Email Newsletters - All Image, No Text

This is what happens when you design content to be image heavy and the user's default inbox blocks images. In this example, there are multiple CTAs and no clear objective as to what the recipient should do. 

Normally, Tinuiti produces emails with great marketing content. However, it just misses the mark. And.. into the delete bin it goes.

Email Campaign Tracking Codes

Some tracking codes in the footer of a commercially sent email are easier to decipher than others. It's like geek speak for marketers. With these, and appropriate ecommerce tracking with Google Analytics 360, companies can see how much, if any, revenue is generated by campaigns. It's usually paired with the assumption of "last touch" revenue source, where the last marketing activity a customer takes before a purchase is how credit is applied to a specific inbound or outbound methodology, be it from SEO, email, a product page on a website, a direct mail catalog SKU number, etc.

Here is an example. This comes from the Starbucks Rewards program, and their tracking code is just below the body of the email and above the footer; though many organizations place this tracking code in the AMP Script (if using a Salesforce product) and some place this below the footer/disclaimer text.

The tracking code text reads: Ref: 21-15-ANO-1-0-0-EM-SR-NA-ALL

Loosely, this reference translates to: ?? - ?? - ?? - 1 - 0 - 0 - Email - Starbucks Rewards - North America - All

I thought that the first two digits were the year of the broadcast, but Starbucks Rewards emails from 2020 also have this 21-15 starter tag. And, it's not sequential to time-order. There are campaigns that ran in January 2020 with the starter tag of 21-14 and emails that were sent in October 2020 with the starter tag of 21-13. So, maybe a campaign type? 

The middle "1-0-0" I think a null code placeholder. Here is a tracking example from their "Starbucks for Life" rewards campaign: Ref: 21-13-SFL21-1-0-0-EM-SR-NA-US

The easiest way would be to just ask someone who works for Starbucks marketing. But this is more fun. These tracking codes aren't meant to be memorable; but they are a good way for marketers to attribute sales revenue and customer engagement through email-to-store or email-to-mobile-order sales.

In contrast, retail stores with ecommerce websites often use coupon codes as tracking codes that are static and can be used by anyone whether or not they are a rewards customer; and as such, the coupon code variations reflect a simple code (e.g., holiday20, welcome10).

Persona Marketing vs Account-Based Marketing

Thanks to the rise of Marketo and its plethora of early adopters, the company has pushed the concept of why to switch (from Pardot, Eloqua, etc.) with Account-Based Marketing. The content language of which speaks to the many pain points of commonly used marketing automation tools. The fact of the matter is that both concepts require a lot of content to be created just to make a decent waterfall or drip marketing campaign.

Persona-based marketing really looks at data segmentation as its main focus for generating content for different decision makers and influencers in customer lifecycle management. For example. when targeting K-12 institutions as a software developer of an educational platform, your buyer personas may include superintendents, edtech buying consortiums (NY does this, for instance), principals; and the influencers may include teachers, students, and perhaps even PTA groups, if they are involved with new technology purchases or adoptions within a school district. It's also used by electronics manufacturers as well that sell direct or through distributors into businesses. With persona-based marketing, not every persona that is targeted with marketing content is a viable buyer. Most are information seekers and will eat up valuable production time creating digital content assets for their insatiable appetites. But, it is all good in the long run because these people are very vocal within their own organizations if they really like what you have to offer.

With both styles, your market strategy for reaching out to customers is based on a few firmographic segmentations to start: industry/vertical markets, revenue, location

IKEA Newsletter

Today I signed up for IKEA's customer newsletter...as an 120-year old person. Seriously! That's the earliest birth year (1895)  that was offered on their sign-up page. It's hard to imagine a 120-year old putting together anything from IKEA. It was the lengthiest, multi-page sign-up I have seen from a consumer catalog company.

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year start

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year end

It could be that when the e-newsletter sign-up page was first produced, back at the dawn of the commercial internet, 1895 was a possible year for a date of birth. But then, there is also a top range part of the birth year and for IKEA, it's 1997 (or you'd be turning 18 in 2015). It begs the question.. why not just have birth month and birth day like most consumer companies? Why would you target a specific demographic like 18-120 yrs old. 

