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Email Marketing

Three Psychological Pitfalls Marketers Should Avoid In 2021
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By Norman Guadagno, CMO, Acoustic

A year in quarantine has changed consumer psychology and the rules of engagement for marketers. From dealing with isolation to significant economic uncertainty,  it is no surprise that depression has doubled for UK adults throughout the last twelve months. 

As the UK lockdown starts to ease, people are grappling with the conflicting emotions of desiring connection with each other on the one hand, yet remaining wary of too much close contact, too soon. 

For marketers, this means both adapting their 2021 plans to today’s “new normal,” contactless world, while ensuring that empathy and connection remain at the core of every communication. To accomplish this, we must all avoid the following pitfalls. 

Don’t mistake empathy for disingenuity 

We’ve all heard the same phrases a dizzying number of times by now: “These are unprecedented times,” “Stay at home, save lives,” and “We hope you’re doing well in these trying times.” For many brands, these empathetic phrases served as a pseudo-obligatory acknowledgement of current events before diving into sales-driven messaging. But for consumers, these messages quickly became white noise, a reason to ignore the communication altogether.

Data from Acoustic’s analysis of email marketing from January to May 2020 reinforces this. While open rates in the UK and Ireland increased by 19% in March versus January as consumers scoured for information on how to safely buy essential supplies and support their favourite businesses, click-through rates and click-to-open rates, on the other hand, remained relatively flat. This signals that emails with “An important message from our CEO” piqued curiosity but did not incite action or engagement. 

For marketers, the takeaway is clear: Show, don’t tell. Find creative ways to make it clear you genuinely care about your customers, without falling back on the same tired phrases. As marketers, we should emulate rigour. Our messaging should be clear, transparent, and to-the-point. The rest is just white noise. 

Stay connected with your audience 

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, it’s important to remember marketing should not be a one-way street. The best marketers foster community and connection, which are vitally important in today’s context. For many consumers who are working from home, the marketing communications they receive may be some of the only forms of communication they have with the outside world in a given day, besides work and the news of the day. This gives marketers a golden opportunity to search for ways to spark conversations with and amongst their target audiences. 

After all, the pandemic has all but eliminated the small talk and water-cooler conversations that play a key role in keeping us happy and productive at work. In today’s stay-at-home world, many of us have replaced these innocuous conversations with scrolling through social media or “forced fun” like workplace happy hours on Zoom. We have less opportunity to opt-in to small talk, but brands can change that. Marketers should embrace new ways they can foster conversation and community through social media, message boards, or other means to create a sense of normality for their consumers. 

Don’t get too close 

It’s one thing to leverage consumer sentiment and personal data to make your communication more personal and relevant. It’s another thing altogether to get too granular that you prompt concern about misuse of that data and abuse an individual’s sense of trust. 

It’s a bit like dating in today’s online world, where finding out about someone is seemingly so easy. It’s almost second nature to Google your date or look them up on Facebook or Instagram to find out more about them beforehand. But would you ask them about their holiday to Croatia the year before last that you found out about? Of course not. At least, I hope not….

Marketers face a similar conundrum. We may have psychographic data about our consumers, but should we use it? And if so, how? Marketers should devise new approaches that allow consumers to be more involved in granting permission to use their data on their terms. Allowing them to actively curate information about their likes and dislikes, in exchange for a better value proposition — a better brand experience — a “give to get.” In this scenario, an informed consumer is acknowledging that a brand may want to learn more about them — and then taking things a step further by cultivating information about themselves that is relevant for brand marketers to know. In the coming months, marketers should think about how to tailor this approach to psychographic profiling to keep their communications empathetic and connected to a consumer’s personal identity. 

Ultimately, marketing and dating can be surprisingly similar. Marketers always want to keep consumers engaged and keep them coming back for more, which requires a delicate balance of reaching out to the target audience without overreaching. As marketers plan upcoming campaigns, we must avoid the artificial genuineness, one-way communication, and overt psychographic profiling that can be so off-putting to consumers. If not, those consumers just might say, “This date is over,” stand up, and leave. 

Norman Guadagno is CMO at Acoustic, an open, independent marketing cloud.

