Event report Nottingham June 2010 – Email Marketing Will Ingleby

Thank you very much to the faithful Nottingham crowd for attending this last event before the summer break and also thank you to all the new business who came along.

This was our last event in Nottingham before the summer break, and we were very fortunate to have Will Ingleby to come and talk to us about email marketing.
We have had some great feedback from this event so for anyone who missed it, please watch the videos and the slides and don’t forget to download Will's top 20 tips here Top_20_Email_marketing_Tips.pdf

Top things we took away from this event

Delivering trust it the most important element of successful email marketing.
People need to trust the sender, so consider if it will be more trustworthy coming from your name of from your company. 60% of users will open an email because they recognise the sender.
Deliver good relevant data so the receiver will start to trust that your emails are worth opening.
Newsletter email campaigns are often killed within 3 emails. Lots of effort goes into the first so and every likes it, nothing new to tell in the second email so the reader is disappointed. By the third email no one will open it and you will have a hard time turning this back around again. Subsequently people then try to work out what was wrong with the third email, even though it was actually the second email at fault.

Cost per lead
Typically the “cost per lead” is lower with email marketing compared to other print/off line marketing (about the same as the cost of search marketing), but this isn’t an excuse for “shooting” emails out blindly. Make sure you carefully segment your customers and ever only send them carefully targeted content.
Use email marketing to keep the cost of other activities down. In stead of doing a phone campaign to all your customers, first send out an email campaign and then only call up those who opened the email. Or only send those “hot leads” your printed brochure instead of spending £ on sending it to everyone.

Measuring the results
It is strongly recommended to use some kind of dedicated email software and not force feed your outlook account. A proper software solution will allow you to measure the results and help you build good templates.
There is no end of choice when it comes to packages, from the free MailChimp to £10.000 worth of Sage/Communigator solutions. Even big companies are using MailChimp and Campaign Monitor so email marketing is definitely accessible to everyone!
60% of business never even look at the results of their email campaigns.

Look at what content got the most attention/click troughs. This is the content your customers are most interested in so focus on this content going forward and also use it on your website, in your printed materials, on blogs etc.
Look at who opened the emails, who clicked through, compared to previous campaign, what works what doesn’t – learn from your “mistakes”.

The content
Typically use shot “grabbing” text in the email to encourage people to click through. Long text won’t convert as well as short.
Make sure you have strong call to action in the email.
Split test on both the subject line and landing pages if you can. People only read the first 4 word of the subject line, be specific don’t try to be clever or quirky.
Don’t use images only, people just won’t see them as most email clients have image download turn off.
The first time a recipient opens your email it the time they are most likely to click on anything – so the content must grab they instantly when they first open it.
19% of your email content is the most a users will ever read.
The landing page is absolutely key and should never be your home page, always link to a page with strong call-to-action and relevant/specific to the email content (55% of people make the mistake of linking their email to their home page.)

Frequency of sending
It all depends on the topic and your clients, but don’t send it if you haven’t got something good to go in it.
One a month is typical for a newsletter, but if you haven’t got anything new to say, then don’t send one.
If you are a motivational life coach sending out a “motivational word of the day” every morning might work.
Quarterly is about as infrequent as you can get away with.
People typically need to be exposed to your brand 6-7 times before they recognise it.

Expressed consent vs. Implied consent
Expressed consent means a person ticked your box to say “yes, please send me your emails”. Implied consent might mean they gave you a business card at a networking event or perhaps they have bought from you previously but not actually knowingly signed up to your newsletters.
Consider the different mindset the two groups will be in when seeing your email. If they have requested it, they might be looking forward to it as they are already interested in what you do. If they don’t remember who you are or recognise why you are contacting them chances are they will hit delete, or even worse unsubscribe. 76% of “implied consent” recipients are annoyed by the emails – watch out.

10-20% CTR (click-through-rate) from “expressed consent” users.
1-2% CTR (Click-through-rate) on “implied consent” users.

Buying lists and cleansing data
Approach purchased lists with care. A big proportion of the emails are likely to no longer work, and they will all be “implied consent” and hence not eagerly expecting your email.
If you do buy lists, chose a reputable supplier with good quality data.
Keep in mind that This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it type emails might not always be read by the same person.
Good idea to always give the recipient the option to update their details, someone else could now be doing the job and they may have very different interested and preferences.
20-30% of all emails change every year, due to people moving job, changing names etc.