I'll have to see if I can change my birth month from December to something earlier in the year like July to see if they have a birth year-specific marketing campaign. It would be really surprising to get a "happy 121st birthday!" note from IKEA as a result of this albeit flawed email newsletter sign-up form.

Supercharge Your List Growth

When I'm at social or networking events, one of the most commonly asked questions I get from small business owners and nonprofit groups is how to grow their membership or customer list. Even having the option to sign up for a newsletter or special offers on one's website can provide enough incentive to get prospective customers to sign up. 

Here are a few tips:

More is better.  As in adding more opt-in forms to your site. What you are aiming for with any mailing list is quality, not quantity. Many times I've seen the newsletter sign-up link below the fold (if you have to page-down to see content, it's below the fold) or buried under layers of content, like hidden where a company's press releases are. You want this web contact form to be found easily and not just by search engines, but by prospective customers.

Include mobile as an option. Should your customers check their email from web-capable phones, tablets, or other mobile devices, you may also want to add a SMS option to the newsletter sign-up form and optimize its accompanying landing pages for mobile. 
Examples: OfficeMax, Bed Bath & Beyond

Attract like honey. Give your subscribers a perk for signing up, thanking them for opting in. Types of perks vary by organizational type. For example:

• Schools or PTAs: a discount card to be used at a local business
• Retail: discount next purchase (online or in-store), free small item, free points on loyalty card program, early preview on upcoming sale items
• Nonprofit Assn: inclusiveness messaging (news and events just for members)
• B2B: actionable insight from industry news/trends

Oracle Topliners Opt-in Override

The wording on this one is certainly something to note, or at least comment on. It reads as though I was opted in without having actually subscribed to the list. Oracle, on the whole, does not market to marketers all that well. The content certainly wasn't all that compelling, and the newsletter format is weak. I can't decide if this is being driven by Eloqua or Oracle.

Oracle Topliners email newsletter, 2015-01-29

Long ago, I did join an Eloqua community user group called Topliners. It's morphed into this years later. Eloqua pitches a better marketing automation solution than the one it just executed on behalf of Oracle. It begs the question.. why wait three years before sending an user newsletter?

Home Depot Black Friday Ad - In Spring?

Recycling of the November/Holiday Winter ad pricing theme? Poor ad planning? No one running their email marketing department? It is rather curious why any retailer would use the Black Friday phrase in a season other than after Thanksgiving day. Even the US Post Office knows that Mother's Day weekend is the busiest parcel shipping "season", which outpaces Black Friday. What do you think? 

2014-04-03 Home Depot Spring Ad

Home Depot: Gardening Club News

Home Depot's Gardening Club newsletter has always been a favorite of mine. This is where regional news really comes into play and why regional targeting of this type of content marketing really works. When I lived in California, it was sunny nearly all year and the overnight lows really never got below 40 degrees F. In the Pacific Northwest where we can have hail and snow as late as April, it's nice to see that this newsletter is aware of that and makes suggestions as to what can be planted at this time. It's a really good resource for both new and current subscribers. There's a lot going on in this basic spring email, and it is all relevant to the store, the brand, and the customer.

2014-02-19, Home Depot Garden Club email

Pre-Game Day Super Bowl Ads

I was served up an ad trailer of a game day ad by Toyota. And it was the feeblest 30 seconds of my day so far.  Part of the excitement and anticipation for the half-time show is to see what new spins on ad creatives that agencies and corporations have come up with, to laugh and be amused. 

This ad trailer already has more than 44k views. I imagine the email advertisement went to all current Toyota owners who are also registered subscribers. I can understand why marketing and sales would have chosen to run a preview of the ad; perhaps they can use early feedback to tweak the ad components or to test campaign tracking; but isn't that what Q/A testing is for? Or maybe they want to prep the audience for what looks like it will be an over-spent ad spot.

