Acquisition or Retention

When most people see the term 'email marketing', they think of opt-in email campaigns. You know, where you buy a product and click on the 'send me periodic mailings with news of related products and services from Brownlow's Online Emporium'. Then once a month you get a short email extolling the virtues of the new Brownlow XF7, and inviting you to 'sign-up for a free trial'. There are whole books on email marketing which only deal with this idea of email campaigns.

That's fine, of course, and this kind of email marketing has established itself as an effective direct marketing technique. The problem is when you apply this perception of email marketing to the other ways in which you might communicate with customers via email.

This is often the case with email newsletters. Many websites and businesses don't understand that email campaigns focus on acquisition, while email newsletters focus on retention.

Email campaigns seek to get the recipient to take an immediate action. The design and writing funnels the reader through a persuasive process which ends with a sale. And by sale, I don't just mean purchases, but also sign-ups, downloads, registrations, and other kinds of actions.

The keyword here is immediate. Email campaigns are generally short-term in nature (unless part of a sequenced campaign). If the recipient doesn't respond more or less immediately to the offer, then chances are that the value of the email is lost. It has little long-term impact or influence on the recipient.

Email newsletters on the other hand are about building long-term relationships. They may, of course, include calls to action, but their primary goal is to strengthen the relationship between the customer or prospect and the publishing entity.

The objective is usually to induce actions in and over the long-term. Email newsletters aim to make the recipient of a newsletter much more likely at some time in the future to take the kind of actions ultimately desired by the publisher, and take them again and again if possible (e.g. repeat purchases). Newsletters build long-term impact and influence.

Campaigns focus on persuasion; newsletters on trust and loyalty. Campaigns look for immediate returns; newsletters for long-term benefits. Campaigns make an offer; newsletters offer value.

Confusing the two leads to all sorts of problems. Subscribers expecting an email newsletters often find themselves receiving one-off email campaigns. Since their expectations aren't met, the response is low and unsubscribes high. The publisher then rejects the idea of a newsletter because 'it doesn't work'.

When you see companies bad-mouthing the email newsletter concept, it's nearly always because what they've actually been doing is selling customers on the idea of a newsletter, and delivering a promotion instead. Instead of giving subscribers valuable, trust-building content, free of overt sales pressure, they've been delivering advertisements.

It's expectations that are key here. It's not the idea of sending commercial messages that's wrong, just the failure to meet the readership's expectations. Sending email campaigns to newsletter subscribers is much less effective then sending newsletters to newsletter subscribers, or sending promotional mails to those who opted in specifically for such campaigns.

So if you're planning regular mailings to customers or prospects, make sure you understand the distinction and design your mails (and the promotion of your list) accordingly. It's not a question of one form of email marketing being better than the other, just a question of meeting and beating the expectations of your subscribers.

Mark Brownlow is an email publishing expert and author of the Keeping the Key Report, a detailed guide on how to create effective email newsletters.

"Your brand is a promise to your clients... a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability." - Jason Hartman

Self-made millionaire and Personal Branding™ guru, Jason Hartman, sees today’s four tips - quality, consistency, competency and reliability - as essential to your brand’s personality. Here, we explore them with relevance to the online arena and help you answer: What is the personality of your brand? Is your e-newsletter delivering on its promise?

These follow our first three tips on brand alignment, unique style and attention to detail.

Quality
What is quality communication or service? And how does this relate to your e-newsletter?

Imagine entering your favourite café. You’re greeted warmly by your first name, some friendly conversation and your regular order of a long black. That is quality service.

In your e-newsletter this same service can be provided by personalisation. Greet your reader by his first name, format the content so his favourite topics come first and make offers that match his interests and needs. It’s warm, it’s personal and it’s relevant. This is quality.

Do you do this with your e-newsletter?

Consistency
What does consistency of service provide for your business?

Let's say your favourite café is part of a quality franchise. Upon entering another café in the chain, you’ll be greeted with the same décor and service. You’ll know what to expect on the menu and where the counter is. You’ll be served your long black in the same way.

If your service is consistently above par, customers come to expect it. And each time you fulfil their expectations your brand values are reinforced.

An e-newsletter's consistency comes from its visual presentation, ease-of-use and content quality. Changing it every second issue erodes your brand, and your company will appear scatty. Content should also follow a regular format and style. Readers are turned off if they get inconsistent quality.

Sure, you can refresh the way your e-newsletter looks occasionally. But first, establish a sense of consistency. Readers should know where to find regular information such as articles, resources, subscription management and where to forward your e-newsletter to a friend. Using a template will help.

Whenever you change your template, make sure you tell the reader why, and how this will benefit them. The best way to do this is to survey your readers before doing any layout changes, then let them know when to expect an upgraded version of your e-newsletter.

Competency
Competency is where most companies fall short with their e-newsletter. According to Quris survey, about 60 per cent of email readers have severed relationships with their suppliers after experiencing bad email practice.

A bad experience from the reader's viewpoint comes from bad email delivery systems. For instance receiving a 3MB PDF that crashes their computers, subscription management that’s clunky or even non-existent, no choice between text and HTML versions or personalisation attempts that miss the mark.

How about my own experience. I receive a regular spam mail that calls me "None". I presume that’s because they don't know my name or just don’t really care what my name is. It gets worse. "Dear None”, they write, “Are you feeling like a hairy gorilla?" Well, not only have they got my name wrong, they also don’t know that I am not hairy at all!