Do you specialise in Email Marketing? We want to hear from you!
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Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in March we’ll be focussing on Email Marketing services.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Email Marketing solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Clair Wyld on c.wyld@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Mar – Email Marketing
Apr – Digital Printing
May – Social Media
Jun – Brand Monitoring
Jul -Web Analytics
Aug -Conversion Rate Optimisation
Sep -Digital Signage
Oct -Brochure Printing
Nov – Creative & Design
Dec – Online Strategy

Do you specialise in Email Marketing solutions? We want to hear from you!
By:
0

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in March we’ll be focussing on Email Marketing.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Email Marketing solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Mar – Email Marketing
Apr – Digital Printing
May – Social Media
Jun – Brand Monitoring
Jul – Web Analytics
Aug – Conversion Rate Optimisation
Sep – Digital Signage
Oct – Brochure Printing
Nov – Creative & Design
Dec – Online Strategy

Email Marketing

Email Personalisation: The Overlooked Source for Marketing Success
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By Gregg Turek, Selligent Marketing Cloud

Email personalisation as a marketing strategy has evolved phenomenally in recent years. Monumental advances in technology are empowering marketers to do things once thought unimaginable.

And the skyrocketing growth of consumer expectations is a sure sign that old techniques are no longer viable for reaching customers in 2019. Marketers can no longer simply insert a first name into a subject line and consider their personalisation work done. We’ve come so much further than that and today, more than ever, personalisation is no longer just an option for marketers. In fact, it’s an imperative.

Personalisation through Time

Remember when Build-A-Bear workshops first started? For several years now, the beloved brand – and others like American Girl in the U.S. – have offered a personalised experience that has delighted parents and children alike. Teddy bears and dolls are built or dressed in outfits and colours that kids can pick out for themselves, offering an ultimate individualised experience that had previously been unavailable. In the digital realm, Amazon and other brands have extended these types of experiences by offering stronger and stronger product recommendations based on consumer behavioural data every day. The days of recommendations simply based on “customers also purchased…” are in the past. Consumers now demand ever more individualised offers.

As these kinds of advances occur, personalisation becomes second nature for consumers, who expect similar experiences wherever they go and whenever they shop. And it makes sense: as humans, we all want to be recognised and remembered. These desires are very real to us as consumers, too. Personalisation not only satisfies this desire, it also amplifies marketing results to a great extent.

The Case for Personalisation

Personalisation is the key to keeping your customers engaged – and spending money. 74% of marketers say targeted personalisation increases customer engagement.1And research shows thatemail personalisation boosts open rates by 26% and click-through rates by 97%.2

Marketers that get it right stand to gain a lot. Those who don’t, lose. Consider some of the major retailers that have struggled or failed in recent years. British casualties of the “retail apocalypse” in 2018 alone include Maplin, Debenhams, House of Fraser, Evans Cycles and Mothercare.3  One major common denominator among these retail casualties is this: they each failed at some level to adapt to escalating consumer demand for digital experiences and personalisation.

Mar-Tech & Email Personalisation

So how do you get it right? How can you take your email marketing to a new and more successful level through personalisation? Fortunately, tools exist today that allow marketers to hyper-personalise emails and other customer communications at a level previously unseen, using consumer data as the fuel for greater engagement. Today’s marketing technology allows you to deploy emails so that every automated message feels personal, every intelligent product recommendation appears hand-picked, and the timing of delivery is always right.

Many leading brands are already investing in marketing technology for personalisation and the required data. Demand for customer data platforms (CDPs) is growing tremendously.4 And marketing automation is expected to grow by nearly ten percent in 2019, with more than half of companies surveyed using some form of automation already.5

AI: The Secret Sauce for Personalisation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is unlocking the hyper-personalised future of marketing – and changing the game for marketers. AI engines can boost email personalisation and individual relevance by automatically turning consumer insights into on-taste messages, at scale and at previously unimagined levels. And it’s not only satisfying the demands of today’s entitled consumers, it can also save marketers time and money. In fact, according to an August 2018 survey of 400 retail executives worldwide by Capgemini, AI could save retailers as much as $340 billion annually by 2022.6

Getting Personal: The Key to Survival

It’s clear that the old ways of marketing are no longer enough to satisfy consumers. Marketers need to start thinking from the point of view of the customer. With every email you send – and every interaction a customer has with your brand – you need to put that individual’s preferences, histories, and current states front and centre. Carefully look at what you’re delivering versus what your customers expect – and make sure every email is injected with a human touch, providing personal relevance for every single consumer. When you are able to deliver hyper-personalised email messages at precisely the right time, you’ve discovered not only how to survive, but to thrive in today’s marketplace.