Anyhow. I don't see the point of wasting an existing customer's time to read an email to click through to a video hosted on YouTube for content that isn't even an entire ad. Ugh. And the micetype? Watch outtakes? Not even close. These are just clips of the same ad hastily pasted together.

The saddest part? There will be Super Bowl ads on game day from companies and organizations that lack deep-pocketed agency resources but will be able to pull off a good ad that drives home a relevant selling point and reasons why you should buy or invest in that company.

Indirectly asked: what could we be doing better?

This is a nagging topic on the minds of a lot of marketers this year; in addition to making marketing automation work like a mad SQL (sales qualified lead) generating tool. With respect to direct, email, or online marketing, what seems commonplace to me as a marketer might not be apparent to others who have had mixed results with their campaigns. Let's start with a basic approach: email marketing.

Batch and blast works well for generalized content or for product announcements. But, for that personal touch, as in do it with customer service like you really care... try sending your customers a personalized, non-sales oriented email about a birthday, anniversary, or a special gift just for them.

Ask customers to engage with you in online conversations, participate on polls or surveys, or get feedback on their experiences. It doesn't hurt to ask for their input. What do you think about the new features we put into ___. How does your website redesign look?

When I ask other marketers how many touches they send out to their prospects and active customers, I get a variety of answers. The most I've heard of (including autoresponders from newsletter signups or web form submissions) on the B2B side is 15-20 touches per prospect per month. Ouch, I don't think I'd want to be on the receiving end without an unlimited data plan for my connected devices. This is when planning out content and using a scheduling calendar really helps when releasing time-delayed content. Some premium features of marketing platforms even offer limiters on how many times a lead or contact can be contacted within a set period of time. And, you can also manage frequency when setting up a demand automation funnel as well for handling MQLs and recycled SQLs.

And last of all, your prospects and customers are just like you and me. We have a finite amount of time to devote to activities like reading email; especially promotional or content that adds some richness to our daily lives. Be mindful of how (often) you send out content.

/stepping off the soapbox/

Want an extra $5 on your Starbucks Card?

If you are unfamiliar with the Starbucks rewards card system, you might not know that you can transfer balances between Starbucks reward cards. Say if you got a stray $5 gift card from a promotion or as a holiday or workplace perk, you could take that balance and port it over to your regular Starbucks rewards card (or account, if you are using their mobile app for purchase transactions).

Starbucks promo email, 2013-02-20

When it comes to content and design, the Starbucks email and accompanying rewards landing page are minimalist. The content certainly does do the job of providing a meaningful amount of information that has a targeted call-to-action which encourages a user to do other steps, maybe check into what else Starbucks is offering, check on reward status or account balance, etc.

What you might not know is that you can also transfer a balance from a cash gift card, say a $100 Visa gift card to your Starbucks rewards card at any Starbucks-owned kiosk or store. And, if you're a Coinstar customer, you can convert your deposited coin balance to a Starbucks rewards card without incurring any service fees.

Want to know how they're tracking this campaign? By product SKU and registered reward card swipes at the register. This is an online/mobile campaign to drive in-store purchases.

And, if you're an avid coffee drinker, this is a darn good deal for 1 lb of whole bean coffee. 'Nuff said.

A Viscountess Salutation

I came across Craghoppers, a UK-based adventure travel clothing company, when visiting with avid travel friends in California this past winter. Whether your passion for travel is for exploring the outdoors or simply wanting to do so in style and comfort, Craghoppers is one of the few manufacturers whose clothing lines do both. Sure, you could cite other US clothing manufacturers that offer competitive products, but when it comes right down to it, there are just a handful who can do at a price point that doesn't turn you into a one-time buyer.

But, this post is about Craghopper's email marketing, which was very amusing when signing up for it. I wonder just how many ordinary citizens enjoy seeing non-standard salutations on their email or postal mail from this company. I would be curious to see what the peak and average transaction value per salutation segmentation this company gets.

