TABLE OF CONTENTS

03 Why Should I Read the Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing? 04 Part One: What is Engaging Email? 17 Part Two: Trusted 51 Part Three: Always Relevant 97 Part Four: Conversations, Not Campaigns 109 Part Five: Coordinated Across Channels 123 Part Six: Strategic - The New Metrics for Email 136 Part Seven: Graduating from ESP to Marketing Automation 152 Appendix: Email Marketing Experts 153 Appendix: Reference Links 154 About Marketo introduction why should i read the definitive guide to engaging email marketing? Buyers today are more empowered. Information is abundantly, overwhelmingly available, and buyers are using that easy access to tune out unwanted marketing messages while simultaneously seizing control of their buying processes.

In this environment, old- This Definitive Guide to Engaging We hope this guide will help you tell richer, fashioned “batch and blast” Email Marketing (#DG2EEM) covers more compelling, and ultimately more email will serve only to alienate the five attributes of engaging email: engaging stories within your email buyers. With short attention marketing and beyond. Throughout it, spans and intelligent buying and • Trusted you’ll find checklists and worksheets to browsing habits, digitally-savvy • Always relevant help you assess your strategy and consumers want personalized, examples of great email marketing to relevant communications. • Conversational inspire you.

• Coordinated across channels To keep up with today’s buyer, you need to know: • Strategic On any given day, the average customer will be exposed • What makes email truly trusted As a “Definitive Guide”, it also covers to 2,904 media messages, will pay attention to 52 and will and engaging all sorts of email topics, including positively remember only four (SuperProfile 2010). • How to talk with each of your writing subject lines, designing emails customers individually, rather for mobile, building and managing How do you ensure that your email is one of the four that than talk at them as a group your list, avoiding spam filters, integrating email and social, and gets remembered? The answer: your email must be more • How to engage your audience more. The guide also talks about the trusted, more relevant, and more strategic. It must be with cross-channel latest in email technology, including more engaging. conversations, listening and what to look for in a modern email responding effectively service provider. part one: What is engaging email? PART ONE: What is Engaging email? The new digital buyer Meet today’s buyer. She has the upper hand when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Tech savvy and brand sophisticated, she is wise to the ways of marketing, and she expects a lot. She believes you should inform and even entertain her, but never bore or, worse, irritate her. And she’s fickle — if you don’t keep communications interesting, she’ll opt out lickety-split.

Three major trends have emerged out of the recent — and rapid — evolution of buyer behaviors across email, social, search, and the Web. Customer Engagement for Competitive Advantage 1. Buyers are more empowered: Today’s buyers are increasingly And as for you sales guys, the idea of According to Forrester Research, we are Thanks to information abundance self-directed when it comes to making taking a customer out for golf sounds now in the “Age of the Customer.” Today, combined with better search and purchasing decisions. They have great, and it may even happen advances in technology allow every sharing technology, product broad access to resources and occasionally, but you know it’s not company to tap into global factories and information is now ubiquitous. The proactively gather information across feasible for everyone. You manage a supply chains, and even the leanest Web provides consumers with instant a number of digital channels, often portfolio of hundreds or thousands startups can access all the computing information gratification. And mobile developing brand perceptions before of customers! resources they need from the cloud. The devices add a wherever/whenever they ever interact directly with a brand. ability to tap into the cloud is no longer dimension to every aspect of the By the time a buyer comes to you, he’s considered an advantage; rather, it’s a way experience. Consumers can access probably already made his purchasing of life. Today, being the customer’s first detailed specs, pricing, and reviews decision, so it’s time to throw out the choice is the only remaining source of about goods and services 24/7 with a old model of a persuasive shop girl competitive advantage, and competition is few flicks of their thumbs on their greeting your customer at the door. fierce. To win, companies must be smartphones. Meanwhile, social obsessed with their customers, focused on media encourages consumers to understanding them and engaging with share and compare. them better than anyone else.

5 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? The new digital buyer

2. Buyers know how to opt out: 3. Consumers have higher It’s an exciting – yet challenging – The junk mail of yore kept consumers expectations: Today’s buyers time to be a marketer. It’s no “Building on the vast increase prisoner because they couldn’t expect companies to keep seamless longer sufficient to simply push in consumer power brought on “break out.” But today’s buyers can track of their purchasing history, static information to buyers in a easily opt out of marketing communication preferences, and mass advertising model, not by the digital age, marketing communications they don’t want. If desires. If your system isn’t a well-oiled even in segmented batches. You is headed toward being you’re sending marketing emails and data machine, you’ll lose brand must fundamentally shift the ways on-demand — not just always tracking your results (and we hope loyalty fast. you engage with customers across ‘on,’ but also always relevant, you are!) you probably know that online channels throughout their gut-sinking feeling well when a Consumers look for a unified and lifecycles. And to do this, you must responsive to the consumer’s campaign underperforms and personalized experience across all of learn to engage each and every desire for marketing that cuts causes a lot of opt-outs – or, worse, your touchpoints: your website, social prospective customer through the noise with spam complaints! media and photo platforms individually and personally. pinpoint delivery.” (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), email But consumers who take the initiative marketing, etc. They want to find the – McKinsey, “The Coming Era of to unsubscribe from your emails information they are looking for in the ‘On-Demand’ Marketing” might only be the tip of the opt-out medium that is most convenient for iceberg. Many more consumers them at the moment. Whether they’re might be “passively opting out” — in front of their computers at work or in simply ignoring the emails you send. lines at post offices on their mobile We’re all getting better at tuning out devices, they expect an experience the noise of today’s digital circus, and that’s streamlined and consistent — the result is that most traditional and it must be personal, too. They also marketing techniques, which are expect you to recognize them — this is based on “renting attention” from the where it becomes critical to capture buyer as they go about their business, and store data over time and across are becoming less and less effective channels — and then feed them the as buyers get more tech-savvy. exact information they want at the moment you interact with them.

6 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? email matters more today than ever before In 2009, The Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that email was dead. Ironically, it was the most emailed article of the day.

Just about every day since then, But the reports of the death of email someone has published an article or have been greatly exaggerated, and “The reports of my death have blog post echoing email’s demise. In the hysteria around the notion only been greatly exaggerated.” fact, if you Google “email is dead,” shows that email is more important Quick Quiz you’ll get over 1.5 million results. than ever. While companies now – Mark Twain (To emphasize just how radical a have the flexibility to communicate 1. How many times a day do you number that is, comparison searches via traditional channels, such as check your email? bring up only 280,000 results for direct mail and TV, as well as “blogging is dead,” 180,000 for through newer channels, such as 2. How many times have you checked your email in the last hour? “social media is dead,” and only social media, email is still the 2,500 for “podcasting is dead.” All of quickest and most direct way to 3. How soon after you wake up do these numbers were current at the reach customers with you check your email? time we wrote this in June 2013.) critical information. 4. Have you checked your email while reading this guide? Why? Because email is the one channel your audience accesses regularly. We – consumers – are addicted to email.

7 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? email matters more today than ever before

Email: Alive and Well Email is very much alive. Plus, it’s still • Email investment is slated to On any given day, your customer may “Where do you tell people or may not visit your website, blog or the number one way for marketers to increase. 64% of companies Facebook page; but with few communicate directly with customers. indicated their organizations’ to send important calendar exceptions, customers check their investment in email marketing was items, documents, or According to new research: expected to increase in 2013. email every day, if not multiple times a discussions about day. Scratch that — how do you make (Source: MarketingSherpa 2013 • Email is the customer it through all those meetings? It’s more Benchmark report) important topics, either for preference. In a recent survey, a like multiple times an hour! work or home? Our guess staggering 77% of consumers reported that they prefer to receive The point is, email is not going is that ‘Facebook’ wasn’t Despite pundit cynicism, the stats permission-based marketing anywhere. As a marketer, it’s still around email are resoundingly positive. your answer. It was communications through email – your number one tool for reaching For example, there are currently 3.3 probably email.” and email was the number one customers fast. billion email accounts in the world. source for all age groups – Jason Falls, Digital Strategist (Source: Mashable) including 15-24! If you agree that email marketing and Co-author of “The Rebel’s (Source: Waldow Social) is NOT dead, go ahead and take a Guide to Email Marketing” What’s more: quick break to tweet: • Email generates nearly a 2X • Of Americans age 12 and over return compared to other who are active online, 94% cite channels. For every dollar spent email as one of their regular on email marketing in 2011, there Email Marketing is activities. (Source: Pew Internet and NOT dead! #DG2EEM American Life Project’s Generations was a $40.56 return. Compare that 2010 report) to other channels, such as search engine marketing, which is the • Jay Baer, Social Media Speaker, next closest at $22.44. Author and Coach, says that 58% (Source: Direct Marketing Association and percent of adult Americans Smart Data Collective) check email first thing in the morning. (Source: MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Summit) 8 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? but email is facing challenges Email still matters – perhaps more than ever – but traditional paradigms no longer cut it. It’s time for a reality check regarding the new challenges that email marketers face as digital consumers get more sophisticated.

Here are the key areas of this new challenge:

• The Economics of Attention: Information abundance and attention scarcity make it harder than ever to get buyer attention

• Opt-Out, Screen Out, Tune Out: Consumers don’t want to feel they are being marketed to, and will find ways to tune out unwanted communications

• The Cross-Channel Marketing Revolution: New communication channels mean email can no longer be a standalone channel

• Imprecise Metrics: Imprecise metrics that don’t show true impact means that email struggles to be strategic PART ONE: What is Engaging email? but email is facing challenges

The Economics of Attention Information abundance means Opt-Out, Screen Out, Tune Out don’t like a message, they’ll not only The rise of the Internet has resulted in attention scarcity. Social scientist People are inundated with pitches, make sure they don’t see it again, but a quick transition from information Herbert Simon first talked about advertisements, and other interruptions they’ll also tell others about their scarcity to information abundance. attention economics when he on a daily basis. Consumers are displeasure. wrote, “In an information-rich world, marketed to so often that, as a matter The world is producing information the wealth of information means a of self-defense, they’ve raised a And, let’s face it, most marketing emails faster than the human mind can wrap dearth of something else: a scarcity psychological “anti-marketing shield.” pretty much suck. Even if yours don’t, itself around the data. According to a of whatever it is that information that doesn’t mean they’ll interest your 2011 IDC report titled Extracting consumes. What information This is particularly the case when it audience. What’s creative and alluring Value from Chaos, the amount of consumes is obvious: attention of comes to email content. Consumers to you might just look or sound like global digital information created and its recipients.” with a vested interest in achieving another sales-y, drone-toned e-blast to shared worldwide grew nine-fold “Inbox Zero” have many tools to help your end viewer: “Hi, are you ready to from 2006 to 2011, growing to 2 This means it is only getting harder them sweep and filter unwanted buy? Hi, are you ready to buy? Hi, are trillion gigabytes. This number is and harder for your emails to emails. They create their own you ready to buy?” expected to quadruple by 2015. engage consumers. definitions of junk mail using custom filters in their email software, and if they Don’t be that guy.

Global Digital Information Created & Shared, 2005 – 2015E

8 Source: IDC report “Extract Value from Chaos” 6/11.

6

4 (zettabytes) 2 Digital Information Created & Shared Shared & Created Information Digital 0 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013E 2015E 10 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? but email is facing challenges

The Cross-Channel Imprecise Metrics Marketing Revolution With traditional ESP solutions, the Today’s buyer seeks relevant and that today’s buyer is adept at marketer has to manually sort through personalized content across all digital multi-tasking across channels — multiple reports to track unsubscribes, channels: email, mobile, social, engaging with email in one clicks, opens, bounces, and so on for display advertising, you name it. moment, a website the next, and each email campaign. The insight Omni-channel, customer-focused then flitting across to social media. these reports provide is, unfortunately, marketing is no longer nice to have; And he does it all while talking on not that insightful with regard to it’s a must-have. the phone or texting. Traditional customer engagement. ESP solutions can’t adequately When stuck with imprecise and Companies that want to put address this level of sophisticated generic metrics, email marketing customers at the center of their multi-channel customer remains merely a tactical channel, marketing strategies must engage engagement. Nor can ESPs relegated to the sidelines instead of them across the board, but this is only adequately capture all the online becoming a strategic part of possible when marketing teams have and offline behavioral patterns that leadership’s revenue plan. a channel strategy that unifies their marketers must track to stay on top products and teams. of customer whims.

Traditional email marketing tools were To spearhead the movement designed for just one channel – email. toward true cross-channel It started as a single communications coordination, a new breed of email Marketers waste valuable time struggling to connect channel with no core connection to marketers is quickly rising to the the basic metrics provided by their ESPs to the more other marketing channels. Even top. These forward-thinking today, companies using standalone marketers are embracing strategies strategic metrics that company executives actually email service providers (ESPs) are that leverage email as the best care about, such as customer engagement and stuck with a legacy approach that platform to tie together the revenue impact. doesn’t take into account the reality customer relationship over time and across all marketing channels.

11 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? Engaging Email Marketing Defined Consumers are always on, always connected, and always overwhelmed. If you want to connect with them, you have to work hard to engage them. In order to be truly effective, email marketing must become more trusted, more relevant, more conversational, and more strategic.

Think about it: you probably pay The best marketing doesn’t the most attention to emails from feel like marketing at all. “Remember that the best friends, family, and colleagues, campaigns aren’t about you people with whom you have If you can genuinely engage your When implemented effectively, modern genuine, trusted relationships. audience through email or what you want subscribers engagement marketing can significantly Sure, the relationship between a marketing, you can build direct, to do. They’re about your enhance your organization’s ability to brand and a consumer is never trusted relationships across all subscribers and what they increase revenue, maximize return on exactly the same as the relationship channels. Do this right, and you’ll marketing investments, and increase the between friends and family, but be the company that cuts want.” lifetime value of your customers. Marketo marketers can narrow the gap. through the noise. – Matt Blumberg has found this to be true across almost Brands can enjoy some of the Chairman & CEO of Return Path every industry, including: benefits of a trusted relationship by marketing to the buyer in a natural, • Business services non-marketing-speak way that truly • Education engages him. • Financial services • Healthcare • Manufacturing • Media • Technology • Telecommunications • Travel and leisure

12 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? Engaging Email Marketing Defined

The 5 Key Attributes of Engaging Email To engage and succeed, your marketing emails Once we’ve covered all five of these must, above all else, be: key attributes of engaging email, “With each advance in digital we’ll talk about technology in Part 7, communication and with every new and how marketing automation can information source, social connection, or help you graduate from basic email 1. TRUSTWorthy services to real, hit-it-out-of-the- mobile device improvement, the customer (Part 2) ballpark engagement strategies. becomes more powerful. Tactics that captivated buyers yesterday lack luster Ready to dive into greatness with 2. always relevant your email marketing? Flip or click today. One such out-of-touch tactic is (Part 3) the page. ordinary email. Email remains a core workhorse of communication, but to gain 3. conversational, the attention and loyalty of today’s not campaign-based discerning buyers — and to avoid (Part 4) irritating them — it must be enhanced with the capability to engage.” 4. coordinated – IDC Workbook, Graduating from Email to Engagement: Using Marketing Automation to across channels Achieve Success with Today’s New Buyer, (Part 5) June 2013 5. strategic (Part 6)

13 PART ONE: What is Engaging email? Engaging Email Marketing Defined

Score Your Email Marketing Engagement What is your company’s current level of email marketing We don’t have a We have an informal We have a formal process or process with a few process with engagement? Circle a number next to each marketing guidelines for this. loose guidelines or guidelines we tactic below, then add up your score at the end. guidelines that are adhere to inconsistently consistently. followed.

Tracking the impact of email marketing on revenue 1 3 5 Total: Integrating email with other marketing tactics 1 3 5

Using sophisticated segmentation to target relevant Score 9-15 : Barely Doing the Basic 1 3 5 messages to smaller groups You’re doing email marketing, but you haven’t begun to tap into its real Creating messages that are relevant in terms of 1 3 5 potential — you could be doing more content, recipient, and timing harm than good. Using email to craft consumer conversations instead 1 3 5 of “blasts” Score 16-29 : Getting There You’re on the right track for consumer Proactively building a bigger list of subscribers 1 3 5 engagement, but you could be doing a lot better. Consistently setting and meeting subscriber 1 3 5 expectations for email timing, frequency, and content Score: 30-45: Truly Strategic Monitoring our deliverability statistics and regularly You understand that being engaged 1 3 5 cleaning “our” subscriber database with your audience is the only way to compete in today’s cross-channel Testing, analyzing, and continuously improving “our” 1 3 5 marketing world. email communications

Subtotal 14 Influencer roundtable: EMAIL IS NOT DEAD; IT’S EVOLVING

We asked, “What’s your reaction to the following statement? Email is not dead; it’s evolving.”

“Clearly email is not dead, but it’s not purely “Having run an email-focused agency for Take a look at the answers: evolving either, it’s growing. From improved over 10 years, I have heard one too many inbox placement and increased revenue to times why and how email’s death is reduced deployment costs, marketers now imminent. It is beyond resolute and anyone see the value of growing their email in digital marketing knows that email programs and cultivating an engaged list. marketing remains the digital marketing hub. “I would recommend that anyone Therefore they are increasingly creating The last few years have brought a more who thinks they need to prove the more tailored, customer-focused email dynamic evolution to email than the past value of email in a world where dialogues. That’s evolution. But this decade has seen. We have seen mobilized Facebook is one of, if not the increased sophistication does not necessarily email for smartphones and tablets, biggest sender of email in the reflect a decrease in email frequency, quite marketing automation and social media help world, to stop sending email for a the opposite; it often represents an increase take email to the next level. Bottom line, with whole month and see if they keep in volume and more email-driven revenue. email driving more revenue and ROI than its their job.” That’s growth.” digital marketing brethren, it is well – Dela Quist, Email Marketing Leader – Scott Hardigree, Founder at Indiemark, positioned for a healthy and long future.” CEO of Alchemy Worx Co-Founder at Bright Speed – Simms Jenkins, Founder & CEO of BrightWave Marketing Influencer roundtable: EMAIL IS NOT DEAD; IT’S EVOLVING

“The fact is that email is the glue that holds “First and foremost, email has never been the entire Internet Marketing infrastructure dead nor has it ever been dying. In fact, it together. From transactional services, has always been evolving and will continue business communication, personal to do so in the years to come. Evolution in communication, marketing and promotion, email marketing has been overshadowed in email is the way business is done. The whole recent years by the rise of social and mobile, “email is dead” idea started as a way of but more and more technology companies differentiating social media channels in an who innovate in the email space are attempt to draw in more advertising and emerging and thriving”. promotional dollars. Years later, social – Andrew Kordek media channels have never enjoyed the ROI Co-Founder Trendline Interactive that email still enjoys. You have to be in the inbox to be a player”. – Bill McCloskey Founder at Only Influencers part TWO: trusted PART Two: trusted Engaging Email Is Trusted Email Only with trust will consumers let your email past their filters and into their lives. Set expectations during an opt-in process, and then fulfill those expectations with every email you send.

Trusted emails have lower bounce and unsubscribe rates, and higher deliverability. Conversely, if you don’t After reviewing 130 million IP addresses that sent nearly have trust, you will have lower opens, 20 trillion emails, Experian noted that 85% of all The Subscriber Covenant clicks, conversions, and so on — and It’s crucial to gain and keep the trust of your messages received by ISPs were classified as spam. your messages are more likely to be audience so they don’t mark your marked as spam. communications as spam. We approach this with something we call “The Subscriber Spam is in the Eyes Covenant” — an implicit promise to of the Consumer deliver value in exchange for Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, To consumers, DJ Waldow, one of the authors of consumer trust. Spam … a few of the many menu spam might represent: this guide, tells a story of watching items in the famous Monty Python his wife mark a legitimate email — If “The Subscriber Covenant” were a letter, it • Any email they don’t expect. sketch from the 1970s. These days, a communication she had opted might read something like this: when we hear the word spam, it’s • Any email they don’t want. into — as spam. Why did she do usually not about a can of meat that? A negative in-store Dear Subscriber, — although today’s version of spam • Any email that prompts them to experience turned her off to We promise to: can be just as nasty. hit the “This is spam” button. the company. • Send emails that you actually want. • Any email they might have • Deliver those emails when you want There are legal definitions of spam For our purposes here, spam is signed up for, but later decide them. — in the U.S., for example, spam can defined as“the opposite they don’t want. be classified as any email that violates of engagement.” • Use the data we collect from you to send targeted, relevant information. the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act (again, no • An easy way to opt-out. relation to canned spam) or any other Sincerely, countries’ bulk email laws. In the A Marketing Department that Wins eyes of consumers, however, the definition of spam is arguably Keep “The Subscriber Covenant” top broader and less forgiving. of mind when deploying your email marketing campaigns. PART Two: trusted Engaging Email Is Trusted Email

Consistency Leads to Trust One way to build trust with your Here are five ways to create and You can also use consistency to email marketing is to be consistent. maintain email consistency: train your subscribers to take We all lean in to routine — from the certain actions, such as click The Occasional Surprise amount of milk we put in our coffee, through to a landing page on your Aiming to be consistent does not mean you 1. Be consistent with your timing. can’t send the occasional one-off email. There to the route we take home from Send emails at the same times website. For example, if a work. Routine gives us comfort and and on the same days of the week. subscriber knows that your emails might be a strategic reason to send a unique, makes our lives easier. typically start with a two or three valuable message on a different day and time, 2. Be consistent with your paragraph teaser, followed by a or in a different format than usual. If you have frequency. Send the same When someone knocks on your link to the full story online, she established a pattern of trust, your audience is number of emails every month. door, if you don’t recognize that might develop the habit of likely to accept the inconsistency — and may person through the keyhole, your 3. Keep types of content consistent. skipping the teaser and going even respond well to the “surprise.” initial reaction probably ranges straight for the story. 4. Brand consistently. Your emails somewhere between annoyance should usually look similar. and dread. The same goes for A predictable routine breeds unexpected emails; subscribers 5. Use consistent naming and security. When subscribers don’t generally like surprises. When subject lines. Your emails should understand your behavior, they “act” similar when they hit a you are consistent, your recipient’s inbox. are less likely to unsubscribe or subscribers recognize your emails complain, and more likely to take the moment they arrive. positive action. PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list Before you can fulfill and maintain expectations, you must first set them. Expectations start with the opt-in. A smart opt-in process sets an accurate and positive notion of what’s to come, and how “it” will arrive.

