triggered automatically

due to different rules. First time visitors can be identied by whether they have a cookie


34/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



34

4

placed on their PC and their computer setup or user agent settings.

Once visitors are then registered, they can be tracked through the remaining stages. Two

particularly important groups are customers who have purchased one or more times.

For many e-retailers, encouraging customers to move from the rst purchase to the second

purchase and then onto the third purchase is a key challenge. Specic promotions can be

used to encourage further purchases. Similarly, once customers become inactive, i.e. they

have not purchased for a dened period such as 3 months, further follow-ups are required.

Heres an example of the lifecycle segmentation approach used by e-retailer Tesco.

com which they call a commitment-based segmentation based on recency of purchase,

frequency of purchase and value. Its used to identify 6 lifecycle categories which are then

further divided to target communications:

Logged-on

Cautionary

Developing

Established

Dedicated

Logged-off (the aim here is to win back)

This is an example of what we think is an excellent branded welcome email from Clinique:

Heres a nice low-tech, but often more effective email activation creative where the attempt is

to win-back a lapsed customer.


35/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



35

4

Best Practice Tip 12 Use behavioural email marketing

Rather than manually planning email campaigns, use automated event-triggered

messaging to encourage continued purchase.

For example, Tesco.com have a touch strategy that includes a sequence of follow-up

communications triggered after different events in the customer lifecycle.

In the example given below, communications after event 1 are intended to achieve the

objective of converting a website visitor to action; communications after event 2 are intended

to move the customer from a rst time purchaser to a regular purchaser and for event 3 to

reactivate lapsed purchasers.

Trigger event 1: Customer rst registers on site (but does not buy).

Auto-response (AR) 1: 2 days after registration e-mail sent offering phone assistance and 5discount off rst purchase to encourage trial.

Trigger event 2: Customer rst purchases online.

AR1: Immediate order conrmation

AR2: 5 days after purchase e-mail sent with link to online customer satisfaction survey

asking about quality of service from driver and picker (e.g. item quality and substitutions).

AR3: Two-weeks after rst purchase - Direct mail offering tips on how to use service and

5 discount on next purchases intended to encourage re-use of online services.

AR4: Generic monthly e-newsletter with online exclusive offers encouraging cross-selling

AR5: Bi-weekly alert with personalised offers for customer.

AR6: After 2 months - 5 discount for next shop

AR7: Quarterly mailing of coupons encouraging repeat sales and cross-sales

Trigger event 3: Customer does not purchase for an extended period

AR1: Dormancy detected Reactivation e-mail with survey of how the customer is nding

the service (to identify any problems) and a 5 incentive.

AR2: A further discount incentive is used in order to encourage continued usage to shop

after the rst shop after a break.


36/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



36

4

Targeting option 4. Current and predicted behaviour in responseand purchase

As customers progress through the lifecycle, if all interactions with different communications

such as email clicks and pages visited on site are captured, well be able to build up a

detailed response and purchase history.

Best Practice Tip 13 Develop an activity score to show levels of customer activity

Here each customer is scored according to their response whether it is the number of

opens, clicks, leads or purchases. Different communications can then be sent to list

members depending on their historical level of activity. Customers who dont seem to be

responsive to online messages can be targeted through other approaches such as direct

mail and phone.

A more sophisticated method of understanding behaviour is to categorise customers

according to the details of their recency, frequency, monetary value and category of products

purchased (RFM analysis). The RFM technique is quite involved, so we will cover that in

more detail in a moment.

Using these RFM techniques in combination with the other targeting techniques it becomes

possible to use predictive modelling to identify the Next Best Product for particular customer

types. With the right system of tracking and web analytics, it should be possible to see not

only which types of links in an e-mail a customer has clicked upon, but also which types

of web pages they have visited recently. For example, a select on the database for a wine

promotion could be used to target customers who have been to the wine section of the

website in the last 3 months, but have not purchased wine.

Targeting option 5. Multi-channel behaviour (channel preference)

No matter how enthusiastic you are about online channels, some customers will prefer using

online communications channels and many others will prefer traditional channels.

