how to build a successful e-mail marketing campaign - suzanna chaplin & warrick lambert
TRANSCRIPT
A4U EXPO:How to Build a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Agenda• Introduction• Tesco Kitchens – Email & Lead Generation
– Creative Design– Importance of Mobile– Sending Strategy – Frequency– Analysing your results
• Matalan – Email for Retail– Creating a strong proposition– Testing– Subject Lines– Targeting
• Drink Aware – Retargeting & CRM– User journey– Sending Strategy – When to send– Retargeting– Optimisation
Background• Performance emailing for customer acquisition
• Working with advertisers on a CPA/CPL/CPC basis but monetize email data on CPM model
• Send over 18M emails per day
• Run over 120 different advertising campaigns per week in UK, Spain, & Italy
• Test up to 40 new campaigns per week
• Generate more than 10,000 clicks per day
• Work with 100 different lists – with consent to mail third-party offers
• Member of the DMA
Introduction
70% of companies surveyed ranked email marketing as providing "excellent" or "good" ROI
Almost 40% of companies describe
their strategy for optimising email
marketing for mobile as “non-existent”
50% of companies don’t know how much email sent is read on mobile
eConsultancy Email Marketing Census 2012
Tesco Kitchens
Aim - To promote their kitchen installation service, driving leads for both brochure requests and design visits
Payment Model - Cost per lead
Target Audience - Homeowners, 30 plus
Tesco Kitchens – Creative Design
First Design
•50% of your audience will look at the email without images
•Knowledge of brand/offering
•Call to action above the fold
•Clear to the point messaging
Second Design• More informative• Choice of brochure/Design visit
targets different touch points in the consumer journey
• Free must be an image or use complimentary
• Call to action stands out• low ratio of text to image area
gives you a spam score of 0.9
Tesco Kitchens – Creative Design
• Tesco changed their strategy and wanted to focus purely on design visits
• Initial creative delivered 50% design visit leads & 50% brochure requests
• New designed changed this to a 85% design visit 15% brochure request split
Tesco Kitchens – Creative Design
Opens by Device - 2011 Opens by Device – 2012
MobilePC/Laptop
MobilePC/Laptop
Tesco Kitchens – Importance of Mobile
Tesco Kitchens – Importance of Mobile
• Clicks haven’t seen the same rate of year-on-year growth as opens• Silverpop claimed in their recent white paper that users
increasingly appear to open emails on their mobile device & then engage with them again on their desktop/laptop – with each opener viewing a message an av. 1.71 times
• In fact very few users open a message on more than one device – Litmus claim as little as 3%
• The biggest challenge in driving interaction via mobile is designing creatives make it hard for users to interact with the message
• Despite the increasing number of people opening via mobile the recent eConsultancy Email Census shows that almost 40% of companies do not have a mobile optimisation strategy in place
Call to action – large & clear
Scale – ideally no more than 320-500 px wide
Layout – single column templates are more
mobile friendly
Short, concise messaging
Avoid javascript etc which is not supported
by mobile devices
Font Size – should be slightly larger than
standard – 14px body/22 px headline
Tesco Kitchens – Sending Strategy
Sending Strategy
With a new brand it essential to retarget people who have expressed an interest with a
consistent and relevant message
Initial Send: Homeowners
Retargeting: Opens/Clicks
Retargeting: Inactive users
Tesco Kitchens – Frequency/Reach
Send1 Send2 Send3 Send40
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
1000000
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Total SenteCPM
Tesco Kitchens – Analysing Results
•Indicates the strength of the subject line & data selection
Open Rate•Re
move variables such as delivery & open rates
Net CTR
•Demonstrates the response to messaging & content
CTR
•Shows the strength of the conversion process, can be skewed by high clicking data
EPC
•Key measure for email success – takes into account impact of all factors across the data
eCPM
Results
• In Q1 2012 we delivered:– 23,426 clicks– 1,762 design visits– 1,362 brochure requests
• 11% Dupe rate across whole program• 77% of appointments generated via email
Tesco Kitchens – Analysing Results
Matalan
Aim - To increase awareness of the brand and drive sales for their 50% off sale
Payment Model – Hybrid: Cost per Click + Cost Per Action
Target Audience - Female, 20 to 60years, low to mid salary
Matalan – Creating a Strong Offer
Merchant View
Your Brand
Strong Offer
High Volume of ClicksUnique
AudienceIncremental
SalesBrand
Presence
Matalan – Creating a Strong Offer
Strong Offer
Good eCPM
High Volume Sends
Premium Data
Highly Active Data
Affiliate View
Matalan – The Importance of the Offer
Subject Line
• Irresistible Christmas treats from Monsoon
• 25 percent off until Sunday – hurry
• Reiss Sale. Up to 50 percent off
Open Rate
• 2.36%
• 7.16%
• 17.73%
Matalan – The Importance of the Offer
Strength of the Incentive vs. Exclusive
Subject Line Open Rate Click Through Rate
Exclusive 10 percent off at Ann Summers until the 31st May
5.33% 18.83%
Hurry, Up 80% off in Ann Summers Sale 9.01% 27.46%
N.B. – For some verticals such as travel an exclusive voucher is beneficial
Matalan - Testing
Test SendsPure CPA
Send Size: 29,497
Open Rate: 11.09%
CTR: 11.39%
ECPM Index: 35% below av. for retail vertical
CPA + CPC
Send Size: 29,562
Open Rate: 10.98%
CTR: 29.19%
ECPM Index: 75% above av. for retail vertical
Matalan – Subject Lines
Importance of the subject line
Phase 8 – Subject Lines Open Rate
Because we missed you! 5.64%
A treat for our friends and family 5.17%
20 percent off everything 6.17%
One week – 20 percent off 3.88%
Other factors to test:
Brand: Average uplift in ECPM of 34%Time: Average uplift in ECPM of 196%
Personalisation: Average uplift in ECPM of 119%
Matalan – Subject Lines• Using the right subject line can
have a huge impact on performance
• Mailer Mailer recently published a report detailing open rates by subject line
• However, our experience shows shorter subject lines can have a significantly lower CTR
• Ultimately, the best subject lines convey the offer in concise & compelling manner
1-15 16-27 28-39 40-50 51+0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
O/R by Subject Line Length
Open Rate
Subject Lines to AvoidThe obvious...
