Practical Guide to Email Marketing 2011Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

From leveraging social email marketing to setting up triggered campaigns and dealing

with the new email regulations – our new Practical Guide to Email Marketing in 2011 gives

you hands-on advice on how to capitalise on the main opportunities and deal with key

challenges for Email Marketing in 2011.

Contents

1. The rise of social media: opportunities for email marketing

2. Coping with the mobile revolution

3. From basic interaction to long term relationship: wise use of transactional email

4. Rising above the clutter

5. Beyond the opens and clicks: the new era of email analytics

6. Summary

Introduction2010 was a year of significant changes in email marketing. New regulations by email providers, further proliferation of smartphones, the announcement of Facebook Messages, and the rise of Social Email Marketing – these and other milestones show that the landscape has changed and the simple email mechanisms of previous years no longer work today.

In our new whitepaper we analyse the main shifts that will shape email marketing in 2011 and give hands-on recommendations on how to capitalise on them. To make sure we provide you with the most complete picture, we complement the analysis with a roundup of last year’s milestones that drove the changes.

Rise and Rise of Social Media: Opportunities for Email Marketing

2010: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn... Social net-works have grown from a consumer phenomenon into an effective business marketing tool. With the increasing num-ber of companies making use of the viral power of social media, the term Social Media Marketing is now an integral part of the marketing vocabulary. While the growing popu-larity of social networks had first caused some to question the future role of email marketing, it is now clear that social media is here not to replace email but to work in conjunc-tion with it, and in 2010 we have seen more businesses integrate social media in their email marketing efforts.

2011: The recent announcement of the Facebook Messages service by the social media giant confirms that email and social media integration will continue to grow. The integration trend will provide plenty of opportunities for businesses to gain additional exposure for their messages. At emarsys we always encou-rage our clients to:

• Add a social sharing or SWYN (share-with-your-network) functionality – sharing whole email or just specific sections – to their emails in order to enable recipients to spread the message among their friends and family.

• Convert followers into subscribers by collecting email addresses at social pages.

• Turn subscribers into followers by including a “Call to Follow” in email messages.

• Track the social footprint of the email messages on Social networks and identify brand champions.

See the emarsys Social Email Marketing Whitepaper for trends and best practice tips on integrating the channels email and social media.

Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

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Image 1: Convert Your Followers into Subscribers

From Basic Interaction to Long-term Relationship

2010: Despite the ample evidence of the impor-tance of individualisation, still a large percentage of email marketing is used to send bulk messages, with little consideration towards personalisation, behaviour targeting and other ways to increase the relevancy of the message. Transactional messages which present a great opportunity to engage with customers – are still to a large extent treated as responsibility of the IT rather than the marketing department.

2011: In the next year we anticipate and encourage more marketers to make a move towards automated lifecycle communication:

• Introduce an on-boarding communication plan: welcome and “how to get started” message

• Make more and better use of transactional messages around the purchase stage. Think of your actions in case the purchase is not completed – what should the Shopping Cart Abandonment strategy be?

• Trigger campaigns at individual lifecycle milestones to achieve deeper and more relevant interaction: reactivation campaigns, birthday emails, reminders, and other.

• Try regular targeted promotions to shorten the gap between purchase and re-purchase.

Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

Birthday

Inactivity

Website- or -Database-Trigger

Reminder

Email Marketing Shipping Platform

etc…

Personalised

Corporate Identity

Relevant

Email CampaignIndividual Recipients

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Going Mobile: Coping with the Revolution

2010: An important challenge for email marketers last year has been the increase in email use through mobile, fuelled by the growth of mobile phones sales and smartphones in particular. The research firm Radicati Group predict the wireless email market will hit 1 billion mailboxes by 2013 (Radicati, 2009); Nielsen claim 41.6% of US mobile Internet time is spent with email, a rise of 10% across the previous 12 months (Nielsen, 2010).

2011: With the mobile revolution expected to continue throughout 2011, what are the implications for email marketers?

• Design. Marketers should take extra care when working on email design: make sure templates are optimised not just for desktop and web-based email clients, but also for mobile clients.

• Time and frequency of send. Viewing habits are different for “mobile email viewing”. It’s important to carefully think of the best time and number of messages required to reach your recipients.

