The Email Wars

Some of you might be unfamiliar with the fact that at eROI we not only are focused on email marketing but our team works extensively in web development, strategy and idea execution across many areas.

I wanted to share this latest case study from eROI as I personally worked on all of these projects. It has been a 2 year journey from when we started testing what community could mean to where we ended up for Wacom. Along the way we learned so much and continue to learn more each day still. Community can mean so many things. It is not simply building a stand alone community site. In the case of Wacom it was a journey of storytelling, sharing, listening and testing. In the end we did end up with a strong and still growing active community site that is built into the Wacom main North American site, but also ended up being a solid and continued use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hopefully you can gleam some of our learnings from this study and see how you might be able to approach your outreach and conversation efforts.

In the end it all comes down to commitment and non stop engagement by not only the members of the Wacom team but also from those participating in the communities as well.

eROI Case Study: Wacom Community: Mastering the 5 C’s

What goes into building the most engaging and successful online communities? Follow along as we take you through the journey and progression of the communities built by eROI for Wacom Technology Corp. Learn all about how to harness the power of your audience to create a successful online community.

What’s Inside:

The three main goals for almost any brand community

Discovering what your customers really want

Trying new things and learning from what works

Building exponentially with social media-to-community connections

5 C’s – Commitment, Conversation, Conversion, Community & Collaboration

Get the full case study today.

eROI Case Study: Online Strategy for a Successful Product Launch (Get the full study)

To support the launch of the Intuos4, Wacom Technology Corporation worked with eROI to put a new twist on the product launch with an effective integrated online campaign. This case study outlines the integrated online strategy used by Wacom, including results of the multi-pronged campaign; email, microsite, and offline channels working together to seamlessly promote the unique aspects of the new Intuos4 tablet.

Enjoy exploring the site and learn how it all came together to support the introduction and sales efforts.

“We’re absolutely happy with the number of visitors. We believe we’ve received a 70% awareness of our target audience. I mean, that’s really good. Not many companies are going to achieve that kind of awareness for a new product launch.”

~ Marketing Director, Wacom

Get the full study

So these past 7 weeks (July 17th to August 27th), I have been reporting and tracking the email campaigns from Abercrombie and Fitch on the use of WIDE, horizontal email formats. I have seen 12 in total over this period of time and have been fascinated with the results that they might be getting from these tests. It is not very often that retailers, or anyone for that matter, use this format and as I saw more and more come out I was sure that it was due to great results.

Why? Well they are a smart marketing machine. After hypothesizing on my own and with others in the industry, I thought it was time to reach out to their team and ask. Since we had placed our “Spy” KillROI (the eROI Spam fighting Robot) into the AF offices some time ago we had an in. I reached out at the end of last week to see if they had some details that they would not mind sharing publicly with the rest of us to learn from. Now what I can share is not going to be the top secret results. As there are others out there that they compete against that would love to copy what they are doing (actually I have now spied American Eagle ripping off, I mean testing, the same WIDE idea) and we don’t want that.

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I pulled out an article I wrote recently that was featured in iMediaConnection that you might enjoy. It covers some past posts that I wrote into one article that highlights the things that you should look at to learn from with your email marketing campaigns.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Ultimate Email Fail

The more experience you gain as an email marketer, the more you come to understand the true purpose of an email. It isn’t simply to blast something to subscribers without relevancy or reason. It isn’t to make a quick, dishonest buck off them. It isn’t to pull off a massive bait-and-switch. It isn’t even to release the hounds on the competition. It’s about nurturing, building trust and relationships, and ultimately increasing and solidifying the reputation of your brand.

Every email sent must have a purpose and needs to personally relate to the subscriber. If the email lacks personalization or has no purpose, you’re taking a risk that may cause subscribers to not only opt-out of your emails, but also mentally and emotionally opt-out from any future engagement with your brand. When this happens, the recipient immediately becomes emotionally unsubscribed. We in the industry identify it with a very technical term: email marketing fail.

Everyone fails at some point. A recent study by Return Path discovered that up to 20 percent of top brand marketers continue to send emails to addresses on their lists that have unsubscribed — more than 10 days after a confirmed unsubscribe request.

