Net Atlantic - Total Engagement Marketing

8/6/2019 Net Atlantic - Total Engagement Marketing

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Your Email Delivery Expertswww.netatlantic.com

Total Engagement Marketing10 Ways to Improve

Email Marketing Response in 2010by Tom Bishop, Marketing Manager

& Marianne Cellucci, SEO/PPC Analyst



www.netatlantic.com 2

Total Engagement Marke ng is a new set of rules

that puts your business in con nuous touch withcustomers, at any moment, on any medium. Youget feedback, answer ques ons, sell productsand win referrals. It makes email the center of your marke ng strategy.

What is

Total Engagement Marke ng?



3www.netatlantic.com

1. Make Email The Backbone2. Have Them at Hello3. Ride the Lifecycle4. Make it Personal 5. Create Micro-Segments6. Keep it Short and Sweet 7. Keep Your Eyes Open Wide8. Get Con nuous Permission9. Raise Awareness of Your Brand

10. Deliver Support Services

Email es it all together.Total Engagement Marke ng relies on everytac c you use to communicate with yourcustomers. You have many outposts on theweb; social media, websites, blogs, directories,Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, and hostedweb assets. You need something to e yourcommunica ons tac cs together: Email.

This white paper asks you to use email asthe central focus of your strategy, tying theothers together. It is easier to personalizeand automate; it is more current than yourFlash billboard; and it gets delivered to yourcustomers’ inboxes consistently, where

they’ve already agreed to welcome it.

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Are you ready for aradical shi in theway you use email marke ng?




Let’s start with a blinding glimpse of theobvious; the online environment is now

rmly entrenched as the media of choice forconsumers and business leaders. Marketers useweb2.0 techniques for websites and landingpages. You may already send automated,sequen al email campaigns, and use socialmedia and blogs as a marke ng tool, and

search for ways to improve engagement withnarrower segments of your audience.

Now for the not so obvious; despite all thisenvelope-pushing, your website is s ll centralto your marke ng strategy, while everythingelse is treated as adjunct. It is me to startthinking of everything outside of your site ascri cal components of your online strategy.

Get beyond focusing on upda ng graphics andperfec ng messaging on the website, whileeverything else gets li le credence as part of your strategy.

The old approach makes sense when youconsider that your company website is underyour complete control while with most other

outlets you are hamstrung by the limita onsof someone else’s user interface. Your emaildesign is constrained by the limita ons of email clients and ESP mailing prac ces. Withdynamic media such as video you are limitedby bandwidth. With social media you canmanage your images and text, but the interfacepresenta on is up to the whims of designers

trying to please everyone else in the world. Yourule your site, so it is temp ng to put the bulkof your e ort into it.

That’s why making email the backbone is notabout abandoning your website’s u lity inyour marke ng strategy, but about trea ngeverything outside of it as part of yourtotal web presence. Each outlet becomes

an extension of your messaging for variousdemographics, ver cal markets, or productsand services. You create a path for users toreach landing pages, blog posts, or web assets.

No ma er what path your customers use toreach you and gather informa on about yourcompany’s o erings, there is only one centralhub that es all of it together: email.

Visitors who opt in at any point in your variousacquisi on paths become part of your emailmarke ng campaigns. Powerful segmenta onlets you capture vital data about who they areand what interests them. Email allows you topersonalize and strengthen the rela onship,which you can’t do with every other sta c,public outpost, including your website.

If your email campaigns, instead of yourwebsite, are central to your strategy, you canmaximize your message through segmenta on,customized merge elds, and triggeredautoma on. The strength of your contactdatabase drives your ability to market toextremely narrow bands of customers.

Make Email theBackbone

of Total Engagement

Total Engagement Marke ng puts email at thecenter of your marke ng e orts.

1.



Email & SMSAutoma on

Website Partners

Blog & PR

SocialMedia

OnlineAds


Why isn’t email the center of your marke ng strategy yet? The diagram to the le shows how emailmarke ng and SMS text messages hold yournumerous outposts together:

• Social media sites• Company website• Blog posts, ar cles, and press releases• Channel vendors and partners• PPC, online directories, banner campaigns

and media adver sements

The people who reach you through thesechannels become part of your database,where you engage them through automated,personalized and targeted email.

Since 2000, we’ve seen the expansion of theonline environment to drive powerful socialinterac on. Your total engagement marke ngstrategy for 2010 and beyond relies onpersonaliza on, frequency, and relevancy.




Know your customers. Follow their online ac vity so you can segment and engage appropriately.

Since prospects are not always ready to makean immediate purchase, it’s important todevelop a prac ce of tracking each stage of thebuying process... from hello through purchase.

People come to you with various expecta onsabout your products and services. Perhapsthey’re in the analysis phase and just want todownload a whitepaper, or maybe they arealmost ready to purchase and need pricing.Web analy cs tools help you track a prospect’sonline ac vity, allowing you to cra relevantmessages, build stronger rela onships, increaseconversions, and drive revenue.

Once people join your email program and giveyou permission, you can send them mely,relevant, and personalized communica ons

on a scheduled basis. Because what you thinkis relevant and what a prospect nds relevantmay be di erent things; tracking campaignsto see what triggers purchases — and whattriggers high levels of opt-outs — is a cri calpart of any email marke ng campaign.

Purchase

Validate

Test

Learn

Hello

Engagement

Time

At each decision point (circled in red), the customer decides to raise engagement or lose interest.

Have Them AtHello2.




According to TowerGroup, rms that maximizeengagement and limit churn grow 30% faster.

— 4Point.com, June 2008 Ac vely Engaged Customers

For customers who are very involved with your company, you should keep the growthopportuni es coming. A er every purchase, send them a thank-you email with an incen veto share the opportunity with others; send a survey; ask permission to send newsle ers;send o ers based on their interests; ask them to review your product or service and sendemail based on dates or ac vi es (birthday, anniversary, seasonal).

Interested Customers

For people who have given permission, but le your site without making a purchase, sendthem relevant messages about speci c product categories; ini ate an informa ve triggeredwelcome email to capture more demographic informa on and customer preference data.Studies show that welcome emails typically have higher open rates.

Lapsed CustomersCustomers who were interested at one me, but have not been ac ve, need o ers andmessages to remind them why they engaged with your company. If they haven’t purchasedin awhile, send campaigns o ering new products, subscrip ons, upgrades or up-sell/cross-

sell programs, surveys, or incen ves to update their pro le and interests.If they remain inac ve, purge them from your database, and focus your e orts on ac velyengaged customers who are interested in your products and services.

By engaging your subscribers with relevant content they want to receive, you’ll achieve a goodsender reputa on, get lower complaint scores, and higher engagement — all of which will lead toincreased open and response rates, higher ROI, and stronger customer rela ons.




Now is the me to take your email marke ngprogram to the next level, and move beyondthe one-size- ts-all model to a lifecyclemarke ng model. Rather than a “batch-and-blast” approach, you use dynamic content tocreate personalized email programs that evolveto match the customers’ needs and increasethe relevance and impact of your emails.

The customer lifecycle includes milestonessuch as: the day they apply to college; the daythey land a job; lease a car; buy a house; havechildren; and pick up expensive hobbies. Yourapproach to the lifecycle considers three keyelements: audience, message, and me.

It’s a simple concept: each life stage createsdi erent needs. Whether the subscriber is

a consumer or a businessperson, the rightmessage at the right me can greatly improveresults. According to JupiterResearch VP andResearch Director, David Daniels, lifecyclecampaigns perform 389% be er than broadcastcampaigns at conver ng interest into sales.

“Despite addi onal campaign costs, relevant campaigns increase net pro ts by an average of 18 mes more than do broadcast mailings.”

— Jeannie Mullen and David Daniels,Email Marke ng: An Hour a Day (JupiterResearch)

With total engagement you deliver highlytargeted, meaningful and hyper-relevantcommunica ons that are unique to eachsubscriber based on pro le, purchase historyand life stage. This enhances your rela onshipsby building deeper, more meaningful andsustainable interac ons as they pass throughdi erent stages in their purchasing lifecycle.

