UK Consumers Place Confidence in Online Marketplace

During this holiday season, you should pay close attention to users in the UK. Over the past few years, these users have developed a much higher dependency on the World Wide Web than most others. According to recent research done by eMarketer, more than 44 million people are online in the UK, with 70% of homes using a broadband connection. In fact, mobile web users were on the rise as well, with roughly 31% of users confirming they used a mobile device to connect to the internet; compared to 2009, this was an increase of 8%.

The increase of online confidence can be attributed to many factors; personal preference, government policy, and advancements in technology. Nonetheless, numbers clearly show that UK users are purchasing much more online in 2010 than in previous years.

Males are far more likely to access the web using a mobile devise than females. In a study done by eMarketer, users were divided into 3 categories: mobile phone, handheld computer, and none of the above. The number of males was increasingly higher in each category excluding the ‘none of the above’ category (females were at 60%, while males ranked in at 48%).

With all this traffic, UK users can be a very lucrative demographic for online establishments, especially during the always busy holiday season.

In the months leading up to the holiday season, UK consumers have been spending more and more each year. According to Capgemini, in August, gift sales increased 8% year to year, while September saw an increase of 32%. Marketers are launching campaigns months in advance in response to the growing trend.

Internet Retailer reports show all online sectors reported an increase in growth of up to 10%, except home and garden which reported a decrease in 1%. Capgemini and IMRG are predicting online sales in the 4^th quarter of 2010 will total $27.37 billion, up 16% from $23.60 billion in 2009.

If you have lists designated for UK individuals only, try to engage and convert these users in different ways than others. Find out how these users are viewing their emails, and what products/services they are more likely to purchase. A better understanding of these already profitable emails will bolster the chance for conversion.

UK consumers have a very high confidence in purchasing online. With this taken into account, you must try to segment and send properly. Males and females are accessing the internet through different mediums – take advantage of this knowledge. If you know that males are accessing the internet through mobile devices at a much higher rate than women, segment these users and send them a separate email that may be simpler when viewed on a mobile device. You should target users as individuals, not as a whole.

Author: Anthony Lee

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth, Peter Schirripa

3 Quick Tips on Bulking Up Your Lists

As we all know, a growing email list is key in this business, but blindly focusing on list growth is a dangerous game to play. Even before you get to work on bulking up your mailing lists, take some time to brush up on your acquisition processes. Doing so will help you build a good reputation with your subscribers and prospective subscribers as a fair, customer-oriented business. Sounds pretty good, huh? Here are a couple ways to grow your list with best practices in mind.

1. List growth through opt-ins: This may seem obvious, but to some it isn't. Avoid renting or buying your lists because the users on those lists aren't true opt-ins and will likely unsubscribe or turn into a spam complaint if they didn't manually and intentionally sign up for your mailing list. Think about it... what would you do with a seemingly random newsletter from some company in your inbox? Delete it or mark it as spam. Fill your list with permission-based opt-ins from your site, an advertisement or special offer and hopefully watch your ROI increase.

2. RAF: Viral, or "Refer A Friend," links in mailings are an amazing and easy way to bulk up your lists and it takes next to no effort on your side! Just include a link somewhere in your mailing where users can send their friends an invitation to join your mailing list. People respond really favorably when something has been suggested to them by a friend... take advantage of this mentality and solicit the help of friends everywhere!

3. Advertisements: There are a couple ways you can utilize advertising to grow your lists. You can strike a deal with your partners where they advertise your brand/product on their site or in their mailings and provide a link to your newsletter signup to their lists and vice versa. You could also use social networking for this. I wrote pretty extensively on this not too long ago so I’ll spare you reading the details a second time :-). The process is similar to advertising with partners, only you can do this all on your own – sign up for a social networking site and start networking.

Be up front with your prospective subscribers and be respectful of their personal information and you should see an increase not only in list volume, but ROI, opens and all that good stuff. And don't forget to take care of the subscribers you already have!

Author: Courtney Dillsworth
Co-Editors: Roopal Rawani and Carolina Bonaparte

Give a little TLC to your users this year

Every day you observe new companies emerging in your vertical. The birth of these competitors means a continuous increase in the choices for your clients – making it harder for you to retain your customer base. We already know consumers are fickle and are looking for the next best deal… so, how do you convert those fickle consumers into active, loyal and vocal supporters of your products and services?

Let’s try to reward these users for their support and loyalty.

Coupons - Who doesn’t love coupons? Once a month, try sending out a communication with a coupon or promotion. These can be sent to users who have purchased already, as a reward and incentive to purchase again OR, you can send coupons to those who haven’t made purchases yet as a way to entice them into buying. It’s also a really great way to get rid of that aging inventory. Doing this every now and then will definitely be noticed by your consumers and it’ll prompt them to anticipate your mailings because just maybe they’ll have a coupon in them. Getting a coupon is like getting a gift in your email. They’re rewarding, they’re exciting, they’re useful. Working with your readers to help save them money will build their trust in you as a fair, customer-focused business. You can also make these coupons a friends and family affair where they can pass on the discounts to the entire family – the result is a viral effect and an increase in traffic to your site.