Read the full article here >>

In our last eROI study, Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns, we showed email marketers how important metrics are in making decisions and proving campaign ROI. One major opportunity to improve metrics and strengthen brand positioning with potential customers is to optimize email campaigns through consistent, careful testing.

GET The Full Study as a PDF >>

In this, our latest study, we reveal how 623 email marketers are currently using, or not using, testing to improve their email marketing efforts. On the heels of our last study, where we learned nearly one in five are not recording the metrics of their campaigns, it’s not too surprising that this study showed over 1/3 of marketers are not testing campaigns – but why aren’t they? And for those that are testing, what elements are being tested and what can we learn from them? With 73% of marketers planning to increase email as a priority in their future marketing plans, these are the important answers we set out to discover.

TO TEST, OR NOT TO TEST?

WHY YOU SHOULD AND WHY SOME DON’T

A 2006 MarketingSherpa article by Anne Holland proved, through survey results, that testing increases ROI. The responses show that “in every case more than 50% of marketers improved ROI (even if only moderately) by testing.”

The results of eROI’s email testing survey show that 37% of email marketers do not test their email campaigns. With what we know from the MarketingSherpa survey, this is essentially saying 37% of email marketers don’t care to improve the impact, and ultimately, revenue, of their email campaigns. We know that not a single good marketer would purposefully think like this, so we uncovered some of the main reasons for not testing.

Read the Full Study NOW >>

I was excited this past week to stumble upon a new site/blog that one of our favorites is behind. You might know Anne Holland from the days of MarketingSherpa – but she went a little off the grid for a while. Well she is back and brings us a great new site that not only shares with us real world tests of all sorts of creative, but adds some flair to it of allowing you to vote on which test you think won the test.

I love this idea as so many of us think that we know the best way to do everything. I took a few tests on this site and I can tell you I was not 100% in my gut answers. I missed some based on what I thought would have been the best test. That was refreshing not only to know that my gut is not always right, but that I was educated after my guess as to why one test out performed another.

It led me to think more about the importance of testing as what we “know” is not always what works best. It hammers home the fact that if we are not testing we might not get the best result. Sure we might have good results with our campaigns, but if we are not challenging our own concepts of perfect execution than we might be missing out on a a significant lift or impact to our campaigns.

Thanks Anne for popping back onto the old interweb and giving us a place to learn in an interactive manner and test what we “know”. I am looking forward to seeing what weekly tests are up next to help me and our clients at eROI.

So now it is your turn to give me some feedback. With each quarter the team here at eROI likes to have a conversation with a few hundred marketers around the world to see how they feel about issues that face all of us.

This time we are looking at how those responsible for email marketing either test or don’t test. We are looking for honest answers from all of you about the elements that you have tried to test to make a difference in your results.

Trust me we know that most of us are not always testing as we want to, but most do experiment from time to time.

Thank you in advance for your 5 minutes to help us out with this. You know you will get this time and all the results back in spades in just a few weeks.

Give me 5 of your minutes for 5 years of blog posts…

I came across an interesting study this past week on the impact that images have on heat mapping in emails and the web. The study provided a few examples that they tested but this one in particular stood out to me due to the focus on the face instead of the copy and product.

What they found was that people are conditioned to look a the facial features of people when presented with the image on the left instead of reading the copy as much as they might be inclined to when the person in the photo was looking at the copy or product.

IMAGE from USEABLE WORLD

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Our latest survey provides insight into trends and use of analytics in email for over 500 email marketers. The final results reveal some alarming habits, showing that many marketers are still taking an extremely careless approach to email marketing.

They share with us which metrics are most important to them, and how they use (or don’t use) these statistics to improve their overall marketing strategy.

