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). writing subject lines, designing emails • How to talk with each of your 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.