We call this Right Touching7 this is the holy grail of digital marketing delivering the

perfect message for each customer. Just one aspect of this is determining which customers

prefer email and then upweighting email activity more for them, while reducing frequency and

using more traditional communications for those who prefer these. These days we will also

need to consider social media response.

Best Practice Tip 14 Use a right touching approach to channel preference

It is useful to have a ag within the database which indicates customers channel

preference and by implications, the best channel to target them by.

Channel preference will be indicated by RFM and response analysis since customers with a

preference for online channels will be more responsive and will make more purchases online.

Customers can also be asked direct through surveys.

Customers that prefer online channels can be targeted mainly by online communications

such as email, while customers who prefer traditional channels can be targeted by traditional

communications such as direct mail or phone.

To deliver relevance also requires a plan specifying the number, frequency and type of online

and ofine communications and offers. This is a contact or touch strategy which is described

7 Daves denition of Right Touching


37/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



37

4

in a later section.

Targeting option 6. Customer personas including psychographics

Once we have reviewed and selected from the ve targeting approaches above, a nal step

to think about is using designpersonasfor typical customer types.

Best Practice Tip 15 Use digital customer personasWeb design personas are a powerful web design technique increasingly used to improve

the usability and customer centricity of a web site.

What is it? Digital customer personas

Digital customer personas are a summary of the characteristics, needs, motivations and

access platform preferences of different groups of users.

These have the benet that they characterise segment types in the context of the targeting

options mentioned above such as stage in lifecycle, demographics and style preferences.We can also include psychographics which summarise the mental attitudes, motivations and

opinions of customers, for example:

Impulsive or rational decision maker

Price-conscious

Risk-taker or conservative

Willingness to share information or participate socially

View they want to project of themselves

The design persona concept can also potentially be used for e-newsletters, but isnt used sooften.

Personas are essentially a thumbnail description of a type of person. They have been

used for a long time in research for segmentation and advertising, but in recent years have

also proved effective for improving web site design by companies who have applied the

technique.

I have not heard about personas being used that much in an email context, but I think they

could be usefully applied, particularly for e-newsletters. One example where they were used

is where the American National Football League (NFL, http://www.nfl.com/nflnewsletter )

identied three types of scenarios one following a particular team who wanted to check

upcoming games, another who was very interested in the statistics associated with thefantasy league and another who tended to be more interested in the position in the league.

These are some guidelines and ideas on what can be included when developing a persona.

The start or end point is to give each persona a name. The detailed stages are:

1. Build personal attributes into personas:

Demographic: Age, gender, education, occupation and for B2B, company size, position in

buying unit.

Pyschographic: Goals, tasks, motivation

Webographics: Web experience (months), usage location (home or work), usage platform

(dial-up, broadband), usage frequency, favourite sites2. Remember that personas are only models of characteristics and environment:


38/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



38

4

Design targets

Stereo-types

3 or 4 usually sufce to improve general usability, but more needed for specic

behaviours

Choose one primary personawhom, if satised, means others are likely to be satised

What is it? Primary persona

Digital customer personas are a summary of the characteristics, needs, motivations and

access platform preferences of different groups of users.

Once different personas have been developed who are representative of key site visitor

types or customer types, a primary persona is sometimes identied. Wodtke (2002) says:

Your primary persona needs to be a common user type who is both important to the

business success of the product and needy from a design point of view in other words, a

beginner user or a technologically challenged one.

She also says that secondary personas can also be developed such as super-users orcomplete novices. Complementary personas are those that dont t into the main categories

which display unusual behaviour. Such complementary personas help out-of-box thinking

and offer choices or content that may appeal to all users.

To summarise the approaches described, the example of Eurofce is a good one .