From this study, you will learn: why the “instant gratification” approach is costing email marketers time and money, how to use email analytics to find the most valuable nuggets of data, how to improve your stats on each metric, tips on using email analytics and behavioral segmentation to maximize campaign success, and much more!

http://www.eroi.com/eroi-email-marketing-study-trends-use-of-email-analytics/

I have long been a fan of the 3 Stripes and decided today to look at opting into their newsletters to see what they are doing and if there is anything to learn from their programs. Here is the “registration” page – note that they do not cal it a newsletter sign up or opt in page, but a registration. Awfully formal if you ask me. 

So the first thing that jumped out at me were so many required fields. Will Adidas really use this many fields immediately as they start to message me for those newsletters I am signing up for? Or am I signing up for newsletters? I was not really sure to tell you the truth. They said eNewsletters but for all I knew it could be anything. Showing me some links to past examples would have been helpful as all I saw were product promotion emails to the left of the page. 

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New Email Marketing Survey: Email Analytics – TAKE THE SURVEY

At eROI, staying on top of the latest in email marketing is always a top priority. In this new email marketing survey we ask you, how do you use analytics in email marketing? 

Have 5 minutes? We would love your thoughts on Use of Analytics in Email Marketing

To show our appreciation, all survey participants will be automatically entered to win one of a handful of iPod shuffles! – AND WHO DOESN”T Need another iPod? Right? You could give it to your neighbor, the mail man, that guy that hands you your coffee each AM as you amble like a zombie to work, or even a co-worker that is doing a great job. Unlimited ways….

This survey should take just a couple minutes of your time, and we will share the results with you after we crunch the numbers. We hope to have it out next week. We like things immediate… just like you. 

Take a moment to take the survey 

I have had the pleasure of spending the last 8 months leading the eec’s Roundtable on email marketing for cause. We choose the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation to assist this year and have learned a lot on this journey to help them have a better email marketing program. 

This last week we presented at the annual conference about our learnings and how other caused based/non-profit organizations can find ways to make their programs better. 

I have loaded up the PPT from the event for you to review and even download if you wish. 

Still 4 months left in this program and I hope that we help them to get to a place where they can have a great program that drives awareness, branding, and fund raising. 

I was sent this article from our Creative Director who manages one of our other blogs We Like It Fresh. It is one of the better in depth analysis of new web 2.0 style sites and the elements that make up a good presence and sign up/opt in page. 

I think that we can all learn from this article as many of these new properties are in the business of land grabbing as many new subscribers and users as fast as possible. But wait, isn’t that the same business all of us are in? Getting new customers and leads? I think so. 

To me this is one of the better articles I have seen in a long time that many of us can use. Yet some key points that he missed is what do you do after you have them signed up? Thank you Page? Double Opt in? Welcome messaging, preference centers? 

Just some things to think about but please do take some time to read this article as you are looking at your own landing pages, lead capture and opt in pages. 

FIND OUT WHY COMPELLING EMAIL DESIGN GETS RESULTS

You’ve got a clean, targeted list, excellent deliverability, and even a hot subject line. So why aren’t your email marketing campaigns performing like they should?

This case study illustrates the effectiveness of appealing content and design in your email marketing campaigns. Read how creative content offerings and precise brand presentation, combined with email marketing best practices, helped Smithsonian Magazine substantially increase both renewal and new subscriptions.

With all the great work and clients that eROI is working with in the publishing industry we are so excited to share this with you. Not for the fact that we are working hard to support clients in a industry where things are changing fast, but that this type of approach can work across so many industry verticals. 

Hope you enjoy it as we have 11 more studies like this on the way in our Resources Center coming down the pipe.

Get the email marketing, strategy and design study. 

Q4 2008 HOW STUDENTS COMMUNICATE SURVEY RESULTS

Our latest survey uncovers exactly how high school students, college students, and recent college graduates communicate online. 283 high school and college students participated in the study and 29 states were represented.

These survey results reveal eye-opening trends and preferences of this demographic in how it communicates digitally. We also get valuable insight into the effectiveness of marketing messages received through email, and discover areas of opportunity for marketers to connect with this in-demand group.

Students can be an elusive demographic for marketers. From this study, you will learn about a lot of new trends and valuable information about students. You will also learn specific data on which marketing channels will carry and present your message most effectively.

Get the Study>>