Like most readers, I react angrily to such mistakes. Have you suffered any bad email experiences? How do you feel towards the sender? Does your e-newsletter pass this competency test?

Implementing the following can help: small file size, professional delivery software, provision of both text and html formats, automated un-subscription functions and foolproof personalisation. The list goes on but these are among the most important considerations.

Reliability
This simply means doing what you said you’d do. Presumably you have a good opt-in practice. Your e-newsletter promises to deliver information that is valuable to your readers. At opt-in you promised regular delivery.

If you fail to deliver information that you promised, or skip an issue or two due to heavy workload, this flags your unreliability. Unfortunately all bad experiences are contributed to your brand.

Stick to your promise and deliver on it. It is timely content that your readers want so make sure the information you provide is accurate, reliable and on schedule.

In Summary Quality, consistency, competency and reliability are all important considerations when brand building. Your e-newsletter is an important part of this exercise. Use it wisely to enhance, not damage, your brand personality by deliver consistently on your brand promise.

How to compensate for false negatives in this crucial measurement

In recent years the increase in the number of email browsers that block images in HTML email has increased. Email marketers have noted that this caused a drop in the usual open rates by somewhere in the vicinity of 7 or 8%.

Why?
HTML Email software measure open rates through the use of images. Usually a unique invisible 1 pixel by one pixel image is loaded in the email browser whenever a reader opens an email. If the image is not downloaded then there is no open record.

So assuming you are doing nothing to tick people off so that they don't want to read your messages, the drop in open rates that most email marketers are experiencing is a false one, In fact our recent surveys of open rates vs. Click through rates have shown that click through rates are steady while open rates have dropped. But if you want your open rates to be more accurate and you really prefer your readers to download your full email into their mail box. What can you do?

What can you do?
Look at your HTML Email in a browser that blocks images. Is it readable? When your email arrives stripped of its images, ensure that those empty image boxes do not clutter the content. This way your recipient can immediately see your content and decide if they wish to download the images. Email Campaigns and e-newsletters that are very image heavy.

Use content to drive your reader to the download images. In your content promise a graphic that is valuable to the reader. This can be an industry specific graph or a comparison chart or even a cartoon. Of course once images are downloaded the open rate is closer to the truth.

Use article intro’s with “read more” style links that encourage the reader to click through for the balance of the story. Thus opening the e-newsletter in a browser window just as you did a few minutes ago.

Make sure that the imagery enhances the content and that the visuals are appealing. Its all about rewarding preferred behavior.

In the end, its all about content. Write stories that compel readers to add you to their approved senders list. That way your images will always be displayed and your brand reinforced. Your branding and your culture are just a click away, so are your open rates.

Have you ever walked past a restaurant wanting to check out the menu but been scared off by a waiter or waitress touting you to get in?

Sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on it. You know you like the product at first sight, and yet an overly aggressive sales pitch makes you want to run a mile.

Frequently a sales cycle is actually almost complete by the time a customer grants you the opportunity to discuss the product they have interest in.

Think about the restaurant scenario.

If I start looking at menus, I must be hungry. I am qualified.

If I check out your menu, then your restaurant has in some way managed to emit the right values such as good lighting, looks about the right price and the background smell of cooking from the kitchen is great. I am showing interest in your product.

However if you set a person to stand at the front door to tout then I would most likely cross the street. I would never get close enough to smell the cooking or read the menu (your proposition).

Your e-newsletter is that shop front. You are sending information to people that have expressed interest in having a relationship with you. You present yourself appropriately, clean, clear and direct.

The lesson is don't oversell.

By all means stand back and watch the behaviour of your e-newsletter visitor. Observe what they read and understand where they are coming from. This shoud be the cornerstone of your email marketing strategy. Watch, learn and utilise the knowledge. Provide the right content and leave the door open as a clear call to action. Don't shout! Don't sell. Just be there with the right proposition and your customers will thank you with a purchase.

Even the most discerning email marketing manager falls into this trap. Here is the scenario:

You design your e-newsletter, you tie in your brand, and it’s all fancy and super sophisticated using the latest technology. What can go wrong?

Your brand can be hijacked!

Even the big players fall into this trap including one of NSW’s biggest member-based organisations, AMNR (name encrypted to keep you guessing).

Your carefully compiled e-newsletter is sent to someone’s inbox. Because all email is now permission based, the only reason you are allowed to send your e-newsletter is because your client trusts you. But what happens once people start using your e-newsletter and start to follow it out of their inbox and on out to the web? Your hope is that your brand and look and feel is carried on through the rest of their interaction with your e-newsletter.
But hope alone is not a strategy.

Go now to your newsletter or someone else’s.
Click on the unsubscribe link.

Look at the next page carefully. Does it still carry your branding, your URL, your domain name?
Click on subscribe, click on email forwarding…

A recent survey conducted by yours truly found that 65% of e-newsletters (yup an astounding number) lose their branding at this point and present instead the brand of their technology provider.

It's such a shame! Not only do you lose your branding (when you are paying good money) but you are confusing your customers right at the moment they are wanting to trust you the most, just at the moment they are subscribing to your e-newsletter or referring you to friends.

As an e-newsletter reader it looks like they are providing details not to you anymore but a third party.

Shock! Horror!

Perception is everything. I would do a double take and worry about submitting my personal information under these conditions. Wouldn’t you do the same?