Blog - Archive for March, 2011

Quick Response (QR) codes were originally the brainchild of Toyota back in the mid 1990’s and were developed in order to track vehicle parts in manufacturing. The name comes from the fact that they allow users to decode its contents at high speed. QR codes work in the same way as regular barcodes except they are two-dimensional and made up of black modules arranged in a square on a white background, like this example below.

For the past year they have been a seriously hot trend largely due to the fact that they can literally be applied to almost everything. Although they have been used for years in Japan, the technology to utilize them to similar levels elsewhere was simply not available. Thanks to the world wide explosion of the smart phone however, that’s changing. Most smart phone users download an app that allows them to easily scan QR codes, but some new smart phones come with a QR scanner pre-installed, which just goes to show how popular they’re becoming.

Once a code has been scanned, it causes the phone to load data. Often this data is a URL, which then opens the embedded website on the mobile device thereby delivering instant information to the reader.

Although QR codes are undeniably novel and successful in print form, many marketers are still sitting on the fence regarding its practicality in email marketing. In an email message they would be used in the same place as an ordinary link, but where a QR code would still require scanning, a link can simply be clicked. This makes it a tricky and less effective option if your subscribers are already viewing the email on their mobile device. If that’s the case, they would need to be able to first save the image on their phone to scan later, or they would have to have a second mobile device handy in order to scan the code (somewhat unlikely). Either way, it takes away some of the ‘immediacy’ that a QR code brings with it.

If however you are integrating email marketing with traditional marketing solutions such as direct print mail, then QR codes could be put to good use here. Unique codes on advertising could instantly take readers to:

• The home page of your website
• The sign-up page for your email newsletter
• A landing page for special offers
• A ‘contact us for more information’ page
• Automatically register them for a competition or freebie
• Send a text on your behalf
• Display text, contact or additional product information
• Provide directions to your stores (via Google Maps)
• Connect to a wireless network
• Display your social network profiles

There’s no doubt that we’ll be seeing much more creative use of QR codes this year, even though we’re already finding them in magazine advertising and editorials, name tags, for sale signs (directs you to a virtual tour of the property) coupons, billboards, busses and bus stops, posters, cards, clothes, business cards, invoices, print distributions and street signs, making them hugely versatile. If you can find a way to incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy, you’ll be engaging with your customers on an entirely new level and you’ll be staying ahead of the latest marketing trend.

If you’re interested in taking the next step, then there are a number of free or inexpensive QR code generators online such as Kaywa, ZXing Project and QR Stuff. For inspiration, you can also check out some innovative examples of QR codes here and here.

In short, an email preference centre is much like a membership page on your website that allows your subscribers to manage their subscriptions. After signing up and when they login, they’re given the opportunity to update their profile and also specify what information they’d like to receive from you and how often. This works best and is necessary if you have a variety of email campaigns that you send out, such as newsletters, sales alerts, product information, industry updates and more. In the preference centre, your subscriber can opt in for as many of the campaigns as they wish, and subsequently make changes whenever they want. They should also be able to specify how often they receive correspondence from you, the format of the emails (html or text versions) and whether they want to subscribe to RSS, mobile or SMS updates.

If you supply products such as books, music, DVD’s or clothes then you should definitely look at incorporating an email preference centre to manage your subscriptions effectively. If however, you only offer a single product or service it’s not necessary.

The real value of a preference centre is that it gives subscribers complete control over what lands in their inbox, and this helps build trust and loyalty, which is one of the main objectives of email marketing. By giving them what they want when they want and honouring their preferences, they’ll have less reason to unsubscribe from your email campaigns.

Keep in mind that customers are voluntarily offering private information about themselves at a time and pace that suites them. Therefore, it’s important that your preference centre is friendly and welcoming and the questions aren’t overly complex, in depth or personal. You want them to feel like they can come back at any time to make changes and when they do, it’s a painless process.

Contrary to popular belief, an email preference centre is pretty easy to implement and to begin with many people simply store data on their email platform or CRM, which is perfectly acceptable.