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Subject LinesDO
Keep your subject lines short
Use company or brand names relevant to the offer
Use features & benefits of the product
Give customers a sense of urgency
DON’T
Overuse exclamation marks!!!
USE CAPITALS FOR EVERY WORD
Forget to tell the customer the point of the emailTrick the customer into opening the email – subject lines needs to be relevant to the email content
Matalan – Customer Journey
•Big call to action
• Strong Sales message
• Navigation to specific areas of the site
•Details of delivery and returns
•Indication of prices
•Social Media
Matalan – Customer JourneyCustomer Journey
Matalan - Targeting
•Source
•Demographic Information
Data Profile
•Analysis of previous opens/clicks/sales
•Seasonal trends
Past Behaviour
•Test to most suitable data first
•Identify similar data & test again
Testing
Matalan - Targeting
Demographic Targeting• Taking information you know about the data to identify
the users most likely to convert• Age/Sex/Location etc
Behavioural targeting • Looking at past activity and sending similar/related
offers • E.g. sending pet insurance offers to users who
responded to a cat food campaign
Matalan - Targeting
Demographic Behavioural0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
OpensCTRConversions
Matalan
Results:
Sent Open Rate CTR NCTR
455,546 7.23% 32.44% 1.70%
• 125% more clicks than any other publisher during the "main period of promotion". • Same click volume as another top retail best true content publisher.•30% of orders came in after a 7 day lag• Latest order came 28.77 days after the first click (cookie only tracked 30 days)
Drink Aware
Aim - To raise awareness and encourage people to sign up to DrinkAware.co.uk to monitor their alcohol intake
Payment Model – CPM
Target Audience – Over 18’s
Drink Aware – User Journey
Subject Line: How many calories are in your drink? Find out with MyDrinkaware
• Relevant Incentive
• Raising awareness and overall marketing strategy
• No CTA above fold = Clickable
Drink Aware – User JourneyLanding Page
Drink Aware – Sending Strategy
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
OpensClicksCTR
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
WebmailDesktopMobile
Drink Aware – Sending Strategy
Drink Aware - RetargetingRetargeting the Openers
Capture the data
Maintain Familiarity
Do not over mail
Mail once a week, if you don't get a response keep halving the sendsInitial Mailing
2nd Mail – 1 week later
3rd Mail – 2 weeks later
4th Mail – 1 month later
5th Mail – 2 months later
6th Mail – 3 months later
Drink Aware - Creative
V
Drink Aware
Results:
Creative Open Rate CTR
Original Creative
36.33% 3.49%
Redesigned Creative
27.95% 5.41%
Analysis• Stronger open rates for the
initial send due to frequency of mailing
• Clearer call to action & layout saw CTR increase by 55%
• Overall performance increased by 19%
Optimisation
•Informs your future activity for each listCampaign Analysis
•Typically 15-20% of your list will respond on a regular basis•This group will contribute 80% of your revenue80/20•Maintain a balance between profit & sustaining the offer/data•Over mailing will increase unsubs, damage deliverability & reduce long-term profitProfit/Sustainability
•Create groups based on what users have interacted with•This can increase response rates by up to 70%Behavioural Groups
•Tailor your sending strategy based on user behaviour:•New subject lines to non-openers•New creative/offer for non-clickers
Mailing Strategy by Group
Summary
Test Everything
Always consider mobile in your strategy
Analyse performance & consider all metrics
Segment & optimise your data as often as possible