But lifecycle marke ng is not just aboutretaining high-value customers; it’s aboutfocusing on the crea on and delivery of life me value to the customer. You maintaina high level of engagement by personalizingcommunica ons across customer touch pointsto keep them coming back.

Ride TheLifecycle3.




Awareness

Interest

Acquisi on

Reten on

Loyalty

Growth

Email improves your visibility with customersthroughout the lifecycle.Once you’ve segmented your list, you canstay relevant with your customers via ongoingcommunica ons that involve them with yourbrand. When you know customers morein mately, you can cra your messages aroundproducts and services throughout the life cyclethat address their needs and interests andmaximize the life me value of each customer.

As you understand your customers’ changingneeds, you can bring them through each stageof their lifecycle: Awareness, Acquisi on,Interest, Reten on, Loyalty, and Growth.

You’ve heard it before… it’s all about quality,not quan ty. A large email list is worthless if subscribers are not engaged with your brand.Although behavior-based, trigger-based and

lifecycle-based segmenta on strategies areall me-consuming and resource intensiveprojects, even basic segmen ng can produce amuch higher return on investment (ROI).




Automa on is the core component of totalengagement. Without dozens or hundreds of customer rela onship managers to deal withyour client base, there would never be enough

me in a day to reach out to your audience asrichly as total engagement requires. A robustautoma on so ware suite provides you withthe tools to answer ques ons and follow up

on ac ons with a level of detail that wouldotherwise be impossible.

Despite its power, an automated campaignis only as smart as the plan created by itsadministrator. The selected triggers shouldbe created according to a communica onsstrategy that makes sense for the marketplaceand the interests of the subscriber. Appropriateand mely behavior-based emails can improverelevance for the individual prospect or

customer, increasing the probability andpoten al revenue from a sale.

A personal approach raises engagement and

puts you in sync with customers’ needs.

Make ItPersonal 4.




The owchart below illustrates a typical automated introductory email campaign:

1. First, when a person makes an ac on, such as responding to a campaign, they become a lead.2. The next item is a Trigger that puts leads into

di erent Segments. In this case, split by annualrevenues of $10 Million a year.

3. Companies with less than $10 Million go intothe automated email campaign, and are sent awelcome email.

4. Companies with greater than $10 Million inannual revenue are taken out of the automatedprocess and into a manual queue to becontacted by a sales execu ve.

5. The next Trigger tracks whether the recipient opened the automated welcome email andclicked through. If they did, they go into the manual sales follow-up list.

6. If they do not open the email, the automated campaign con nues by sending an invita on fora white paper or other asset.

This example is simpli ed, but a more typical automated campaign has more triggers, ac ons,and built-in delays to help you manage an automated response to customer ac vi es.

By using dynamic segments and merge elds in your emails, the result is a seamless, organicstream of messages sent to your readers. Automated campaigns are completely controllable byyou, and limited only by your data and crea vity. By improving relevance, you improve response.

Automated email campaigns can get very complex.




With the incredible amount of customer dataavailable today, it is possible to segment youraudience into much smaller groups than everbefore. Marketers use this data to tailor theirmessaging by industry, region, market, age,interest, income, gender, and several otherfactors. The technology limita ons of the pastno longer prevent storing detailed informa on.

With online communica ons and networkeddata storage, what is the limit to the data thatcan be gathered? You can collect the namesand informa on of each customer, client, user,subscriber, member, and reader so that youcan drill down to their immediate needs andinterests. Beyond that, micro-segments canchange as people take di erent ac ons, ful ll

needs, and shi to new income strata.The result of this new level of detail is theability to create micro-segments. A micro-segment is a grouping of people who shareexceedingly similar descrip ons, such aswomen of a par cular ethnicity between 32and 34 living in greater Boston who work for

a nancial services company and like Mexicanfood. If your product is designed to appeal tothat person, your campaign can reach them inthe venues where they are found.

Micro-segmenta on opens a ton of poten alfor crea ve ideas, because now you canuse words, humor, color schemes, dynamicgraphics and overall designs that would notappeal to a broader audience. How manyadver sing campaigns have been watereddown to avoid o ending viewers who are notpart of the core audience anyway? Today, youcan use a mix of di erent marke ng channelsto reach your intended audience, and appeal tothem with a campaign for their exact pro le.