When you think of a brand, or specifically your brand, what comes to mind? Broken down, a brand constitutes a name, tag line, logo and design, all of which should ultimately define your business perfectly. A brand, we now know however, is much more than that. It is the voice, attitude, style, familiarity and feeling that people get when they think about a business or company, and it’s hugely important.

On the back of a global recession competition is stiff and just a click away at the best of times, so the more awareness there is surrounding and supporting your business the better. One of the ways that you can boost your brand is to use (or make better use of) email marketing. These days it’s an extremely affordable solution that can help keep you in the inboxes and minds of those who matter most to your company; your customers and subscribers. On average it takes 7 times for a customer to recognize your brand after first encountering it. The beauty of email marketing is that it allows to you to engage, interact and find out more about your customers long after they have left your site. In short, it helps them remember you and recognize your brand quicker.

Without further ado, let’s look at the ways that it can help your brand.

1. It keeps your customers informed about what’s happening at your company; what’s trending; latest industry updates and what specials or promotions are running.
2. It gives you the opportunity to let them know more about your blog, forum or website and your subscribers the opportunity to share your fabulous news and articles with their friends via email and social networks.
3. Thankfully these days emails are becoming more personalized and targeted, based on customer behaviour, purchase history and geo-location, to name a few. This means your email campaigns and brand have the potential to reach the exact target audience you’re interested in.
4. Loyal customers become your own personal brand ambassadors without you having to do much. Provide the best service you can, consistently and from the very beginning and your customers will spread the word about your company (and brand) for you, to their family and friends.
5. It helps reinforce your brand, especially if an email welcome letter or campaign is sent soon after a customer has left your website. If they haven’t visited your site in a while, then your message will remind them about your company, what you have to offer and why they were interested in you in the first place.

So now we’ve had a quick look at how email marketing can benefit your brand awareness, let’s look at what you can include in your email campaigns to help win your customers over.

1. Don’t be shy to remind them how great your product or service is. With all the competition out there, it won’t do you any harm to blow your own horn. Remember, your customers first bought from you because they thought you were fabulous and loved what you had to offer, remind them of this and don’t give them any reason to cross over and sniff at what’s on offer from your competitors.

2. Make sure that your email campaigns have the same style, color, font and format as your website. If a customer has visited your website, but hasn’t received a newsletter from you then you want them to be able to instantly recognize your brand in the email when they preview or open it.

3. Be consistent when you send your email campaigns. Whether that’s every Saturday or every third week of the month, your subscribers will come to recognize and appreciate this pattern. A welcome email sent soon after a person has signed up also gives you the opportunity to tell them more about your company and let them know the different ways that they can stay in touch with you. It creates a sense of familiarity, which is part of what you’re aiming for. It’s good practice to send a warm and friendly welcome email before you start hitting them with your regular campaigns. It’s similar to ‘courting’ in a real relationship, and really, who doesn’t like to be wooed?

4. Make sure you have a standardized email template that clearly shows your company name, logo and tagline. That way, each time your customer opens your email and reads something relevant or useful, they positively associate that knowledge with you and your brand.

5. Remember to take the time to personalize each email. Rest assured your subscribers don’t like being thought of as just ‘an email address.’ By taking the time to personalize each campaign you make them feel unique, which of course they’ll like and in turn associate this feeling with your brand. It’s easy to personalize your campaigns and it’s simply a matter of changing your settings in the campaign builder stage of your message.

6. Keep your campaigns and content user friendly (read simple and easy to find). You want your message, links and branding to stand out and be immediately visible, not hidden amidst cluttered copy and a busy design. If you have a lot you want to say, don’t cram it into one message; rather have a link to your website where they can find out more information if they need to.

Email marketing has been shown to deliver one of the highest ROI’s over any other e-marketing tactic and by incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy; you are effectively optimizing your company’s brand awareness, whilst at the same time building and nurturing an online relationship with your customers.

