2010 is about having interesting, engaging emails to send to your subscribers.  With your recipients receiving more and more marketing messages, yours really does have to stand out from the rest.

This is why whenever we speak to prospective new clients, we always tell them they should be building lists of their own customers and potential customers*.  People are receiving enough emails from the companies they have requested information from, without other unwelcome senders getting in on their precious inbox space.

So for the legitimate senders out there, here are a few suggestions on what can help your campaigns have that little bit extra…

Be experts in your field

If your company happens to be in an industry that your recipients are genuinely going to be interested in, why not write articles that relate to your industry on a whole.

Say you’re in the cosmetics & beauty industry, you could be writing articles right now about tips for good winter skin and hair.  At the end, recommend some of your products as a good example of what could be used.  Not only are you selling on your products but also offering information that people will be interested in and forward on to friends.

Have additional, useful information

We all seem to be obsessed with gadgets, apps and time saving devices nowadays.  Take this idea on board and try and incorporate this into your campaigns.

For instance, if you’re a financial company you could be having interest rates and projected changes to it as a small widget-like section of your email.  If you’re a last-minute holiday company, why not display the weather forecasts of some of your most popular destinations?

Humour

This is a tough one to integrate into your campaigns but does work.  Think about it, what is the one thing that gets sent to you via email that you will forward on? Jokes, funny stories, random facts etc all seem to be the things you’ll take some time out to read through.

I recommend using this with caution though as humour is something that if not done absolutely right, can cause offence to some.

Not all of these ideas will work for you (maybe none of them), but hopefully this will give you some inspiration for own campaigns.

If you do have any other ideas about what you can do or have done, please contact us via the comment box below or via our twitter page – I’d love to hear how people have innovated in this area.

Other useful posts that will help on this subject:

Email Campaign Life Cycles

Maintaining Engagement and Sometimes Forgetting Targeting

Passive Segmentation

*For any prospective clients who may be reading this – as some personal advice, we do recommend that you use your own data and then tell you we won’t allow you on our system with purchased or rented data.  Please view our anti-spam policy for more information.

What’s in store for Email Marketing in 2010The start of the year always seems to be a time for marketers to take stock and start planning for the forthcoming year.

Over the past year we have seen some parts of the email marketing industry progress and become more prominent whilst we have also seen announcements which mean certain aspects of email marketing will stay the same for quite some time.

Domain Based Reputation

One of the big issues to arise for me is ISP’s adoption of domain based reputation.  There’s a couple of great articles on it here:

Times are changing for E-Mail Marketing
The coming gold rush with domain based reputation

In a (very small) nutshell, this potentially could mean that you’re accountable for your sending practices regardless of how many different IP’s or ESP’s you go through.

Although in this Return Path post it does point out that rather than being the sole solution to everyone’s problems, it will more likely be another tool for ISP’s to adopt to be more accurate with their reputation filtering.

So what does this mean to you?  Well, basically it’s another step forward in promoting good sending practices and sending relevant emails.  Those of you who are conscientious about your sending practices and campaign content, will see your campaigns strive, whilst those who don’t will see their campaigns continue to lose effectiveness.

Engagement

The best way to adapt to domain based reputation filtering is to keep your subscribers engaged in the emails you send out.  Engagement has become a more prominent issue throughout 2009, and I can see that continuing through 2010.

This post from Mark Brownlow brings up a great point “organizations managing incoming email (particularly the big ISPs) would broaden the list of criteria used to define spam (unwanted) email to include how people interact with a sender’s messages”.

As reputation filtering progresses, so does the definition of spam.  Marketers still looking towards what the law defines as spam will ultimately fail as its definition is now the opinion of each person you send to; legal terms won’t stop a recipient from disengaging or pressing the “this is spam” button.

Have a look at a previous post I wrote for inspiration on how to maintain engagement.

Preference Centres

Another way to keep your recipients engaged is through preference centres.  Okay, not a new subject but it has continued to grow in popularity since it was introduced.

Preference centres are an alternative to unsubscribe links.  They will allow your subscribers to choose what they receive from you.  In theory, this should reduce the levels of unsubscribes you receive – great.  This in turn will allow your subscribers to also choose what emails they receive, which should keep them more engaged in your messages – also great.