Craghoppers.com email sign-up form

Dear Valued Customer

In some messaging campaigns, it is appropriate to use this addressing moniker when a customer's name is not know. Many small and large sized businesses are afflicted by incomplete customer profiles. While using "Dear Valued Customer" as a salutation within a bulk email is indirect and lacks the connectivity marketers strive for with their customers, it still has value when used appropriately. Consider these two bulk email examples where the customer's name is not known. One used "Valued Customer" in the subject line of the email. In the other example, no data validation was used prior to the send. If the salutation or subject line is the first impression a customer sees in their digital inbox, the email could be less personalized if those details aren't known. Frankly, both of these emails are unappealing, impersonal, and simply not the kind of email that conjures up warm, fuzzy feelings about their respective firms.

Sears Rewards Program #FAIL

Thanks a lot Sears, I really didn't need to be spammed by all your eCommerce entities all at once. Sears is typically where I go to get tools and appliances for the home; although, in today's age, Home Depot wins out on in-store price comparisons and Lowes wins on customer service; at least in southwest Washington anyways. The customer experience is probably different where you live. Regardless, this post reflects upon the poor execution of what could have been a good retention marketing campaign by the Sears rewards program.

Gee thanks Amazon, I feel so unloved

If you've done business with Amazon.com or have aStore or affiliate links embedded in a blog or some other website, I'm sure you've read about the sales tax troubles Amazon was having with the state of Illinois and now with California. Granted I used to live in California when I signed up with the Amazon Associates program, but even when I changed my payee residence to Vancouver, WA where I live currently, I received the affiliate termination letter TWICE! Once for having a California address, and again for having a Vancouver, WA address. So, does this mean Amazon is unilaterally severing affiliate relationships with all other states, or just California? It's really unclear. 

I was just doing it for fun, mainly for the cooking blog so that readers could see a product shot of a particular cooking utensil or kitchenware that I used for making a particular recipe. Now it seems like it's just a wasted extra step to embed those links in, even though Amazon affiliates is an add-on within Blogger.

What makes Goldstar Events different

Email marketing is not dead, really. Just ask the people who run Goldstar Events. Back in 2002, their email list only had 10,000 registered users on it. Today, it does about $40 million a year in ticket sales and has 1.2 million subscribers. The founding principle behind this privately held company is similar to Priceline.com, except it's for the entertainment sector and doesn't rely on a reverse auction system. The notion of "not every show sells out, so instead of letting seats go empty, venues list them with us to sell to our members" is what drives customers to buy up tickets at half price. Sometimes tickets are even free, but it's on a first come first served basis.

Goldstar's forte is having deals in major metropolitan areas. When I lived in Los Angeles, I thought it was a real treat to sit at the very front of a jazz or classical music concert. It just tickled me pink to see all the septo- and octogenarians wondering how I got there. They're still a little skinny on venues in the Portland metro area.

How a customer opts in for email through Goldstar was really well thought out. You can add and remove venues by zip code, and Goldstar will serve up content to your specifications. Even if you don't live in a metro area, you can still buy tickets for other people. All they need to do is show the ticket registration (which, by the way is delivered by email to you and to your guest) at the venue's ticket counter with a photo ID and they're all set. Newsletter spam too much for you? Simply log into the site and turn it off for a while. Your venue interests will still be there if you want to see what's going on in your metro area.

Here is a shameless plug for my referral link, if you wanted to subscribe. Every referral earns me a service fee credit. Even at half off a ticket, Goldstar charges a small, but fair fee per ticket purchased. This is how they make money to run the site. It's still a lot better than paying full price.

Sure, they have joined the social media platform bandwagon, but they have never lost sight of their core strengths in this market and whatever additional buzz is created by Facebook and Twitter, it can only help to create more mindshare about their services.

Organic Growth for Email Lists

You don't need a sophisticated ad program on a 3rd party daily deals website to gain traction with your local customer base. If you have a physical storefront like a dry cleaner, restaurant, bakery, coffee shop, or auto repair shop, you want a loyal, repeat customers.. right?