Choose the Right Opt-in Single Opt-In Type for Your Business There are various tactics for building How it works Pros Cons your list of opt-in email addresses, A new subscriber enters her email but, in general, they fall into three address and possibly other information • Requires the least amount of effort • No opportunity to set expectations with on the part of both the company and your audience; the first email they receive categories: (demographics, preferences, etc.). the customer. is your next marketing message. She is immediately subscribed and will 1. Single opt-in automatically receive the next email • There’s no place for a subscriber to • Unless you have a system for catching campaign. There’s no need for her to 2. Single opt-in with a ‘Welcome’ drop the ball, which can happen bad email addresses, you run the risk of take an additional step. when she’s required to “confirm” her being targeted by spambots submitting or ‘Thank You’ email opt-in. phony addresses. This is annoying and Implicit opt-in occurs when a consumer fills could cost you credibility with your ESP. 3. Confirmed or double opt-in • Most quickly leads to a big list. out a form, e.g. in order to download content • If a subscriber forgets that he opted in, or or register for an event. The website’s doesn’t realize he has opted in, the risk is privacy policy must state that performing high that he’ll mark your email as spam. this action automatically opts the user into This is particularly true with implicit opt-ins email marketing. This is a commonly used and when too much time has elapsed method in the business-to-business (B2B) between subscriber sign up and your first sector, and typically B2B audiences communication. understand the implications of providing their email addresses. • Less consumer effort in the sign-up process generally means less connection to your brand overall. Single opt-in tends Explicit opt-in requires the user to voluntarily to attract less committed subscribers, sign up for email marketing. Often, this takes who will either actively or passively opt out the form of a checkbox on a registration of your emails later. page. Often checked by default, this option reads something like, “I want to receive • In some countries, implicit opt-in is news and updates.” actually illegal. Check the laws of the countries in which you market. PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Single Opt-In with Welcome Email Confirmed or Double Opt-In Marketo’s Benchmark on Email How it works How it works Marketing study showed that a A new subscriber enters his information and A new subscriber enters his email address and, implicitly or explicitly opts-in as described above. depending on your needs, other information and clear opt-in method increases In this case, an immediate auto-response email content preferences. The post-subscribe trust by 10%, while cheap thanks and welcomes the subscriber. This email thank-you page may alert him to look for an email. includes a customized message that tells him Once he receives that email, he’ll need to click on shortcuts, such as using third- what to expect in future emails, and when to a link or button to confirm the subscription. party lists and data vendors, expect them. Pros actually decrease trust by 10%. Pros • Asking subscribers to confirm their Marketo Benchmark on • The welcome email provides a great subscriptions separates the committed from opportunity to engage each new subscriber. the simply impulsive. Those who click on the Email Marketing It’s courteous, and it also serves as a good link really want to receive your emails. way to begin earning the trust of your subscribers while setting proactive • Requiring a manual confirmation action expectations. separates humans from bots. A bounced confirmation email can be filtered out right • A welcome email and/or landing page away. prompt provides an opportunity to link to a bonus opt-in incentive. Cons

• If a welcome email bounces, you know to • You’re asking subscribers to take an extra filter out that address. Bye-bye, spambots! step, which is a risky request in this age of instant gratification. After all, they’ve already Cons told you they want your emails with their initial opt-in request; asking them twice • Similar to basic single opt-in, less effort can might annoy them. equal less engagement and more risk of opt-out or being marked as spam. • There’s a risk that an interested subscriber will get distracted before she can click • You still run the risk of sending the welcome “confirm” in the follow-up email, or, worse, emails to bad addresses, which can that your email will get lost or filtered. As a negatively impact your future deliverability. result, you may lose interested subscribers. 21 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Problems with Assuming Opt-In Spam is in the eye of the beholder, and • Someone handed you her A better option: When you meet a any time you assume or use implicit business card. An executive potential subscriber through any of opt-in, or use a list of email addresses handed you her business card these means, send a “Nice to meet you secured elsewhere, you’re taking a after being introduced by a you” email with a button or link risk that your valuable messages will colleague at an event. Does this inviting him to your email be considered junk mail — even if you mean she wants to receive your communications. Give him a great technically have legal permission to marketing emails? Probably not. reason to accept! Provide value and send them. For example: maybe include an incentive. If he • You already have a list of opts in, great; if not, you know to be • You got a name from a contacts. You give your admin more circumspect with how you use tradeshow list or other activity your entire contact list to enter his email address in the future. you sponsored. When a into your email database or CRM consumer registers for something system. A month later, everyone you’ve sponsored, lets you scan on that list receives an unsolicited his nametag at an event, or drops email from your company. This is a business card in a fishbowl, it a way to break trust — fast. does not necessarily mean he’s asking for future email marketing. If the recipient is not expecting your email, you may not be building trusted engagement. PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Expert Opinions on Set Expectations Single vs. Double Opt-In During Opt-In Single Opt-in: According to DJ Opt-in is an opportunity to build trust Your opt-in should: Waldow, one of the guide’s authors, Double Opt-in: Seth Godin, creator and to set expectations about what’s • the single opt-in is the best option for of Permission Marketing, is an to come with your email marketing. Explain “What’s In It For Me Subscribers want to most companies. After all, building an advocate for the double opt-in. “Real The page where a subscriber enters (WIIFM)?” know why they should subscribe; email list is one of the most valuable permission is different from her email address is your first chance so tell them right up front. things a company can do in terms of presumed or legalistic permission,” to establish a positive relationship. Remember, marketing is about marketing, and lists grow fastest with he says. “Just because you somehow meeting their needs, not yours. single opt-ins. DJ is also not a fan of get my email address doesn’t mean Use your opt-in page wisely. Explain in the question implied by a confirmation you have permission. Just because I simple and compelling language what • Explain exactly what types of email: “Are you really, really sure?” If don’t complain doesn’t mean you she will get after entering her content you’ll be sending: Let your someone tells you they want to be on have permission. Just because it’s in information: “Enter your email address subscribers know they might your list, believe them! the fine print of your privacy policy to download our white paper” or “Get a receive updates, deals, coupons, (Read DJ’s entire article on this) doesn’t mean it is permission either.” special subscriber discount when you offers, advice, news, events, or If you take the time to get a sign up for our newsletter.” The value general information. subscriber’s permission, with you offer might seem obvious to you, confirmation follow-through, you gain but it might not be crystal clear for • Set expectations for frequency the advantage of his abiding loyalty others, at least not from the beginning. and timing. (We’ll talk more about and engagement. this later.)

• Give subscribers choices, if you can. Offer them the ability to sign up for emails on certain subjects versus others, or for a weekly digest versus a daily message.

23 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Other Tips for Opt-in Pages Privacy Policy: Your privacy policy is Social Proof: Including social proof crucial. It’s not just mandatory of your popularity can help validate legalese, but also another opportunity the message of your opt-in form, e.g.: to establish trust and set expectations with your Web visitors. Here’s a link to • “Over 750,000 professionals Marketo’s privacy policy: have subscribed.” marketo.com/trust/privacy.php. • “Join the 200,000 others who get The mention of your policy doesn’t our weekly newsletter.” have to be dry verbiage; it can be a simple promise not to spam your audience, like this example from Funny or Die:

24 EXAMPLE: southwest airlines

Southwest Airlines is known for its creative, fun, and “simple” marketing. Its email marketing opt-in process is no exception. This example from the Southwest Airlines website has all of the essential elements. 1

1. The headline sets a clear expectation of what’s going to happen when the 3 subscriber fills out the form, and the banner above it reinforces the promise. 2 2. The thumbnail email examples give subscribers a visual cue of what to expect.

3. The accompanying text lists not only the content of future emails, but also how often they will be delivered. 4 4. The form does not ask for a lot of 6 information. Simple. Direct. Easy. This usually equates to more opt-ins!

5. This checkbox lets subscribers choose to receive a monthly newsletter in 5 addition to the weekly emails.

6. Southwest also provides another option to get alerts: “DING.” While this is not specific to its email marketing list, it does give potential subscribers another way to connect. 25 EXAMPLE: waldow social

While not as visually appealing as the Southwest Airlines example, Waldow Social’s opt-in form clearly states what’s in it for potential subscribers and sets expectations up front. 2

1. A catchy newsletter name builds brand recognition. The repetition of the “W” sound is what does it here. 2. What’s in it for the reader is 1 clearly communicated. 3 3. The phrase “a weekly recap” sets expectations for frequency, and “delivered on Friday” dials down the timing more precisely. 4. A “preview” link offers an example of 4 what to expect.

26 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Email frequency and timing Your opt-in page is a great place to set expectations for the frequency and timing of your emails. You can be “When should I send emails?” “How often should I send emails?” specific (“every Friday”), establish Determining the best time and day to • Time Zone: By capturing IP Ultimately, the answer depends on the email cadence (“weekly”), or let send your emails is a challenge. Despite addresses at opt-in, you can level of perceived value you deliver in each subscribers know they should be on what some people will tell you, there is segment your list to send emails email. For instance, daily deal emails, such based on where subscribers live, the lookout for unscheduled emails no perfect or best time to send. Timing is as those from Daily Candy, Groupon, and so that every subscriber gets your (“new product alerts”). established after knowing what works email at the right time for their Living Social, have high value and deserve best for your audience, based on time zone. daily frequency. Help A Reporter Out The most important thing to captured user data and other (HARO), an email service that connects • Domain: Send emails to remember about setting expectations parameters. Some strategies to test: product and service experts to journalists subscribers using personal email is to meet them. If you tell your domains (Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, looking to write on-topic stories, sends subscribers you’re going to send a • Time of opt-In: If a subscriber opts in to your newsletter at 2PM AOL.com, etc.) during the early emails three times a day! According to The weekly email, and then bombard PST, you can reasonably assume morning and evening hours. Those Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing, some them daily, they’ll quickly that’s a time he is online. using work-related domains (e.g., HARO users even set their alarms for 5:45 unsubscribe, ignore your messages, company.com) should receive AM EST, so they don’t miss the first • Early bird: If you schedule your emails during the day. or mark them as spam. message of the day! emails to arrive in the early morning, you can be at the top of Whichever tactic you choose, pick a the email pile when folks arrive at For most businesses, however, once a send time and own it. Remember, once the office. Note, however, that as day is much too much. A general rule to you set an expectation with your smartphones become more follow: If you find yourself wondering if subscribers, stand by it consistently. ubiquitous, people check their you’re sending one too many emails, email earlier and earlier in the day (Note: this does not mean that you you probably are. — often long before they actually cannot send “one-off” emails on a get to work. different day of the week or time of the day. It also doesn’t mean that you cannot – and should not – be testing to see what works best for your audience.) 27 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Post Registration: What to Expect Next Once subscribers have offered up The Welcome Email their information, it’s a good idea to As soon as someone registers, your immediately serve them a “Thank email marketing software can You” page. This page serves a few immediately send them a welcome purposes: email. The anatomy of a welcome email looks something like this: 1. It says “Thank You,” which is just good manners. • Thank you! 2. It tells subscribers that the opt-in • Congratulations, actually worked. you are now subscribed! 3. It answers subscribers’ questions about when to expect their first • Here is your offer (fulfill the promise email and what it will look like. of the opt-in by sending the coupon code, content, or other You can stand out from the pack by promised offer). adding unique, funny, or creative language and graphics, or maybe • Here is what to expect next, and even include a short Thank You video when to expect it. to this page. Your subscribers have already exhibited their willingness to be engaged, so this is a great time to seize their enthusiasm. Invite them to follow you on social media, subscribe to your blog, or learn more about your product or service via content links. It’s also a good time to ask them to refer their friends. PART Two: trusted building the list

A key goal as an email marketer Building Your List on Your Website Website registration should be to grow your list of According to a 2013 MarketingSherpa page engaged subscribers. You will lose study, 77% of marketers ask for an Social media sharing up to 30% of subscribers each email address on their websites. Your buttons in email year due to email attrition, and not website is arguably the most effective all engaged subscribers will place to collect email addresses. Offline events become paying customers. To There are two ways to do this: grow your business, you need to Registration during 1. ASK. When you give your visitors purchase feed the top of the funnel with great reasons to subscribe — news, list-building tactics. updates, discounts, promotions, and Online events freebies — they’ll often gladly give you their email address. Facebook registration page 2. FORCE. With gated content, such as premium areas of your site and Email to a friend contest pages, an email address is the key that opens the gate. If email opt-in is only implied, however, be aware that Paid search the user may not actually be requesting future email marketing. Blog registration page

Co-registration programs

Other

Source: ©2013 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded December 2012, N=451 29 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Email Opt-In Form Placement Options Having too many opt-in forms on your 1. The sidebar. website could be a turnoff for potential Depending on the design and flow of new subscribers. On the other hand, if your site, putting an opt-in form in a sidebar might be very effective. If you you relegate your opt-in form just to “pin it” — anchor the opt-in on users’ your home page or your contact page, screens as they scroll down the page you run the risk of missing visitors who — it’s never out of their sight. come in the back door. You need to Marketo uses this on our blog. strike a balance. 2. The header. If someone comes to your site Here are some traditional placement hoping to sign up for your newsletter, options, as well as a few you might not the first place he’ll look is probably have considered. the top of your page. Consider placing an opt-in form right in your header, or adding “sign up” as a top menu tab. This is what Waldow Social does.

30 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

3. The footer. 5. At the bottom of your content. 6. A lightbox. By the way, Marketo’s subscriber Like the header, your footer is a If your blog is popular, or if you have Pop-ups can be irritating, but they can numbers have skyrocketed since we logical and traditional place to put other well-read content available on also be very effective. They’re added the lightbox: an opt-in form. In fact, even if you your site, consider adding an opt-in certainly worth testing. You have have opt-in options elsewhere, form at the end of each post or plenty of options with lightbox opt-ins think about also having a simple article. If a visitor has taken the time — you can have them appear after a text link to “subscribe” somewhere to read an article, you already have certain period of time or present one in your footer. a certain level of buy-in, so it’s an to visitors as they navigate your site. appropriate time and place to ask Health and fitness source Greatist 4. Smack in the middle. for more! attributes 82% of its list growth to its The bold and brazen might pop-up opt-ins, and Funny or Die consider an increasingly popular contends that 75-80% of its list (of option for opt-in placement: right in over a million) has come from its the middle of your content. As pop-ups. Here’s an example of visitors scroll down, they won’t Marketo’s lightbox, which is only miss it. This is how active-wear presented to non-subscribers once company Lululemon does it: every six months.

31 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

7. Welcome Gate. You can redirect your visitor to an opt-in landing page before they arrive on your main website. Nail the Landing (Page) Waldow Social does this, and has found that nearly 50% of its list An optimized landing page can make all comes from the Welcome Gate. the difference between a visitor subscribing or abandoning your page. Landing pages are so important that we’ve devoted a resource center and a guide to them:

Marketo Landing Page Resource Center

Landing Page Optimization Success Kit

32 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

15 Other Ways to Get Email Addresses:

1. Via online whitepaper/eBook/ 6. Via your Facebook page. 11. Through aerial advertising: webinar online registration. 7. Through Twitter, particularly airlines, hot air balloons, blimps. Hey @Marketo! Here’s another 2. In the middle of an e-commerce using Twitter’s new 12. During tradeshows. Have a tactic to grow your email list: checkout experience. Lead Gen Cards. tablet on hand to easily opt-in new contacts. 3. During an actual in-store 8. When an existing subscriber checkout experience. shares your email in any social 13. During presentations. You know, media and one of their friends at tradeshows and conferences. 4. Via QR code #DG2EEM opts-in to your list. 14. Through an online pop-up or 5. Through a prompt at the 9. Using old-school paper pop-under. end of a survey advertising techniques 15. With a suggested opt-in prompt 10. On billboards. Yes, those things on a paper receipt or invoice. you see from the freeway.

33 PART Two: trusted maintain your list

It’s not enough to build a list – you Most opt-out forms are pretty bare: When a Bonobos subscriber clicks In your subscription center, give also need to maintain it. This means you ask a subscriber to enter his email “unsubscribe” in an email, he’s your subscribers options such as: letting subscribers manage their address — if it’s not pre-populated — taken to his preferences page, preferences or opt-out if they wish. and, perhaps, his reason for leaving. where he can choose how often • A list of all current And it means proactively cleaning As a marketer watching a subscriber he’d like to receive messages, subscriptions. Show and culling your list based on march out the door, wouldn’t it be including never. Through the use of subscription details. response data. better to give him one last chance to appealing language and humor, • The ability to customize stay by offering a few subscription- Bonobos is savvy about offering preferences. Checkboxes Subscription Centers frequency options in a human, friendly options that decrease a subscriber’s make it simple to change One of the best ways to establish trust voice that lets him know you care likelihood of unsubscribing. subscription options. with your audience is to allow them to about his needs? take control of communications — As a result, Bonobos retains 25% of • A pause option. For they should never feel trapped. Here’s a great example from those who would have otherwise subscribers going on vacation, Bonobos, a men’s clothing line: opted out. or who simply need a break You can be smart about your opt-out from the information stream, by creating a subscription center on offer the ability to pause for a your website. When subscribers click certain period of time. This “unsubscribe,” they will be taken to the option can help decrease your center and given the option of unsubscribe numbers. changing their communication • The ability to “opt-down.” preferences or the frequency with Opting down allows which they receive your emails. Maybe subscribers to receive fewer they still like you and don’t really want — but not zero — emails. to leave you — they just want to see less of you.

34 EXAMPLE: marketo’s subscription center

At Marketo, we allow subscribers to choose which “channels” to subscribe to, unsubscribe, or simply pause for 90 days.

Make sure your call-to-action buttons, such as “save setting” and the essential “unsubscribe all,” are clear and prominent.

35 EXAMPLE: fab’s subscription center

Fab does a great job with its subscription center. In its center, customers can choose email delivery days and the content they want to receive: sales information, order confirmations, invites, and/or inspirational emails.

36 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Clean Inactive Subscribers What Percentage of Your List is Inactive? Do you suspect that a lot of your Marketo Benchmark on Email Marketing subscribers have emotionally opted out? The Marketo Benchmark on Average (shown as %) Top Performers (shown as %) Email Performance study found that 26 25 most marketers are pretty sure a significant percentage of their subscribers are inactive — neither opening email, reading them, nor 20 20 bothering to unsubscribe.

14 15 When we asked, “What percent of your lists do you consider inactive?” the most common answer was 26-50%, with 8 10 more than 20% of respondents saying 51-75%. What’s more, the top performers — those who tend to be the 2 5 most on their email game — were even < 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% >75% Don’t Know < 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% >75% Don’t Know more cynical about the average level of engagement of people on their lists.

If you can identify your inactive subscribers, remove them. This can save you money — especially if your email marketing service provider charges you per email sent or number of active contacts — and it can save your reputation as a sender and lead to a higher deliverability rate. 37 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

“In the end, removing inactive subscribers is often the action “As an organization’s email needed to get your mail back marketing program matures,

to the inbox and in front of routinely and methodically Removed inactive ‘scrubbing’ its subscriber list subscribers 75% your customers.” becomes a greater priority,” – Melinda Plemel, ReturnPath according to MarketingSherpa’s Monitor and lower complaint rates 42% Special Report: CMO Perspectives on Email Deliverability. Scrubbing Modified email means removing email addresses that template 41% bounce after each campaign. Conduct a thorough sweep of your list every 4 to Delivery monitoring solution 31% 6 months, and you’ll get rid of inactive subscribers and “spam traps”. Accreditation or reputation service 29%

Dedicated IP address 28%

Deliverability/ISP relations consultant 17%

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded September 2010, N=245

38 PART Two: trusted engagement up front: develop and maintain a quality list

Reactivating Subscribers Before removing inactive 2. Mass unsubscribe the subscribers, consider giving them inactive subscribers and send one more chance to stay in touch. them a final email that includes an option to re-subscribe. With a re-engagement campaign, Remember Fab? That’s what you might just find that some of they did recently. your “zombie” subscribers come back to life. 3. Pick up the phone and call your inactives. This is a more aggressive and labor-intensive There are a few ways to bring them marketing operation, and it back into the fold: assumes that you have a database of phone numbers. But the payoff could be worth it 1. Send a series of emails to just if your call is perceived as great those subscribers that have customer service. Gary not opened, clicked, shared, Vaynerchuk from Wine Library or converted for a while. In did this a few years ago with each message, give them the some amazing results. option to remain on the list or opt out. Once you’ve sent your final 4. Run a direct mail campaign. email in the series, go ahead and This takes time and money, but, remove those who haven’t like a phone call, it allows you to responded. They’re dead to you, communicate with — and after all. (Pun intended.) (Note: hopefully re-engage — The “not converted” part of this subscribers through query is essential. If you don’t another channel. include this, you risk removing subscribers who may not be active clickers, but are your biggest purchasers!)

39 PART Two: trusted email deliverability There’s no question that email software and the people who use it are getting better at filtering out spam. This is good since it makes it easier for engaging emails to get through — but without a strong focus on deliverability, sometimes even quality, permission-based emails can get filtered out of your subscriber’s inboxes.

According to Return Path’s Email Intelligence Report Q3 2012, 18% of permission-based email in North America never reaches the inbox: 5% is classified as spam, and the remaining 13% simply goes missing. While 82% inbox placement is not a horrible number, marketers would agree that there is certainly room for improvement.

In this section, we review what drives modern email deliverability and show how the best practices of engaging email can improve your deliverability.

(Source: Return Path Email Intelligence Report Q3 2012)

40 PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Your Reputation as a Sender Is Crucial Email deliverability is more and Algorithmic Filters Spamtraps owner that the sender is randomly more about your reputation as a Most email applications use Spamtraps are email addresses creating addresses or buying lists sender and less about the actual algorithms to compare all incoming created to catch spammers in the from someone who is. These are content of your emails. This does emails to those marked as junk. Any act. So, you want to be scrupulous useful for identifying sources that are not mean that content is not email with a similar sender, links, or about your email list building to avoid sending mail without permission.” important, but it does mean that content is more likely to be them at all costs. marketers need to give plenty of considered spam. But the analyzing If you’re not a spammer, you’re attention to how their emails are doesn’t stop there: The subscriber’s In an article titled “A Brief Guide to probably thinking that you don’t being delivered. internet service provider (ISP) Spamtraps,” Word to the Wise have to worry about spamtraps. But remembers the URLs and domains founding partner Laura Atkins it can be all too easy to end up with When it comes to modern email in the spam. If those URLs and describes a spamtrap as an “[email] spamtrap email addresses on your delivery, it’s good to know domains are reported, then any other address that was never used but still contact lists if you’re not using the fundamentals. email containing them has a harder received mail. By definition these secure opt-in techniques, or if you’re time getting through to the recipient addresses were never handed out, buying or borrowing email lists from — even if it’s from a completely advertised or even used by a unsavory sources. different sender. human.… These traps tell the trap Read Laura’s great article for details regarding different types of spamtraps. “More than 80% of all “Filtering improvements are going to give recipients more delivery issues arise and more control over their inbox. In fact, I don’t think there because of a problem with will be one inbox view, each individual user will be able to your sending reputation.” customize their own inbox based on preferences”. – George Bilbrey, – Laura Atkins, Email Deliverability Expert and Owner, Word to the Wise President of Return Path

41 PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Blacklists Bounce Handling Blacklisting is a process of actively ISP and email receiving systems are Authentication Protocols monitoring the Internet for reports of moving away from standard email Use protocols to help email senders sending unsolicited address validation more and more receivers separate legitimate commercial email, and then publicly by using their own custom bounce messages from spam and listing that information on Internet codes. Modern email marketing malware, so less false-positive sites for others to reference as a service providers need to know filtering occurs. The most common measure to fight spam. Many ISPs what all the different new bounce email authentication protocols are and independent organizations use codes mean so they can properly DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), these blacklists as a reference filter process soft and hard bounces SPF (Sender Protection applied to their inbound mail servers while giving senders the visibility Framework), and SenderID. to aid in preventing spam, and to they need to manage their email encourage internet security. campaigns. Receiver and ISP Relations SBC - Email Blacklisting Your email provider should be able Shared or Dedicated IP to handle relationships with ISPs If you are a low-volume sender, a and receivers, especially if your shared IP address might suffice, but legitimate emails are getting if you are a high volume sender, a marked as false-positive spam. dedicated IP is usually best (assuming you are a “good” sender). PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Gmail’s Tabbed Inbox? Gmail’s new tabbed inbox automatically filters incoming email into one of several “buckets” (tabs) – primary, social, promotions, updates, and forums: 1. Primary – Email from your family 4. Updates – Email from blog There’s been lots of discussion about This is because if someone wants your and friends, as well as other commenting services, what this means for email marketers email, they’ll find it. And if they know your messages not classified as bulk confirmation/transactional (“does the new Promotions tab kill email emails are consistently valuable and/or (one to many). Also, any emails, Google calendar marketing?”). We think not. But it means enjoyable, they’ll open them – even if message that does not fit nicely reminders, and other “updates.” that the themes of the guide become they’re sitting next to a bunch of other, Note: Sometimes “promotional” into the other tabs will fall here. more important than ever. If you send less engaging emails. emails will end up here as well. 2. Social – Email from social media timely, relevant, engaging, valuable, networks such as Facebook, 5. Forums – Email from any human emails to people who want them, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, listservs or other “groups” the Gmail changes will have little impact. and so on. (forums) you are part of. 3. Promotions – Email marketing messages from companies, brands, and individuals – any messages that are sent from an email service provider and/or marketing automation company as well as any “mass” (bulk) mailings will probably land in this tab.

43 PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Engagement Matters to Deliverability Consumers use the spam button to tattletale How your recipients engage with Yahoo! has acknowledged that as it your emails is a major factor in future more precisely analyzes user behavior on companies that send unwanted emails, deliverability. Since the summer of to weed out spam, some genuine even if they initially opted in to receive them. 2012, engagement data has become senders might find themselves facing If recipients don’t want or expect your a prominent measure of deliverability deliverability challenges. And, time will at some of the major ISPs. Big league tell, but we predict that if a consumer emails, they are more likely to mark them as email providers, such as Yahoo!, always engages with emails from a spam. Disturbingly, Return Path reports that Gmail, Hotmail, and Outlook, have particular sender, then Gmail will recipients are more likely to tag your email made it clear that they analyze which eventually move those emails from the emails their users open and click Promotions tab to the Primary tab, just as spam than to simply unsubscribe, even if through to gauge whether emails as they did with the older Priority Inbox. your “unsubscribe” link is conspicuous. from a particular sender are spam. If users are not opening and clicking This is why engagement matters even certain emails, to the spam folder for deliverability. they eventually go.

