Email; Not Dead!

comScore.com’s report, “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review,” showed a decline in time spent with web-based email among all US internet users under 55 years old.

However, this trend should not be too much of a surprise. According to research from Merkel, “87% of internet users checked personal email daily in 2010, a number that has changed little since 2007. Among those with a separate email account for commercial email, 60% checked daily, down just one percentage point from 2008.”

Contrary to popular belief, social media usage is not taking away from email usage. Social media users are actually more likely than other internet users to check their email four or more times a day. Please review the chart below for more details.

The report also indicates that mobile access is encouraging email users to check more often. More than half of those surveyed who had an internet-enabled phone checked their personal email using the phone.

Be sure to read the report from comScore above, and continue to read the KobeMail blog, in order to keep up with email marketing trends.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth

Editor: Peter Schirripa

Need More Subscribers?

The sign-up process for your potential customers is the first step in creating a relationship with them. You can, and should, do more than just have a sign-up form on your website. From our experiences at KobeMail, here are a few suggestions on how to successfully increase your sign ups:

1. Just because people land on your site does not ensure that they will sign up for your email newsletter. Even if they begin to fill out the form, often times the potential subscriber will not finish the form. If you want them to eventually buy from you, having them sign up for your email newsletter is the first step. Your sign up form needs to be clear, easy, and visible.

2. Give your potential subscribers something to look forward to. Make sure that the future value is presented clearly. Will you be sending coupons? Will your subscribers get inside information that non-subscribers won’t? The more enticing the reason to sign up is, the more likely you are to gain new subscribers.

3. Be sure to ask for enough information without asking for too much. Each additional field you add on your sign up form is one step closer to losing the subscriber. Decide ahead of time exactly what information you need, and be sure not to ask for more. Ask yourself this question: would you want to fill out all of the allotted information? If the answer is no, it will surely be a no to everyone else be smart here.

4. A great way to increase your sign ups is to gain the trust of your consumers. You can do this by justifying ahead of time why you’re asking for their personal information. For example, if you need their home phone number, tell them WHY you need it, and if you don’t need it, don’t ask them for it. Being up front with your customers will allow them to trust you and increase your chances of making the sale.

In addition to these steps, you want to make sure that your sign up form is visually appealing. Here is a site that offers unique and easy sign-up form ideas.

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

"Win Back" - Improve ROI

Do you want to see more from your email marketing campaign? At KobeMail, we have helped clients in many different ways to improve ROI based on testing and tweaking their campaign strategies. As you may know, the new engagement metrics, (i.e. in-box placement and deliver-ability), are being practiced by three major ISP’s – Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. Opens and CTRs from users are monitored and engagement has now become an indicator of reputation of a sender.

Want to see an increased ROI? Begin improving your online reputation and start segmenting out your user base, especially if this is something you haven’t done before. By segmenting your lists I mean breaking out engagers vs. the non-engagers. Question now becomes who do I consider non-engagers? Are these the users that have been in the system for a long time but has not purchased? Or users that have purchased but have not purchased anything since a certain period? Are they users that haven’t opened or responded to your emails in a number of days as defined by you – 60 days? 90 days? 365 days?.

Once you define the buckets that you have placed your user base, you have to now think of your email strategy – to up-sell the existing and convert the non-engaging.
You might want to try a few of the strategies we have implemented with our clients that have resulted in positive for your next campaign.

• Target subscribers who have not opened-offer them a creative with a compelling call to action. 50% discounts, free membership for a year, $20 coupon for a purchase of over $100, etc.

• Reach out to users who have clicked in past but did not buy anything and send them a follow up email encouraging them to make a purchase with the same compelling action in mind
• Send out a message to users who have made a purchase only once with a call to action or incentive for them to purchase again
• Respect your subscribers and encourage them to interact
• Be honest and straight forward about the offer in the subject line (use a call to action)
• Be informative – keep the message and tone in line with your brand
• Test a few alternative subject lines or messages – this is very important- it gives you a big picture of what works best

You leave a lot of revenue left on the table when you do not attempt to win back former subscribers of your email messages. Winning back even a small percentage of users can help you generate additional revenue in future so be sure to clean up your lists and reach out to your users In hopes of increasing your ROI.

Author: Roopal Rawani
Editor: Peter Schirripa & Yasifur Rahman

A/B Split Testing

We spoke a little bit about A/B split testing on our “Learn to Love Testing” post last January, but it’s such an important and useful testing tool, we thought we’d give you a little more information. To refresh your memories, an A/B split test is when you take two or more versions of a campaign and send them to one database of users. The list is split evenly according to the number of campaigns you are sending and each equal portion of the list gets a different creative. Now, you can also choose to keep the creatives the same and only change the subject lines or from names. There is a lot of insight that the A/B split test offers.