Here are five easy ways to get started:

1. Use online registration - on your website, on a social media profile page
2. Use offline registration - ask customers if they want to be added to your newsletter or sign up for special in-store offers; a simple sign-up roster or guest registry book can help
3. Embed opt-in messaging in transactional emails
4. Use a brand-relevant prize if engaging in a contest or sweepstakes
5. Use market research studies as a means to gather relevant customer insight, contact info

Pros:

This is relatively inexpensive and subscribers have already expressed an interest about you or your products/services. They are pre-qualified, or at the very least, open to receiving information or relevant offers from your organization. Growing your own list can help reduce spam complaints and opt-outs.

Things to keep in mind:

• Make sure your sign-up box is highly visible on your website (top left is common)
• Don't limit your subscription box to just the home page; make it available in more than once place and be sure it can be easily picked up by a search engine when users type in "email newsletter" when searching in conjunction with your brand(s) or company
• Give people a reason to subsribe: free offers, free webinars, new product announcements, offers from relevant partner firms (e.g., if you are a Photographer magazine and you have exclusive offers for teachers who buy software/hardware from an academic reseller like Studica); free industry research or highlights; coupon for free shipping, 50% off an item (Michaels.com); free gardening newsletter and %-off coupons (HomeDepot.com, Lowes.com)
• If you're using a contest as a means of traffic traction and conversion, track the lifetime value of subscribers obtained this way to determine if the promotion is worth repeating

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)

Attended an Amazon webinar today that covered their Simple Email Service. I have yet to test it out. Initial impressions suggest that you should stick with your existing email service provider for basic email marketing broadcasts because there aren't a whole lot of tools nor analytics built yet for SES. It is a basic as basic gets.

A few things to note:

• Supported APIs
• Built-in Features
• Sending Limits
• Access Levels
• Pricing

Via Simple API, SES supports Java, .NET, PHP, Perl, and HTTPs, and is AWS compatible, meaning if you already use Amazon EC2 or Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk, you can "migrate" over to SES easily.

There are two types of email sending options: formatted or raw message; both of which are also supported by API functions (SendEmail, SendRawEmail). The basic feedback analytics are reminiscent of basic web stats (GetSendStatistics API) which will tell you about delivery attempts, rejected messages, hard bounces, and spam complaints. And, everyone's lists are served up separately, so even if you have an overlap of customers with another business that also uses Amazon SES, their spam complaints do not affect your broadcasts (unlike how Gmail blocks spam).

Most ESPs have sending limits built into their pricing contracts. Amazon is no different. Every SES user is assigned a quota (max number of emails that can be sent in 24 hours) and an access level (everyone starts out in the sandbox to test SES features and can send up to 200 recipients a day), which is tiered. However, you can only send to and from a verified email address.

Pricing. ESPs that support small to medium sized businesses such as iContact, Bronto, Vertical Response, or ConstantContact, shouldn't fret about Amazon's pricing structure. Pricing is tiered and is based on the combination of two elements: data transfer and CPM per email message.

Current CPM is $0.10 per thousand messages sent. Data transfer pricing is as follows:

Data Amt	Cost
First GB	Free
up to 10 TB	$0.15/GB
next 40 TB	$0.11/GB
next 100 TB	$0.09/GB
150+ TB	$0.08/GB

Pricing examples:

1000 email messages to one recipient per day with content size 10kb
= 31,000 recipients sent per month
= 3.1 GB in/out data transfer
= $3.73 for the month

1000 email messages outbound to one recipient per day with content size 100kb
= 31,000 recipients sent per month
= 31 GB in/out data transfer
= $10.70 for the month

Amazon EC2 users are already subscribed to the free pricing tier and are capped at 2000 messages for free each day.

To get started with Amazon SES:

Subscribe
Verify email addresses / create your own whitelist of verified addresses
Send Email
Request production access
Get Feedback

Limits on sandbox accounts: 100 whitelisted verified addresses, up to 10MB per message (because most popular email readers cannot handle more than that).

Limits on all accounts: Does not support SOAP or file attachments