“Mail providers and mail clients are going to have more sophisticated filters that measure user interactions with mail and preferences for content. This is why it’s so important to figure out how to tailor email content to the audience.” – Laura Atkins, Email Deliverability Expert and Owner, Word to the Wise PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Content still matters (some) Trigger Words We haven’t yet talked much about The rules of content are ever- the actual content of your emails. changing. It used to be that if your This is not because content is emails included certain “trigger” Check Your Content meaningless; it’s just that reputation words, such as “free,” there was a You can use a spam content check tool, such as and engagement matter more. pretty good chance they would Marketo’s Email Deliverability Power Pack However, if you find that your emails never reach the inbox. Today, solution, to get a sense of whether or not your are landing in junk boxes, despite however, those once-forbidden email content is “spammy” and make sure your your adherence to all the words no longer cause email content isn’t inadvertently raising red flags with deliverability best practices we’ve marketing messages to ISPs or email clients. mentioned, then it’s probably time to get blocked. review your content. Here’s the best advice we can give you for determining what not to do with content: Look at the emails in your own spam folder, and don’t do what those guys are doing!

Screenshot: Marketo Email Deliverability Power Pack

45 PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Deliverability: a Partnership between Email Provider and Sender With all the issues surrounding The Provider’s Responsibility The Sender’s Responsibility deliverability of your marketing emails, 1. Your provider is responsible for making sure its 1. As a sender, you must keep your lists clean, take you can see how important it is for a email technology is up-to-date and compliant the time to understand your audience, and craft sender (that’s you) to work closely with a with today’s legal requirements. This means it carefully-targeted messages that are relevant to provider (your email marketing service) to must optimize the back-end of its delivery specific subscriber sub-lists. make sure sent emails are getting platform for reduced friction with corporate 2. You are ultimately responsible for what you send through to recipients. Deliverability is a filtering systems. A good provider must also and to whom it’s sent. Corporate email systems shared responsibility. Here’s how it cultivate good relationships with receivers by keep a close eye on how the subscribers under breaks down: applying proactive issue resolutions, feedback their watch are interacting with your emails. They loops, and whitelisting practices. score you based on your engagement levels, so 2. A modern email marketing service provider will you want your subscribers to open, click, allow you to segment your contact lists into forward, save, and print on a steady basis. If sub-lists so that you can target specific your subscribers are ignoring you, you are in customers with specific messages. This is danger of being blacklisted. essential to keeping your audience engaged with 3. If you send relevant messages to a willing opt-in relevant content and making sure the right list, you’ll build a good deliverability reputation; if person gets the right message at the right time. you don’t, your reputation will suffer.

46 PART Two: trusted email deliverability

Seven Best Practices for Deliverability Take the following proactive steps to give your emails the best chance of hitting the inbox:

1. Follow the trust and 5. Manage your complaint rate. up against your competitors’. Sender 7. Be transparent. engagement mantra. If your email marketing service warns Score’s proprietary algorithm ranks a Let your subscribers and potential Give your subscribers a good you that complaints made against sending IP address on scale of 0 to subscribers know how you’re doing reason to opt in and set clear you are high, take the warning 100, where 0 is the worst score and when it comes to complaint rates, expectations about what’s to seriously. Set up an email address 100 is the best. Ranking is based on bounces rates, and your Sender come. Then, follow through on — [email protected] — that factors such as complaints against Score rank. Here’s how Marketo your promises with timely, a representative of your email you, volume of your emails, your presents this data to give our clients targeted, valuable emails. marketing service or an anti-spam external reputation, number of confidence that their emails are organization can use to contact you unknown users, and amount of getting delivered. For more on this, 2. Use responsible methods with any complaints. Register that rejected emails. Another reputation see Marketo’s Trust page. to build your lists. email address with www.abuse.net, monitoring option is SenderBase. Part (marketo.com/trust) Verify all new email addresses an anti-spam advocacy group and of the Cisco IronPort SenderBase before sending your messages, resource center, to show anti-spam Security Network, SenderBase rates and regularly scrub your contact organizations that you are your IP as good (little-to-no threat lists to remove inactive addresses. responsible and that you’ve given activity), neutral (within acceptable thought to the email abuse issue. parameters), or poor (showing a 3. Choose a solid email problematic level of threat activity). marketing service provider. 6. Be proactive about closely Make sure the vendor you choose monitoring your reputation Trusted IPs All IPs is sophisticated enough to handle metrics. Cisco Cisco bounce codes, feedback loops, Get your email reputation score to Return Path Return Path SenderBase SenderBase and connection optimization. Month Sender Score Sender Score learn what you need to change Good/Neutral/ Good/Neutral/ about your program in order to 0 to 100 0 to 100 4. Create engaging content. Poor Poor improve your reputation and your On its own, bad content won’t June 2013 Good 99 Good 97 inbox placement rates. Return Path, prevent your emails from being May 2013 Good 99 Good 96 a leader in email intelligence, offers a delivered, but if your content is April 2013 Good 99 Good 96 product called Sender Score, which, boring or irrelevant, people won’t in addition to providing you with your March 2013 Good 99 Good 98 engage with it or, worse, will mark reputation score, shows you how February 2013 Good 99 Good 95 your emails as spam. your email marketing program stacks January 2013 Good 99 Good 95 December 2012 Good 98 Good 95 PART Two: trusted legal issues Being a law-abiding email marketer is a big part of establishing trust, not just with your audience but also with ISPs and other companies.

With email marketing, the “country of United States Australia reception” principle usually applies. When it comes to the legalities of The following brief from the Bureau of Here are the key requirements of the This means the law of the country of email marketing in the U.S., the Consumer Protection Business Spam Act of 2003: the recipient of an email applies, even if Controlling the Assault of Non- Center breaks down the law into you (the sender) are situated abroad. solicited Pornography and seven main requirements for email • Consent - make sure you have This makes it important to understand Marketing Act of 2003 — also marketers: consent to contact the recipient the nuances of each country you known as the CAN-SPAM Act — is and can prove you have 1. Don’t use false or misleading market in. Wikipedia has a big list of obtained it. the governing law. The CAN-SPAM header information. Email Spam Legislation by Country. Act, updated in 2008, makes it • Identify - include accurate 2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. possible for spammers to be fined information to identify yourself or This guide is not meant to be a legal $11,000 per violation. Yes, that’s 3. Identify your messages as ads. your organisation as the authorised document, and we’re not lawyers, so right —$11K for sending one sender of the message. we can only give you an overview of inappropriate email! Authentic 4. Tell recipients where you’re located. legal compliance. Play it safe – be sure • Unsubscribe - make sure your marketers must stay on their toes to 5. Tell recipients how to opt out of to consult with legal counsel or a avoid using deceptive language in receiving future emails. messages have a functional member of your company’s their email headers, subject lines, unsubscribe facility, so that compliance team for specifics of the and from and reply-to addresses. 6. Honor opt-out requests promptly recipients can unsubscribe at (within 10 days). laws in your region. any time. 7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.

For more information, read the Bureau of Consumer Protection Business Center’s full Compliance Guide, and the updates to the CAN-SPAM Act.

48 PART Two: trusted legal issues

European Union Canada The European Directive on Privacy With marketing in Europe, it’s The Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) For more, see the following resources: and Electronic Communications especially important to was passed in December, 2010. For an covers all direct email marketing understand nuances of specific email marketer, the most important • Canada’s Anti-Spam Law messages, including charitable and countries. For example in some piece is the consent requirement; (CASL): What Does It Mean political messages. It specifies that countries (including Germany), the CASL prohibits senders from mailing For You? direct marketing email messages sender of the email has to be able anyone who has not explicitly • Canada’s Impending Anti- may be sent only to subscribers who to provide an objective evidence requested that mailing. The consent Spam Legislation: What You have given their prior consent (“opt- that he received the consent of must be affirmative, so implicit consent Need to Know to Be Prepared in”). Prior permission is required for all the recipient. or even a pre-checked box on a business-to-consumer (B2C) registration page is NOT acceptable. • CRTC Issues CASL communications, though in some For more, see our ebook: (Canada’s Anti-Spam Law) cases a prior business relationship How New EU Privacy Laws Will CASL also requires clear identification Regulation Guidelines will suffice for business-to-business Change Your Marketing. of the sender of any electronic (B2B) communications. message, each message must include the sender’s valid postal mailing Regardless, all emails must include address (valid for at least 60 days after “Always remember email opt-out instructions. Furthermore, the mailing), and each message must law is a guiding framework, disguising or concealing the identity have an unsubscribe method that is to be blended with your of the sender on whose behalf the clear, prominent, and able to be communication is made is prohibited, “readily performed.” engagement strategy, your and companies registered or message, and your content.” operating in the EU need to state their – Duncan Smith company details on every electronic CEO of iCompli business communication sent from their organization.

49 case study: “Marketo has really looked at K12 as a partner... and has been incredibly interested in our roadmap and how they can help us get to the next level.” K12 – Dianne Conley, VP of Marketing Operations & Technology, K12 automated email marketing Makes the Grade for K12’s B2B and B2C Marketing

Highlights Challenges nurture those relationships not only Benefits K12 is the nation’s leading provider of authentically, but cost-effectively. Once Since adopting Marketo, K12 has • Highly focused marketing: K12 online education for grades K-12, offering K12 decided on Saleforce.com, Marketo successfully leveraged more of its increased productivity, reducing award-winning solutions to public and was the obvious choice for their email resources — the intuitive platform is the need for hundreds of emails to private educational institutions, as well as marketing solution as both systems share being adopted by ranks of business 4 per campaign. to individual students and families. K12’s the same data model and database, teams, enabling K12 to reach out to a • Efficient marketing: K12 leveraged goal was to have one solution for their B2B enabling K12 to get the most out of their vast number of prospects and Marketo to shrink the number of its and B2C marketing. They required a smart lead-routing algorithms. customers in a conversational way. landing pages by 150% and more system that would allow for exceptional Additionally, K12 has streamlined its effectively aggregate the data. revenue analysis and seamless integration As K12’s VP of Marketing and Technology, processes, reducing landing pages by with Salesforce.com. They also wanted the Dianne Conley explains, “With 150% and producing dynamic • Democratized marketing: benefits of scalable marketing tools while Salesforce.com and Marketo, it was campaigns with 3 or 4 emails rather than Automated email marketing engaging parents earnestly about critical very important for us to think about hundreds. Ultimately, it’s allowing K12 to empowers large numbers of users, choices for their children’s education. how the systems would work together reach out to its database both efficiently maximizing how resources are rather than thinking of them as isolated and meaningfully — and that’s used across the company Solution platforms.” K12 can track the entire channeled directly to the top line. Marketo’s intuitive interface empowered customer lifecycle, from initial touch point, K12’s marketing and enrollment teams to to lead acquisition, to lead nurturing and K12 is looking strategically across their begin to democratize campaigns across conversion — allowing for a big picture organization to create a plan to scale their organization. In the B2C realm, this view of what’s really going on in the their business with Marketo. means that the agility and robustness of pipeline and insightful business decisions. Marketo enables K12 to have very meaningful conversations with families about their children’s education, and to part three: Always relevant PART three: always relevant engaging email is relevant Relevance means knowing who your audience is and what they want from your emails. Impersonal and poorly timed messages make your subscribers think, You don’t know who I am. You don’t know what I want. You just don’t get me. If you aren’t relevant, your subscribers will opt-out – or emotionally opt-out.

Being relevant means sending the right content to the right person at “Your email content has to the right time. This part covers three topics related to relevance: be compelling and in line

1. Talk to the right people. with the subscriber’s stated Segment and target by using an needs and their behavior. email marketing solution that’s easy to customize and manage. Done correctly you have not

2. Say the right things. only increased relevancy Put thought into your content; and engagement – you’ve call on a talented team to write and design your emails. significantly increased sales

3. Improve, always. and lifetime value.” Optimize and test to learn what – Scott Hardigree works and what doesn’t. Founder at Indiemark

52 PART THREE: always relevant segmentation and targeting Consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with targeted advertising and personalized content. They expect marketers to know almost everything about them, and to use that information to create customized experiences.

When consumers visit Amazon.com, Segmentation Means they look for recommendations to be Higher Engagement fed to them based on what they’ve One of the most valuable ways to use “More than half of email purchased in the past: “You bought consumer data is to segment and target your marketers say that their this, so you might like this.” Data- lists. Consider this: biggest challenge is targeting driven customization is commonplace now across all • “Email marketers estimate 30% of email subscribers with relevant platforms, and email is no exception. revenue derives from targeting to specific content. The key to creating Everyone can market like Amazon. segments.” — DMA’s National Client Email Report - 2013 engaging campaigns starts with having a clear Consumers increasingly expect • “Segmented email campaigns produce when they share information with 30% more opens than undifferentiated understanding of what is truly marketers — either explicitly at opt-in messages.” — Monetate’s Intelligent relevant to your subscribers”. or implicitly with their buying and Email Marketing that Drives – Andrew Kordek browsing habits — that those Conversions - 2012 marketers will use that data wisely. Co-Founder, Trendline Interactive • “76% of all email marketing revenue came from more advanced practices than generic broadcast email.” — DMA UK’s National Client Email Report - 2013

53 PART THREE: always relevant segmentation and targeting

Small, segmented sends are more Source: Marketo Benchmark Study research engaging than large, untargeted showing the relationship between smaller, more sends. Marketo’s research shows targeted email sends and higher engagement. See Part 6 for the definition of Engagement Score. that sending targeted content to smaller groups leads to higher engagement. This makes sense, of course, since the smaller the group, the more focused – and therefore relevant – the message can be. It’s basically impossible to be relevant with a “least common denominator” message sent to a large group.

Additionally, The Marketo Benchmark on Email Marketing study found segmentation to be the highest ROI tactic used by email marketers — higher even than drip marketing or dynamic content.

54 PART THREE: always relevant segmentation and targeting

Types of Segmentation Segmentation Based The two main ways to segment on Demographics your list are: Knowing who your contacts are is an important part of being relevant Segments Are Used In Two Ways: 1. Who they are: Demographic attributes, such as in your messaging. Here are eight 1. To pull targeted lists, and send income, title, age, and location. common ways to segment different emails to each segment. using demographics: 2. What they’ve done: 2. To customize a single email for Past behaviors and transactions. 1. Gender different segments using dynamic content. Dynamic content allows 2. Age (or birth year) As we will see, segmenting you to create one email template according to behavior is the 3. Job title with content that varies based on single most essential tactic an the recipient. (We go into detail 4. Company size email marketer can adopt to about this later in the guide.) increase relevance. 5. Industry

6. Interests

7. Geography

8. Birthday month

As we will see, segmenting according to behavior is the single most essential tactic an email marketer can adopt to increase relevance. PART THREE: always relevant segmentation and targeting

Example: Segmenting by Age In the campaign below, Fit For Me segmented customers using each subscriber’s year of birth, and then adjusted the tone of the writing and images Personas to be relevant to each group. Even though Personas are research-based profiles of archetypal you may not be able to read the copy of customers that represent the needs of many. Creating the message, you can clearly see how the personas brings a human element to your campaigns by images are adjusted based on age. allowing you to focus on your customers as real people, and then communicate with them on a more natural level. You can name each persona, give them a storyline, and even assign lifestyle attributes and pain points. For example:

• “Sam the Shopper” is partial to impulse purchases and likes to “add to cart,” provided that each additional item is under $25 and relevant to his needs. • “Cyril the CEO” is an information-hungry whitepaper hoarder, who is looking to league up with thought leaders in his field. • “Wendy the White Wine Enthusiast” will buy any California white that isn’t a heavily-oaked Chardonnay, and that happens to be offered in bulk at a discount greater than 20%.

If you haven’t already, take the time to create a few buyer personas that represent your customer base, and then use those personas to segment your communications. For more on personas, visit our blog and read “Improve Your Targeting and Tell a Story By Creating Buyer Personas.”

56 PART THREE: always relevant segmentation and targeting

Keep Your Forms Short, But Your Data Rich Where do you get this 1. The Page Two Experience: 3. Preference Center: 5. Click Paths and Transactions: demographic information? Capture basic contact information Once customers have subscribed to By paying attention to a user’s click on the first page of your site, and your email marketing, invite them to path and transaction activity, you Ideally, keep your Web forms short to help then ask for more information on your email preference center, where can make inferences about his prevent users from getting frustrated and subsequent pages. Waldow Social they can customize their profiles and demographics. For example, successfully uses this technique. help you help them. marketers at Bluefly infer gender giving up on the conversation process. So based on whether a shopper visits how do you get that data without directly 2. Progressive Profiling: 4. Data Augmentation Services: the women’s section of the site or asking them? Try the following: When you recognize repeat Web There are many vendors specializing visitors, ask for new information in either business data or consumer the men’s section. But be careful; each time they fill out a form. With data, that can help you “clean” and your buyer might be shopping for a each completed form, you augment your data. spouse, friend, or significant other! progressively add to their profiles. As another example, at Marketo we present a navigational choice by offering links to “Solutions for Small Business” and “Solutions for Global Enterprise” on our site.

57 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors Knowing who your customers are is great, but knowing how they behave is even better.

Actions speak way, way louder Learn to Read Buyers’ than words. Knowing your Online Body Language Always be aware of the laws prospects in terms of their Behavioral data can be highly When you combine online body personas and demographics tells predictive of future decision-making language with transactional and related to capturing customer you what they might be interested patterns and road-to-purchase purchase data — transactional activity data. If your privacy in, but knowing how they behave activity. A prospect’s browsing and history, products purchased or policy isn’t accurate, or if tells you what they definitely are search activity relate directly to his owned, usage data, and so on interested in. You can ask your intent; his social sharing activity can — you have solid and very powerful you’re capturing data without contacts about their interests in indicate future purchase possibilities; information to go on. informing customers, it could an effort to cater your content to and emails opened, links clicked, be considered a breach of those interests, but, the truth is, and content consumed indicate But when behavioral data is not used, they rarely provide accurate data, good ol’ interest. your emails could be considered browser security. In many and interests change over time. dissonant interruptions. The last thing countries, this could violate you want is for a subscriber to wonder The information gleaned by paying privacy, data protection, and attention to a consumer’s digital why you sent him a discount coupon behavior is her online body on Friday for a product he purchased consumer protection laws. language. By tracking and on Thursday. Without behavioral Consult legal counsel for the interpreting online body language, targeting, what you consider a nice specifics in your jurisdiction. you can determine where she is in drip campaign might feel more like her buying journey and what water drip torture to a recipient. problems she might be trying to solve. You can even begin to figure out what interests her, what annoys her, and what persuades her.

58 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

The Value of Behavioral Targeting When David Daniels, co-founder Similar research from Gareth Click-through Conversion of the Relevancy Group, was an Herschel at Gartner found that Target Type Open Rate Rate Rate analyst at Jupiter Research event-triggered campaigns (acquired by Forrester Research performed five times better than Untargeted in 2008), he reported that traditional batch campaigns. broadcast emails 20% 9.5% 1.1% targeting emails based on Web Forrester research recently found click-stream data increased open that only 17% of companies rates by more than 50%, and assessed themselves as mature increased conversion rates by practitioners of behavioral marketing Triggered from more than 350%. – but those mature practitioners user actions 27% 9.3% 2.3% grew revenue faster than they planned (53% versus 41%).

Targeted with web click data 33% 14% 3.9%

Source: Jupiter Research

59 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

Triggered emails and segmenting campaigns based on behaviors are the top tactics to improve email engagement.

Automatically send email Chart: Relevancy Improvement Tactics = Level of Effectiveness 39% based on triggers Q. Please indicate the level of effectiveness for each of the relevancy improvement tactics your organization is using.

Segment email campaigns Segmented email campaigns based on behavior 37% based on behavior

Dynamically personalize email content 50% 50% 36% (e.g. first name in subject line, geo-location content) Automatically send email based on triggers Segment email campaigns 28% based on sales cycle 45% 55%

Allow subscribers to specify email 21% preferences via a robust preference center Allowed subscribers to specify email preferences

Include surveys, 27% 67% 6% 18% trivia or games Segmented email campaigns based on sales cycle Use loyalty / 14% reward programs 23% 74% 3% Dedicate resources to produce content 12% for each stage of the buying process Dynamically personalized email content

Make use of animated GIF 10% 90% 11% images or video in design Very Effective Somewhat Effective Not Effective

Source: ©2013 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey - http://bit.ly/18I1O80 Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded December 2012, N=626 Methodology: Fielded September 2010, N=246 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

“Online behavioral models

built with Web traffic, search Campaigns Based behavior, lifestyle data, and on Topic of Interest demographics are At Marketo, we created different email For example, when a prospect downloads engagement tracks based on focused social content, we assign him to the social particularly effective at topics that might interest customers: marketing nurture track. In that track, he identifying prospects not email marketing, social marketing, and receives a set of social-marketing focused found with traditional marketing automation, to list a few. We emails. Once he’s received all of our social then used behavioral triggers to content, we automatically trigger him back demographic prospecting determine when to add a person to into the regular track. By using these smart models.” each track. segmentation tactics, we’ve experienced much higher engagement. – McKinsey, The Coming Era of ‘On-Demand’ Marketing

Standard Nurture Triggered Interests Lift

Open % 21.7% 34% 57%

Click to Open % 23.4% 37.1% 59%

Click % 5.1% 12.6% 147%

61 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

Examples of Behavior Targeting Here are some basic examples of behavioral targeting.

Email: Social: Website:

• Which emails did a consumer • Did a consumer mention your • Did a consumer visit your open and/or click on? company on Twitter? website? If so, how recently?

• Which emails did she NOT open • Did she navigate to your site • What content did she and/or click on? from Facebook? download or view?

• Which type of offer does she • Did she share one of your • What keywords were used to respond to most often? messages? navigate to your site?

• How long ago was her last • Did she comment on one of • How long did she stay on interaction with an email — your blog posts? your website? three days, three weeks or three months? • How many pages did she view while there? • Who responds frequently, who rarely interacts? PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

More Examples of Behavioral Targeting There are many other ways to use behaviors in email targeting.