You can move your “Refer a Friend” link from the bottom of the creative to the top, or place an important link in a new location. You can play around with images, subject lines, content, etc-there are an infinite number of possibilities this testing type allows.

Generally, the 1st split will be your control split – a creative or subject line you’ve been using for a while, for example. The number of other splits you choose to use are your tests splits. Using this type of testing allows you to directly compare the performance of one campaign against another. Sending parallel tests rather than sequential tests allows you to control the outside factors, such as what time the campaigns go out. Sending time will not pose an issue because the campaigns will all be sent at the exact same time, so the test results will be more accurate and easier to compare.

At KobeMail, we suggest keeping the number of changes per split to a minimum in order to get the maximum amount of information from your campaign performance data. Changing too many aspects on one creative will make it difficult to truly understand which change triggered the best performance rates. A/B split testing is a process we have implemented as part of our application at KobeMail, with an allowance of 8 splits per campaign. At no additional charge, we can set up A/B spilt testing campaigns for you to help optimize and analyze your performance.

The versatility A/B split testing allows is a great way to determine what your user base responds best to. Sending more targeted and better optimized campaigns can increase your conversions and ROI, so why not give it a shot? You’ve got nothing to lose.

You can contact us at (888) 723-8090 and we’ll be happy to help you set up an A/B split testing.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth

Editor: Peter Schirripa, Yasifur Rahman

Landing Pages

While reaching the inbox of subscribers is the ultimate goal of email marketers, supplying them with an appropriate landing page is important as well. From our experience here at KobeMail, we have seen a lot of email marketers do everything right with the exception of supplying their users with an ideal landing page.
Here are a few examples of common landing page mistakes that some marketers make:

1. Landing pages that do not actually work. You need to test your landing page in every browser, and test them often! We have come across some landing pages that work one day and then do not work the next. Testing and re-testing is a must in email marketing.

2. Landing pages that do not match the ads in your creative. Readers will likely abandon the page that they are redirected to if it seems very different from the products or services that are shown or described within the content of your email. It’s important to remain consistent across all platforms of email marketing.

3. Landing pages that break promises. If within the content of your email you mention a promotion that the reader will receive by clicking a link, you need to actually offer that promotion. We have seen issues in the past where readers will click the redirect link and end up with a mixed message, causing them to immediately exit out of your landing page and maybe even unsubscribe from your mailings altogether.

4. Calls to “inaction.” Assuming that your user knows what to do is not going to work. You need to tell them and tell them clearly. You must create visual “call to action” buttons. You can get a free call to action button generator here.

5. Poorly created landing pages. Making sure they work is one thing, but making sure that they are clean and engaging is another. Be sure not to have a cluttered page with too much information. You should try different copy and test out which receives a better response. You want to make sure that your landing page is engaging yet to the point.

Landing pages are primarily where a conversion takes place. In order to ensure a conversion, you must have an ideal landing page for your subscribers to be redirected to. Try different content changes and test them all to find what works best and what your users respond best to. Make sure that your link works and that the landing page has an immediate call to action. Work with your ESP, like KobeMail, to make changes to your campaign to have a more effective landing page.

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

Side Advice: How to correctly use Twitter

Here at KobeMail, we love offering our readers insightful advice on how to benefit from email marketing’s best practices. Considering that we constantly preach the necessity of combining social media with email marketing, we felt it was necessary to offer insight on how to successfully market via social media platforms, in this case, Twitter.

Here are a few tips to take into account when trying to expand the reach of your message through Twitter:

Make sure to shorten your URLs. Since you only have 140 characters to post, you want to make sure your link (whether to your blog or company website) does not account for most of your available space. Use a third party source such as bit.ly or tinyurl to shorten your links.

Take advantage of reTweets. There are two ways to retweet; you can either type RT@(name) or use the retweet button on Twitter. The company whose message that you retweeted will get notified of the action, which will most likely build a stronger bond between the two of you.

Check your direct messages, better known as DMs. although the majority of direct messages end up being spam, you want to make sure that you regularly check DMs so you do not miss anything important. Direct messages have a similar role to email, and represents an easy way for a client or company to reach out to you, and vice versa.

Separate the people or companies that you follow into lists. This is a simple way to segment the information posted by companies or people that you follow into specific groups, based on their industry or interest. In addition, this may clean up your newsfeed and separate information into easy to find locations.

Use an outside application that makes using twitter much easier. What I use is an application called Tweetdeck. This is a centralized application that serves as a desktop client. It makes tweeting much easier and highly customizable.

Twitter, like all other social media applications, is extremely easy to use yet fairly difficult to fully understand. While almost every company has a twitter account, most are either not taking full advantage or making simple mistakes. Follow the aforementioned tips, and follow us @kobemail, for more information on how to lead a successful marketing campaign!

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth