Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

In email marketing, if you aren’t planning a week or two ahead, you’re too late. If you really want to plan a successful campaign, and avoid “blasting”, you need to give your self some time to create content, creative, landing pages and the like.

That is why we are starting a new series of posts this year called the Email Marketing Calendar. Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in February you can utilize to develop a timely and relevant email campaign. We will post this list a week or two ahead of the next month.

Tuesday, February 2nd – Groundhog Day

If a groundhog fails to see its shadow, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow, winter will continue for six more weeks. This would be a great theme to use for consumer campaigns, from apparel retailers to ski resorts to restaurants. If weather is a driving factor in your business, more winter or less winter is most likely something to take advantage of.

Sunday, February 7th – “The Big Game” (aka Super Bowl XLIV)

Due strictly enforced trademark infringement, you can’t use the words “NFL,” “Super Bowl,” or “Super Sunday” in your marketing campaigns. However, you can use colloquialisms such as “The Big Game,” or other generic descriptions for Super Bowl XLIV. Aside from the game itself, you also have the commercials and the half time show which have a lot of cultural currency as well.

Monday, February 8th – Boy Scout Day

A tounge-in-cheek brand might be able to get something out of boy scout day – Scouts Honor!

Friday, February 12  – Abe Lincoln’s Birthday

You are free to create unique artwork of a US President’s likeness, but you are not allowed to use anything that has “authorship”. Abe Lincoln has one of the most iconic and trustworthy brands in American history. How can you buddy up to Honest Abe?

Sunday, February 14th – Valentine’s Day

If this is a big day for your company, hopefully you already have a plan. If you are B2B, here’s an idea: “Will you be our Valentine?” with a link to update their profile or take a survey. Maybe you can use Cupid’s spell to clean up your subscriber data or ask a few questions without having to give something away. Or you could play against Valentine’s Day and ask a subscriber to be selfish and by something for themselves.

Monday, February 18th – Washington’s B-day aka Presidents Day

First off, it’s spelled “Presidents Day” not “President’s Day”. This is a federal holiday and many are off work. It is also known as much for big sales at stores as it is for honoring US Presidents. Creatively, you can really use iconic American symbols and imagery. But make sure to work on your subject lines and copy, as their will be considerable activity.

Tuesday, February 16th – Mardi Gras aka Fat Tuesday

Here’s a day you could really have some fun. Mardi Gras is a great day to have an event or a sale. The opportunities for fun creative don’t get better than this. From a charitable side, you could also send your subscribers to donate to the Katrina reconstruction efforts.

Wednesday, February 17th – Random Act’s Of Kindness Day

Random Act’s Of Kindness Day is an unofficial holiday in order to encourage acts of kindness. This is an opportunity to give something back to your loyal audience of readers. Maybe it’s just to say thanks. Maybe it is a no strings attached coupon for something free or at cost. Don’t send your same old 20% coupon, do something original and kind. Your subscribers won’t forget it, and it could really work to lift your next few emails.

Saturday, February 20th – Love Your Pet Day

This one may be a stretch, but here me out. We are always looking to humanize our companies. How about you send out a link to a flickr gallery or blog post of all of the employees pets? Or, offer a link to the local humane society to adopt or volunteer. We all love our pets, don’t we? This may be a connection you never knew you had with your subscribers.

Sunday, February 28th – National Tooth Fairy Day

This one I am leaving up to you guys, aside from companies that sell children’s products or dentists, I got nothing. Give us an idea in the comments section.


Good luck and happy emailing! Stay tuned for the March Email Marketing Calendar…in February.

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The eROI crew descended on the desert earlier this week for the Email Evolution Conference. While attendance at trade shows has been spotty die to the economy, the EEC pulled together a lively event.

eROI participated in a few panels and attended almost all of the sessions collectively. The saying at the New Orleans Jazz Fest is that “it’s not what you saw, it’s what you missed to see it”, which is exactly how I felt this year.  Rather than go into deep analysis of each session, I compiled a few of my favorite soundbites, quotes and tidbits from 4 of my favorite sessions from the event:

Topic: Email Design

3 things that need to be in your pre-header: Branding, Primary Message, Main Call-to-Action. Keep it tight.

Whitelist requests need to happen early (welcome, confirmation, transactional) in your program, so you can use the pre-header more effectively.

A logo (with link) in your header is not only a consistent branding impression, it will drive the most traffic to your site over the life span of you program.

Navigation menus (above or below header) drive sales, especially “sale” or “clearance” links.

Pay more attention to your Footer – add more options, branding, social, viral SWYN/FTAF link, and repeat the main call-to-action. (more…)

During the EEC event in February in one of the sessions the topic was frequency of email. The panelists had discussed email frequency and how much is too much as well as capping the frequency of your email, i.e., only allow a subscriber to be emailed X times per month. I asked, “If you cap the frequency of email to a subscribe to, say only get 5 emails per month, but you send out 10 a month, how do you determine what email is most relevant to them?”

I watched the panelists skirt around a non-answer as no one could tell me how you determine which emails are most relevant to the subscriber. If the 7th email might be the one that makes me purchase, you missed the boat.