Campaign Response Remailing Content Interactions Revenue Stage Target new campaigns based on Remailing is like retargeting for The content a consumer views tells Use different messages for prospects how buyers have responded to prior email. With it, you give your original you a lot about his interests. For that have never bought and are not campaigns. If a consumer always email a second chance by sending example, if a consumer uses the currently evaluating solutions, responds to content downloads but it again a few (3 to 5) days later mortgage calculator on a financial prospects who are actively evaluating never to event invitations, stop — and perhaps with a different services company’s website, he is solutions, and active customers. You targeting her for events. Instead, subject line — to contacts that did likely interested in mortgage products. can identify these segments by give her more content to download. not open it. You could also resend Making the connection between integrating your email with your This tactic requires the ability to emails to those who opened, but content interaction and email transactional or CRM system. track conversion success or, even did not click, with a different call to targeting is vital, and not that hard. If a better, to look down the funnel to action, or with altered content. prospect has read reviews of a Transactional Data see what actually happened during E-Loan recently garnered 13% particular product on your site, Using actual transactional data can be her experience. more purchases as a result of a common sense dictates that you one of the most powerful forms of three-part email promotion would promote that product. behavioral targeting. For a financial strategy: recipients were sent services company, this can include similar emails (with a slightly If another prospect visits a key balance information and deposit and different message) on three product Web page twice in one week, withdrawal transactions. For a different occasions. send him a special offer, and alert the telecommunications firm, it can include sales team! On a related note, if a data usage and add-on purchase consumer has already seen content history. A travel company noticing that offered on your website, then it makes a particular customer travels to Paris sense to exclude him from an email every April can use transactional data campaign promoting that content. to offer a related discount. 63 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

Non-activity One-Time Buyers vs. Targeting emails based on “missing” Repeat Buyers behavior can be just as powerful as Loyal customers require a different targeting specific behaviors. For message than those merely sampling example, you can target consumers your goods. Out of all the choices they that do not respond to a campaign (no have, they’ve chosen your company not open; no click; no conversion) or that just once, but many times. Your loyal have not visited your website in a customers are also the people who with specific amount of time. A more each transaction tell you they want you sophisticated example: a customer to succeed. Make sure they understand who regularly makes a deposit on the how important they are to you. first Friday of the month, but then misses a date, might deserve Example: Segmenting a check-in. In the campaign below, the surgical weight loss center Slimband segments Propensity Models / Scores their lists based on surgery date and You can use scores to predict surgery recovery stage. Demographic propensity for customer behaviors, data is based on what your business such as readiness to buy, probability of cares about, so for Slimband, they responding to offers, retention actions, customize based on information cross-sell offers, and likeliness to pertaining to surgery and recovery. churn. This can be based on statistical Take a look an example email Slimband models, but you can also score based customizes for their patients who are on simple rules. For example, you day 1 post-op. might assign a customer two points every time he visits your website, and four points each time he downloads a whitepaper. 64 PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

Anniversary Other Date-Based Data In this program, prospective students Target customers based on the PaperStyle, an online invitation and were sent invitations to on-campus anniversary of a purchase. Norm stationery store, targets brides-to-be events, program sessions, and tours, Thompson, a men and women’s by sending a series of email reminders and they were provided with fashion retailer, does this well. based on crucial dates: when to send application process information and Exactly one year after a customer invitations, when to think about important application dates. makes her first purchase, she wedding favors, and when to buy receives an email thanking her for bridal party gifts. PaperStyle has As a result, prospective student being a loyal customer and offering found that targeting brides in this way engagement soared: Algonquin’s her a 20% discount off her next generates an open rate three times open rate is now 23.5%, with some order. See Waldow Social for how that of their bulk mailings, and a click individual click through rates climbing Norm Thompson perfects its rate twice as high. Additionally, to over 10% from 2-3%. They also messaging in this campaign. PaperStyle found that these emails saw an increase in visitor loyalty of generate four times the revenue of 8.1% over the previous year. Replenishment Date their bulk mailings. Companies that sell consumable products can predict when buyers As another example, Algonquin will run out by looking at typical College of Applied Arts and usage patterns, and then send an Technology, the largest college in offer to replenish in advance of the Eastern Ontario, recently embarked predicted date. Mapping upon a revitalization of its recruitment customers’ buying cycles is a great processes. The college replaced its tactic for small items, such as traditional batch and blast email hearing aid batteries, as well as campaign with automated big-ticket items, such as car leases. conversations based on various factors, including a prospective student’s graduation date. PART THREE: always relevant A better way to segment: based on behaviors

Cart Abandonment Shopping cart abandonment is the Send one personalized email scourge of ecommerce for vendors. reminder, or even a series of In fact, many sources cite shopping reminders to follow up! According to Recency, Frequency, car abandonment rates in the mid- the e-tailing group’s 2012 Merchant and Monetary (RFM Analysis) 60% range. There are a lot of Survey, shopping cart abandonment Direct marketers have been using Using quintiles, you end up with 125 potential reasons for this, including emails was the single highest ROI recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) segments of equal size, coded from 5-5-5 that some consumers use shopping personalization technique used by analysis for years to sort customers by (5 points for very recent purchases, 5 points carts to compare prices and shipping e-tailers, with 55% of those surveyed most recent purchase date, dividing for very frequent purchases, and 5 points rates before they’re ready to commit, responding that such campaigns them into equal groups and assigning for high value purchases) down to 1-1-1 (1 and others get distracted or were either very successful or points to the groups. point for responding a long time ago, 1 frustrated before completing the somewhat successful. point for responding only once, and 1 point purchase. But regardless of the For example, if you use quintiles (which is for resulting in little or no value. rationale, cart abandonment is a most common), the 20% that make up good reason to use a behavioral the most recent purchasers are given 5 This technique works great in traditional targeted campaign to nudge your points; the next group, 4; and so on, until marketing models like direct mail, where subscribers to finish their order. you get to the bottom 20%, which are sending is expensive per piece and it might given a score of 1. With segmented RFM behoove a company to send only to the groups, marketers can target promotions customers most likely to buy. But since to each group separately. One campaign email campaigns carry a much lower cost could target the top most recent buyers, — perhaps as low as zero marginal cost, for instance, while another could be depending on the email provider — RFM aimed at those who haven’t made a doesn’t make a lot of sense for email purchase in a long period of time. You do marketing. More specific behavioral the same thing by frequency of purchase strategies — targeting based on actual and total monetary value of the products purchased, content consumer’s spending. consumed, keywords used — makes more sense. 66 PART THREE: always relevant From dumb lists to a smart database Relevancy and engagement are powerful sources of value — but they require sophisticated targeting that combines online body language (web traffic, search behavior, email response) and transactional data with lifestyle and demographic data (personas).

However, while this engaging level Dumb Lists and of targeting is not a new concept, Technical Queries it’s still not commonly used in In a perfect world, every interaction Traditional ESPs don’t help much When marketers are forced to deal with practice. Why? Because traditional that individual consumers have with with data aggregation. Sure, they complicated technical jargon and email service providers have not your brand would be collected and can track email behaviors and customized code, they are at the made it easy. stored in behavioral databases, so feed their customers reports on mercy of IT for explanations. This you could target and customize every open and click-through rates. But makes acting on behavioral data quite single message easily. Unfortunately, they lack connection to other challenging for the average marketer many marketers don’t yet live in that behavioral data and are unable to using a traditional ESP. Less agility world. According to Forrester, only inform communication with more means it takes longer to react to 45% of marketers are currently personal behavioral cues. opportunity. Ultimately, it means that capturing and consolidating sophisticated behavioral targeting is customer behavioral data from These ESPs work primarily from often not done because it’s too difficult. multiple channels into a single imported lists and spreadsheets. We And when it’s not done, you can say database. Data comes from many call these “dumb lists,” for obvious bye-bye to relevant engagement. sources, and customer-facing reasons. Anything sophisticated systems don’t always talk to each requires pulling custom lists with other. Social data, for example, is complex queries written by technical sometimes connected; sometimes experts — not marketers. They are it’s not. Website data is almost never made up of API calls, SAS code, and connected to transactional data. SQL queries. Not sure what these acronyms mean let alone stand for? You’re not alone. 67 PART THREE: always relevant From dumb lists to a smart database

Sample email provider interface for “basic” queries – complex for most marketers.

The Problems with Lists Many traditional email service providers • Companies tend to use lists over use lists for their marketing. However, and over and over. Beating your lists can present problems, including: customers into submission is not the answer. • Lists require marketers to • Lists lack history when pulled fresh re-create the wheel. Each time a for each email. Every new list company wants to send a new compiled lacks the knowledge gained email, marketers have to “pull a from the experience of the last send. new list” — which often requires Companies eventually end up with working with a technical resource, thousands of messy and hard to Sample email provider code for behavioral query slowing the process way down. manage lists! (e.g. click a specific URL) • Lists treat each list subscriber • Lists lack actionable visibility. the same. A list might be “every When the metrics are tied to the list Select SubscriberKey AS EmailAddress person who bought a product from and not to the actual subscriber, or to from _Click us at some point.” This is a very an intelligent segment of subscribers, Where like = ‘%www.your URL.com/corporate.html%’ broad, one-size-fits-all approach, it’s hard to read and learn from them. and doesn’t promise the most relevant messaging.

68 PART THREE: always relevant a smart database with smart lists

There are progressive email With a smart database, marketers Within many of these filters, segments marketing providers offering also have the ability to easily can be created by existence of behavior-smart databases at their segment their subscribers using behavior — timeframe of behavior and core. These marketing automation various filters, such as: number of times the behavior occurred providers offer a secure and — as well as inactivity. trusted repository of demographic • Demographic: name, location, and behavioral data to power age, registration source, intelligent communications. household, preferences, score, custom fields, etc.

Companies that use marketing • Email history: sent, opened, automation get a database that clicked, bounced, serves as the system of record for all unsubscribed, etc. prospect and customer interactions within marketing, sales, and • Social: shared content, referral, transactional systems. The result: a poll answer, etc. Marketo Screenshot: Easy drag and drop single place from which marketers • Website: visit, clicked link, can build highly targeted campaigns completed form, referral source, tied to trackable information about search query, etc. each individual contact. • Campaign history: campaign membership, campaign response, campaign success, etc.

• Custom: purchase history, deposit, withdrawal, cart abandonment, data usage, etc.

69 PART THREE: always relevant A smart database with smart lists

Best of all, because these systems Marketo’s Smart List builder combines are built for marketers, not demographics and powerful engineers, the functionality is behavioral filters with real-time triggers accessible to an entire team. They in an easy-to-use marketing interface. make it easy to create “smart lists” using drag and drop functionality similar to creating a playlist in iTunes. You can combine filters to create specific lists: subscribers ages 18-25 who shared content via social, or customers with balances above a certain amount who visited the loans page twice in the last month. Plus, you can track campaign and response history for a solid record of how segments have performed.

This type of system makes marketing self-reliant, so that marketers can easily create and manage sophisticated behavioral- targeted campaigns on their own, without having to enlist the help of technical support. That means you spend less time modifying spreadsheets and waiting for IT, and more time building engaging, relevant campaigns.

70 PART THREE: always relevant content and design While segmentation and targeting are certainly the most important aspects of keeping your marketing relevant, content also matters — a lot.

In order to engage your audience, your content must be “human” — likeable and personalized. It should also be helpful and educational — Direct Marketing Economics or, at the very least, entertaining. According to an old direct marketing And it should be timely. rule of thumb:

In this section, we’ll show you how • Targeting is responsible for to create great email content, and 50% of your audience response we’ll share tips on optimizing some • Creative is responsible for 20% of the most important pieces of your content: the subject and • The actual offer is responsible “from” lines. We’ll also discuss the for 30%. latest trends in email design, how to design for mobile, and how to design for recipients who don’t allow image downloads.

71 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Engaging Content is Human To be engaging, your company and The language is friendly and your content must be human. conversational, making it pretty obvious that a human wrote it. (Note: Many of today’s email marketing As it turns out, Ann Handley – Chief campaigns are boring and Content Officer at MarketingProfs – impersonal: Opt-in forms read as if DID write this email). Notice the written by robots, email subject lines language in the second paragraph; it’s are dull, and copy is stale and laden personable, likeable, and witty. with corporate-speak. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Urge your copywriters to err on the side of being more human, not less, in Some companies, such as email messages (and on your web MarketingProfs, really know how to pages and opt-out form). nail the human aspect of an email:

“Effective engagement is inspired by the empathy that develops simply by being human.” – Brian Solis, Author of “Engage!”

72 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Take a look at another example from ReachForce and LeadMD. In Hi Pierce, The one thing to boost email planning to attend Marketo’s User Summit, LeadMD worked with In case you are being inundated with the same AMAZING marketing emails that I am. I marketing engagement is to thought I would share an easy cut and paste you can use for your replies: ReachForce to try a new take on the be human. conventional, cliché traffic builder “Hi - Yes I am excited to go to {(Marketo Summit)}, thanks for asking {(unnamed sales rep email. Instead, they wanted to try who never contacted me before)}. It will be life-changing! something more conversational and humorous. They even finessed fake And yes - Your booth sounds amazing, too. Your incredibly creative {(ipad)} giveaway is Marketo tokens so it would resonate Yes, your solution will certainly change my demand generation life – or would if you with the audience. The campaign understoodsure to be a great my {(buyer traffic persona)} builder. You’ll {(company be demoing? revenues)} At your {(experience booth? Who using would Marketo)}.” a thunk it? received a 42.8% email open rate 5 Ways to Be More Human in Your and a 300% improvement over the Email Marketing Message previous year in booth visits. So,Oh Yes,no cheesey those sales emails. guys. Just We saying hire email if you copywriters really want to for get a reason, something yo. valuable at the • Ditch the corporate “Frankenspeak.” There is no silver bullet when it summit, check out what you can pick up from me at ReachForce, Booth 36. comes to creating engaging and • Add humor. And yes, that is the 8-incher. Nothing but the best from ReachForce. relevant content, but we’ve got a free • Include customer stories. guide, titled “Creating Content that • Weave in real-world events Sells: A Guide to Content Marketing {(36)} as we introduce {(fully Marketo integrated continuous data quality management See you in class {(at Marketo University)} {(taking my certification exam)} at our Booth and pop culture. for Demand Generation,” which we including lead de-deuplication and automated merge)} as part of our new Connected encourage you to download. This • Don’t take yourself too seriously! get a set of data)}. guide will teach you how to effectively Marketing Data Hub and as I present {(Will the real lead please stand up? Tips and tricks to engage the right prospects with the Mary Firme, Chief Lead Accelerator right content by using smart email ReachForce | Connected Marketing Data Hub marketing techniques that target (512) 327-9000 buyer personas. Email: [email protected] | http://www.reachforce.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryfirme *andTwitter: of course, twitter.com/ReachForce we are not giving away free beer any night but Monday, and as for the gold,

that’s what you’ll find in your data after working with ReachForce!! 73 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Engaging Content is Personalized There are two ways to help your Personalization email marketing content be An example of personalization relevant to your subscribers: includes using a subscriber’s first name within the subject line and/or 1. Use personalization techniques body of the email — “Cindy, we have 2. Use dynamic content a special offer for you!” — and adding data that’s specific to that subscriber. Here is a generic email that shows You’ve probably received both of these in use. The small personalized emails like this. fields such as name and pet type are personalized; the larger The following email from REI reflects custom coupon is dynamically personalization done well. It includes inserted content. both the subscriber’s first name and his unique dividend information, making it highly relevant to him.

Source: Chris Siestema, Teach to Fish Digital

74 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

To take personalization even further, use “snippets” to dynamically insert entire blocks of copy into your emails. Snippets require zero technical skills and are easily reusable and editable in a text interface. At Marketo, we often use this tactic to personalize attributes such as office location (based on the Regards, {{lead.Lead Owner First Name:default=Ryan}} recipient’s region), and the {{lead.Lead Owner First Name:default=Ryan}} subscriber’s gender. {{lead.Lead Owner Last Name: default=Hammer}} {{lead.Lead Owner Job Title:default=Sales Development Representative}} {{lead.Lead Owner Phone Number.default=+1.650.376.2301}} Here is an example of a snippet used to populate an email footer on a landing page in Marketo:

Regards, Ryan Ryan Hammer Sales Development Representative Phone: 650.376.2301 Email: [email protected] www.marketo.com

Let’s Connect!

75 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Dynamic Content Socialware, a Marketo customer, Dynamic content allows email dynamically customizes its emails marketers to create one email and landing pages based on the template with content that varies industry and role of each recipient based on the recipient. The content — marketing, sales, IT, and so on. is determined based on the Using vertical, functional, and attributes of each individual firm-specific dynamic content, subscriber. For example, a travel Socialware has increased: company might customize messaging to its subscribers by home airport. A marketer at that company doesn’t have to create hundreds of different emails for every single home airport possibility; he simply sends one email using dynamic content. If one subscriber’s home airport is DFW and another’s is BOS, each subscriber receives a slightly different email based on the flight specials available from his home airport.

Source: ROI of Dynamic content for socialware

76 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

SmartBear also uses dynamic content to change the free tree CTA based on which product a lead has already trialed. Tips for Using Dynamic Content to Improve Marketing ROI

1. Don’t customize for the sake of customization. Focus on varying the content that’s relevant to your personas. 2. Work on your data quality to ensure that customized fields are populated with accurate information. 3. Plan ahead. Dynamic content requires more creative input and testing. 4. Review all versions created by dynamic content before sending to eliminate errors.

77 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Personalization Can Backfire

Personalization can backfire if you are creepy or aren’t confident in your data. You will know some things for sure (maybe a person’s age), but many more things are merely estimates. If you send emails that are more personalized than your data quality can support, consumers may be confused and turned off.

Instead of sending emails that say “You bought product X and visited page Y so we’re sending you offer Z”, simply use the information you know to craft messages that will be relevant to people who had those behaviors – without mentioning the information you know specifically.

78 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Content: What to Say • Repurposed or Reimagined: Now let’s discuss what your emails Content that you’ve already are actually about. published on your website, in a blog, on a podcast, and/or as video can Types of Email Your email should do one of four things often be repurposed for email Most emails will serve one of the following for a prospect or customer: marketing. If the content offers purposes. Be sure the content of your email unique benefits on different 1. Solve his problem is appropriate for the purpose. platforms (video versus a bulleted 2. Save him money list, for example), it’s a great • Transactional: An operational email, • Communication: An email that is opportunity for you to cross- 3. Make him smarter usually related to a purchase – a meant to update or communicate promote your different receipt or confirmation, for example. information (e.g. a newsletter). 4. Entertain him marketing channels. • Promotional: An email meant to • Reminder: A ‘nudge’ email sent to stimulate an action (purchase, a subscriber who has abandoned Take a moment to think about the glut • Curated: A newer trend in email registration, usage, etc.). her online shopping cart. Daily deal of email marketing messages you marketing, curation is the process of sites like Groupon use this method receive every day. Which ones do you finding useful industry content from • Alert: An email triggered by a certain to remind users of coupons that open? We guarantee they fit into one various sources and then sharing it event, such as the one you receive have not been redeemed. Other (or more!) of the four categories above. in email campaigns, often with a when your flight is delayed or when customized summary or introduction someone asks to connect with you companies send consumers reminders for scheduled events. Sources of Email Content to why it is useful. on LinkedIn. Alerts offer convenience. Where do you get content for emails, • User-Generated (Community): • Relationship development: An especially content-rich communication Asking your community to help email that is meant to simply maintain and nurture emails? Here are a few create content can inspire your and build a relationship over time; no common sources: creative team and engage action is needed. • Original: Content that you create. subscribers. Social media is perfect It’s yours, and only yours, and it for this. You can send an email that cannot be found anywhere else links to a poll you’ve created on online or in print. Giving your Twitter or Facebook, and then post audience original content in an the results of the poll within another email is great incentive for email. Community content can also them to opt in. come from blog comments, customer testimonials, and reviews. 79 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Timely Content When integrating news events into On the other hand, if during the Marketo scheduled this Superbowl Being relevant often means being your marketing, be sensitive to the time of the Superbowl you have a email to run at 5:40PT, in order to give timely. Leverage real-world events dynamics of the news. It’s best to hunch that a commercial relevant a buffer after the halftime ads had and current industry goings-on. Did affiliate with positive events rather to your industry will be featured been shown. The timeliness of the something big happen recently in than those that are negative or tragic. during the telecast, have an email email generated great results: your city, state, country, or the American Apparel took a lot of heat ready to go that looks something world? Can you tie it back to what’s for sending this email during like this: • The email was sent to 20,000 going on in your email, say, through Hurricane Sandy: marketers in the US and Canada a graphic or headline? Or — if • It had a 13.5% open rate, yielding appropriate — is it cause for an a 16.5% click to open rate email of its own? • More than 680 people responded to the poll and forwarded it to colleagues and friends

With your finger on the “send” button, so to speak, you can release it in the moment for that priceless human effect.

Note: When using timely content in an automated campaign, it’s crucial to set “content expiration” dates. This is especially important for emails related to events.

80 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Educate, Don’t Sell For example, imagine you lead the We’re in the post-hard-sell age. email marketing team for a hospital. Consumers are savvy about You can assume that, at any given avoiding ads, but willing to engage moment, most of your subscribers The 411 Approach to Content with interesting, relevant content. wouldn’t respond to the urgency While your messaging should always be You can apply the 411 approach to email In other words, an email that implied by a subject line that reads, “Do centered on educating or entertaining marketing as well. As you plan your includes a sales pitch will alienate You Need to Visit the Hospital?” So, to consumers, not every single message you conversations, schedule four educational your subscribers, but one that appeal to your entire audience, you send has to be educational or entertaining. or entertaining emails for every soft contains good content will please would write a subject line that’s more promotion (e.g., event invitation), as well them. So, keep this rule of thumb inclusive: “Five Things to Look for in a Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the as every hard promotion (e.g., discount in mind: Your content is on track if Hospital” or, even better, “10 Ways to Content Marketing Institute devised what coupon). your subscribers find it valuable Stay Healthy and Avoid the Emergency they call the 411 approach to marketing on — consume and interact with it Room.” These subjects will appeal to Twitter, which touts that for every self- Consider another dating analogy: If you — even if they never purchase a readers who happen to have a current serving tweet you post, you re-tweet one focus on only being funny and smart, you product from you. need, as well as to the bulk of your relevant tweet that you’ve read, and share might end up in the dreaded friend zone. readers who might turn to your hospital four pieces of content written by others. Sometimes, you have to make a move to when the need arises. With this approach, you engage in the take your relationship to the next level. conversation, build awareness, and help spread interesting content without coming across as pushy or narcissistic. “Focus on creating opportunities to invite customer engagement, rather than tearing the door down.” – MarketingSherpa

81 PART THREE: always relevant subject lines

The subject line of an email is one of the first things a recipient sees in “Email subject lines are a her inbox. And she’s likely to make a snap judgment based on that line form of headline. They Subject Lines Typically Perform about whether to open, ignore, perform the same function One of the Following Actions: delete or — ack! — mark as spam. as a headline by attracting • Educate: Not every subject line needs to be attention and getting your “7 things content marketers can Pulitzer Prize-worthy, but there email content a chance to learn from fiction writers.” sure is power in a subject line that’s be read.” • Ask a question: magnetic. Let’s face it, if you can “Did you miss this?” get a subscriber to open your – Brian Clark, Copyblogger email, you’re doing a good job, but • Announce a sale or new product: if you can get her to stop what “Save up to 50%: Our semi-annual she’s doing and open your email sale starts today.” immediately, you’re winning! • Offer a solution to a problem: “Pay down your loan.” • Jump on a popular topic: “Do subject lines matter? “The state of the Facebook The short answer is yes. The newsfeed: What’s working now?” somewhat longer answer is, HELL YEAH.” – Waldow Social

82 PART THREE: always relevant subject lines

How Long Should Subject Lines Be? Companies for which email marketing is everything, such as While some marketers argue that Groupon, sometimes experiment with extremes when it comes to subject lines should be short (30-50 subject line length. Groupon often sends emails with very long characters long), shorter is not always subject lines, such as this one, which is 42 words! better. According to a study by Alchemy Worx, a UK-based email marketing agency, longer subject lines actually Subject: One Oil Change, Three Oil Changes with Inspections, or have higher click-to-open rates. a Four-Wheel Alignment (Up to 78% Off) | 10 or 20 Gym Passes (Up to 69% Off) | Salon Package with Cut, Style, and Two-Color Highlights; Shellac Manicure; or Acrylic Nails (Up to 51% Off)”

As well as very short ones, such as this:

28.5%

22.6% Subject: Wine

18.8% 15.9% Shorter subject lines make sense if you fear your recipients won’t 15% 13.5% read the entire thing. This is a genuine concern, especially when subscribers read on mobile devices, where your message can get butchered or shortened. Consider what could happen if this subject line got cut off after, say, 26 characters:

Subject: Get up to 70% off children’s fashion

That’s right, you’d end up with this, a possible public relations nightmare:

Subject: Get up to 70% off children...

