THINK.

A Multi-part Email Strategy series to help you get the most out of your email program. Each Tuesday, I will focus on one aspect of email communications. Please submit a comment if there is an area you would like for me to focus on or a problem you are encountering with your own email program.

Over the past few weeks I have been blogging about different aspects of email communications, and how they can positively impact your organization. Recently I have discussed topics ranging from email frequency, sender name, personalization, and testing practices. Each of these topics were spun-off a blog entry discussing ‘industry best practices’ and ‘industry averages.’ (of which I discussed determining your own ‘industry averages’)

It is important to keep track of your email program very closely. It tends to be the forgotten-step-child in an organization’s Communications or Development group, or the even more – it’s the forgotten-step- child-that-lives-under-the-stairs when it falls to the IT group for support and cultivation.

THINK.

Thinking is something we all do. Like it or not. But in the case of your email program, little thought is given to the power of the medium – even in this Web 2.0 world we are currently experiencing and is impacting the way we communicate and get communicated TO. It’s not just ‘drop some content into the email program and hit the send button and forget about it until next time.’ You must THINK about each email that goes out, and how it impacts your organization and the relationship it is building with your members.

This series will cover and help you THINK about how your program can have a positive effect in member or customer acquisition, retention or donor bonding and cultivation, fundraising and product sales, and just making the member feel like a valued part of the .

To some organizations that already do it right, this series will be a no-brainer and will help you refine your process, to those organizations that are just starting to feel the impact of a large list size that is not responding to plan – this series will help you get back on track, and to those organizations that are just getting ready to press the ’send’ button for the first time – THINK

THINK first, press later.

The first official part of this series (outside of those mentioned above and in this blog already) is Email Capture Preparation. Getting the name and making sure you understand how keep it.

Here’s a checklist to get you started and for other things to THINK about as we proceed in this series:

1. What are the goals of your email program? And who ‘owns’ the email program (on that note, the ORGANIZATION ‘owns’ the program and list, not a person or group.)

2. Make a list and review the treatment of every place your organizations asks for email

• Is it on every page (and by this I don’t mean buried or hidden in the header, but as a strong call to action in a prominent location on every page)
• Is it on your Direct Mail or other Marketing Collateral? Or anything else that a prospective new-member may come across?
• If your organization or company utilizes telemarketing, are your call center reps trained to ask for email?
• Is it a required to provide email address to access any high value content or other site features?

3. Sign-up for your own email using a secondary email address so that you can see what your visitors/members experience, and take notes on each step.

• Does the process make sense? Is it easy to complete? Do you think you are asking for too much information up front that could be captured in the cultivation process? (do you REALLY need to know their home address just to send them an email?)
• THINK about how much information may actually stop someone from engaging into this email communication with you.

4. Review your sign-up form or process and see if you are asking the correct questions – and make sure the look and feel isn’t too different from the rest of your site:

• First Name
• What name do they go by? (phrase it something like “how may we greet you?”)
• Last Name
• Email address (double entry to ensure a good address)
• Interest areas
• Frequency of communication
• Instructions on how to go back later to change or remove information. Believe it or not, the easier you make it for members to unsubscribe over time you will see fewer unsubsribes.
• What kind of autoresponse is sent? Make sure that someone sits down and THINKS about this copy – it will be the first communication you have with the new constituent – give them a call to action to get them immediately engaged. (please note though, that many email systems DO NOT track the open rates of auto responders. frustrating, but true. also a huge pet peeve of mine)

5. Look at your email system reporting features

• Is it robust enough to give you information on email performance down to the individual link level?
• Does it give you the information you will need to perform advanced testing in the future?
• Is it flexible enough to handle conditional content and segmentation?

BONUS QUESTION

1. What does your email communications and testing calendar look like?

Now that you have sat down and really thought through some basic questions, share them with your team and leadership to get additional input. Next week in Part Two of this series, we will focus on getting that first email (or first refined email) sent and talk about goals of your email program.

See you next Tuesday.

And, whatever you do, THINK before you send.

Or, what to read and why.

Over the past few weeks I have seen an increase in specific buzz-terminology subject line emails that I receive in my inbox and my RSS readers. Mostly it seems that everyone has the latest tip or secret to a successful email campaign, or how to drive the most traffic to your site, or how to quadruple your ROI. All you have to do is sign up and download a white paper, or read that writer’s top ten tips and —voilà!—you are an overnight success.

