Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

First off, Happy Birthday! (whenever your b-day is).

Birthdays are great opportunity to mix up your messaging to an email subscriber and give a non-sale oriented, warm and fuzzy to build trust and enthusiasm with your brand and email program.  That doesn’t mean you don’t get to sell and covert though!  Let’s take a look at how to set this up, automate, and also a few content ideas to get you thinking.

Setting up a Birthday Email

First off, your going to have to know their birthday. The best practice here is to capture that data at the opt-in. You can always get this information later through progressive profiling, but I would recommend adding it to the initial email capture so you can automate the email trigger from day one. Making this a required field is also a good idea if you are serious about birthday emails.

Remember, you don’t need the year they were born, unless you plan on sending different content based on their age. It will also make the opt-in process faster.

Triggering the Birthday Email

Your ESP should have the ability built in to capture this in your form generator. In emailROI, one requirement is to choose the format of the date:

Once you have chosen the format, you will have a consistent format in your database to work with. Then, you can assign that birthday event trigger to a specific email message in your email app. This email will either reside independently or within a list or group.

This email should allow for personalization of name and or creative elements and coupon codes or offers. This also gives you flexibility to contiunally edit the message with out changing your opt-in code.

Birthday Email Ideas

Restaurants & Retail are going to have the most flexiblity here, as they can allow for free items or discounts. Let’s take a look at few that provide these:

Here was an email I recieved from Wendy herself. Along with a birthday greeting, it gives me a link to $1 off coupon I can use at any location.  This is effective and trackable outside the online channel.  They use Coupons Inc. to facilitate barcodes and personalized online printing. They also make good use of the preheader space with “Get Coupon” to tease the present.

Here is an email from Adidas that does a technqiue here that is noteworthy.  Aside from the 15% off coupon, they give a secondary call-to-action to join the Addidas Insiders club. This takes advantage of the Birthday message to cross promote their club.  I would be intrested to know how this element performs. Lesson here is that the email doesn’t have to include only 1 item.

El Gaucho, a fabulous NW steakshouse, doesn’t waste their birthday email opportunity with a small discount.  They come right out with a $25.00 off discount that is sure to drive visitors. Every business is different, but to me, if your going to give someone a birthday gift, give them something they will remember.  A halo effect will be placed on future campaigns to that subscriber, both online and offline.

Before you Implement Your Birthday Email Campaign – Some Things to Consider

I unsubscribed from Ruby Tuesday email list today after a number of clearly untargeted messages. After checking the unsubscribe box and clicking on “submit” I was greeted with the page below.

Apparently Ruby Tuesday thinks you are part of the “in crowd” when you unsubscribe – is this self-admission that their email program is in DIRE need of assistance? Maybe their lack of “listening” is the reason I unsubscribed in the first place.

Piece of advice for Ruby Tuesday, I would urge you to not only personalized your email experience, but also the opt-in and opt-out process as well (at least with a relevant theme like “Hate to see you go” or “Can’t we still be friends?”).

Watch this post for live updates from Email Marketing Twitterati at the Email Evolution Conference in Scottsdale, AZ.

Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, had her son the other day. Congrats! However, I don’t think Yahoo’s ad network feels the same way. Plan B is, well, the morning after pill, and with a great tag line of “Because the unexpected happens”.

Click the thumbnail to view the larger version of the image

Woot.com has built a great business and brand using great copy and a unique business model.  The following personalized email they sent to me really illustrates this.  I will let you read for your self:

WOOT, INC. INTERNAL EMAIL 
STAFF EYES ONLY 

Attention Woot employees - 

We are now entering the final phase of preparations for the Woot-Off planned for midnight tonight. This is when we depart from our usual deal-a-day model and sell one product after another, offering a new deal as soon as the previous one sells out. For some reason, Woot members like my name continue to have high expectations for this event. We must make every effort to ensure that they feel disappointed and betrayed. 

All workers should be physically and mentally straining to make this Woot-Off a success, like every muscle in a wolf’s body strains to capture and devour its prey. We expect total compliance with the following objectives: 

• Make sure the stables are thoroughly cleaned and the horses properly groomed and shod. As you know, Commander Rutledge prefers to lead us on horseback during Woot-Offs. (more…)

You’ve all been told how you need to start segmenting your lists and sending more relevant emails to yoru subscribers. Here is an out-of-the-box example from HornyToad.com (who just opened the very cool Lizard Lounge store in PDX).

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How they will determine what to send me from this, who knows.

But I found this to be a fun excerise and break from the same old routine. Think of ways you can get creative to engage your customers this year.

So, today is my birthday. The older you get, birthdays start to go from exciting days to not so exciting days (“damn I’m getting old!”).

That being said, it is still nice to get a happy birthday message – from anyone.

Aside from my friends and family, I received quite a few from brands and companies. They were all a nice touch. From coupons for a free Ice Cream cone (Coldstone Creamery) to just “Happy Birthday” (My Coke Rewards), they are a great tool for to pat your subscriber on the back and make them think you care, even if you don’t.

Most ESP’s have an automated tool to trigger birthday messages. If you can capture that birth date on Opt-in, try to send out a personalized b-day message. It is just an additional opportunity to get an email out and get people remembering what a great company you are.

With the growth of your email lists comes the need to create more manageable sub-lists of targeted recipients. By discovering some common themes amongst your contacts, you will be able to make your messaging more relevant and you will attain higher quality leads.

Join me as I explore five techniques for segmenting email lists, and five examples of using dynamic content to deliver targeted messaging based on your recipients’ profile settings.

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Segmentation based on form data is a great start, but what do you do with those individuals that are not responding to the emails based on your segmentation rules? Most marketers stop their segmentation once the form is filled out, but one of the key attributes to effective email marketing is making sure that the content is relevant to your subscribers over time. People’s preferences change, a married couple might have children, the offers they respond to are going to vary once they do, a college student graduates and gets a job and now has purchasing power. Someone that was not previously a purchaser or was not responding are likely to respond to different content as long as it is valuable.

How do you create your segments, how do you know what will work? Initial surveys are valuable here to get an understanding of what segments to create. Get a good comprehensive survey put together to get a real understanding of demographics, preferences, product/service categories, etc. and compile the results to understand that if you have an average household income of under $35k that is subscribing and a fairly equal split of gender with an average age of 25. You know that you are more likely to direct those products that fit within the budget and lifestyle of your subscriber base, but beyond that is understanding what products to market, what sells to this group. This survey is going to help you move people between segments and test those people that are not fitting into the “bucket” they originally came in as.

I just got this email from Faucet.com. They normally do a typical job of their emails, show me product tells me what to buy, gives me some offer, and gives me a link – The major faux pas that home improvement brands do is try to push product that is totally off the mark from my tastes. As a homeowner it is valuable to get a helping hand from home improvement brands. The biggest help is telling me what I need to fully complete the job. So with this ensemble email, the use of the diagram is perfect. It shows you what you need (without assuming your style preferences) using the wireframe as well as links to each individual product category.

Many retailers go for one of two outcomes, get them to buy one thing, give them a very generic offer good on anything. Now both have their place, but this is targeted while being broad enough to cover the topic. Home Depot, Lowes, Bellacor, etc. Take note, this is an a great way to talk to the customer.