83 PART THREE: always relevant subject lines

When to Break the Rule: Never use the word free. Rule: NEVER USE ALL CAPS. Subject Line Rules This is no longer a sure-sign of email Wrong again. Look in your inbox right “Emphasize value. The There are a lot of “always do this; deliverability problems; search your now. Chances are pretty high that never do that” rules surrounding the own inbox for companies using the there are many legitimate emails from subject line is the first thing intricate science of email marketing word and you’ll see that a good well-known brands that include an email marketer should subject lines. Consider breaking the reputation dominates. Plus, FREE is a all-caps subject lines. As long as focus on crafting, not the rules occasionally to see what works very powerful motivator for action. you’ve tested this style to confirm your best for you and your audience. Of Vermont-based flour and baking audience responds positively, go last thing dashed off just course, to break the rules, you first resource company King Arthur Flour ahead and use it. before the campaign goes have to know what they are. Here are ran an A|B subject line test: In email A out the door. Assuming the some of the top “bossy” tips we’ve the subject line was Ends Thursday: heard (and rolled our eyes at): FREE SHIPPING; in email B, a more sender’s email reputation is creative subject line was used solid and their email is (Hawaiian Pizza — the secret’s in the getting delivered, the crust). While email B resulted in a higher open rate, email A had a nearly subject line is the one thing 400% higher conversion revenue. everyone’s going to see.” – Ken Magill President of the Magill Report

Email inbox searching for emails using “Free” in subject. Note this is not a junk folder. 84 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Rule: Never include fake FWD: Rule: Never use symbols. We’re Well-known brands that currently and RE: in subject lines. We tested seeing symbols used more and use symbols: this rule in a recent Marketo more in subject lines. While symbols campaign, and found that our email may provide a short-term lift in open Angie’s List: with the fake forward had an open rates because they are unique and Share the Angie’s List love rate of 19.9%, while our email without stand out, you shouldn’t base a the forward earned a rate of 17.9%. long-term strategy on them. The Travelocity: Additionally, the click-to-open rate novelty may wear off, and not all Fly from $49 Each Way was 5.3% for the email with the fake email clients support symbols. If you forward, compared to 3.5% for the do choose to use them, be sure to Staples: one without. That said, some email test across a variety of platforms Don’t miss your bonus coupon marketing purists argue that these and devices. Learn more about how inside. Open now! gimmicks are deceptive, so always to use symbols in your subject line test how your audience response to at EmailKarma.net. Pottery Barn: this kind of approach. Days Only! Free Shipping and Monogramming on holiday favorites

85 PART THREE: always relevant content and design

Email Marketing Rules You Simply HAVE to Break When it comes to email marketing, there That’s why we’ve made a list of 17 email are a lot of purists out there who say you marketing “rules” that you absolutely, should ALWAYS do this or NEVER do that. 100% must break*. Consider all of the “best practices” that are 1. NEVER use words like “free” or 11. NEVER have fun. *“Break” is a fancy way of saying test to floating around online. From PowerPoint “deal” or “discount” in an email 12. NEVER use ALL CAPS in an see what works best for your audience. presentations to old white papers, archaic subject line. email subject line. Don’t assume that all of these rules will eBooks and other resources that are just work for you simply because they worked 2. ALWAYS keep your email subject 13. NEVER use animated gifs in the plain outdated, they promote rules that for someone else. Test. Tweak. Then, lines between 30 and 50 body of an email. used to be true. characters. break the rules. Figure out the best 14. NEVER put the unsubscribe 3. ALWAYS use double opt-in when approach for your community. The reality is, as long as you are not button or link at the top of an growing your list. breaking any laws, not much is black and email (or make it obvious). 4. NEVER use a pop-up (or pop-over) white. (That said, we do strongly encourage 15. ALWAYS send an email during to collect email addresses. you to consult counsel for anything legal. the middle of the week. We are not attorneys!) 5. NEVER send a mostly-text email. 16. NEVER send an email at the end 6. NEVER send a mostly-image email. of the day. 7. NEVER send an email with one 17. NEVER send more than one big image. email per day. 8. ALWAYS have a good balance of images to text. 9. NEVER send “ugly” emails. 10. NEVER buy a list.

86 PART THREE: always relevant the “from” name

Trust, trust, trust. We can’t make this There are many different ways to • With a Phone Number: point enough: Your goal as a marketer set up your From name. Here are Include an office or mobile should be to earn enough trust from some options: phone number so your your subscribers that they are willing to customers can contact you Some companies use a combination of • Company or Brand Name: open your emails. easily after reading your email: From-name tactics. MarketingProfs, for Apple, Travelocity, and The Gap, John Smith | 555-123-4567. example, is known for mixing and for example. Along with the subject line, the sender matching various styles: name — or “From” name — is a critical • Campaign-based: Marketo • Product or Service: “Mileage sometimes sends nurturing factor in a subscriber’s decision to Plus” is sometimes used by emails from “Marketo Jen Kelly - MProfs Partn. open versus delete your email. If a United Airlines as a From name. subscriber doesn’t recognize you or Nurturing” or “Marketo Events” doesn’t trust you, he’s far less likely to • Personal Name: Use the name of so subscribers know exactly MarketingProfs open your email, and he might even a specific employee at your what to expect before opening. MarketingProfs Today mark it as spam. Shudder! company (e.g., the sales executive • Gimmicky: Celebrity names or that owns the account). names of those famous within Sharon, MarketingProfs your industry. Kathy Bushman, Marketing.

MarketingProfs Events Te.

Corey O’Loughlin, Market.

Ann Handley, MarketingPr.

MarketingProfs: Email Ne.

Note: These are actual from names and subject lines from real emails we’ve received! Can you guess who the sender is? Tweet us!

#DG2EEM

87 PART THREE: always relevant email design

Congratulations! You’ve gotten your subscribers to open your emails. Now, what do they see? Think about not only how your content reads, but also what it looks like.

While it’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, here are a few basics to guide you to design success:

• Think about the width of your email. Most common is 600 pixels.

• Remember that Flash, JavaScript, video and other rich media won’t work in an HTML email.

• Focus on what will appear “above the fold” in the preview pane on desktop computers, laptops, and on mobile devices.

• Pretty is not always better; sometimes text-heavy emails can be quite effective. Publisher’s Clearing House often uses text- heavy emails that get 40% open rates and 87% click-to-open rates!

• Provide a plain text version for subscribers who simply don’t like HTML versions. PART THREE: always relevant email design

Images • Use image “alt” tags so that • Get creative with images-off Most email clients now block all recipients who’ve blocked design. Check out what the images by default, so users must images know what they’re creative team at Pizza Express did: take the initiative to unblock if they missing. For example, a picture of want to see them. The semi-good a red cashmere sweater could news, according to David Daniels of have an alt tag that reads, “red The Relevancy Group: “55% of cashmere sweater.” If you’re consumers stated that they turn on offering 15% off of the price of the images in the emails that they that sweater, the alt tag should receive, which rivals the 57% of definitely read, “15% off red consumers who state they check cashmere sweater.” their primary personal email account on their mobile devices.” • Test animated GIFs. Starbucks used animated GIFs in a February Nonetheless, many recipients will be 2012 email. We can’t animate the looking at your emails without example for you in this guide but, images. Here are a few steps you if you squint, you can probably can take to respond: imagine the stars “falling” down the page. • Create bulletproof buttons that look like images but are actually cleverly formatted HTML. The buttons ensure that Once again, it comes back to trust. In order to get subscribers will see the most subscribers to care enough about your images to download important points of your email, them, they must have confidence in your content. regardless of whether or not they’ve blocked images. The folks at Mass Transmit have created a cool bulletproof button generator. Give it a try!

89 PART THREE: always relevant mobile design

Eighty-one percent of people read their emails on mobile devices, and 41% of commercial emails were opened on devices in the second half of 2012. This is up from 27% a year earlier, and from 13% at the end of 2010. When we see the numbers Mobile for 2013 and beyond they are sure to be even higher.

Yet even with all this explosive growth Desktop in mobile email, 58% of email marketers are still not designing for it. And MarketingSherpa reports that 31% of marketers don’t even Webmail know their mobile email open rate!

Source: Litmus

90 PART THREE: always relevant mobile design

Scalable and Responsive Design Media Queries • Readers use their fingers to There are two common design Media queries allow you to control the select items, so use pronounced options for mobile — scalable layout and display of your email based image buttons and keep them or responsive: on the mobile device that is being used simple. Links and buttons with a @media Support Across Mobile Apps to open it. However, it’s important to minimum target area of 44 × 44 • Scalable: The layout is clickable know that not all mobile email clients pixels (per Apple guidelines) iPhone native and the type is readable, even support media queries. Style are ideal. when reduced 50% in size. Campaign, a company that specializes iPad native Scalable design avoids large in responsive email design, maintains a • Make sure images are readable Android 2.1 native widths and includes big type good list of what is supported by when resized, or include mobile- and big buttons. various clients. specific images. The minimum Android 2.2 native font size displayed on iPhones is • Responsive: The layout of a 13 pixels; anything smaller will be Android 2.3 native page responds based on the You can also use media queries to fine-tune your code with designs for upscaled and could break Android 4.x native proportions of the screen on your layout. which it’s presented. This design specific devices and situations, Gmail mobile apps including horizontal vs. vertical layout, is becoming increasingly • Use display: none; to hide any Mailbox iOS app common for use in emails, as and even iPad-specific layouts. Media part of the design that is well as on websites. queries also let you include mobile- unnecessary for email. Extra Yahoo! mobile apps specific CSS to handle single-column callouts and social sharing Windows Mobile 7 layouts and widths under 600 pixels. buttons may work on a desktop But there are a few things to remember or laptop computer, but can Windows Mobile 7.5 when using media queries: clutter a mobile experience. Windows Mobile 8

• Most people access mobile email • Pay attention to the pre-header BlackBerry OS 6 on 320 x 480 pixel screens. — the preview shown in many BlackBerry OS 7 mobile email clients. Give your • If a device does not support BlackBerry Z10 responsive design, then it will be pre-header language the same scaled. So it’s worth thinking about care and attention that you apply Kindle Fire native a scalable design, nonetheless. to your subject line, and avoid simply displaying ‘view in Source: stylecampaign.com browser’ text. 91 PART THREE: always relevant design testing

Design Testing across Clients You can’t control everything, but you One of the most frustrating things can test your design across different about designing for email is that you clients. With enough resources, you have little control over what your could do this manually, but, better yet, The 6 Golden Rules of Mobile Email audience actually sees. There are a you can use a tool such as Marketo’s by: Simms Jenkins lot of different email clients across Email Deliverability Power Pack to CEO & Founder of BrightWave Marketing desktop and mobile and tons of automate the testing process. Here’s I believe mobile to be the biggest thing to variation in how they display HTML what the output of our tool looks like. ever impact email. It can also affect your and handle previews panes. To brand since email closely ties to how your make things worse, users can brand is perceived. If you send too many customize email appearance by emails, offer a poor user experience, bad changing font size and turning rendering, etc., your brand equity can suffer. images on or off. The same email Good mobile email drives revenue. client can even display messages According to Adobe, 71% said mobile differently from ISP to ISP! If there’s purchasing decisions are most influenced one thing you can be sure of, it’s that by emails from companies. That is huge! your email doesn’t look the same to all subscribers. 1. Smartphone owners are more likely to read emails than make calls 2. Consumers read more emails on mobile devices than a browser or desktop 3. How your email looks on smartphones matters to consumers 4. Understand where your subscribers read your email to determine the right approach 5. What you are trying to accomplish in Source: Marketo Email Deliverability Power Pack your mobile email should impact your approach & strategy 6. Device matters and behavior varies PART THREE: always relevant testing and optimization Best practices are those that are best for YOUR audience. You must test to see what resonates most with your subscribers.

One of the most powerful aspects of What to Test email marketing is that it can, indeed, Historically, the subject line has been Subject line be tested, which is crucial to the the most popular marketing email (e.g. phrasing, length) success of your campaigns. There element to test, followed closely by Message are no golden rules for how to run the content of the message itself. But (e.g. greeting, body, closing) your campaigns, and that can be as MarketingSherpa highlights in this frustrating; but rules don’t exist chart, there are many other elements Layout and images because what works for one of your emails that are just as testable: audience won’t necessarily work for Call-to-action another. Testing is your biggest ally.

Days of the week sent

Want to learn more about testing? Visit: Time of day sent Marketo’s The Ultimate Guide To Test Statistics (bit.ly/11ZkASJ) Personalization Are you among those who self-proclaim, “I’m not good at math”? If so, we’ve got a handy calculator you can use. Landing page

This calculator was originally designed for landing-page Target audience conversions, but it works great for email numbers. Just replace “page views” with “emails sent,” and “conversion rate” with From line “click-through rate.” Mobile layout and images

Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey 93 PART THREE: always relevant testing and optimization

Eight Tips for Pro Testing

1. Start simple. Test subject lines 5. Make sure testing is part of your and headers first. It doesn’t take day-to-day processes. Testing a lot of time or creative work to doesn’t have to be daunting, Here are 25 elements we suggest come up with a few simple and it shouldn’t be something you consider testing: variants, and the return can you put off due to a lack of be significant. resources — it should be part 1. Subject line 14. Font colors of your daily routine. 2. Test one element at a time. If you 2. From name 15. Font styles test more than one element, you 6. Run tests on groups that are 3. Day of the week 16. Opt-down won’t be able to tell which variant small, but large enough to 4. Time of day 17. Social sharing icons drove the success. determine a clear winner. The winning variables should then 5. Frequency 18. Social connecting icons 3. Control for time of day and day of be incorporated into your 6. Mostly-images vs. mostly-text 19. Delivery by time zone the week. If you’re testing other larger mailing. 7. Short copy vs. long copy 20. Call to action — number variants, then send on the same 8. Links vs. buttons 21. Call to action — placement day and at the same time to 7. Don’t forget that small eliminate the timing variant. differences can be significant. 9. Number of links 22. Post-click landing page This is especially true if your 10. Unsubscribe at the top 23. Social proof 4. Keep a log of all your tests. sample sizes are large. 11. First name personalization — 24. Tone — human vs. corporate Record your findings so you can in the subject line 25. Copy length refer back to the specific 8. Listen to what your tests tell you! 12. First name personalization — variables tested and, more All the testing in the world won’t in the email body importantly, learn from them. matter if you’re not making 13. Animated gifs decisions and modifications to your campaigns based on what you’ve learned. Unused data is sad data, indeed. What other email elements have you tested? I tested Please share by tweeting us: #DG2EEM

94 PART THREE: always relevant testing and optimization

What We’ve Learned at Marketo At Marketo, we’ve run 100s of email Here are examples of the Salutations because not only are short emails less tests to discover what resonates well two versions: Think salutations don’t matter? Think likely to overwhelm readers, but also with our target audience. Here are again. Our test compared an email that they’re not cluttered by text, so the some examples, along with our • Version A From Name: included a salutation (e.g., Dear [First CTA appears prominently. findings – though keep in mind that Ryan Hammer, Marketo Name]) with one that didn’t. The this is what works for us, and your • Version B From Name: subject lines were the same. Bracketed Offer in Subject Line results may vary. Marketo Premium Content This test applies to emails that offer a The winner: The email with a content asset. We tested two versions From Label (Person vs. Alias) The winner: Version A, which salutation resulted in an almost 2.5% of subject lines by naming the asset To conduct this test, your email increased opens by 28% and increase in Click-to-Opens, which (New eBook) in one and simply placing marketing solution must have the increased CTR by 8%. Our translates to 49 more clicks. It was the word “Download” in brackets in the capability to insert personalized hypothesis is that an email from a real significant with a 95% confidence level, other: token information and/or merge field while open rates did not significantly person appears more engaging. [Download] Make Your capability. Version A was sent from a differ. • Version A: Facebook Posts More Shareable human being (the lead’s owner); Fake Forward version B was sent from a general In our Fake Forward test, we tested Email Body Length • Version B: [New eBook] Make marketing alias; the subject lines an email that appeared as if a sales Does shorter, more concise email Your Facebook Posts More were identical. rep forwarded it to the subscriber to content lead to more click-throughs Shareable an email that was directly from that than highly descriptive, longer email sales rep. content? The winner: Interestingly, the Open Rates did not differ. However, the click The winner: The test showed Fake The winner: We conducted two tests, through was higher for the email that Forward had significantly higher both of which showed significant contained the word Download. That, Open Rate (2% higher) and Click-to- results in favor of shorter, more concise we believe, is because the word Open Rate (2% higher). content. Our first test resulted in a 7% Download doesn’t just just alert increase in Click-to-Opens, equating to readers to an asset, but also instructs 38 more clicks. The second test readers how to obtain that asset. In generated a 2% increase in Click-to- terms of confidence, the results were Opens, which translates to 66 more only significant to 80%. clicks. We believe difference exists thought leadership snapshot: Andrew kordek, co-founder, trendline interactive

MKTO: What is your advice for Creating engaging email campaigns The second and perhaps most difficult creating engaging email marketing starts with research. It leverages change for marketers is the increasing campaigns and content? existing and future content and is then expectation that behavior can and will optimized through testing and drive messaging relevancy. AK: More than half of email marketers technology-driven insights. This is Someone’s behavior in the store, on say that their biggest challenge is not an easy task, but then again the the website, in an app, an action in the targeting subscribers with relevant competition for inbox attention is car or even the television shows they content. The key to creating engaging every email that is more relevant watch will drive communications campaigns starts with having a clear than the one you just sent. between brands and their subscriber. understanding of what is truly relevant Brand loyalists will expect hyper- Andrew Kordek is the to your subscribers. You cannot MKTO: Looking into your crystal personalized communication and Co-Founder and Chief Strategist achieve relevancy if you don’t know ball, what does email marketing digital and marketing privacy will for Trendline Interactive, a what to say. look like 5-10 years from now? continue to be a topic of fierce debate strategic email marketing agency. around the world. He leads all strategy for Trendline In order to form a baseline of what to AK: In the next 5-10 years email will clients, touching all aspects of email say to subscribers, organizations need evolve in two important ways. First, programs. He has over 22 years of to gather insights on topics and types the inbox as we know it will become a sales and marketing experience. of communication that both customers centralized communication hub You can find Andrew writing, and prospects find valuable, and then whereby subscribers will be able to blogging, speaking, and generally create a messaging strategy around communicate with brands and other obsessed with email marketing. the research. This research should be individuals via integrated social and both qualitative and quantitative, and email capabilities. The days where lead to a strategic messaging you will need separate apps to blueprint, which is then used to create communicate on Facebook, Twitter, a program charter that defines email and other social networks that objectives and creates a value have yet to be spawned will be history. proposition for their subscribers. This experience will be mirrored and unified across all devices. 96 part four: conversations, not campaigns PART four: conversations, not campaigns nobody wants to get blasted Commercial email marketing evolved out of the traditional direct-mail mindset, which is all about big campaigns sent to many, on the marketer’s schedule, not the buyer’s.

With email blasts, marketers realized Popular marketing expressions such that they could save a lot of money as batch and blast, hit the database, over direct mail — and reach their and e-shot, certainly don’t have target audience much faster. It positive connotations. The sentiment seemed logical that if sending 100 behind the words is telling. When you emails generated $10 in revenue, batch and blast, you are essentially then sending 10,000 emails should admitting that your emails are not generate $1,000. Batch and blast individually relevant. was off and running. The days of batch and blast are But marketers soon ran into a serious numbered. Contemporary subscribers problem: No one wants to get expect personal and relevant emails on “blasted.” What seemed like a a non-disruptive schedule. dream solution for companies became a nightmare for recipients, who were inundated with messages.

Think about the word blast for a moment. What does it bring to mind? An explosion? A batch and blast email strategy is, indeed, like an explosion — a violent shattering or blowing apart of something that often results in more damage than benefit.

98 PART four: conversations, not campaigns nobody wants to get blasted

From Direct Mail Origins What Does an Engaging to Ongoing Conversations Conversation Look Like? “‘Sense and respond’ Just getting your messages to We’ve used the word “engaging” quite recipients is not enough; you have to a bit so far, but what does it really mean communication in the digital world give subscribers reasons to engage in terms of email marketing? requires automation that monitors with those messages. This means for explicit and implicit behavioral abandoning the idea of batch and For starters, engaging means that your blast and entering into a relationship- email marketing content stimulates a cues, captures that data (senses) oriented mindset that continuously dialogue that’s organic and free- in a rich behavioral database, builds engagement with consumers, flowing. Just like a real-world and then uses the data to one by one and over time. conversation, the dialogue you start should foster a two-way conversation. customize a valuable response We now have the opportunity to In other words, an engaging email (responds). Marketing automation listen and respond to every customer doesn’t just talk to a recipient; it also platforms, sometimes known as at every stage of his purchase gives him a reason and an opportunity process, keeping him engaged and to respond, and fits into a broader campaign management systems helping to drive his purchasing conversational arc. or marketing operations systems, decisions. Emails should flow in logical fashion through smart Put another way, having a conversation are one of the primary marketing tracks to create engaging, means you: technologies used for this personalized conversations. kind of ‘sense and respond’ • Listen and adapt digital dialogue.” Email needs to evolve from • Send messages that flow campaigns to conversations. one to the next – Graduating from Email to Engagement: Using Marketing Automation to Achieve Success with Today’s Buyer, an International Data Corporation (IDC) Workbook, sponsored by Marketo

99 PART four: conversations, not campaigns nobody wants to get blasted

Listen and Adapt Here’s how to listen and adapt in As a simple example, imagine you’re a A romantic date goes badly if all you email marketing: marketer at a food company, and your do is talk about yourself. The same goal is to drive sales for a particular • Use behavioral filters to target. • Trigger messages and holds true for marketing brand of salad dressing. You have two As discussed in Part 3, behavioral adjustments based conversations. If you don’t listen marketing messages — one about the filters ensure relevance in your email on behaviors. — really listen — to your prospects health aspects of the dressing, and the marketing. So, start a conversation When a prospect does and consumers, you’ll never earn the other about how kids love the taste. In with a smart subset of your contact something meaningful on your chance for a “second date,” let alone practice, you find out that Customer A list based on unique profiles and website, in social channels, or a long-term commitment. responded to the health message, but behaviors. Then, continue to watch offline (such as making a that message did nothing for Customer your subscribers’ behaviors as the purchase at a physical store), you To start a two-way conversation, you B. By listening for a lack of response to campaign progresses and your need to be able to respond with must provide content relevant to a your initial marketing message, you conversation with each recipient a relevant, timely email. When consumer’s interests. Then, you can automatically deliver the “your kids diverges down its own unique you automatically send a must be willing to adjust your will love it” message to Customer B. content based on how that behavioral path. prospect a message based on consumer responds. It’s great to an action she took (or didn’t automate workflows that map to a take), you allow for the message buyer’s journey, but they can’t be to be delivered at the moment static workflows; you must be willing your brand is on her mind. You to adjust them as you observe how are communicating with her on your buyer actually navigates her terms, not yours. But if you across channels. miss these triggers, and simply blast emails to your entire list as your promotional calendar dictates, you ignore your potential customers and their buying signals.

100 PART four: conversations, not campaigns nobody wants to get blasted

Send Messages That Each step in the conversation should Flow One to the Next flow from prior communications and “Every interaction is a link Good email marketing move the relationship forward. conversations evolve over time. Here’s what an engaging conversation within the context of a They tell stories that have a might sound like: communication supply- beginning, a middle, an end, with chain. Don’t look at each each component flowing naturally • Welcome! Here’s what to expect. • Are you ready to buy? from the last and weaving a plot. • Check out this article. • Here’s more great content! discrete message, or even each campaign, as a • Here’s a cool video. • Join us at our event. unique event with a direct • See our latest offering. • You like X, so check out Y. link to the end result. • Share this with friends. • Here are some fun ways to learn Marketing is not a candy more about our products (or machine. Instead, view • Here’s what others like. services). each as a link in a chain of • Download our new book. • Take this survey? events each of which leads • Happy birthday! • You haven’t bought X yet, so here’s to other actions.” a 10% discount. – IDC Technology Marketing Blog

101 PART four: conversations, not campaigns traditional tools don’t cut it There’s no doubt that engaging conversation is a great marketing technique. So why aren’t more companies using it effectively? Turns out, flow-chart approaches don’t work for real-world conversations.

Flow Charts Don’t Flow It made perfect sense while Perhaps you began by sketching out planning, but now that your a plan on your whiteboard during a campaign is live, your prospects marketing meeting: and buyers aren’t taking the actions you mapped out. You did your best to script the conversations, but people are unpredictable. Think about it: you can prep for a cocktail party by coming up with some great conversation points based on things you’ve read or seen on television, but you can’t control how the people you meet at the party will react to your conversation. All you can do is make a loose plan, and then be willing to adapt in real time.

Similarly, with email marketing conversations, you can do your best to map countless if-then scenarios, but in an attempt to cover all your bases, you might end up with visual spaghetti.

102 PART four: conversations, not campaigns traditional tools don’t cut it

Complex flow charts quickly cause problems for marketers because they are:

• Confusing. • Less agile. • Error prone. Charts can get so complicated Flow charts require rebuilding It’s almost impossible to act that only technical experts can workflows when new content is intelligently on information that’s “My own opinion is quite understand them. As David added. Subscribers who are hard to follow. Complex flow firm: flow charts don’t work. Raab, marketing technology already partially through a track charts can cause you to send expert and consultant, wrote in won’t ever get the new content if expired or duplicate content, or They look good in his blog: “I never saw a flow chart it’s scheduled early in the even too much content to demonstrations and can lay interface that actually did a good sequence. Or, if the content is subscribers. The last thing you out simple processes quite job handling complexity. So I’ve scheduled for the end, they might want is to send prospects an reluctantly concluded that flow not receive it for months. Making invitation today to an event that nicely. But they get impossibly charts are only suitable for changes requires you to reprogram was held last week, or to convoluted once you try to do serious technical experts.” complex flow charts – which can receive an email from a something complex.” quickly get unwieldy. subscriber who is fed up with your constant messaging. – David Raab, Marketing Technology Consultant & Analyst Marketers using flow charts can’t keep up with the dynamic, interactive nature of behavior-based conversational marketing. They’re handicapped when it comes to customizing their dialogue with customers.