So why not use them for your campaigns? Read more here:

Why an email preference center matters
Preference centres and positive unsubscribe processes

Strategy

The new year is a great time for marketers to start to plan ahead for the year.  A post I wrote last year outlines how some campaigns become stale and fall into a rut.  Eventually you could see your recipients becoming emotionally unsubscribed from your messages – an email marketers’ nightmare.

So with the new year in place, why not try planning out a full years campaigns using the email campaign life cycle model?  The idea is that by setting out your campaigns with a definite end to it, it will keep you engaged in your own campaigns as well as your recipients.

Design

News in 2009 was that Microsoft confirming that Outlook 2010 will keep the same rendering engine as Outlook 2007. Despite a big uproar from the email marketing community, the engine in Outlook 2010 will keep the design side of the industry limited.

Here’s an email design essentials post I wrote a while back to help you on your way in this area.

For all designers out there, here is the only guidesheet you need.

Read a great post on Mark Brownlow’s page the other day – The slow death of your email (and how to stop it)

For me, it raised something which I had been thinking about recently and even wrote briefly about in a previous post re-activating inactive subscribers.

In Mark’s post, he raised the issue that throughout time the response rate declined for his subscribers.  He mentioned many factors which may have caused this steady decline with the two most prominent being:

• Increased competition for attention in the inbox from competitors.
• Subcribers becoming less engaged as time passes by

The first of these points is one which should shake up anyone who has moved into a comfortable zone in their email marketing campaign.  More and more companies are moving into email marketing and though they might not be your actual competitors in terms of sector, they are now competitors in your recipients’ inbox.

Couple this with subscribers becoming less engaged over time and you could become old news with your subscribers compared to a new, fresh company.

I personally know what it’s like to be that recipient, as outlined in my inactive subscribers post.  The problem I had with that email was that it hasn’t actually changed over the past 4 years – it was the same thing each week and eventually I became disinterested and stopped opening.

In that post I mention that I had moved away from the main purpose of their emails but still remained subscribed as I may be interested in the future.  The fact of the matter was, I still love music, and though my interest in records had passed, the company wasn’t just a record shop – it sells dj equipment, music production equipment, and music cd’s amongst other things.

The reason my interest had passed in these emails is because I had moved from playing records and decided to catch up with the digital times and now use cd and mp3 emulation software instead.  Essentially my tastes had changed slightly but the campaigns hadn’t changed to match this.

They had lost a subscriber who was still interested in what they had to offer.

In this case, I think that the targeting and segmenting they had carried out actually negatively affected them as I’m sure I’m not the only one who has moved that way with my tastes.

So what could they have done?

I offered some pretty standard suggestions in my previous post as to what you could do to re-ignite interest but after reading Mark’s post I have started to think a bit more behind the scenes.

Alternative Email Budgeting

I didn’t really know what to name it but this seems to describe it the best.  Take your campaign and look at it in yearly/semi-annually/quarterly phases.  Then look at allocating different email campaign types for that period.

For instance, budget yourself to have a couple of emails that offer some big discounts for your subscribers even if it does end up making a loss in the short term – the engagement level will be increased from such offers which in the long term will produce better returns.

Okay, so there’s nothing new in that suggestion but the thinking behind it is different from how this type of campaign is predominantly carried out.  The fact that you have allocated yourself a certain amount for the year means that you can be proactive about your campaigns and gives you a plan for the year.  Instead of being reactive to maybe a recent dip in open rates or responses, you could actually plan it before a dip even occurs.  Also, by having allocated yourself a certain amount for say, a year, you can control the amount of these emails you use – the last thing you want is for your subscribers to become accustomed to these emails and only switch on when a discount offer drops in.

Another variant on your usual campaign could be to look at using cross-selling emails throughout the set period.  Though the subscriber primarily asked to receive information on a certain area of your company, that doesn’t mean that their tastes don’t change and evolve over time.  It can’t hurt to plan out emails that offer them the chance to view and subscribe to other products/services that you offer.

Just by planning your campaign in this way will stave off the monotony that can sometimes creep into a campaign after a certain amount of time.  It also allows you to try and adapt to your older subscribers changes in tastes and wants – keeping them just as engaged as the day they signed up.

More on engagement strategies in my next post….

Yes, that’s right, we’ve jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.

I think the general Idea behind our Twitter account will be to link you to our favourite blog posts for the day or any really useful resources/guides/apps we find to help you through your email marketing.

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