Spam
90% of all emails sent are classed as spam. Always try to run a spam test on your email before sending it, most email software has a built in spam-checking-feature.
It isn’t only about which words you use in your email, it is about how often you use them and the context they are used in.

Please post any questions about Email Marketing on the forum.

Slides

We keep telling everyone that blogs are great and everyone should contrinute and get involved. However, the sad cath with blog and getting involved can be spammers targeting your content and getting your in trouble with Google, so don't fall into this little trap.

It might not be Xmas and new year yet, but we are at the end of our first “semester” of events and would therefore like to thank our fantastic external speakers who came along and shared their knowledge with our businesses at events and workshops.

Thank you very much to the Leicester crowd and thank you also to all the new business who attended this event.

This was our last event at DMU in Leicester before the summer break, and we were very fortunate to have Will Ingleby to come and talk to us about email marketing.
We have had some great feedback from this event so for anyone who missed it, please watch the videos and the slides are also available.

 Download Will's top 20 tips here Top_20_Email_marketing_Tips.pdf

Top things we took away from this event

Delivering trust it the most important element of successful email marketing.
People need to trust the sender, so consider if it will be more trustworthy coming from your name of from your company.
Deliver good relevant data so the receiver will start to trust that your emails are worth opening.
Newsletter email campaigns are often killed within 3 emails. Lots of effort goes into the first so and every likes it, nothing new to tell in the second email so the reader is disappointed. By the third email no one will open it and you will have a hard time turning this back around again.

Cost per lead
Typically the “cost per lead” is lower with email marketing compared to other print/off line marketing (about the same as the cost of search marketing), but this isn’t an excuse for “shooting” emails out blindly. Make sure you carefully segment your customers and ever only send them carefully targeted content.
Use email marketing to keep the cost of other activities down. In stead of doing a phone campaign to all your customers, first send out an email campaign and then only call up those who opened the email. Or only send those “hot leads” your printed brochure instead of spending £ on sending it to everyone.

Measuring the results
It is strongly recommended to use some kind of dedicated email software and not force feed your outlook account. A proper software solution will allow you to measure the results and help you build good templates.
There is no end of choice when it comes to packages, from the free MailChimp to £10.000 worth of Sage/Communigator solutions. Even big companies are using MailChimp and Campaign Monitor so email marketing is definitely accessible to everyone!

Look at what content got the most attention/click troughs. This is the content your customers are most interested in so focus on this content going forward and also use it on your website, in your printed materials, on blogs etc.
Look at who opened the emails, who clicked through, compared to previous campaign, what works what doesn’t – learn from your “mistakes”.

The content
Typically use shot “grabbing” text in the email to encourage people to click through. Long text won’t convert as well as short.
Make sure you have strong call to action in the email.
Split test on both the subject line and landing pages if you can. People only read the first 4 word of the subject line.
Don’t use images only, people just won’t see them as most email clients have image download turn off.
The first time a recipient opens your email it the time they are most likely to click on anything – so the content must grab they instantly when they first open it.

Frequency of sending
It all depends on the topic and your clients, but don’t send it if you havne;t got something good to go in it.
One a month is typical for a newsletter, but if you haven’t got anything new to say, then don’t send one.
If you are a motivational life coach sending out a “motivational word of the day” every morning might work.

Expressed consent vs. Implied consent
Expressed consent means a person ticked your box to say “yes, please send me your emails”. Implied consent might mean they gave you a business card at a networking event or perhaps they have bought from you previously but not actually knowingly signed up to your newsletters.
Consider the different mindset the two groups will be in when seeing your email. If they have requested it, they might be looking forward to it as they are already interested in what you do. If they don’t remember who you are or recognise why you are contacting them chances are they will hit delete, or even worse unsubscribe. 76% of “implied consent” recipients are annoyed by the emails – watch out.

Buying lists and cleansing data
Approach purchased lists with care. A big proportion of the emails are likely to no longer work, and they will all be “implied consent” and hence not eagerly expecting your email.
If you do buy lists, chose a reputable supplier with good quality data.
Keep in mind that This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it type emails might not always be read by the same person.
Good idea to always give the recipient the option to update their details, someone else could now be doing the job and they may have very different interested and preferences.

Slides

Applying a distinctive and consistent tone of voice to your online communications has many benefits - so long as you make sure that voice doesn't get in the way of web-writing essentials such as usability, accessibility and seo.

This isn’t a new feature really, but a great little feature that not everyone is making the most of yet.

Some good pointers to keep in mind when doing on-page optimising...