103 PART four: conversations, not campaigns conversations: a better way

Years of experience at Marketo have shown us that there’s a better way to manage engaging consumer conversations.

1. Easily add new content 3. Automatically limit from your website just before an 6. Engage across even An intelligent solution will let email frequency email promoting that book is more channels marketers easily drag and drop Sending too many emails can kill scheduled to go out, the system You want to engage your prospects relevant content where they want it in your campaign and quickly lead to should be smart enough to know and customers wherever they are the stream of communications, and high unsubscribe rates. So, look for that this prospect shouldn’t get that most apt to hang out, but traditional the system will automatically deliver solutions that let you control the email, and deliver the next most email solutions don’t let you do that, appropriate messages to each number of emails any one recipient relevant piece of content instead. because they are focused on, well, recipient at the perfect time. This will get — regardless of the email. As we’ll explore in Part 5, an means that subscribers always get communication streams in which he 5. Know when you’ve run automated solution for marketing the freshest and most relevant takes part. You simply set limits and out of content conversations enables you to listen content. let the system do its thing. With regular flowcharts, there’s no and adjust the conversation based on indication when a consumer hits the information over any channel (e.g., 2. Schedule content to 4. Never serve the same end of your content stream, which trigger engagements based on activate and deactivate dish twice can result in large numbers of mobile application usage, or With traditional solutions, it can be It’s never relevant to send a subscribers falling out of the string of interacting with online videos) as well hard to remember to activate content subscriber an offer for content she’s conversations. Instead, the solution as coordinate messages over other at the right time or deactivate it when already downloaded or a product should track when consumers have outbound channels including direct it’s no longer relevant. Plus, the more she already owns. A smart exhausted all the content in a stream mail and SMS. complex the workflow, the more conversational solution monitors and alert the marketer that it’s time to error-prone management can be. A content consumption across input new content or switch streams. better solution is to support content channels — not just within your activation and expiration dates for email marketing — and ensures that each message, and let the system customers don’t receive duplicate automatically activate and deactivate content or offers. For example, if it for you at the right time. your prospect downloads an eBook

104 PART four: conversations, not campaigns conversations: a better way

FROM TO

New content = need Drag-and-drop new to reprogram content into Smart Streams

Content expiration Expired content dates

Duplicate Never send the content same content twice

Too many emails Frequency limits

Consumer falls off Exhausted the end of tracks content

Marketo’s Customer Engagement Engine intelligently and automatically manages the timing and distribution of the right content to the right person at the right time.

105 PART four: conversations, not campaigns a better way

Automation Makes Personal Conversations Scalable Having a conversation with one That’s why automation is critical to subscriber at a time is easy, and you customer engagement — there is can even do it manually. You could no other way to have one-to-one probably even manage dozens of conversations with your consumer conversations manually, customers on a large scale. in fact. But there is a real scalability Automation allows you to be relevant issue when your subscribers start to to each and every one of your number in the hundreds, thousands, customers lets them feel listened to or millions, because you still want to and respected. Remarkably, in this have relevant, personalized new digital era, we’re back to the conversations with each and good old-fashioned business ethic of every one. putting the customer first!

Some companies try to implement these processes using the wrong tools. Remember the “I Love Lucy” When your subscribers number in the episode in which Lucy took a job hundreds, thousands, or millions, you need working at a candy factory? She the right technology to keep up with the could handle packaging when it involved just a few chocolates, but volume and engage customers in respectful as the volume increased, things got and relevant one-to-one conversations. messy (and funny!). When your subscriber volume increases, it’s as if your conversations are on a fast-moving conveyer belt. Without the right technology to keep you up to speed, your marketing could become a mess, and no one will find humor in that! 106 case study: trimble with automated email marketing, trimble positions its dealers to deliver sales

Highlights Challenges Schoder, Marcom Project Manager for dealers, they were forced to hand sort Best known for commercializing GPS Trimble’s Heavy Civil Construction address lists and communicate in one-off • Actively supports their dealers and technology, Trimble offers over 500 division, explains, “Before our Marketo emails. With Marketo, Trimble segments distributors by sharing valuable products that are used for a variety of implementation, we weren’t confident that campaigns with precision and lead insights for trial downloads, applications including construction, we were getting the most out of our communicates with specific dealers about accelerating conversion rates surveying, agriculture, fleet and asset tradeshow, website and customer opt-in support issues, webinars, and events that • Transforms data aggregation and management, transportation and logistics, lists. We didn’t have an integrated way to specifically pertain to their clients’ needs. greatly reduces manual and public safety. Trimble products are measure and manage success.” Trimble Trimble’s marketing has been able to processes, which improves ROI used in over 141 countries, and their 6,500 wanted an easy-to-use platform that energize customer acquisition for dealers and allows for deeper focus on employees are assisted by a highly integrated seamlessly with Saleforce.com and distributors by automating nurture marketing campaign quality capable network of dealers and and that possessed advanced functionality campaigns associated with its free trial distribution partners. One of many to assist their channel partners in nurturing download. For example, when potential divisions leveraging Marketo is the Trimble leads to enhanced sales. clients visit Trimble’s website, and take Heavy Civil Construction division, who advantage of the free software, Marketo supply advanced automation and lifecycle Solutions enables Trimble to follow up at each stage solutions which incorporate precision After researching the top Gartner-reported of the free trial. With Marketo, Trimble machine control, software, site positioning, automation vendors, Trimble chose makes sure opportunities are cultivated telematics and real-time connectivity. Marketo. Immediately after migration, with customized campaigns. From data Trimble Heavy Civil Construction recently Trimble’s marketing team was freed from collected from form fill outs, Trimble can implemented Salesforce.com to manage numerous data management chores and assess an opportunity—whether it’s a their leads globally and with that realized could finally focus on creating compelling small or large company and how many their previous email service provider was campaigns and programs. Before people from the same company have not providing the level of engagement with Marketo, when Trimble wanted to send out downloaded a trial. They can follow clients they were hoping for. As Tamara specialized content to their regional behavior in the pipeline and know if a lead case study: trimble

has filled out a form, downloaded software, or opened a newsletter. Trimble’s marketing “The difference between using our previous email passes on valuable lead data to their dealers, who then have the ability to engage marketing tool and leveraging Marketo’s full- opportunities in meaningful conversations fledged automation has been night and day. that close deals. The net effect: significant increases in conversion rates. Before, we were passing spreadsheets of leads to sales and had mostly anecdotal data to support Benefits With Marketo, the Trimble Heavy Civil strategic decisions. Now, we’re sharing valuable Construction division has improved their behavioral insights with the field and managing relationship with their dealer networks by providing active support. Sharing valuable our campaign development much more efficiently. insights on opportunity behavior with dealers Marketo has completely transformed our sales has also improved Trimble’s sales processes. With Marketo’s metrics, Trimble’s marketing and marketing process.” team proves the value of their efforts and – Tamara Schoder quantifies the leads that they attract and Marcom Project Manager – Heavy Civil Construction nurture. After a year of using Marketo, Trimble Division, Trimble has seen impressive reductions in time and resources for managing their databases.

108 part five: coordinated across channels PART five: coordinated across channels channel agnostic customer experiences Today’s consumer moves seamlessly – and sometimes quite quickly – across digital and offline channels. She jumps from an email, to social media, to your website, to your 1-800 number, and then back to social media, all without losing momentum. And she does so from whatever device is most handy in the moment.

The modern, digitally-empowered The channel-agnostic consumer has consumer is channel agnostic: she become the undisputed controller of Marketing is no longer just about being multi-channel. doesn’t think in terms of committing her relationship with a brand. Now, to channels. In fact, she typically more than ever, the customer is in Today, it’s about being omni-channel — delivering an interacts with your company over at charge. She is living her life on her own integrated customer experience across every single least two channels each month, and terms and engaging with brands when platform. This requires a single, cross-channel view of according to a recent Experian and how it’s most convenient for her. the customer and the ability to coordinate messages QAS® survey, 36% of U.S. and interactions across touch points. organizations interact with customers and prospects in five or more channels every month.

For that reason, omni-channel business — a new paradigm that concentrates on a more seamless approach to consumer engagement through all available channels — is now mainstream across many industries, including retail, financial services, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, services, and technology. PART five: coordinated across channels organizational and technology barriers

In Multi-Channel Experience, an Organizational Barriers Technology Barriers article on 360Connext’s blog, writer Traditional marketing organizations Most companies aren’t equipped Jeannie Walters asks, “How do you divide teams into channel or product with the technology they need to best serve customers when they are groups that work in isolated silos to integrate the customer experience. DemandGen Report jumping from device to device while meet their goals. A company might The tools we’ve used for years to What are your biggest obstacles to achieving posting on your Facebook wall and have one group for direct mail and connect with customers are your customer marketing/management goals? calling your customer service line at the another for online marketing. These focused on single channels, such as same time?” If you don’t have the right teams often create their own email, mobile, Web, print, and so 52% - Managing multiple, disparate systems tools and strategies to deliver seamless campaigns, track their own metrics, on. Messages delivered via each of integrated experiences across and have their own budgets. But even these channels come from different 44% - Insufficient data to support channels, you don’t serve your if one team is doing a bang-up job technology platforms, which can segmentation/targeting initiatives customers well. exceeding its goals, it could be get complicated and create 36% - Manual reporting/insufficient duplicating the content efforts of the problems quickly. Of course, companies don’t send other teams. 36% - Lack of integration between channels mixed marketing messages Your customers don’t care – and (web, social, etc.) intentionally or because they don’t Customers don’t consider the Web, likely don’t even know – which 27% - Over-reliance on one off communications care. The problem is that most social media, and email from the same technology platforms you use; companies are just not prepared to company to be separate entities, and they’re interested only in their 23% - Inconsistent messaging between deliver integrated channel experiences. get confused and overwhelmed by a personal multi-channel divisions / branches The consumption and buying habits of stream of what often appears to be experiences. Don’t expect the Internet-savvy buyers have zoomed contradictory messaging. We’ve all consumer to adapt to you; you 19% - Inability to determine/communicate with ahead of companies’ organizational gotten an email from our favorite airline should adapt to the consumer. To customers’ preferred channel and technical abilities to communicate promising flights from one place to meet their expectations, you have to and interact with them. another for low fares. But when we move from channel- or promotion- navigate to the website to take centric marketing to customer- advantage of the offer, we can’t find it. centric marketing powered by This is frustrating for the consumer, cross-channel technology. and an easy way to lose her trust. 111 PART five: coordinated across channels becoming multi-channel Delivering an integrated, cross-channel consumer experience is the new mandate for marketers. They will need platforms that aid them in listening to their audience and proactively responding over any channel.

Multi-channel marketers need Listen tools to help them: Imagine you had a great phone The same thing happens when a conversation yesterday with one of customer receives dueling messages • Listen. your best customers about a new from you on different marketing Identity Resolution and Pay close attention to consumer service offering. Now imagine that platforms. If you’re not listening to him Profile Building behavior across all channels to after you read this, you go out for a across different channels, you’re not Identity resolution is key to creating a create a single, integrated view of cup of coffee and run into him on the delivering an integrated experience. To successful customer experience across the consumer persona. street. “Hi! So glad we bumped into create relevant interactions with a platforms. The ability to know that • Act. one another,” you say. “I want to talk consumer over any channel, you need • [email protected] (email) Manage and personalize to you about a great service we’re to understand that consumer’s conversations with consumers offering!” Your customer responds behaviors across all channels – you • @jonmiller (Twitter) across channels. with a puzzled look. He thinks you need a single, cross-channel view of have a terrible memory or that the customer. • +jonmiller2 (Google+) you’re confused. are the same person is a key aspect of any cross-channel database.

“Fewer than 10 percent of brands are executing true cross-channel communications informed by one view of the customer.” – The 2013 Digital Marketer, Experian

112 PART five: coordinated across channels becoming multi-channel

Act Engaging conversations with Display / Retargeting Direct Mail consumers should be maintained Some companies are including a Companies like Cloud2You let you seamlessly as your subscriber retargeting pixel in the emails they send direct mail as part of moves from one channel to the next. send to prospects and customers marketing conversations as easily (including emails sent by individual as you send an email. MarketSync A conversation you start in an email employees). This sets a cookie on offers a solution that sends must continue when the consumer the subscriber’s machine, which packages and tracks the delivery navigates to your website, and allows the company to target of those packages; when a shouldn’t skip a beat when he jumps specific display ads to them as they consumer signs for the delivery, over to your Facebook page. Instead navigate the Web. Done well, it can the system receives an alert, of competing against each other with create more coordinated which can trigger a follow-up disconnected messaging, or experiences between the messages email, phone call, or both. repeating information the customer the subscriber sees over email and Integrating in this way not only has already absorbed, your email on online. allows conversations to flow and different marketing channels across channels, but also should work together to coordinate Web beyond the digital. the customer’s experience. Your website is of course a great place to capture new email Here are just a few examples of how addresses, but also it’s a great email can work with and place to continue conversations. complement other channels. (See The Web experience can and the next section for a deep-dive on should be dynamically personalized email and social.) to reinforce and extend the dialog started in emails. PART five: coordinated across channels becoming multi-channel

PURLs PURLs are personalized URLs. Customers type a custom URL into their browser from a postcard they receive in the mail. This address brings them to a landing page designed specifically for their persona. By offering them targeted Web content in this way, you can improve conversion by 30% or more. Here’s an example of a Marketo designed postcard Marketo that includes a PURL:

(Postcard: Back)

(Postcard: Front)

114 PART five: coordinated across channels becoming multi-channel

Stores Video Other Use email to drive traffic to stores, If you’re running a TV or online video Multi-channel consumer dialogues can dealers, and other physical locations campaign, use email messaging to trigger intelligent interactions over by promoting special events, local refer to it in your copy: “As seen on TV!” many other channels to support and news, and in-store discounts. Also, or “From our YouTube channel.” You complement email communications. use store visits to capture email can offer your loyal customers longer For example, a phone call can be a addresses (“Would you like your ‘directors’ cuts’ of videos if they click on powerful follow-up to an email receipt emailed to you?”), adding a link in an email. You can also use promotion, an automated voicemail walk-in customers to your mailing list. email to promote upcoming television can supplement email reminders to and video events: “Rachael Ray will be attend an event, and an SMS message cooking with our mustard on her show can prompt consumers to respond to on Friday morning. Don’t miss it!” an email promotion. PART five: coordinated across channels becoming multi-channel

Email is the Digital Glue Email is the digital glue that holds “Email is the ‘digital glue’ of “Email is the hub of all digital all these new channels and the new media landscape, messaging. It’s not the end-all communication forums together. and a medium that is not to be-all, but email is the glue In an omni-channel scenario, email is be overlooked. Email is the that keeps marketing the anchor channel — the one Internet’s dominant channels together.” channel that all the other channels refer back to and rely on. This is good application, and is where the – Simms Jenkins, CEO of Brightwave news for email marketers, because it attention is of our audiences means they’re leading the evolutionary march toward true on the most frequent basis.” cross-channel coordination. – Greg Cangialosi, Founder & CEO, Blue Sky Factory When it comes to carrying the “Email continues to be the customer relationship across communication tool linking channels, email messages have together in-store activity, online two advantages: shopping, social sharing, and 1. They’re proactive, reaching out to “Email marketing is well-suited consumers at the right time and Web-based searches. … with relevant messages. to integrate with a multitude of Triggered emails communicate existing and emerging 2. They’re everywhere. Thanks to the with consumers at the moment rise of mobile, email is accessible communication channels to on any device at any time, and they need valuable information, from virtually any location. deliver precise value in this to assist their progression on ever-evolving environment.” the path to purchase.” – MarketingSherpa – MarketingSherpa CMO Perspectives on Email Deliverability

116 PART five: coordinated across channels social media and email There are cynics who predict that the rapid adoption of social media will lead to the decline of email marketing. Simply put: They’re wrong. People are using email as much (or perhaps more) than ever before. But it is true that social networking is forcing email to evolve and adapt.

Before getting into the evolution of When you want to make sure Those messages raised the ire of email marketing fueled by social someone gets your message, you several online bloggers, who chided “Email is for conversations that media, let’s remember just how email her. And when you want to LinkedIn for not using email as a first are urgent and important. much social networking sites rely on get that message to a lot of people mode of communication. email. Sure, you can tweet on Twitter at once — and to be sure they’ll see (Read more about LinkedIn’s Social media is for and post to Facebook. You can pin it — you definitely email them. For email gaffe on Waldow Social.) conversations that are less visuals on Pinterest. You can even example, Evernote is an app that urgent and less important; they publish videos and pictures with witty functions as a progressive to-do Social mediums are not trying to captions on Instagram. But in the list. In March of 2013, Evernote’s IT replace email, because email is still have a place.” end, it always comes back to email. team discovered suspicious activity essential to the way they operate, – Jay Baer, Social Media & Content on their network and needed to and to the way we all operate. Marketing Strategist Twitter, Facebook, Google+, notify users — fast. Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all require an email address just to sign How did they choose to up for and log into their platforms. (A communicate? Email, of course. few social sites do let you sign in with LinkedIn experienced a similar data a phone number as an alternative, breach in 2012, and ultimately used but people who use a phone number email to alert its user base. But for ID are in the minority these days.) unlike Evernote, LinkedIn first Several social networks send weekly announced the news on its blog or monthly email newsletters by and on Twitter — more passive default, and they provide many modes of communication. options for email notifications.

117 PART five: coordinated across channels social media and email

The Symbiotic Relationship between Email and Social There are three ways email • Social Connecting 201: Include marketing and social media can team social media icon links in your Email Marketing (Batman) & Social Media (Robin) up heroically: emails, along with encouraging Like Batman and Robin, email and social media have a text: “Like us on Facebook”; symbiotic relationship. If email marketing is Batman, then 1. Social Connecting: Use email to grow your social followers. “Follow us on Twitter”; “Subscribe social media is Robin. to our YouTube channel”; or 2. Social Sharing: Use email to extend “Follow our Pinterest board.” Batman is the “Caped Crusader.” He’s always around when the reach of your message through Gotham City needs him. He’s trustworthy and dependable. social channels. • Social Connecting 301: Include When the bat signal goes off, Batman swoops in to save social media icon links in your 3. Social Promoting: Use social the day. Like email, he’s awfully powerful by himself, but emails and give subscribers media to grow your email list he’s sometimes even more effective with a little help. and promote your email reasons to follow you. (Remember marketing messages. what’s in it for me —WIIFM?) Robin is the “Boy Wonder”. He helps Batman fight evil and Reasons might include deals, get the job done! Like social media, he’s young, full of ideas Social Connecting discounts, or news only available and enthusiasm. Social Connecting means leveraging on social media. You could even your email list to increase your social run a contest to give subscribers Like the Dynamic Duo, email and social media are most media followers, ultimately benefitting an extra incentive to connect. effective when they cooperate. Your social media followers your email marketing. Here’s a social tend to be less committed than your email contacts at first. connecting curriculum to help • Social Connecting 401: Send a When you successfully transition social media followers into you plan: dedicated email to your list, asking them to connect with you. email subscribers, your email marketing list gets bigger, and • Social Connecting 101: Include your subscriber loyalty grows. And when you drive your social media icons in the header, email subscribers to your social feeds, you create deeper footer, sidebar, or main body of engagement. You and your success metrics will agree that your email campaign so it’s easy both channels benefit. for people to find and connect with you on social platforms.

118 PART five: coordinated across channels social media and email

Social Sharing • Social Sharing 201: Encourage • Social Sharing 301: Create a You don’t just want your email the use of a hashtag in your social sharing contest. Make a subscribers to follow you on emails for social. For instance, game out of it, and provide Facebook; you want them to actively Piperlime, a retailer, created the incentives and rewards for sharing. share the content of your emails with hashtag #sandalweek within an their Facebook friends. When your email campaign to start a trend For marketers, the ultimate goal of email recipients are so connected to on social media and make people social sharing is to extend the reach of the content of your emails that they think about buying sandals. Even email marketing messages. If your are compelled to share it through their better, include a “tweet this!” link email subscriber list has 100,000 social networks, you’ve hit the cross- in an email. When the reader names, then the people you know are channel content jackpot. Here’s your clicks on the link, a pre-written just the tip of the iceberg – imagine curriculum for social sharing: tweet pops up that you’ve already how many people they know! Even if a customized with hashtags and an small percentage of your recipients • Social Sharing 101: Include @YourCompany Twitter handle. click “share,” your number of followers social sharing links in your email As long as the tweet is less than can increase dramatically. messages so it’s easy for people 140 characters, you can include to share right from your content. any message you want. In this “Share with your network” example from Waldow Social, (SWYN) is the new “forward to a there is a link to opt-in to the email friend” (FTAF). Recent research newsletter, providing a closed indicates that SWYN links have a loop of #winning #marketing: click-through rate of 0.5% — five times that of FTAF.

119 PART five: coordinated across channels social media and email

Social Promoting • Social Promoting 201: Include a • Social Promoting 401: Target Social promoting is about driving link in a tweet or on Facebook consumers who are on your traffic in the other direction — from inviting non-subscribers recipient list but haven’t opened social media to email marketing. It to opt-in. an email by placing a duplicate Cowgirl Creamery can make non-subscribers aware of offer in their Facebook feed using Most email marketing services offer a way • Social Promoting 301: Build an the advantages of subscribing, and it custom audiences. to create a tab on your Facebook page for email opt-in app that lives on your can let current subscribers know to an email opt-in. You can customize how the Facebook page, and occasionally be on the lookout for your latest tab reads and the order in which it appears promote it in your status updates. email message. in on your main profile. Here’s an example You can also amplify the of one company, Cowgirl Creamery, putting promotion with paid social Here’s your curriculum for building “Join Our Mailing List” front and center on advertising options, e.g. targeting bigger lists with the help of your their Facebook page: social media sites: Facebook users who perhaps follow your competitors or • Social Promoting 101: Send a industry-related companies but tweet or post an update on your who aren’t yet on your email list. Facebook page that includes a link to your most recent email marketing campaign.

Clicking on the tab brings you to:

It’s all done without ever leaving Facebook.

120 PART five: coordinated across channels social media and email

“Surround your customers with options to interact with Bonus Tips for Combining Email and Social your brand, and the chances Running social campaigns is great, but making every you will be able to interact campaign social is better. When you connect your email with them at all go up and social marketing efforts, they enhance one another.

considerably.” Here are some ideas: – Jay Baer, Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist • Supplement each email address in your database with that contact’s social media data. • Increase opt-in conversion rates with social sign-in capabilities on your forms. • Feature a Facebook and Twitter connect button in email opt-in confirmation messages so that enthusiastic new subscribers don’t miss out on other ways to connect. • Add a Facebook and Twitter connect button to email unsubscribe pages for recipients who’d rather stay in touch over social networks. • Listen for keywords that are used by your audience in social media, and then send segmented emails that use those keywords. • Watch who your followers follow, and use their content interests to help augment your segmentation strategy.

121 thought leadership snapshot: matt blumberg, chairman & CEO of return path, inc

MKTO: What is your advice for MKTO: What’s your reaction to MKTO: How can we integrate email creating engaging email marketing the following statement? Email is into our marketing strategy – not campaigns and content? not dead; it’s evolving. merely into the marketing mix?

MB: The best campaigns aren’t MB: Since 2010 we’ve seen more MB: This is a loaded question, but about you or what you want innovation in email than in the entire maybe not for the obvious reason. Of subscribers to do. They’re about your decade before it. Lately when we course we think strategists should subscribers and what they want. talk about emerging email focus more on email, but its real They may buy kitchen equipment or technology, the examples we cite transformational power lies in what golf clubs, but what they really want is are typically already in use, as email email data can tell us about our help becoming better cooks and technology is so rapidly advancing. business. The same data that can Matt Blumberg is Chairman & golfers. A knife skills primer or a Automated foldering is already the optimize email revenue should also be CEO of Return Path, Inc, troubleshooting diagnosis of left- normal email experience. Utilities guiding efforts to better understand is the pioneer of many innovations in handed swing problems—maybe that turn the inbox into to-do lists, customers, markets, and brands. The email marketing, including Email even an interactive video—will be integrated calendars, social media way audiences engage with Change of Address, email infinitely more engaging than lists of monitors and messaging hubs, campaigns can reveal critical insight deliverability, whitelisting, and product SKUs. When every shopping engines and reservation into product positioning, brand reputation services. Matt was listed campaign delivers legitimately managers are already popular and perceptions, and shifting trends that as one of New York’s 100 most valuable content, your subscribers already part of the mobile user impact decision making across the influential technology leaders by the will engage. They’ll read your experience. Even communications entire organization. We talk about Silicon Alley Insider in 2008, he was messages, they’ll become brand technologies beyond the mailbox email as a revenue engine, but the data one of Crain’s New York’s Top advocates, and most importantly, are being built on top of email – try and intelligence that email generates Entrepreneurs in 2012, and he was they’ll buy. joining a social network without an may ultimately be worth far more to a an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of email address. Email has always business than the (admittedly the Year finalist in 2012. Matt is also been transforming, but the speed of impressive) ROI it generates. an author and blogger. change has increased radically over the past few years. 122 part six: strategic: the new metrics for email PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email Engaging email is strategic email Engaging email is strategic email, and as we’ve learned, traditional email campaigns are not strategic. To achieve strategic value, email marketers need better metrics.