Micro-segmenta on lets you approach

customers and prospects on their level, one toone, and par cipate in a conversa on of equalsinstead of performing for an audience.

However, the risk in collec ng this kind of detailis that customers may feel like their privacy isbeing compromised. At some point, Internet

users and store visitors resist giving away toomuch informa on, especially if they know itmeans ge ng buried in emails, text messagesand postcards from you. That is why con nuouspermission and surveys are so important.You must keep the customer in charge of therela onship. As your approach becomes moremicrotargeted, you defer more and more to the

communica on preferences of your audience.Micro-segmenta on can mean a vastimprovement in the response to your emails,as people are more apt to read a message thatlooks like it is relevant to their interests.

Prac ce has proven that open and clickthroughrates rise when the size of a market segmentis smaller. This isn’t because of the size of

the segment alone, but because the messageis more closely targeted. As a marketer, youwant to use any technique that can improveresponse; so, more detailed informa on aboutcustomers is worth real dollars in marke ngROI, sales, and pro tability.

CreateMicro-Segments To Raise Response5.




Micro-segments are

very small groups of customers with similar interests, made possiblewith the latest email sending and trackingtechnology.

3. Ac on

5. Comedy

4. Drama

2 & 4

2. Horror

1 & 2

3 & 5

2 & 4 & 5

1. SciFi

Current email marke ng tools let you storemore detailed data and run very ghtly messaged campaigns. For example, you cansegment viewers of movies down to the exact

genres they prefer (graphic on right):




Most professionals think of marke ng asthe easiest func on in any business. Theassump on is that it just takes a li le wri ng,a dash of color, a pile of money, and customerswill ood your inbox with orders. It doesn’tquite work that way; marke ng is a terri coutlet for crea vity, but it also requires asurprising level of discipline.

With email marke ng, it is very easy to let themessage and design of a campaign get out of hand. It takes e ort to keep the idea simpleand the acquisi on path clear. With productupdates, partner announcements, events,promo ons, and numerous other excusesfor ar cles, it is temp ng to let the messagebecome di use. The customer receiving youremail has too much to read and too manychoices to make, obscuring your message.

With current email marke ng prac ces, theaverage campaign is run every few weeks ormonthly, and the message includes more than

one idea. Most marketers won’t inundate their readers with emails more o en than that. Thistrend is now shi ing to more frequent emails, requiring the marketer to scale down the message.

With total engagement marke ng, you seek a deeper level of rela onship with your customers,and ask for permission more frequently (which is described in Get Con nuous Permission ). Thismeans you can engage more o en, as long as you avoid taxing your customers’ pa ence withmul message emails. Your email marke ng strategy for the next decade should be focused on:

• Crea ng shorter, more targeted messages that focus on one key o er.

• Se ng ac on triggers in your email marke ng program, to send one of these short emailswhen a customer takes a certain ac on at any one of your numerous outposts.

• Tracking opens and clicks to speci c campaigns and apply a score to each ac on, measuringthe depth of a customer’s interest in your o er.

A er you send an email campaign or get a click or conversion from somebody, follow up a day ortwo later with a welcome email, related o er, invita on, or just a message of thanks. But use justone message. You can send another next week.

Keeping your messages to just oneidea can have a large impact onyour overall marke ng strategy.

Keep ItShort And Sweet6.




Thank you for joining us!We are glad you registered or our latest update aboutour latest products and services.

Read More >>______________________________________________

View our newest video.Learn about our product that helps you increaserevenues and reduce costs. View Now >>______________________________________________

Have you heard about our latest product?It will help you raise the value o your marketingcampaigns exponentially. Learn More >>______________________________________________

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We are pleased to announcethe rollout o our new prod-uct that creates value oryour company.

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Thank you or joining us!We are glad you registered or our latest update about our latestproducts and services.

Regards,

Director o [email protected] our newest video.

Learn about our product that helps you increaserevenues and reduce costs.