Getting personal with your customers starts with being human – in the way you collect and share data, and how you communicate with your customers. Download the free whitepaper, “The Case for Personalisation,”to learn how to get more human with your marketing, including a deeper look at the role of artificial intelligence for hyper-personalisation in your campaigns.

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1          https://econsultancy.com/tag/reports/

2          https://www.marketo.com/articles/how-is-personalization-changing-the-face-of-marketing/

3          https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/01/everything-must-go-what-next-for-the-high-street-new-retail-empty-shops)

4          “Seven Marketing Tech Trends for 2019,”eMarketer PRO, December 19, 2019

5          “How AI Is Driving Marketing Automation,”Entrepreneur, January 25, 2019

6          “Will AI Transform Retail,” eMarketer, January 8, 2019

Do you specialise in Email Marketing solutions? We want to hear from you!
By:
0

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re be shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in March we’ll be focussing on Email Marketing.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Email Marketing solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Chris Cannon on c.cannon@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Mar – Email Marketing

Apr – Digital Printing

May – Social Media

Jun – Brand Monitoring

Jul – Web Analytics

Aug – Conversion Rate Optimisation

Sept – Digital Signage

Oct – Brochure Printing

Nov – Creative & Design

Dec – Online Strategy

For more information on any of the above topics, contact Chris Cannon on c.cannon@forumevents.co.uk.

Email Marketing

Do you provide Email Marketing solutions? We want to hear from you!
By:
0

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’ll be shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in April we’ll be focussing on Email Marketing.

It’s all part of our new ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Email Marketing solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Lisa Carter on lisa.carter@mimrammedia.com.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

April – Email Marketing

May – Digital Printing

June – Social Media

July – Brand Monitoring

August – Web Analytics

September – Conversion Rate Optimisation

October – Lead Generation & Tracking

November – Brochure Printing

December – Creative & Design

For more information on any of the above topics, contact Lisa Carter on lisa.carter@mimrammedia.com.

Industry Spotlight: Is this the end of the email discount?
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Consumers and marketers alike enjoy a good old email coupon. So much so that various studies have found a staggering 20 – 30 per cent of marketing emails now feature a discount, voucher or giveaway based incentive; and, understandably, evidenced by their tenure as a long time favourite in a marketer’s archive.

The critical factor in the promotional arena is the perceived level of exclusivity to the recipient, and this goes hand-in-hand with how well past data has been used for personalisation. But in the absence of perfect execution, is there still a place for incentive-based email? Here’s a closer look at its pros and cons in today’s digital landscape.

 

The Pros

* Quickly gain brand traction: There’s no faster way to boost subscriber rates than by offering a strong incentive or freebie, and is also a great method for brand exposure and starting conversations. Krispy Kreme growth hacked their email list by 71 per cent thanks to their “Friends of…” campaign offering free doughnuts in return for referrals to family and friends.

* Boost product uptake: Flooding the market with fast moving consumables is a powerful way to generate recurring demand. Freebie uptake is admittedly less effective in Services and SaaS where tactile value is not immediately realised on redemption. Creating urgency (time limits or download quota) is an effective way to boost uptake in these markets.

* Something to say: Don’t let competitors get a word in – end it with a promotion! Being delightfully creative is one thing but doing it consistently is another. A discount or voucher keeps you in the foreground and provides something worth saying while working on your next marketing masterpiece.

* Build an audience profile: A strong promotion is a big opportunity to profile new and existing data. Carefully consider the requisite fields and leverage that data in future to create a continual improvement cycle.