Membership rewards programs are really great too. I’ll skip the boring step-by-step process, as we all know how these work. What’s important here are how these rewards programs make your consumers feel. For example, I recently signed up for a promotion and I just got an email saying I’ve been given special membership status now and that my card is on the way to me. The promotion isn’t huge, but it made me really excited to buy my next product from this provider. A reward like this is really gratifying when day after day, you’re making purchases everywhere. Think about it – not everyone has rewards programs, but everyone sells something. Coming up with a rewards program for your customers is an amazing way to allow you to stand out and take a step above your competitors, while simultaneously rewarding your consumer-base and giving them every reason to purchase your product or use your service or visit your website again.

Another promotional tactic you can try out is offering your readers virtual money/gift certificates for each referral they give. For example, for every five (5) friends they forward your email to, they get $10 off their next purchase or if they tell X amount of people they get X amount in return if their friends signup.

It’s not only important to reward your clients for their business, but it’s important to listen to what they have to say about you. Send out a customer review survey and attach a promo to it i.e. if they fill out your short, concise survey, they get a coupon in return. Avoid lengthy surveys that take 30 minutes to fill out. Come up with a couple of easy to answer questions (multiple choice) that will help you directly improve your product line, your mailings, and your customer service or for that matter anything you need an insight into.

It’s so important to give your consumers exactly what they want… especially with all the competition out there. Listening to the complaints or compliments or concerns of your users and actually doing something about the feedback you receive, is going to make your consumers feel that their voice has been heard and they have made a difference. Your business practices can always improve and what feedback is more valuable than that of the people who are utilizing your business? Making yourself available for comments or criticism lets your customers know that you are there for THEM. They’ll feel important and will be inclined to choose your product over the other guy’s… the guy who didn’t ask their opinion. You can try making surveys on SurveyMonkey and it’s free, so there’s no excuse not to!

Basically, take care of your customers and they will take care of you. Give them exclusive offers to make them feel special and make them want to continue doing business with you.

Author: Carolina Bonaparte
Co-Editors: Courtney Dillsworth & Roopal Sharma

Learn to Love Testing

We all know how important it is to make the most of the money we've got and spend it wisely. This being said, you may not think that this is the right time to test out new creatives to see what works best for you and your readers. Testing new creatives is the first step you take towards improving your email marketing skills and create more productive campaigns. Ultimately, this should (hopefully!!) increase your revenue - and the prospect of that alone should be enough to persuade you that testing is undoubtedly very, very important.

Where do I get started? First let's identify and set your goals - do you want to increase performance? If yes, then which aspect of it? Without a doubt, clicks should be your primary focus (of course, hopefully you're using the right ESP to get them delivered). Understand the needs of your business and the needs of your clients. Recession or no recession, your readers don't have a handful of free hours during the day to read emails with a lot of content. Try to keep your content short and to the point.

A/B split campaigns are a great way to test the effectiveness of one campaign against another. Here's how you do it -

- Ensure you've got a list big enough to evenly split for testing and to get a realistic picture of which campaign had a better performance

- Create 2-3 (or more) versions of the same creative/offer using different verbiage, or images (I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'll say it again -- while creating campaigns don't forget the 40% to 60% text to html ratio)

- Choose the subject lines next - keep in mind that your subject line is the identifier of your mailing. It's the thing that prompts readers to open or not open your email

- Make sure to run Delivery Testing prior to sending out the campaign. This will help you understand any flags that rendering or delivery may cause prior to scheduling the mailing. If you need further clarification, please feel free to contact us at (888) 732-8090 and we'll be happy to assist you in understanding the process

Another very effective tool for measuring and testing your creatives is sending an Nth sampling campaign. It allows you to extract a small sample of users from your overall list and allows you to define at what interval/position you want the selection to be. For example, a 10th name selection from a 100 user list will bring back 10 users for your testing. KobeMail allows you to create not only Nth sampling campaigns, but a combination of A/B split testing as well. Once you identify the performing subject line and creative, a follow up campaign can be sent to the rest of the users (excluding the 10 users that have already seen the creative).

After the campaign has been successfully deployed, analyze and compare the reporting for the different splits. You should not only measure the outcome of the split campaign, but compare the reporting with that of the previous campaign. KobeMail clients can easily do a campaign comparison report along with purchase trackng (if purchase tracking is set up). You should be looking at the following for your campaigns:

- Opens - this will give you an idea of which subject line/from name works better. Although, you should limit your deduction on this, as an open is dependent on whether the user downloaded images. In text only campaigns, this is close to impossible to determine unless the user clicks a URL in the email

- Clicks - this will give you a better understanding of the content your readers respond more favorably to. Refer to a previous blog post on call to actions for more info

- Compare the conversion rates from previous campaigns you sent out for the same product/offer - see which campaign had a better performance

- Check to see if a certain campaign increased traffic to your website

- Look at the percentage of received mailings - did one campaign seem to get blocked more? Did it have more images or a risky subject line?