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Director o [email protected]

Have you heard about our latest product?

It will help you raise the value o your marketingcampaigns exponentially.

Regards,

Director o [email protected]

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2.

3.

Simple messages raise the value of the opportunity, so break up longmessages into parts, for example:




What ma ers most to your customers?

One of the most important elements of doingbusiness is being open to receiving customerfeedback. Developing las ng customerrela onships requires an understanding of theirneeds. Listen to your customers, discover theirpain points, and bring innova ve solu ons tomarket to address their issues.

Ge ng frequent customer feedback makesTotal Engagement a scary concept for manybusinesses. However, the closer you get toknowing the customer, the richer rela onshipyou enjoy. You should survey your subscriberso en, even if it means hearing feedback youwon’t like.

Customer surveys help your organiza on:

• Discover new product and service ideas• Learn what keeps your customers loyal• Understand customer pain points & needs• Gain insight into customer service care• Keep a compe ve edge with your market

Measuring customer sa sfac on is acon nuous process. With every bit of feedback,you can improve services so your customersunderstand that you listen to them.

Many companies monitor customer feedbackmonthly, quarterly, or yearly. Yet, there is muchto be gained from acquiring and analyzingcustomer feedback on a con nuous basis,in terms of mely response to changes incustomer sa sfac on.

When conduc ng surveys, make them quickand simple. You should streamline your surveyby limi ng the length and number of ques onsyou need answered, for several reasons:

• To ensure a low abandonment rate• To reduce the customer’s level of boredom• To raise the thought level for each answer

The ideal customer survey has 3-5 mul plechoice ques ons with no ‘neutral’ answers, anda box for comments or sugges ons.

Knowing your customer is the most important func on of marke ng. Total Engagement only

increases this need.

Keep YourEyes Open Wide7.




Customers Sales &Marke ng

ProductDevelopment

CustomerService

Billing

Surveys help you understand exactly how to engage customers.You reach people in many ways, and each o ersa survey opportunity. Whenever a businessdepartment has contact with a customer, use atriggered email survey to con nue dialogue.

You set the criteria and the types of triggers arein nite. A customer or prospect is much morelikely to respond to a survey if they have justhad an interac on with you, and surveys thatare automa cally emailed to people when atrigger or event occurs deliver be er results.

Triggered surveys give you rapid insight intoyour quality of customer care, your purchasingprocess, and ways to improve the experience.When you can iden fy your prospects’ andcustomers’ needs and pain points, you canaddress them; and addressing pain points iswhat creates a las ng customer rela onship.

By listening carefully to customers, you caniden fy opportuni es for training employees,while gaining valuable insight for productand service enhancements that will increaserevenue as well as improve customersa sfac on and loyalty.




Engagement-based deliverability metrics areincreasingly important for email campaigns, likeopen rates and clickthroughs. While open andclick rates vary widely, deliverability describesthe percentage of emails ge ng to the inbox,and should always be as high as possible.

The best way to maximize deliverability is toimprove email compliance prac ces, whichare more important than they’ve ever been.ESPs monitor SPAM complaints and use robust

ltering systems to weed out illegi mate email.ISPs have developed user engagement metricsfor deliverability to iden fy legi mate email.For example, Yahoo! tracks the me an emailstays in a user’s inbox before it is deleted, andAOL tracks what messages are moved from theSPAM folder or forwarded.

SPAM complaint bu ons are more prominent inemail systems, and email recipients use them.‘Blast’, ‘Bulk’, and ‘Mass’ have become dirtywords in email marke ng, which means emailmarketers have to strengthen their compliancee orts and ghten their sending prac ces.

Most people say “No” to your message. Engagethe ones who say “Yes” and grow your business.

Get

Con nuous Permission8.




Increase your market reach and campaignresponse by se ng viral triggers that cul vatecustomer engagement. Put simply, a viraltrigger is a piece of content that engages youraudience and compels them to forward it to afriend. It’s the most cost-e ec ve and e cientway to spread the word to a broader audience.

Digital content types that can go viral includephotos, widgets, compelling o ers, ar cles,and podcasts. Be sure to include a ‘forward toa friend’ link in the footer of your email. This isa great way to enable recipients to share youremail with friends who might also be interestedin your product or service.