 

The Cons

* Change in list composition: Yes, you’ve increased subscribers by a million percent but your list composition will be drastically different. One-off giveaways tend to attract low lifetime-value subscribers so solid expectation management and segmentation is essential.

* Demand fulfilment: Even the best laid schemes go awry and with digital especially, things can quickly get out of hand. Oversubscription will turn a potentially positive brand experience into a bad one. Be upfront about quantities and don’t let promises go unfulfilled!

* Effect on brand positioning: Your email subscribers are often your most loyal customers so cheapening the brand with precipitous promotions is ill-advised. If you are positioned as the market premium, then a subtler incentive that does not implicate future pricing and brand perception is required. Don’t over-promote at the expense of brand.

* Risk of escalation: Competitors will soon catch wind of aggressive promotions (they have definitely subscribed to your email) and will soon respond with their own incentivised promotions. Discounts are easily countered and squeeze margins over time, so focus on the experiential, creative and personal instead.

 

Takeaways

Arguably the biggest positive for promotional mailers is the ability to use past insight to make ever-more effective campaigns with a greater degree of personalisation. Choosing not to customise campaigns to the recipient’s exact needs comes with the tacit understanding that everyone is entitled to the same advantages – and where’s the added value in that!

There are still benefits to the old-school, generic incentive but they are contextual, and highly dependent on industry and brand positioning. Giveaways can elevate new brands and quickly establish voice in new channels, but established names beware.

So while the coupon survives to fight another day, its rule as the marketer’s darling is certainly contested. Its day is certainly not up yet, but the mindset must soon evolve to stay relevant. And as other marketing tactics such as native and inbound continue to mature, so must email.

 

Words by Ross Carroll, senior email marketing manager at Fat Media

Guest Blog, Rupert Harrison: Moving mobile for email marketing…
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In a prevalent ‘mobile first’ society, Rupert Harrison, planning director at Zeta Interactive, explains the rise of its incorporation into email marketing, and how marketers and brands should be cautious in monitoring its engagement level, the design and how it will fit into the overall ‘marketing mix’.

We live in a ‘mobile first’ world. Take a look at any bus stop or queue for the bank and the majority of people will have their mobile phone in hand. It’s no surprise that 50 per cent of consumers use email ‘on-the-go’, according to the DMA Email Tracking Study 2015. That means that half of brands’ email interactions with consumers are on mobile, so it’s important to get it right.

But the hype around ‘mobile first’ has led many brands to oversimplify their thinking when it comes to mobile engagement. Yes, mobile creates the opportunity for brands to target customers in any place, at any time – but email marketing via mobile is so much more than a one-way route into consumers’ pockets.

It goes without saying that email design must be responsive to mobile devices, so that the customer experience is as good as possible when the message is viewed on mobile. However, it is also critical that marketers make good use of the data available to them to understand the context within which content is consumed, and deliver the right messages accordingly.

Striking the right tone

Mobile takes the relationship between brands and consumers to a new level of intimacy. Email marketing is already a very personal medium: as a means of delivering highly personalised content, it is the real definition of one-to-one marketing. But brands can derive powerful insights by looking at location and device type, as well as time of day, dwell times and interaction rates – allowing them to make their communications hyper-relevant to every customer.

Of course, this is a good thing. But such intimacy can quickly turn invasive if it misses the mark, and marketing that is poorly targeted or overbearing can feel particularly intrusive for customers. True personalisation is speaking softly to an audience, not yelling in their ear.

Over half (51 per cent) of consumers believe that just one-30 per cent of emails are relevant or interesting, according to the DMA; a figure that has risen steadily over the past four years. And consumers do unsubscribe from brands that no longer interest them, or if their content is inappropriate or uninspiring. By smarter targeting and better understanding of the customer mind-set and situation when they are engaging on mobile devices, marketers can improve engagement and reduce the cost of getting it wrong.

Moments of insight

But mobile gives brands the opportunity to go further and use the channel as an ‘early alert system’ providing insights for a wider marketing campaign.  Think of mobiles as mini ‘vote now’ devices and you get the picture.  The ‘moments of insight’ afforded by these interactions can be fed into a segmentation engine that allows brands to target their customers in a more intimate way.