Limiting the frequency by subscriber, in my opinion, is a bad idea. I welcome the conversation about why it is good, any lift in ROI you have seen etc., but I see the practice more harmful that good.

I always found that setting subscriber expectations is much more appropriate than a predetermined number. Tell subscribers that you send your newsletter once a month, promotions weekly, and event announcement every other week. Let them determine what is too much. It would be interesting to see if anyone has seen a lift in overall subscriber activity, as well as revenue and ROI that has implemented a predetermined frequency limit.

One thing I have learned in email marketing over the last 5 years – Labor Day is an email wasteland.

Unless you are sending to a highly targeted segment or sending a time sensitive offer, my advice would be to hold off until late Tuesday at the earliest.

Why?

This is one of the biggest travel weekends of the year. People will be with their family and friends or on the road. If they are on the road, many of them will checking email from a smart phone – not an ideal situation yet.

Also, when they do check their email, their inbox will be jammed, and many emails will be deleted before being read. I know I have done this when I miss a few days of inbox maintenance.

So, go out, have a good time this weekend and leave your email marketing cares behind. Think about a great fall kick off campaign, and stay out of the inbox traffic jam.

Please don’t follow Kmart’s lead. Here is what I received shortly after opting in:

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Wow. Of course, when I went to manage my preferences, I was given 2 options: unsub from “Kmart” email or unsub from “Promotional” email. I am not even sure what this means? Is Kmart selling my address? Are these different types of lists?

In 1 month I was sent 12 emails asking me to buy everything in the entire store. Tv’s, diamond rings, baby strollers, toasters, etc….Am I really just going to buy $34 grand worth of product in the first 30 days on the list?

Some times I wonder who is driving this channel at some of these companies, and If they even subscribe to email lists. Is this not common sense? Do you like getting an email every other day from a department store?

Please put yourself in the shoes of the subscriber, and try to be smart about your frequency and messaging.

It’s companies like Kmart that give email a bad name.

From Chad White at RetailEmail.Blogspot.com. If you have not bookmarked Chad’s Blog yet, you should. This site is operated by its founder, Chad White, who has covered the retail, e-commerce and technology industries for more than six years as an editor at Dow Jones and Fairchild Publications.

The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.Week-End Trends: Back-to-school drives volume higher

The 81 top retailers currently actively tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot sent out 120 emails during the week ending July 28 as part of their core email marketing campaigns. That was an increase of 7% over the week before. Ninety-two percent of these retailers sent out emails last week, up from 85% the week prior.

Read More and See the Charts >>

I was fortunate to have my first stay at the Boulders Resort in June for the Email Insiders summit and would go back in a heart beat. I think that they know this as the stay there is truly unique. What has impressed me is that they are carefully reaching out to me once a month after my stay (and sent me an exit/check out survey days after leaving) and keeping it simple and top of mind.

The clear actionable button (I am of late a big fan of the Button) makes me know exactly what to do to learn more and plan my next stay. When I was checking out I actually asked them what Property Management system they used and if they had the ability to connect the two in order to send me emails in the future. I asked, as you might be surprised, many Boutique hotels do not have this ability and in my opinion miss the opportunity to bring me back and stay in touch.

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I am always impressed with Alaska Airlines in the Monday AM email I get each week. It is always at the same time and loaded with information that is really (or appears) focused on my needs as a frequent traveler. The only draw back is that there is a lot of text to read. But they have me waiting for it every Monday AM to see what new offers and great additions they have in store.

Hats off to Alaska Airlines for creating campaigns that are always on time and on the same day. I have not noticed much change up in these emails in a while, so it must be working well.

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I have a number of family members that use Safeway.com to buy their groceries so I thought I would give it a shot. I went through and picked all my groceries and put them in my cart. I got pulled away from my purchase to take care of something else and forgot about the cart.

OPPORTUNITY #1 – Remind me of my cart, they did this without fail, a nice email reminding me how much I had in my cart. There was no offer, but they did not need to, it is food – a necessity of life. My one rant about this is the timing – 5 days after I had abandoned my cart. I think 1-2 days is an acceptable timeframe for a follow up for food. Most likely a week later my needs have changed and the cart is fairly irrelevant.

OPPORTUNITY #2 – This is a huge failure. First of all it was 2 weeks after my abandoned cart, what grocery list is exactly the same two weeks later. The thing that really got to me is how the email started out. “We hate to be a squeaky wheel…” Hint: as soon as you say “We hate to be” don

One of the things I have been noticing on our newsletter is the value of the RSS button we insert in our email. Yes everyone that gets our newsletter is a double opt-in subscriber, but it allows those users that are forwarded the email from their friends to be able to keep up to date on our newsletter without subscribing.

I ran into a client example this last week when we were in Chicago at the Internet Retailer show. This client has 250 email subscribers, highly qualified, small list. The interesting thing is that they have over 6,500 RSS subscribers.

Yes, you cannot track nearly to the same level as with email, but if someone wants offers in RSS, give it to them. If you have a BlackBerry you filter your email on your phone and RSS is another touch point for those that filter email, but not RSS. Give it a shot. If you need assistance in turning on your RSS functionality in emailROI, please contact us.