Beyond email campaigns, you can increasecontent reach by adding social bookmarking toyour website. This enables visitors to bookmarkkey pages across their social networks.

In 2010, ramp up your engagement ini a vesand make your campaigns even more viral byadding video to your email newsle ers. Createcontent that is ready to share, because it isnewsworthy, educa onal, or entertaining. This

en ces your readers to pass it on to others.

The viral trigger turns a passive viewer into anac ve in uencer, who sets “viral” marke nginto mo on by broadcas ng a message thatdrives awareness and generates leads.

Your goal is to get the viewer from justpassively consuming the content to ac velysharing it. Although people usually pass onvideos that are funny, sexy, surprising, orshocking, a video that is hyper-relevant has thepower to be extremely viral.

The best part of adding sharable media toyour email is that you can track and monitorits impact every step of the way, includingimpressions, clicks, views, drop-o s, view

mes, and viral sharing.

74% of people are in uenced by the opinions of others, and 47% read reviews before purchase.

— ManageSmarter, September 2009

You have the capability to help customersshare your messagewith others. Use it to

increase engagement.

Raise Awareness

Of Your Brand9.




Have you ever received an email from oneof your vendors asking you to write back toschedule a support call, in case you haveproblems with the product? It’s not a salespitch because you’re already a user. It ’s merelyan invita on to get some support me. Wouldit work? Would you write back, or would youdelete it like any other vendor email?

Email campaigns can be used for a lot morethan just marke ng. A large company canuse email for internal communica ons, or asupport team can use them to help customersget the best experience from the product.Automated emails and segmented lists makethis kind of campaign much easier for everyoneat a company.

Salesforce.com is one company using emailcampaigns for their customer success program.The team works ac vely to help users learnthis online CRM solu on to maximize its use.They regularly send emails to users to ask if they need support, or have issues or ques ons.Instead of wai ng for irate callers, they defuse

poten al problems by taking a proac veapproach to customer service.

Engagement is an ongoing process. Exis ngcustomers are poten ally your greatestsales force, and yet, a surprising number of companies fail to see them as an audience forfurther brand messaging. Total EngagementMarke ng is about more than expandingrela onships with your target market, it is also

about nding addi onal groups with which youshould apply your core strategy.

What kind of support-oriented message shouldyou use? You can send o ers to help, productupdates, scheduled training courses, new datasheets, and other service-related materials. Noma er what your support message is, the true,underlying message to your customer is:

We are here and we are engaged.

DeliverSupport Services10.




About Net Atlan cFounded in 1995, Net Atlan c, Inc. is a global email service provider (ESP) o ering email marke ngsolu ons, branded reseller programs and dedicated email marke ng servers. Net Atlan c’s goal isto help businesses maximize ROI with email tools like A/B/N split tes ng, triggered and sequen almailings, custom surveys, click streaming, spam analysis tools, open database connec vity, and anopen API (applica on program interface for even further customiza on). Net Atlan c was one of the rst email marke ng companies.

Visit www.netatlan c.com , or contact an account execu ve toll-free at 978-219-1900 .

The latest email marke ng technology allows you to deepen customer rela onships, turn leads intosales opportuni es, and move them forward in the buying process. Engagement metrics such asinterest scoring, shopping cart abandonment, and sales cycle analysis comprehensively assess howe ec ve your campaigns are at retaining your audience. Raising your level of engagement is the key

to sales growth and the expansion of your business.When you engage people throughout the process, no ma er where they congregate on the web,you raise the level of par cipa on and build trust. Listen, learn, and deliver targeted informa onto address their par cular interests and needs, at the right me... consistently. Customers engagemore deeply with companies that listen to their needs.

Total Engagement Marke ng is a new message, and it may seem unorthodox, but as a marketertoday, you should rethink how you deliver your product to your customer.

It’s simple: Don’t lead your customers. Engage them.

You’re not trying to

be all things to all customers. You’retrying to be one thingto one customer.

Conclusion

Net Atlantic - Total Engagement Marketing

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