Using the right metrics doesn’t just Top executives in your It’s no secret that top help you finesse what you’re sending company care about things like: executives don’t really care to your recipients and when you’re about the Open Rate or Click- • Driving customer engagement sending it. Appropriate metrics also through Rate of your last email Strong relationship between let you measure the worth of your • Measuring and proving ROI campaign. If you can’t convince strategy and email marketing results marketing tactics. your top executives to care about Top email performers spend significantly • Beating the competition email, you won’t get the budget or more time on strategy than their resources you need to make email • Making buyers happy and counterparts. In fact, the Marketo a core part of your strategic customers successful Benchmark on Email Marketing found “Bottom line, with email driving marketing plan, and won’t be able that top performers spend more than more revenue and ROI than its • Controlling risk to take advantage of its potential. three times the amount of time per month on email strategy than average digital marketing brethren, it is • Managing and leveraging the In this part of our guide, we’ll cover performers do: well positioned for a healthy growing complexity of best practices for using traditional changing buyer behaviors, email metrics. Then we’ll introduce Top and long future.” Avg. channels, and technologies a new email metric for Performers – Simms Jenkins engagement, and also explain Hours Per Month 62 123 • Growing revenue and Founder & CEO BrightWave how you can strategically tie email Creative “making the number” 23% 20% to revenue. (design and copy) Segmentation 12% 13% and targeting Strategy 14% 22% Email layout and 18% 17% processing Reporting 10% 13% Content creation 23% 16%

124 PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email email measurement basics Before we discuss sophisticated measurement strategies, let’s review the common metrics used by ESPs. We’ll define each one, where appropriate, share benchmark values for average companies and top-performers, and share tips for how-to results.

Here are the seven most Sent Delivered common email metrics: Definition:Your sent metric is the Definition:Delivered refers to the number of emails that actually moved number of emails that were sent and 1. Sent through the sending mail server (your not rejected by a receiving server. 2. Delivered ESP). This may or may not be the It’s important to understand that same as addresses on your sending Delivered does not mean it landed in 3. Bounced list; it depends upon how your ESP the recipient’s inbox. Marketo 4. Opens / Open Rate tracks what’s been sent (whether or defines Delivered as the number of not it includes “bad” email addresses contacts who were successfully 5. Clicks / Click Rate / Click to Open Rate in the final count). Remember, while delivered at least one message. some of your emails are sent to bad 6. Unsubscribe Rate addresses, they certainly don’t get How to optimize: Again, ensure 7. Marked as Spam received. Marketo defines Sent as the that your email list is healthy; take number of valid contacts who were precautions to prevent bad email sent an email. addresses or spam traps from being added to your list. For a refresher, How to optimize: If your goal is to refer to Part 2, where we covered increase the number of emails sent, the ways to build and maintain a you have to grow your contact list! But healthy list. for this to work, your list also has to be healthy. The healthier your list, the more emails are sent successfully.

Keep in mind that some Email Service Providers (ESPs) might use different terminology for these metrics. Your provider can probably help you map our terms to theirs. PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email email measurement basics

Bounced Definition:Bounced email is the The Value of Engagement: The • Scan your list(s) and check for • Consider calling or direct mailing opposite of Delivered email. There Marketo Benchmark on Email obvious typos, like a missing recipients whose emails bounce are two types of bounces: Performance found that top period or mistyped domain to let them know that there’s a performers had lower bounce rates: name (myemail@aol, myemail@ problem with their addresses. 1. Hard bounces are messages that aolcom, etc.). These errors can You definitely want to keep in are permanently rejected (emails • Average companies: 2.1 – 5.0% denied due to an invalid email be fixed on the spot. touch with recipients you believe address or because the • Top performers: < 2.0% have the potential to be high- recipient’s server has blocked the • Provide a way for recipients to value customers. sender’s server). update their own email How to optimize: Be proactive addresses. An online • Monitor delivery rates by domain. 2. Soft bounces are messages that about preventing bounces: Subscription Center is a logical Track your Open Rates and are temporarily rejected because the recipient’s mailbox is full, the • Your email provider should place for information updates. Bounce Rates according to the server is down, or the message automatically remove recipients Keep in mind, though, that sent-to domains. If the Bounce exceeds the size limit set by the who bounce from your mailing instead of navigating to the Web, Rates for one domain are recipient or ESP. Too many soft list for future sends, but be sure subscribers will often click “reply” significantly higher than the bounces to one address can to process soft bounces, on a message to alert you to a others, your campaign might be eventually result in a permanent change to their contact the victim of spam filtering. hard bounce. such as “out of office” messages differently. information. If you receive these replies, update your list quickly. In both cases, Marketo defines • Use a real-time email validation (This is another reason to have a Bounced as the number of people service to minimize the chance human managing your email (contacts) who were sent a of a subscriber entering a bad replies, rather than using do-not- message that bounced. email address — accidentally reply email addresses!) or on purpose.

126 PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email email measurement basics

Opens / Open Rate Definition:How many recipients Opens are tracked by adding a small, The bottom line is, the Open Rate is email gets opened, deleted, ignored, opened (viewed) the email. Marketo personalized image (“pixel”) to the not 100% accurate, but it does serve or marked as spam. As we detailed defines Opens as the number of email. As soon as the image renders, as a good proxy for whether emails in Part 3, there are many ways you can design an effective subject line: contacts who opened the email at the ESP will register that the email has are being read, and as a relative long or short, straightforward or least once, and the Open Rate as been opened. Note that this means measure to compare emails against intriguing, etc. Again, test options to the number of opens / number of Opens is a difficult metric to track, and each other. know which style is best for your leads delivered. there is also no guarantee that an email campaign. opened was an email read. The Value of Engagement: The Note that some ESPs report Total Marketo Benchmark on Email You can also increase the odds of Opens versus Unique Opens. Total Some challenges: Performance found that top recipients opening your emails if you Opens include every instance of a performers had significantly higher remove from your list the contacts who recipient opening an email. In other • If a subscriber loads an email with open rates, showing the value of trust have not opened your emails in the last words, if one subscriber opens the “images on” in the preview pane, and quality targeting: six months. same email ten times, then it will be the ESP will record as Open even if reported as ten Opens instead of she doesn’t actually look at it. • Average companies: 10-15% Marketo’s Open Rate Results: When one. Unique Opens signifies that no • The ESP will record an Open if she • Top performers: 16-20% Marketo sends email campaigns, matter how many times a single selects it (opens it briefly) in order about 75% of those emails are opened subscriber opens the same email, it to delete it. How to optimize: The Open Rate the day they are sent. counts only as one time. is primarily influenced by the • If email preferences are set to following factors: “images off,” it’s entirely possible for the subscriber to authentically 1. Targeting – If your list is focused open and read your email without and well-targeted, your recipients will more likely value your email it being registered as an Open. As and open it. we mentioned earlier, most email clients do block images 2. The From Name – A recipient is by default. more likely to open your email if she recognizes (and trusts) the sender.

3. The Subject Line – The subject line, or headline, is what sells your email. It plays a huge role in whether your PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email email measurement basics

Clicks / Click Rate / Click-to-Open Rate Marketers often pay more attention to How to optimize: The unique Click • Test, Test, Test: If you’ve tested Definition: When a subscriber clicks the CTO than the Click Rate, since the Rate is a good indicator of how everything else, try testing the on a link, button, or image within your CTO helps to separate the reasons for effective your content and your calls color of your CTA button. When it message, a Click is recorded. opening from the reasons for clicking. to action (CTAs) are within your comes to your CTA Click Rate, Marketo defines total Clicks as the email. If people are opening your testing is vital. number of people (contacts) who The Value of Engagement: In the emails but your Click Rate is low (or click at least one link in the email. In Marketo Benchmark on Email trending down), this usually means • Create Scarcity: Offering a deal other words, like the Open Rate, no Performance, that top performers you need to tweak both your for a limited time (or to a limited matter how many times a recipient had better click rates and content and your CTAs. number of people) creates clicks on the link(s), only one Click is click-to-open rates: scarcity and a clamoring for the recorded. Counting in this way • Make It Easy: Your CTA should bargain. Subscribers often fear provides a better measure of how Click Rate: be obviously placed (not hidden that they’ll miss out if they don’t many subscribers are truly engaged. on the page) and include plain, act fast. This also ensures the Click Rate • Average companies: 2.1 – 5.0% clear language. Don’t make cannot be greater than 100%. your audience work to find or Marketo’s Click Rate Results: When • Top performers: 5.1 – 10% interpret it. Marketo sends email campaigns, 2/3 Click Rate equals the total number of of our recipients click them the day Clicks divided by the total number of Click to Open Rate: • Multiple Links: Test your CTA they’re sent. emails delivered (or, depending on the using multiple links for the same • Average companies: 11 – 15% measure used, sent). The Click-to- action. Try using an image link, Open (CTO) Rate is the total number • Top performers: 16 – 20% one button link, and multiple of Clicks (per subscriber) divided by links inline within the copy, each the total number of Opens. This with different anchor text. means that Click Rate = Open Rate x Including many links to the Click-to-Open Rate. same destination has been shown to improve email Click Rates. PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email email measurement basics

Unsubscribe Rate Marked-as-Spam Rate Definition:The number of contacts How to optimize: In this case Definition:The number of who click the “unsubscribe” link in an optimize means to shoot for the subscribers who reported your email email and then follow through to lowest number possible while as spam, divided by the number sent successfully opt out. avoiding being marked as spam. If or delivered. someone wants off your list, it’s far The Value of Engagement: The better for him to unsubscribe than to How to optimize: You want to do Marketo Benchmark on Email point a finger at you, so don’t hide whatever you can to bring the Marked Performance found that top your unsubscribe link. Instead, place as-Spam-rate to the lowest number performers had lower overall it in the footer of your message, possible — ideally, zero. The more unsubscribe rates: because that’s where we marketers engaging you are, the fewer spam have trained subscribers to look for complaints you’ll receive. Remember • Average companies: 0.11 – 0.20% it. To make sure that subscribers see your goal: send timely, targeted, • Top performers: < 0.10% the link, some companies also valuable, human content to people include an option to unsubscribe, who have requested it. along with friendly language, closer to the top of the email.

Then, once someone is on your unsubscribe page, use the various options described in Part 2 to let them manage their subscription and perhaps not unsubscribe completely.

Marketo follows these rules when computing our email metrics: Rule #1: Each email activity record is set to one — and only one — of the following values: Delivered, Hard Bounce, Soft Bounce, or Pending. Rule #2: If the email record shows Opened, then it is counted as Delivered. Rule #3: If the email record shows Clicked Email or Unsubscribed, then it is Opened and, therefore, counted as Delivered. Rule #4: If the email is Opened, then any bounce is ignored. Otherwise, a Hard Bounced “wins” even if the email record shows Soft Bounced or Delivered. PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email engagement Engagement is more than an idea or a buzzword; it’s a tangible way of interacting with consumers one-to-one across channels by listening, acting, and analyzing. With the right tools, engagement metrics can be managed and increased.

Operational metrics, such as Opens In order to accurately measure and Clicks, are not ideal for measuring engagement, you need a way to engagement. Consider the following combine all the metrics of testing scenario: traditional ESPs — Open Rate, Click Rate, Conversion Rate, • Email A has a high Open Rate. Unsubscribe, etc. — into one • Email B has a high Click Rate. single measure.

• Email C has a high Conversion Rate.

Which of these emails had the best engagement? With traditional ESP solutions, no real insight is given into whether a campaign has actually engaged customers or deepened relationships. A marketer must pore over multiple reports and then apply guesswork to determine how an email performed in terms of engagement. PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email engagement

Marketo Engagement Metric The Marketo Engagement Score is a This metric takes the guesswork out proprietary algorithm that our Data of your marketing metrics and applies Science Team created to determine a tangible number that you can wield exactly how engaging each message when making future marketing is. It combines multiple data points decisions — not just decisions — Clicks, Opens, Conversions, regarding email campaigns, but also Unsubscribes, Program Successes, those relating your entire omni- etc. — and then applies a statistical channel strategy. algorithm to create a single measure of engagement.

Our Engagement Score provides a standard way to measure the engagement of your messages over time, not just as isolated standalone incidents. With this new level of measurement, you can best accomplish the following:

• Fine-tune to improve the engagement of campaigns, continuously.

• See how the changes you make improve engagement over time.

• Test different messages and content streams against each other to find which are the most engaging.

131 PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email True Financial Metrics A riveting subject line or persuasive email copy is only as good as the revenue it generates: you don’t just want Opens; you want actual sales.

Many email marketers obsess over traditional ESP metrics without ever connecting them to important financial numbers. This is not their Mapping Marketing 2011 2010 fault — traditional ESPs don’t Back to Revenue provide the functionality to make this MarketingSherpa asked CMOs and Financial return on investment 65% sort of connection. senior marketing executives about the (quantitative return on email investment) importance of various factors in 57% When you measure Opens and measuring the value of email marketing Clicks without comparing them to programs, and found a shift in the Post-click metrics like lead 62% bigger-picture financial metrics, factors used by CMOs. While basic generation and sales conversion 73% you’ll generally always come to the metrics used to be considered same conclusion: You need to sufficient, they aren’t anymore. send more emails. But more According to the survey, “today, CMOs Email performance metrics 56% emails isn’t always a good idea. like opens, clickthroughs presume email will provide a financial and bounce rates 69% return on investment.”

Non-financial return on 33% investment (qualitative return on email investment) 29% Email measurement is moving beyond Opens and Clicks A/B split or multivariate 32% test results on email and toward true financial and landing pages 30% metrics, such as Revenue Impact and ROI.

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded July 2011, N=2,735 PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email True Financial Metrics

How to measure revenue impact of email programs In its 2013 Digital Marketing Report, Step 1: Experian noted that 35% of marketers Count All the Successful Touches cited response attribution as the most In an omni-channel scenario, challenging multi-channel marketing successful touches can happen issue for their organizations. across numerous channels. Perhaps the customer’s last touch point was To become more strategic about your website, but prior to hitting measuring financial metrics in email “buy,” he spent time in an email, on marketing, start by recognizing that the your Facebook page, and on your consumer rarely makes a purchase as Twitter feed. He may have even gone a result of a single campaign. into a brick-and-mortar store before Conventional marketing wisdom committing to the purchase online (or proposes that at least seven vice versa). When collecting all your successful “touches” (forms of touches, be sure to only count those engagement) are needed in order to that occurred before the action was convert a cold prospect into a buyer. taken — those that led to the action. Marketo Deal Storyboard, showing all the marketing interactions with a customer before a sale.

Sometimes companies attempt to tie Step 2: Step 3: revenue to either a customer’s first Assign Value to the Final Action Distribute That Value across Your As simple as that seems, it’s often touch or his last. But a better strategy You might use your e-commerce Successful Touches easier said than done, because most is to allocate the value of every platform, transactional system, or In a multi-touch attribution scenario, ESPs don’t support such sophisticated engagement across all of the CRM as the system of record for how you assign a value to each successful analysis. But modern marketing marketing efforts that customer much the action is worth. A touch. Often, this is best done with automation solutions can do this right touched. Here’s how. marketing automation tool can make simple distribution: if a consumer out of the box. this easy for you. touched five marketing programs, each touch point gets 1/5th of the credit for the ultimate value.

133 PART six: strategic: the new metrics for email True Financial Metrics

Test and Control A/B testing can be used to find The outcome metric you ultimately emails with the best open rate, but it measure can be anything —revenue, can also be used more strategically profit, traffic, retention — or all of to measure the impact of broad those things. Measure Email Compared programs. Just divide your target to Other Channels buyer group into two homogenous One final, but critical point: Don’t just groups, and apply a program to only measure the performance and ROI of one of these groups. All other factors your email against other emails; instead, being equal, you’ll be able to attribute compare the results and ROI against any difference in subsequent buyer ALL channels. You might find that email behavior to the marketing effort. outperforms other channels and you should invest MORE on email, or perhaps you’ll find that in some cases LESS email investment Sample output from Test and Control groups, courtesy of The Lenskold Group. is called for. The key point is to know what is working – and what isn’t – across channels.

This sort of “marketing mix analysis” is an essential tool for a modern marketing department, but most ESPs are unable to provide for it. Since they’re exclusively focused on email metrics, the best they can tell you is which of your emails should be sent more often.

For winning marketing across channels, you need a true omni-channel marketing solution that can help you measure and optimize your entire portfolio of marketing investments — not just email.

134 thought leadership snapshot: Mark brownlow, writer & publisher at email marketing reports

MKTO: What is your advice for It’s a little old-fashioned, but it comes MKTO: Looking into your crystal creating engaging email marketing down to recalling that the recipient is ball, what does email marketing campaigns and content? not a number in a spreadsheet or an look like 5-10 years from now? entry in a database, but a human MB: There are lots of tools and tactics (hopefully). And that human wants MB: I have absolutely no idea. When for ensuring that email marketing is some kind of value in return for the I started online, AltaVista was THE FUNCTIONALLY very successful. For time they spend on our emails. search engine. Facebook wasn’t example, behavior-based and trigger even a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg’s emails still offer a lot of undiscovered That value can indeed be functional eye and mobile communication potential: things like post-purchase – a great deal, an insightful article, devices were pretty much exclusive Mark Brownlow is an email follow-up messages, cart good advice. But there’s value in to episodes of Star Trek. (And I’m not copywriter, business writer, and abandonment emails, emails personality too – engaging writing, even that old.) publisher at Email Marketing customized to website browsing clever design, creativity, humor, Reports. He has a focus on behavior, etc. giving a platform to customers, With the Internet so dynamic, e-commerce and email marketing sometimes giving value and asking predictions are hard (impossible and contributes to many websites That all works and works well. But for nothing in return. These are all really). The trick is to stay flexible and such as MarketingSherpa there’s a reason I say “functionally” things that help distinguish you from keep in mind that certain and MarketingProfs. very successful. When you get locked the competition when they’re also fundamentals don’t change: you can into the tools and tactics mentality, you offering a 15%-off everything sale. dress up your messages however can lose sight of other opportunities you like, but at the end of the day, that can keep your emails immune delivering value is what counts for a from the vast competition for lasting customer relationship. subscriber attention (inside and outside the inbox).

135 part seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation technology for engaging email Consumers have more control than ever, and marketers need to step up their game accordingly. Email service providers (ESPs), vendors that primarily provide batch and blast email capability, can’t deliver the behaviorally- targeted engagement needed to stay relevant, let alone the integrated multi-channel conversations necessary to maximize the impact of marketing. Only an intelligent marketing automation platform is up to the task.

Throughout this guide, we’ve 4. Email must be coordinated emphasized the five key factors with other channels. that make email engaging and Your emails must be coordinated with interactions from every ultimately successful: marketing channel, so that your 1. Email must be trusted. customers’ experiences are It’s essential that your emails set consistent and progressive. and then consistently meet 5. Email must be strategic. subscriber expectations. Always use the right metrics to 2. Email must be relevant. measure your email marketing You have an obligation to deliver tactics and assess their the right content to the right effectiveness and worth. Then, person at the right time, based on make adjustments accordingly. a smart understanding of each subscriber’s interests Traditional ESPs can’t deliver and behaviors. on these musts. If you agree that your 3. Email must be conversational. company needs email to be Buyers are individuals, and they competitive and effective, it’s time to deserve personalized graduate to marketing automation. communications. This means abandoning the idea of batch and blast campaigns and entering into a relationship-oriented mindset that continuously builds engagement with consumers, one by one and over time.

137 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation limitations of traditional email service providers ESPs came onto the scene in the mid-90s as email became mainstream and companies realized they needed to be able to send consumers large volumes of marketing messages. But as email marketing has become more sophisticated, ESPs have struggled to move beyond their original batch and blast origins.

Some ESPs have tried to evolve, but Key limitations of traditional they are constrained by their very email service providers include: nature. Their databases are simple and lack easy integration with other Not relevant Not conversational Not multi-channel enterprise systems. They were built for ESPs rely primarily on targeting ESPs don’t have the functional ability Today’s buyer shifts rapidly and rapidly sending the same message to audiences based on demographics to allow one-to-one conversations continually across channels, many, not for orchestrating intelligent and flat “subscriber” files. However, this over time. They send mass emails to engaging with email one moment and one-to-one conversations, and are kind of targeting ignores valuable an entire list at once. Sure, they can with social media the next. But destined to always view everything information about buyer behavior that customize emails, but they aren’t traditional ESPs were designed through an email-centric, not omni- can be obtained by examining a built to facilitate evolving and around one function: email marketing. channel, lens. buyer’s actions, or lack of actions, as customized two-way conversations Traditional ESPs have made modest they engage with content and trusted between a company and each attempts to integrate other sources online and offline. Connecting individual consumer. Marketers capabilities such as social media, but to behavioral systems requires stuck using traditional ESPs waste without the backbone to support true technical skills and complex queries, an incredible amount of time cross-channel marketing, their small making traditional ESPs blind to manually simulating dynamic fixes don’t address the bigger valuable buyer behavior and, therefore, conversations with their various lists problem. Traditional ESPs simply unable to build meaningful — valuable time that they could be cannot comprehensively capture all relationships with consumers. using to optimize their marketing the online and offline behavioral strategy and create fresh content. patterns that give marketers real insight into how their customers tick, and they cannot effectively or in a timely manner trigger action in other parts of the organization such as sales or call centers. PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation limitations of traditional email service providers

Not strategic ESPs only provide email marketing “Given the situation with metrics. They can’t track and today’s buyer, standalone measure the impact of marketing Lack of Automation spend on revenue over time. Without email is insufficient to produce If you’re a marketer using traditional ESPs, even sending a a comprehensive and unified view of or effectively judge short follow-up email about an event is complicated. how spending is affecting revenue, engagement. In fact, email can 1. You manually compile a list of people who marketers cannot compare the attended the event. This isn’t something the ESP relative effectiveness of their be worse than inadequate. keeps track of, so you probably do import and investments. As a result, marketers Instead of engaging buyers, export to get names. are challenged in how to allocate and 2. You determine which of the people on your list re-allocate resources to the channels improperly managed email RSVP’d to the event, but never showed up, and and methods that have the greatest can push buyers away.” then put them on a separate list. Another positive impact on revenue. – International Data Corporation import/export. (IDC) Workbook: Graduating from 3. You manually build two campaigns — Email to Engagement: Using one for those who attended, and another Marketing Automation to Achieve for those who didn’t. Success with Today’s New Buyer, 4. You manually send both emails – June 2013 nothing is automated.

The time you spend manually gathering data, analyzing it, creating lists, and setting calendar notices for yourself in order to remember to simulate what you hope will appear to be a personalized marketing experience for your recipient is time that you’ll never get back. But worse, this cumbersome process means that scaling your marketing efforts is pretty much impossible.

139 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation Marketing automation platforms succeed in all of the areas in which traditional ESP solutions fail, particularly when it comes to personalized, targeted marketing.

Although we’ve noted the importance of marketing automation throughout How It’s Used: this guide, it’s now time to dig into the Marketing automation is used to create details. Let’s begin with a concise a real-time, relationship-oriented definition of marketing automation: approach to marketing across all online and offline channels. Marketing automation is a category of software that How It Works: streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and Marketing automation combines a workflows, so companies can marketing database, workflow engine, increase operational efficiency multi-channel interactions, and rich and grow revenue quickly. analytics in one powerful and easy tool.

