By We, I Mean You

I had the opportunity to attend the “Successful Strategies for Email Marketing in 2009″ half day seminar hosted by SilverPOP in Dallas. Besides great presentations by Loren McDonald, Ted Roberts and Eric Stablow, they shared some key points that email marketers must keep in mind while planning their email strategies that I wanted to pass on to you.

• Collect the right data and leverage the data you collect
  If you require recipients to provide information during the registration process, leverage it! Don’t make consumers provide information that you don’t plan to use to enhance the overall communications. More often than not, you will have more success acquiring new leads if you have a shorter registration process. Plan ahead as to what consumer data you need to enhance your communications by providing relevant content each individual, which we all know is key to the success of email.

• The Inbox is changing
  Ever notice how many emails you receive are based on an alert or trigger?
  The user’s Inbox is becoming filled with notifications from Social sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc…) and customized news alerts (CNN, NYT, Google alerts).
  How does a brand compete for the recipients attention?
  Must develop an email strategy that promotes “value” in the eyes of the recipient, and engages them through relevant, timely communications.

• Time to think about screen agnostic designs
  Consumption of email is shifting from the traditional email inbox to a multitude of devices and platforms. More and more of the population is connected to email via their mobile devices or through a content aggregation site, however we tend to design with traditional platforms in mind (Webmail, Email Client such as Outlook or Lotus notes). With the advancement and adoption of Smart Phones, like the iPhone, the need for Screen agnostic designs is becoming increasingly important.

• Sharability
  We all know that the traditional Forward to a Friend functionality built into an email doesn’t drive the level of Word of mouth as we would all like it to, as the process is more cumbersome than clicking the old forward button. However, with the continual growth of Social Media, it time to consider inclusion of “click to share” links within your email. Such platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it feasible for your recipients to share your message to their entire networks with a simple click of a button. Oh, and by the way, SilverPOP has made this functionality very easy to manage.

• List management should still be a top priority
  ISPs continue the assault against SPAM in full force. For your message to be delivered, you must continue to practice rigorous list hygiene tactics. Following these list management tactics should help retain current subscribers while increasing your deliverability.
  • Make it easy for consumers to Update their profile, if they can’t easily update their email address, they won’t.

  • Email on a regular basis, and remove any hard bounces
  • Remove any recipient that reports your message as SPAM as some ISPs have a one strike policy, meaning you mail to it again, you are done.
  • Identify and manager inactive recipients, remember, some of the major ISPs allocate unused accounts as SPAM traps.
  • Don’t rent or purchase email addresses, the risk of damaging your reputation doesn’t outweigh the potential reward

• Engage your Recipients
  Find non “margin robbing” ways to get your recipients engaged with your message. This could include optimizing delivery time to account for when each particular recipient typically interacts with email to adding fun polls within the message. The key to success is testing different tactics to better understand your list and how it interacts with your message. Example quick polls, if used correctly, can both be fun for the recipient as well as provide you as a marketer with actionable consumer level data. Other methods for engaging could come in the form of placing your brand where the recipients are. For example, if your brand is managing a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account, then consider including a link within the email to the page.

Many thanks to the SilverPOP folks for putting on a good event and I look forward to the next event.

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