Figure 1: Use Triggered Lifecycle Campaigns for Better Customer

Interaction

Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

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See the emarsys case study on how Prezzybox implemented a Shopping Cart Abandonment programme to gain customer insight and recover lost revenue opportunities.

Rising Above the Clutter

2010: Making sure your message is heard has always been one of marketing’s biggest challenges. In email marketing it’s a journey that starts from making sure that the message reaches the customer inbox to ensuring it gets opened and leads to conversion. The introduction of Gmail’s Priority Inbox in 2010 put ad-ditional pressure on email marketers to take greater care of their marketing database and content – keep track of how customers engage with the brand via opens and clicks, find ways to re-engage with lapsed users, make sure email messages contain the right call for action and stand out in design.

In 2011, the battle for customer attention will continue. With the pressure on marketing to deliver measur-able results growing, how do you get through to the recipient? Making full use of the variety of channels is key to cutting through the distractions and reaching the customers. Use the right channel for the right message throughout the communication lifecycle. For example:

• Think of ways to use multiple channels to grow your marketing database. For example, use text messages and social media to invite consumers to register their email addresses to claim a discount coupon. Follow up with an email to collect additional data.

• Start segmenting your database by channel. Integration of email with social media, for example implementation of the SWYN functionality, gives you way of knowing which of your subscribers are also present on social networks. Identify the channels which are most popular among your subscribers, be ready to adapt your marketing messages accordingly.

• The best time is real time. Make best use of the launch time and reinforce your message. At the time of the campaign launch, publish your marketing message on a variety of other channels.

• Use the flexibility of social media. After the launch, continue to drive subscribers to the email through repeated posts.

• How do you target non-responders? Don’t forget each recipient has their preferred method of communication. Send dedicated follow-up messages via multiple channels.

The current environment allows making sure that the recipient always gets the message, regardless where they are and what they are doing at a given point of time.

Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

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Beyond Opens and Clicks: The New Era of Email Analytics

2010: Email open and click rates remained the most popular email metrics. As revealed in the emarsys Social Email Marketing research, despite the popula-rity of social networking and social email marketing, almost 60 percent of marketers are not yet monitoring the use of the social sharing functionality in emails. Today however the metrics used to measure the success of an email campaign is changing

2011: While open and click rates are still important indicators of the results of the campaign and a primary tool to measure email deliverability, it is no longer the only metric. Today marketers are looking to

gain more complex insight into customer behaviour and the footprint of the message. 2011 is likely to see growth of popularity of alternative indicators.

• On the one hand, in the wake of the downturn marketers are held more accountable for their contribution to the bottom line and revenue and ecommerce tracking, Average Order Values and sales monitoring will become a critical element in determining the overall email marketing success.

• In addition, as email integrates with other channels, following customer behaviour across these channels will be essential. In particular, tracking the social footprint of the message – the numbers of posts, “likes” and comments across the chosen social networks – will provide marketers the data they need for more effective email strategies.

Figure 2: Track the Social Footprint of Your Message

Summary

2011 will be the year when Email Marketing will further establish its position as a cost-effective ROI generator. To take full advantage of its potential however, email should not be used as a silo but work together with other channels. The rise of social media means that integration of email with social will become critical – from adding the SWYN functionality to effective tracking of the social footprint of the message - an indicator which needs to complement the open and clicks rate measurement as standard email metrics. On the mobile front, further proliferation of smartphones will drive change in the way consumers interact with emails and will call for extra consideration for design and time and frequency of message sending. 2011 will also see change in the way transactional messages are used. These one-in-one emails can significantly enhance customer relationship if used wisely, as building blocks of lifecycle campaigns: welcome programmes, cross and up-sell messages, abandoned shopping carts campaigns and reactivation emails.

A big challenge next year will be rising above the message clutter. However, making use of the full variety of communication channels and using them in integration with email will hold key to successfully getting through to the recipient.

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About emarsysemarsys is one of the leading global providers of email marketing solutions and services. More than 600 clients, among them eBay, Canon, Vodafone, Honda, Motorola, Alpharooms.com, Bur-ton, Head, Zurich Insurance and Mainline Menswear, send more than 24 billion emails every year with emarsys technology.

For more information on our solutions and services, please visit our website at www.emarsys.com or contact us:

emarsys UK Limited:

100 Euston StreetNW1 2HQ LondonPhone: +44 (0)20 738808-88Email: uk@emarsys.com

Email marketing has changed. Has your email strategy?

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