So, businesses need to be wary of placing too much emphasis on ‘mobile first’, take a step back and think smartly about where mobile engagement fits into the overall marketing mix. Only by thinking in more holistic terms can brands ensure they make the most of the “moving target” opportunity.

 

Rupert Harrison is the planning director at Zeta Interactive. He has extensive experience of data driven communications and customer journey planning across direct, digital, social and offline and has worked at a wide range of companies, including POSSIBLE, News UK and most recently as head of comms planning at VCCPme.

Zeta Interactive is a digital marketing and smart data company working with over 250 brands worldwide.  It was recognised as one of the 50 most promising private companies by Forbes in 2014 and has featured twice in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs. 

Guest Blog, Laura England: Email marketing – here to stay…
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We have come a long way since Gary Thuerk sent the first mass e-mail in 1978. It might have only reached a few hundred people, but back then, that figure was impressive. Almost 40 years later, we continue to use the same technique to reach customers, staff and stakeholders. Laura England, account executive at technical PR agency, Stone Junction, details its substantial transformation

Advances in SEO, content marketing and sophisticated automation tactics have slowly pushed some traditional techniques into digital obsolescence. Despite this, e-mail marketing continues to remain relevant. Throughout its 40-year life span, the medium has seen some questionable techniques. Nevertheless, a few changes and improvements that come to mind are definitely here to stay.

Responsive design

According to Experian, a large percentage of e-mails are now read on mobile devices – two thirds, to be precise. In fact, the growth in use of mobile phones and tablets is part of the reason e-mail marketing has remained so popular. Without a doubt, most of us understand the importance of responsive design. Despite this, just eleven per cent of commercial e-mail templates are optimised for mobile viewing. If e-mail marketing is part of your marketing strategy, responsive design should be a top priority.

A personal touch

In today’s society, everything is personalised, from TV adverts to Starbucks cups, everything is tailored for you. While personalisation of e-mails certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, we’re finally beginning to see this tactic done well.

E-mail marketing has gained a relatively bad reputation when it comes to personalisation. Even luxury brands have fallen victim to the easy but detrimental mistakes of poor tailoring in their campaigns. While it is true that brands could easily scrap this technique and avoid embarrassing mistakes, according to various studies, e-mails containing personalised elements have transaction rates six times higher than those without. Despite this, less than 30 per cent of brands use this tactic in their campaigns.

Long live the light box

Most of us will have experienced a pop up box on our screens whilst browsing online. Often referred to as a light box, the tactic is a pet hate of some marketers because they consider it a nuisance to the customer. However, using a light box is no different to a call-to-action in your sidebar or including a subscribe option in your e-mails. Perhaps, just a little more direct.

Aside from providing a useful platform to notifying the user of a deal or promotion, the sign-up function through light boxes has been known to expand e-mail lists between five and ten times faster than traditional sign-up fields. For me, that is worth disrupting the browsing experience for a few seconds.

Now, more than ever, e-mail marketing is a tool to be embraced and used to its full potential by marketers. Outliving the likes of affiliate programmes, pop-up ads and classified advertising, there is no doubt that e-mail marketing is here to stay.

Laura England is an account executive at technical PR agency, Stone Junction. The award-winning agency, based in Staffordshire, focuses on public relations and marketing for businesses operating in the technology sector. Laura was appointed the company’s e-mail marketing specialist in 2015.

Campaign Monitor launches email marketing solution for publishers…
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The email marketing software provider, Campaign Monitor, has launched a specifically for publishers which aims to provide a simple and effective solution to building email marketing campaigns, as well as drive audience engagement and extend subscription lists.

Campaign Monitor for Publishers claims to boast ‘easy-to-use’ integrations such as flexible sign-up forms; a drag and drop tool for a quick and easy way to navigate campaign features; and an email automation tool for publishers to create personalised campaigns. CMO at Campaign Monitor, Kraig Swensrud, said: “Publishers have unique email marketing needs because their audience has expectations for email content, length and frequency that differs from other industries. With more than 10,000 customers in the publishing industry, we have prescribed the best practices and simple do-it-yourself technology to help publishers deliver messages that resonate with their audience.”

Read more about Campaign Monitor for Publishers here

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