Why Companies Automate:

Marketing automation allows companies to streamline marketing processes and improve customer and prospect relationships to grow revenue.

140 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

Marketing automation platforms can By bringing all of this functionality replace traditional ESPs to handle together into one single platform, a “A marketing automation Marketo’s free 100-page email marketing – both batch and marketer’s world is simplified. solution delivers essentially all real-time, personalized email Definitive Guide to Marketing messaging. But marketing Core Benefits of the benefits of an email Automation will answer all of automation goes way beyond Marketing Automation marketing solution along with your questions about how email. Its functionality allows for Marketing automation is marketing automation can (and ties email to): indispensible to today’s integrated capabilities that help your company, and how businesses because of three would otherwise need to be • Landing pages to be successful with it once core benefits that traditional cobbled together using various email marketing can’t provide: you’ve made the decision. • Online forms standalone technologies.” 1. Saves time and money by • Behavior tracking – Gleanster Research automating processes and • Relationship marketing eliminating tedious and error- prone manual work. Marketing • Campaign management automation makes what used to be complex, simple. • Customer scoring 2. Measures and optimizes • Customer lead generation marketing investments so that you can better track your • Customer management marketing programs and assess their performance over time. • Customer retention 3. Compels faster revenue growth • Cross-selling and upselling by dramatically improving customer engagement with • Event management relevant, personalized conversations to thousands or • CRM integration millions of contacts.

• Social marketing

• Marketing analytics 141 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

Five Essential Reasons to Graduate Just as the introduction of to Marketing Automation It’s time to stop using the term Ford’s Model-T in 1908 set in email marketing, and replace it motion a revolution in with engagement marketing. affordable transportation A marketing automation platform that quickly made the horse extends the benefits of email and and buggy irrelevant, today’s provides an opportunity to mitigate powerful but easy-to-use email’s shortcomings. When marketing automation is used to its marketing automation tools full capacity, it becomes a full- are rendering traditional fledged engagement-orchestration ESPs old fashioned. tool, enabling you to listen to consumers’ unique needs and deliver what they want, when they want it.

Marketing automation performs new and valuable functions that standalone email solutions simply cannot, including several essential capabilities for “sense and respond” conversations.

Let’s take a closer look at the functionality that marketing automation platforms provide. PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

1. Behavioral Targeting 2. Relationship-building for Relevance Conversations Dumb Lists vs. Smart Lists Do You Want to Get Blasted? With marketing automation tools, Batch and blast. Spray ‘n Pray. you can build dynamic behavioral While marketing automation Those tactics are yesterday’s news. Nobody likes the idea of lists that segment customers and tools use “smart” lists, which Marketing automation tools getting “blasted,” but that’s prospects by demographics and automatically and intelligently provide are dynamically generated exactly what most ESPs do by behavioral data, such as Web consumers with the next appropriate activity, social sharing history, according to buyer behavior and relevant message – which builds — blast subscribers. At best, transactional history, and more. using rich database lasting relationships. Marketers use they succeed in sending Marketers can then send the right automation platforms to create a functionality, traditional ESPs similar messages to message, in the right format, to dialog using sophisticated the right person at the right time. can only perform the most conversational nudging, rather than everyone on a list at the rudimentary segmentation disconnected missives. By taking into same times — at best, the account where each customer is in using “dumb” static lists, or relationship to your business right messages won’t resonate; at worse, spreadsheets. now, you’re able to create a worst, they will irritate and Behavioral filters often require connection that starts with the very alienate recipients! first dialog you have with a customer, complex queries written by and lasts all the way through his developers, not marketers. stages of purchase, use, and loyalty.

143 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

3. Coordinated Multi-channel Campaigns 4. Strategic Analytics As today’s consumers move For marketers used to working with Marketers greatly appreciate how seamlessly across digital and offline the limited functionality of ESPs, it’s much better the analytics are on channels — the Web, mobile, social exciting to know that marketing marketing automation platforms than ESP reporting is limited to media, in-store, etc. — marketing automation provides functionality to with traditional ESPs. Marketing email-centric metrics, such automation enables coordinated easily create personalized landing automation is meant to give a deep marketing. It pays attention to the pages and forms right out of the understanding of marketing ROI, to as how many Opens and consumer’s behavior on every box. Not only is marketing prove the revenue impact of Clicks a batch and blast channel and then takes responsive automation capable of following campaigns. Company executives don’t action. For instance, marketing consumers across platforms, that’s really care about Open and Click campaign garnered. automation knows when a precisely why it was designed. Rates; they want a measure of true consumer shares social content, engagement and actual financial and can use that data to target him metrics that tie email and all marketing with an SMS text, a personalized to the goals of the entire company. email, or even a phone call. By ESPs were built for email, tracking an integrated chain of and email alone; this makes interactions via email, search, and social, marketing automation tools ESPs ill-suited for the sort of coordinate conversations with omni-channel integration for buyers across every channel. which marketing automation was born.

144 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

5. Customer Lead Management Marketing automation takes a To traditional ESPs, customer I can explain a move from an proactive stance on developing quality leads. At many companies, a lead management is a Email Service Provider (ESP) to large part of marketing involves foreign concept. a marketing automation reaching out specifically to platform with an analogy: still consumers who have not yet bought, but who are good targets for future photographs versus video. buying. Marketing automation ESPs are like still photographs: platforms typically provide lead you can get great stats from management functionality, including scoring, CRM integration, sales using one, but each campaign alerting, and lead recycling ability. is effectively a snapshot in time. Marketing automation A good marketing automation tool will also provide a dashboard that you platforms are like videos: you can use to follow your leads and their can see the behavior of people behaviors within your CRM system, if in multiple campaigns over you’re using one. Marketing automation ensures your company time, taking all the snapshots connects with potential customers and connecting them together before your competition does. to make a flip movie or video out of them.” – Joseph Zuccaro, Founder & President of Allinio LLC

145 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation enter marketing automation

Email Service Marketing Comparing Marketing Automation with an ESP Provider Automation

Sends mass emails

Tracks open rates and clicks

Easy to build landing pages and forms ­—

Website behavior tracking —

Easy to create dynamic segments based on cross-channel behaviors —

Powered by a smart marketing database (demographics, behaviors, transactions) —

Easy to create multi-step campaigns with conditional logic —

Intelligently delivers content with Smart Streams —

Coordinate cross-channel interactions (direct mail, SMS, etc.) —

Social sweepstakes and referral applications —

Ability to define and measure a data-driven view of the buying cycle —

Customizable time series reporting on marketing performance —

Behavioral and demographic scoring to prioritize engagement —

Comprehensive and flexible integration with CRM systems —

Manage marketing budgets and forecasts seamlessly across teams —

Measures impact of marketing programs on revenue —

Ability to define and measure a data-driven view of the buying cycle — 146 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation Case studies

TM

College with over 55,000 students Investment management Fifth largest travel management products provider company worldwide Challenge: Batch and blast method was ineffective, needed to modernize Challenge: Existing system only did Challenge: No ability to segment, track student interactions untargeted email blasts; needed to and engage prospects based on buying generate campaign success results for behavior; lists had to be rebuilt from Solution: Marketo empowered Marketing sales and top management scratch each time the company to measure ROI impact, improved lead undertook an email campaign generation by 28%, and multiplied Solution: Marketo drove targeted conversion rates thanks to new insight multi-layered campaigns, crucial Solution: Marketo drastically reduced into student decision process behavioral insights for reps in the CRM, campaign launch time, increased email and automated Brinker’s national and click-through rates, and improved sales regional event process and marketing collaboration to drive revenue

“Life before Marketo was like being in the dark ages. Marketo has “With Marketo, we’ve gone from being tactical, put us into the modern era of marketing and helped us increase manual, and flying blind to being automated, leads by 28% and sales by over 18%.” empowered and strategic.” – Doug Wotherspoon, Exec. Director of Advancement, Algonquin College – Cate Vanasse, Marketing Manager, Egencia

147 PART seven: graduating from esp to marketing automation checklist: Key capabilities

If your email solution can’t do the following things, it’s time to graduate to marketing automation.

Smart Content Omni-channel Engagement Relevant Metrics Technical

Intelligently decide the next best Provide WYSIWYG ability to build Provide insight into which Offer role-based access options to give a piece of content for each individual graphical Web landing pages and messages are driving the manager one set of functions in the recipient (as opposed to targeting forms without help from IT best engagement system, and a customer or third-party content broadly) user another Support engagement across all Support A/B testing so you can Allow new content to be easily channels — not just email, but quickly and easily compare Separate work groups in order to define added to ongoing conversations also social, Web, print, phone, and multiple landing pages and emails segmented contacts, campaigns, and at precisely the point it would be in-person assets that are only accessible for most relevant for each subscriber Use multiple scoring models to marketing purposes by certain Handle event marketing smartly, track interest in — and specified users Automatically remove content that streamlining the entire event engagement with — multiple is no longer relevant process with personalized products or services House a sophisticated marketing invitations, registration prompts, database with a simple user interface, so Offer behavior-based trigger timely reminders, and post-event Help manage marketing you get a rich view of all of your marketing responses based on real-time follow-up investments, including assigning interactions with customers, including individual behaviors, rather than top-down budgets to various their website visits, email interactions, on pre-set schedules aimed at Integrate smoothly with Facebook groups, planning marketing purchases, campaign responses, social dumb lists registration page publication so spending across platforms, activity, and data history that your lead registration tracking open-to-spend numbers, Ensure you don’t ever feed a programs’ EdgeRank ensuring budget compliance, Offer progressive profiling so you customer content he has continuously improves coordinating workflows and can easily create dynamic forms that already consumed permissions, and reconciling plans recognize known visitors and pre- Handle social campaigns, such as with actual invoices populate any existing fields, all the Limit communication frequency so polls, referral programs, and while gathering additional information that one subscriber never gets too sweepstakes (e.g., “Enter to win an Use multi-touch revenue for each visitor’s unique record in many emails iPad” or “Refer three friends and attribution to allocate revenue the database get $100” among all the marketing activities that successfully influenced a Use advanced segmentation to combine customer as she moved through real-time triggers, demographic fields, the buying process and behavioral attributes into a single list that automatically changes as customers change Vision snapshot: “We want potential members to feel support from current Curves Graduates from members, and from the Email to Marketing Automation company, as soon as they land on our website. We know that we gain the most Challenges content to potential members across and nurture leads through the buying influence with personalization Started in 1992, Curves has grown into the multiple channels. To get back to the heart cycle. Even in the period when consumers largest fitness franchise in the world, of Curves’ mission to “strengthen women aren’t yet ready to make a purchase, lead and talking to our clients helping women in over 90 countries lead inside and out,” Curves turned to Marketo. marketing keeps Curves top-of-mind with about their specific journey. healthier lives. Curves empowers women the buyers. The Curves’ team was also Marketo gives us the power to to take a practical approach to diet and Marketo as the Solution impressed with Marketo’s simple, easy-to- exercise and combines this with a Curves heard about Marketo through their use interface. do that.” supportive club environment. With its web development company. Stark and his – Jacob Stark tremendous growth, Curves grew largely team were also impressed by the amount Vision with Marketo Director of Digital Strategy, Curves on word of mouth without advertising or of content Marketo shares with the world. Curves recognized that the batch and focused digital strategies. The company “I realized that Marketo, too, is a blast emails with their previous email already had an abundance of valuable thought leader in its industry,” adds service provider weren’t going to build online resources, but most were only Stark. “Marketo was providing a model lasting relationships. What they needed accessible to its members. of the path we want for Curves.” In order was the more sophisticated approach that to distribute thought leadership to a solution like Marketo could offer. Curves to do that.” Curves’ plan is to begin using Curves leaders recognized the need for a customers, Curves needed a solution that intends to leverage Marketo to open the Marketo for corporate marketing initiatives strong, visible presence on the web. “We built meaningful conversations with its doors to its community. before introducing the solution to its want every woman to see how much we audience whether they were members franchise owners. With Marketo, Curves can offer them in support of their or not. By broadening the scope of their content, can nurture leads across channels to fitness and weight loss goals,” explains Curves can help invigorate people who include social media. Jacob Stark, Curves’ Director of Digital Marketo’s marketing automation solution have not yet succeeded at meeting their Strategy. “To be a thought leader, we will help Curves create personalized, fitness and weight loss goals and Curves excels at developing community needed to centralize those resources targeted conversations with potential demonstrate how Curves can be a partner and conversation, and now with Marketo, so that anyone, member or not, could clients to nurture leads into customers. and a supporter through the process. “We Curves can leverage those strengths to go and quickly find what she needs.” While the previous solution sent leads want them to feel support from other incentivize people to take action. “With directly to the bottom of the funnel, members, and from the company, as these tools, we can demonstrate to Curves’ traditional email service provider Marketo enables top and middle-of-the- soon as they land on our website. We women that Curves is a group who will was competent with traditional batch and funnel lead nurturing. Rather than simply know that we gain the most influence be involved in supporting their blast email formats but those formats placing leads in buckets of ‘ready to with personalization and talking to our success. We can show people that lacked crucial functionality to purchase’ or ‘not ready to purchase,’ members about their specific journey,” Curves is a company they want to be communicate relevant, conversational Marketo offers a solution that can engage says Stark. “Marketo gives us the power working with.” conclusion Engaging email marketing The old batch and blast model of sending one email to a big bucket of subscribers is no longer effective. Today, your emails must truly engage consumers.

Today’s email marketing demands that your messages be: trusted, relevant, conversational, coordinated across channels, and strategic.

Trusted Relevant Conversational Coordinated across channels Information overabundance reigns, so To be relevant, you not only have to Listen to your audience, adapt to Email is the digital glue that holds all of consumers have become more know the demographics and your subscribers’ changing needs, your marketing together. Your email sophisticated and savvy about firmographics of your subscribers, and tell engaging stories over time. marketing must integrate with every focusing their attention where it but also how they behave. Use your Engaging content is, above all, channel you market through — your counts. To get past their filters, you metrics, test often, and segment human — written by humans for website, including landing pages; your have to establish trust with your subscribers into smart lists. humans. It’s conversational, friendly, blog; and all of your social media consistency. Set an expectation in Apply sophisticated behavioral and never boring. Use behavioral pages. When your email marketing your very first email to subscribers filters to pinpoint their browsing and targeting and dynamic content to exists in a silo, you’re incapable of and stick to it. You must also create purchasing behaviors across create two-way email conversations being effective in today’s omni- the right opt-in process for your brand, channels. Most companies aren’t that are not only trustworthy and channel world, where consumers offer consumers a convenient online doing this very well, so engaging relevant, but also interesting. Your jump seamlessly from email to your subscription center, and honor what consumers with relevant content should always answer the website to social. No matter which we call The Subscriber Covenant: messaging will put you way ahead question that’s on every channel a consumer is in, each send your subscribers emails they of the competition. subscriber’s mind: What’s In It for conversation you have with him want, when they want them, and use Me? And your answer should be should pick up where the last one left the data you collect to send targeted, specific and compelling in every off. The only way to do this is with an relevant information. By setting and single email you send. automated tool designed to integrate keeping consistent expectations email marketing across the Web. around your email marketing, you develop a relationship with each subscriber and become a familiar and welcomed presence in his inbox. 150 conclusion engaging email marketing Email service providers are antiquated. Automated marketing platforms are designed to engage and convert your subscribers within and beyond your email efforts. It’s time to move beyond the term email marketing. The future lies in engagement marketing.

Strategic Targeted, engaging emails call for better metrics that measure the levels of customer engagement with your brand and, more “Successful engagement importantly, the actual ROI of your marketing requires marketing automation.” campaigns. Old school email service – IDC providers (ESPs) can’t deliver the metrics that automated marketing platforms can. Your Sent, Opened, Bounced, and Clicked numbers are important, but they don’t tell you everything you need to know.

Automated marketing platforms deliver explicit engagement scores that take all the “Email Marketing. The future guesswork out of your marketing strategy is very bright.” and give you tangible figures from which you can make strategic marketing decisions that – Scott Hardigree actually map to company goals. With Founder at Indiemark automation, you can finally measure the true impact of your marketing. appendix: Email Marketing experts

Josh Aberant David Daniels Andrew Kordek Neil Schwartzma @jaberant @EmailDaniels @andrewkordek @spamfighter666 Twitter The Relevancy Group Trendline Interactive CAUCE twitter.com relevancygroup.com trendlineinteractive.com cauce.org

Elana Anderson Chris Donald Ken Magill Chris Sietsema @elanaera @inboxgroup @Kmagill @sietsema IBM Inbox Group The Magill Report Teach to Fish Digital ibm.com inboxgroup.com magillreport.com teachtofishdigital.com

Laura Atkins Michelle Eichner Bill McCloskey Craig Swerdloff @wise_laura @ibm @BillMcCloskey @swerd Word to the Wise IBM OnlyInfluencers LeadSpend blog.wordtothewise.com ibm.com onlyinfluencers.com leadspend.com

Tom Bartell Tamara Gielen Stephanie Miller Morgan Stewart @barteltom @tamaragielen @StephanieSAM @mostew Bounce.io Plan to Engage Direct Marketing Association Trendline Interactive bounce.io plantoengage.com thedma.org trendlineinteractive.com

George Bilbrey Scott Hardigree Kath Pay Stefan Tornquist @gbilbrey @indiescott @kathpay @MarketingStefan ReturnPah IndieMark Plan to Engage eConsultancy returnpath.com indiemark.com plantoengage.com stefantornquist.com

Matt Blumberg Sharon Hayes Chris Penn Ragy Thomas @mattblumberg @SharonHayes @cspenn @ragythomas ReturnPath Domainate.com Shift Communications, Sprinklr returnpath.com domainate.com Marketing Over Coffee, sprinklr.com Podcamp Shar Van Boskirk Jack Hogan christopherspenn.com Matthew Vernhout @SharVanBoskirk @Lifescript @EmailKarma Forrester Lifescript Ryan Phelan Inbox Marketer forrester.com/shar-vanboskirk lifescript.com @ryanpphelan emailkarma.net Axciom Mark Brownlow Simm Jenkins axciom.com Mark Vogel @MarkatEMR @SimmsJenkins @markvogel Email Marketing Reports BrightWave Marketing Dela Quist Vogel Marketing Solutions LLC email-marketing-reports.com simmsjenkins.com @DelaQuist vogelmarketing.net Alchemy Worx Tom Burke Justine Jordan alchemyworx.com Tim Watson @TowerData @meladorri @tawatson TowerData Litmus Jordie van Rijn Settasphere towerdata.com litmus.com @jvanrijn zettasphere.com eMailMonday Jordan Cohen David Kirkpatrick emailmonday.com Matt Williamson @jcohen808 @davidkonline @m_d_Williams Movable Ink Sherpa Windsor Circle movableink.com sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com windsorcircle.com 152 appendix: reference links

Part One: Part Two: Part Three: Part Four: Part Six: Email Spam Legislation Pew Internet and American Marketo Privacy Policy by Country. National Client Email Graduating from Email to Marketo Benchmark on Life Project’s Generations (bit.ly/15LFshb) (bit.ly/wuywqT) Report - 2013 Engagement: Using Email Marketing 2010 report (bit.ly/137a2Dw) Marketing Automation to (bit.ly/142gJ9H) (bit.ly/gjKFvg) DJ’s article CAN-SPAM Act Achieve Success with (bit.ly/HNmOLR) (http://1.usa.gov/YgrzFP) Intelligent Email Marketing Today’s Buyer MarketingSherpa MarketingSherpa 2013 that Drives Conversions - 2012 (bit.ly/15S6zqD) (bit.ly/14bxVUB) Email Summit 2013 MarketingSherpa study How New EU Privacy Laws (bit.ly/Od01ww) (bit.ly/Z7bn96) (bit.ly/15QCRjI) Will Change Your Marketing IDC Technology (bit.ly/12O8KbD) National Client Email Marketing Blog Part Seven: Waldow Social Marketo Landing Page Report - 2013 (bit.ly/19kTv1j) (bit.ly/IGUkCn) Resource Center Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (bit.ly/12Ozedb) Graduating from Email to (marketo.com/landing-pages) (CASL): What Does It Mean Engagement: Using Marketing Direct Marketing Association For You? The Marketo Benchmark on Part Five: Automation to Achieve and Smart Data Collective Landing Page (bit.ly/17Gteq6) Email Marketing study Success with Today’s New (bit.ly/VEAKAn) Optimization Success Kit (bit.ly/142gJ9H) Multi-Channel Experience Buyer (marketo.com/success-kits/ Canada’s Impending Anti- (bit.ly/15bEAoY) (bit.ly/15S6zqD) MarketingSherpa 2013 landing-page-optimization) Spam Legislation: What You Improve Your Targeting and Benchmark report Need to Know to Be Prepared Tell a Story By Creating Greg Cangialosi Definitive Guide to (bit.ly/YGdMoe) Lead Gen Cards (bit.ly/Zyfuty) Buyer Personas (bit.ly/167LPwe) Marketing Automation (bit.ly/13hh5oV) (bit.ly/RBYpPK) (marketo.com/DG2MA) Extracting Value from Chaos CRTC Issues CASL Simms Jenkins (bit.ly/mh7faw) Marketo Benchmark on (Canada’s Anti-Spam Law) EmailKarma.net (bit.ly/16i4Z1c) Email Performance Regulation Guidelines (bit.ly/13U40Vb) (bit.ly/13CJzJn) (bit.ly/RzWrxt) MarketingSherpa CMO Pizza Express Perspectives on Email Melinda Plemel, ReturnPath National Client (bit.ly/YFf6YU) Deliverability (bit.ly/14tjuyB) Email Report - 2013 (bit.ly/169xFIC) (bit.ly/137a2Dw) Marketing Land MarketingSherpa’s Special (mklnd.com/15sUZ5J) LinkedIn’s email gaffe Report: CMO Perspectives on Monetate’s Intelligent Email on Waldow Social Email Deliverability (bit.ly/Od01ww) Marketing Land (bit.ly/LS7L4o) (bit.ly/169xFIC) (mklnd.com/XPdt9l) Marketing that Drives Return Path’s Email Conversions - 2012 Litmus Intelligence Report Q3 2012 (http://bit.ly/Od01ww) (bit.ly/Xmq0BG) (bit.ly/RlbhtA) DMA UK’s National Client STYLE Campaign Laura’s great article Email Report - 2013 (bit.ly/U7Fb5z) (bit.ly/nHdhl8) (bit.ly/12Ozedb) Marketo’s Email SBC - Email Blacklisting The Marketo Benchmark Deliverability Power Pack (bit.ly/11eb9i7) on Email Marketing study (bit.ly/17GABOx) (bit.ly/142gJ9H) Yahoo! Marketo’s The Ultimate (bit.ly/13uDGS0) Improve Your Targeting Guide To Test Statistics and Tell a Story By Creating (bit.ly/11ZkASJ) Email Deliverability Buyer Personas.” Power Pack (bit.ly/RBYpPK) Handy Calculator (marketo.com/packages/ (http://bit.ly/13gAZ2x) email-deliverability.php) Teach to Fish Digital (bit.ly/VT84hX) 153 about this guide #DG2EEM

Written By: About Marketo: Jon Miller Marketing Software. VP of Marketing, Marketo Easy, Powerful, Complete. @jonmiller Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with leading cloud-based marketing offices in Europe and Australia, Marketo software platform for companies of all DJ Waldow serves as a strategic marketing partner sizes to build and sustain engaging to more than 2,500 large enterprises and Waldow Social customer relationships. Spanning fast-growing small companies across a @DJwaldow today’s digital, social, mobile and offline wide variety of industries. For more channels, the Marketo® solution information, visit: www.marketo.com. Additional Contributors: includes a complete suite of applications Dayna Rothman that help organizations acquire new Marketo, the Marketo logo, Marketing Content Marketing Manager, Marketo customers more efficiently, maximize Nation and LaunchPoint are trademarks @dayroth customer loyalty and lifetime value, of Marketo, Inc. All other trademarks are improve sales effectiveness, and the property of their respective owners. Caitlin Roberson provide analytical insight into Wordisseur marketing’s contribution to revenue growth. Marketo’s applications are Designed By: known for their breakthrough ease-of- use, and are complemented by the Davis Lee Marketing Nation™, a thriving network Creative Director, Marketo of more than 150 LaunchPoint™ ecosystem partners and over 30,000 Lynn-Kai Chao marketers who share and learn from Graphic Designer, Marketo each other to grow their collective marketing expertise. The result for modern marketers is unprecedented agility and superior results.

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