Although progressive profiling is not a new concept, it is a ‘practice’ that many marketers seem to have side-lined of late. This is evident with the number of otherwise great websites that bombard would-be subscribers with a 15 field sign up form, all for the privilege of receiving a newsletter. Needless to say it can (and quite possibly does) hinder ones sign up and conversion rates.

Registering for something or requesting a download should be a quick and painless experience that needn’t require handing over too much private information. So, when a visitor is confronted with a stream of increasingly personal questions with no explanation behind them, they are likely to abandon the process, permanently.

Of course ultimately you want to find out as much information about your subscribers as you can, but if you want to do it right, you need to do it subtly. Enter progressive profiling. What this clever little feature allows you to do is ask for information incrementally rather than all at once, thereby engaging with your subscribers in a slow and steady manner.

How it works is like this:

1. When a visitor first lands on your site and wants to sign up for your newsletter, only ask for their name, surname and email address. This is all you need to start building a basic profile of them.
2. The next time they return to the website, prompt a few more questions such as their industry and job title. On their following visit, ask them the name of their company, city and or country. Subsequent questions to this could be what their interests are and what they would like to receive from you. What’s key here is that because you are only asking two or three questions at a time your abandon rate is low.

Remember to reconfirm your privacy policy each time a subscriber converts, and reassure them that any data you gather is used to make sure your email campaigns remain relevant to them.

One of the great benefits of this tactic is that with each new interaction you find out valuable information about your subscriber. At the same time, they don’t feel uncomfortable with an intimidating sign up form because the process is handled over a number of stages, at their own pace. The result, everyone’s happy. You get the information you need and the subscriber gets their newsletter (or whatever it happens to be).

Naturally, to keep your subscribers coming back for more and happy to give out personal details at each interaction, you need to be offering truly unique and relevant content from the start.  You can read more about keeping (newsletter) content relevant here and great ideas for content here.

The process of setting up progressive profiling questions might involve a little bit more PT, but there is no doubt that it allows you to develop a strong online relationship with your customer, even if it is over a longer period of time.

A/B split testing is a refined and enhanced email marketing strategy that has been shown to increase open rates, click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates with minimal risk. So what is it and how does it work? Basically with an email A/B split test, two versions of the same email are produced, with one variable such as the subject line or call to action different to the first version.  These two emails are then divided equally between a small group (normally 20%) of randomly selected emails on your list. The results are carefully tracked and monitored and once it is clear which email produced the most desired results, the remainder of the email list is sent the ‘winning’ email. A/B split testing is often done on an on-going basis, and the format is commonly referred to as the ‘champion/challenger’. This ensures that campaigns are continuously improved on, so results are up to date and representative of your target audience at any given time. Although it might be time consuming to test separate variables individually in your campaign, it is the best way you can determine exactly which element is having the desired (or undesired) effect.

The beauty of email A/B split testing is that there are many variables of an email campaign that can be tested, such as:

• Subject Lines
• Calls to Action (text vs. buttons)
• Headings / Greetings
• Body Content
• Long vs. Short Copy
• Landing Pages
• Colors and Images
• Personalization
• Layout
• Banners
• Numbers of products promoted at one time

It’s important to remember that although you have a variety of elements that can be used to test the strength of your email campaign, not all elements produce the same results. The value of A/B split testing is that it allows you to identify those elements that consistently produce the best results.

Besides increased open rates, click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, A/B split testing can bring the following benefits to your campaign:

• It allows marketers to better understand their audience behaviour and habits. What motivates them to convert? What makes them tick (and click!) on links?
• Easily determines which variations improve the performance of your campaign
• You know exactly what changes you need (and don’t need) to make
• You’re able to quickly and easily identify and implement the best combination based on test metrics and analysis
• Email campaign optimization leads to improved user experience (UX)
• It’s inexpensive because existing resources and tools are used
• It’s a low risk approach

With these benefits in mind and the fact that nearly every aspect of your email campaign can be tested, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be conducting A/B split testing on your email campaigns. By taking the time to truly understand your subscribers and optimizing your campaign to the fullest, you have the opportunity to target your customers with an email message is hugely relevant and beneficial to them.