Eurofce targeted email marketing case study

Eurofce (www.eurofce.co.uk) is a large online ofce supplies company which targets small

and mid-sized companies. This description is adapted from the company web site press

releases and Revolution (2005). According to George Karibian, Eurofce CEO, getting the

message across effectively required segmentation to engage different people in differentways. The ofce sector is ercely competitive, with relatively little loyalty since company

purchasers will often simply buy on price. However, targeted incentives can be used to

reward or encourage buyers loyalty.

Rather than manually developing campaigns for each segment which is time consuming,

Eurofce mainly use an automated event-based targeting approach based on the system

identifying the stage at which a consumer is in the lifecycle, i.e. how many products they

have purchased and the types of product within their purchase history. Karibian calls this

a touch marketing funnel approach approach, i.e. the touch strategy is determined by

customer segmentation and response. Three main groups of customers are identied in the

lifecycle and these are broken down further according to purchase category. Also layered on

this segmentation is breakdown into buyer type are they a small home-user, an operations

manager at a mid-size company or a purchasing manager at a larger company? Each will

respond to different promotions.

The rst group, at the top of the funnel and the largest are Group 1 Trial customers who

have made one or two purchases. For the rst group, Eurofce believe that creating

impulse-buying through price-promotions is most important. These will be based on

categories purchased in the past. The second group, Group 2 The nursery have made three

to eight purchases. A particular issue, as with many e-retailers is encouraging customers

from the third to forth purchase, there is a more signicant drop-out at this point which the

company uses marketing to control. Karibian says: When they get to Group 2, its about

creating frequency of purchase to ensure they dont forget you. Eurofce sends a printed

catalogue to Group 2 separately from their merchandise as a reminder about the company.


39/63

The

CRITICAL

factors

Creategreat

cre

ative

Test,learf,

refne!

Integrateyour

emailmarketing

Segmentation

andtargeting

Youremail

proposition

Setobjectives



39

4

The nal group, Group 3 Key accounts or Crown Jewels have made nine or more orders.

They also tend to have a higher basket value. These people are the Crown Jewels and will

spend an average of 135 per order compared to an average of 55 for trial customers.

They have a 90% probability of re-ordering within a six-month period. For this group, tools

have been developed on the site to make it easier for them to shop. The intention is that

these customers nd these tools helps them in making their orders and they become reliant

on, so achieving soft lock-in.We can then target these segments through using elds within the database to identify which

segment customers belong to and then using mass customization an personalization to tailor

offers to these customers as described in the following section.

RFM analysis

As is well known by catalogue retailers, knowledge about customer purchase behaviour

typically falls into three key areas:

Recency of last purchase, e.g. 3 months ago

Frequency of purchase, e.g. twice per quarter or twice per year

Monetary value of purchase(s), e.g. average order value of 50, total annual purchase

value of 5,000.

Assessing these behavioural characteristics is known as RFM or a similar equivalent FRAC,

which stands for:

Frequency

Recency

Amount (obviously equivalent to monetary value)

Category (types of product purchased not included within RFM)These approaches have not been limited to retailers though, they have been a staple

approach for many years for some marketing applications such as catalogue and mail-order

companies; grocers and other retailers with loyalty schemes; charities who can track

donations and car manufacturers who can track car purchases or services through time.

However, for many other organisations, they have proved less relevant. With the advent of

web and email marketing, there are many more opportunities for applying this behavioural

customer information to use RFM in virtually every market. This is possible since recency

and frequency of purchase can be used to understand and respond to other types of

digitally recorded transactions and interactions, for example visits or log-ins to a website or

interaction with emails such as opens or clicks. These types of interactions apply not only toe-retail sites, but also relationship-building websites, brand-building sites and portals.

We will now give an overview of how RFM approaches can be applied in online marketing,

with special reference to email marketing.

Recency:

Recency shows the number of days since a customer completed an action.

Jim Novo stressed the importance of recency when he says:

Recency, or the number of days that have gone by since a customer completed an action

(purchase, log-in, download, etc.) is the most powerful predictor of the customer repeating an

actionRecency is why you receive another catalogue from the company shortly after youmake your rst purchase from them.

8/12/2019

email marketing 7 steps

Documents