Of course, most of these tips are geared towards the clients ‘we’ work with and that rarely read these types of emails because they expect US – as paid consultants – to tell them what they should be doing. My first step: Don’t read too many of those emails! (probably NOT a popular statement to make…) Find a few reputable sources and follow their advice, but don’t over do it.

It amazes me that many of these ‘magic bullets’ rarely speak specifically to a client or a client’s need, but are really just a lead generation technique to sell services. I don’t have a problem with that, but that goal should be pointed out sooner rather than later and that the information the reader is going to accept as ‘gospel’ is really biased towards a closed-sourced-product. And for this magic bullet to work that they must sign up for a service or subscribe. Keep in mind that many of these best-of techniques may work against your existing tracking and metrics and cause you to lose data on processes that are working for you but just may need some tweaking.

So, here are MY tips to make your way through the clutter of “Industry Averages,” “Best Practices” and the “Tips to Increase your ROI” propaganda.

• Only read the emails that you feel are in line with your current activities or goals. If your emails are not selling a product; then a best practices email to increase online sales or conversion rates will not help you much if you really just want provide information about a product or service. In that case, look at tips that help you increase your open rates to increase brand awareness – everything else is icing on the cake. Make sure that you understand the goals of each email that you are sending, and test test test to get a good idea of what works for YOU. Do you really think that following what Amazon.com does is going to work with your audience?
• Understand Industry Averages. Industry Averages are generally calculated by the ‘big guys’ that have sophisticated tracking in place and years of data to work from. It is important to understand your own ‘industry average’ and look at the trending of your own results and how they measure up against your business or organizational goals. In some cases, for smaller businesses or organizations, ‘industry average’ can crush your infrastructure and cause more problems than good. This is not to say that all “Industry Averages” are bad numbers to be avoided, but they help to keep your own metrics in check. Establish your own average by looking at your historical data and make changes to increase the numbers that work for you.
• Be leery of anything promising an ROI of 2000%!! These are probably rare cases and interesting math (let’s say an email costs a nickel to send and generates a $100 sale…that’s 2000% ROI in some calculations). Be realistic in your ROI calculations, and be thorough in all the criteria included in the calculation to get a truer idea of the money you are spending and the return on that investment. It’s not just how much that email cost to send, but the staff in the marketing department, fulfillment centers, outside vendors, profit margins. That 5cent email probably really cost a few dollars to send, dropping that ROI considerably. And that one email has is cyclical – it drives repeat traffic to your site, and will lead to more and more sales over time, so that ROI calculation over time – annualized – could be much different than that one email send and that one time ROI calculation.

The most important take away from this posting is that you shouldn’t worry if you are just starting an email or online marketing program or have a program that has been running for years and you are seeing results from competitor organizations or companies that are not in line with yours. Sit down and look at your numbers and work with your vendor to create a plan that will increase successes by testing and re-testing, segmenting, analyzing ROI, and most importantly – identifying goals and objectives that work with your overall business goals.

Not another SEM blog I hear you cry. Heck, Lee Odden has over 350 of them on his Biglist of Search Marketing Blogs. So is there room for another blog in this crowded field? The answer is emphatically “Yes“.

So what’s going to appear on this blog? What is going to differentiate it from the crowd? Well, let’s start off with a note or two on what is not going to appear on this blog. This blog is not going to be a “me too” site, where the same news that has broken across the blogosphere is going to appear in the same format here. There are many other blogs that already handle the topic of breaking news in this industry, and to attempt to do the same without a full time staff dedicated to this blog would be a foolhardy prospect. So what is going to appear here, and who is involved? Well, the answer to the second part is that this blog is going to have posts from the RedBoots Digital team. The answer to the first part is that we’re going to be posting on a variety of Marketing topics as we find interesting items through our daily work in the RedBoots Rodeo. Topics will range from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay Per Click (PPC) to Social Media Optimization (SMO) to Search Agency issues to general Digital Marketing to Marketing for Non-Profits. If we learn something that we think would be of benefit to those outside our company, we’re going to share. If we have a unique perspective on a topic, then we’re going to share (that’s the one exception to the ‘me too’ rule).

We are going to aim to write interesting and informative topics that’ll have you coming back for more, and we’re going to encourage you, the reader, to comment on any of the posts that we put out there. Tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like, and we’ll do our best to make this a go-to site for your feed reader.