- If you're selling a product/service and have purchase tracking, compare the revenue across the campaigns. Did any particular offer work better than another? Did placing a certain link at the top or bottom of your creative generate better revenue? Did readers buy more when you placed links on the left versus the right?

Comparing the results of test campaigns will help you better understand your reader base and better understand the changes that could be beneficial to your future mailings.

Author: Roopal Sharma
Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

Harnessing the Power of Social Networking Sites

You might've noticed the recent trend in social networking sites rocketing out of control. These kinds of sites have definitely influenced the way email marketers are thinking - if it hasn't for you yet, I'm sure it will in the very near future. They houses on their databases all the info email marketers need to perfect creatives and speak directly to consumers in a very relevant way. You may be wondering how to make social networking sites work for you... luckily there's a very easy answer to this question and it lies in social networking sites themselves. I've got some ideas you can use to make Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and any other social networking site work to your advantage.

If your business is resisting getting sucked into the social networking vortex that has taken over the internet recently, it's time to quit resisting. You should take the plunge and give into social networking, because it holds the key to so much valuable info from your consumers - for free! Here are a few suggestions/examples you can use on a couple of the leading social networking sites:

1. Facebook: If your product is a clothing brand or manufacturer, create a Facebook application that users can download, where they can dress a virtual person in your brand's clothing. This is both entertaining and a great advertisement. Users can share the application with their friends, exactly the way a viral solution works. Your brand instantly becomes associated with fun and entertainment and is accessible to more people than you probably ever dreamed of!
   
   


2. MySpace: If your company deals in music, for example, create a MySpace page linked in your creatives where users can listen to sample songs from the artists you represent. You can create bios for your artists, post pictures, give facts, etc. Doing this not only puts your brand in the middle of a huge pool of users, it also makes your brand seem more user-friendly - more relatable.



3. Twitter: This is probably the most convenient of the social networking sites. Just post a couple times a day with news, or fun facts or promos your company is offering. This should generate followers, who will (hopefully!) subscribe to your newsletters or buy your product. Once again, your company has been instantly exposed to millions of viewers, consumers, etc.

The best part of social networking sites is that there are no spam complaints (haha) - all joking aside, though, becoming a part of these social networking sites really allows you to connect with your readers on a more intimate level. Create profiles for your brand and put links to them in your creatives. Maybe send out a mailing specifically announcing your new profiles on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter to spark interest and begin generating followers/fans/friends. From here you can research exactly what interests your readers; you can create polls about mailing topics, or what promos your readers like best, etc. You can use the info you get from these social networking sites to really fine tune creatives and increase your opt-ins.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth

Happy New Year

Another successful year at KobeMail. Thanking and wishing all my clients and readers a HAPPY & PROSPEROUS 2010 from the KobeMail Team.

Regards,
Yasifur

Increase your email's performance during the holidays

This is the time of year when your users are inundated with emails. Black Friday emails, Thanksgiving discounts, Christmas offers... not to mention the notorious increase in activity from all the spammers sitting around, hoping for a click to make a buck. The question now becomes, how do you have your users look out for your email while sifting through thousands of other offers/promos?

As I had mentioned in my last post, subject lines and building anticipation or including a call to action for your next mailing are some important tools you can use to increase the performance of your email. With all the expenses, preparing for holiday parties, and shopping, your users are more stressed than usual. They don't need the additional stress of going through hundreds of the same offers - buy now, use this coupon and save, etc. You need to come up with a way to better understand your users and differentiate yourself from all the other companies sending emails. Pushing your users over and over or sending the same email with the same promo/offer will get your mailings deleted. You can differentiate yourself by offering informative, effective, non-pushy subject lines - become a friendly voice to your users.

Once you've got the reader's attention, you've already won 90% of the battle. Next you need to monetize on the attention you've got from your readers. One way is to stretch their interest from one email to the next. Here are a few strategies you can try:

- Include an effective call to action, such as, "Look out for a blow out sale happening two days before Black Friday. Stocks are limited." Maybe mention that this promotion isn't for everyone - the users were selected via a randomized process. This will create a sense of exclusivity and increase anticipation for the next mailing to come because you have allowed the reader to believe he/she is the only one privy to this information. It instantly becomes more valuable.

- Send a follow-up campaign to non-opens, or send a special offer to clickers. Historically, this has worked well, but sending test emails before the start of the holiday season is the only way to be sure of what will work for your mailing list.

- Limited Time Offers are another effective way to increase opens, clicks and revenue. Allow your readers a month or 6 weeks to use a promotion, rather than 24 hours or 3 days or something. It's advisable to avoid One Time Offers, because they come across as pushy and forceful - they send a message of urgency, which is the last thing your users need this time of the year.

It's important around the holidays not to push sales too hard. Stress levels are at an all time high and people are looking for that one company to give them a break and not force the sale out of them. This is the time when you make or break user loyalty. Be a friend to them and you will reap the returns.

Co-Author: Courtney Dillsworth & Roopal Sharma