Email Summit Miami 2010 short wrap-up PPT

I wanted to share with you a short wrap-up presentation about the key findings of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit in Miami. It’s a short one, but I’m still working on the longer version. We’ll keep you posted.

Kenny Van Beeck

2010 email marketing predections

An overview of some famous quotes and predictions on email marketing in 2010:

“Because email is inherently effective, marketers get away with poor processes and little innovation and still are able to produce better ROI than their other marketing efforts” – Jeff Hilimire, chief digital officer, Engauge

“More sophisticated use of analytics will help marketers better target email marketing — and develop more unique dynamic messaging that drives deeper engagement.” – Michael Kogon, CEO, Definition 6

“Forums like Facebook and Twitter present a ripe opportunity to capture new email addresses at a pace and magnitude that was impossible before these sites existed.” – Jordan Cohen, senior director, marketing and public relations, Pivotal Veracity

“Most people see the growth of mobile email as a problem in design: how do you get your email and landing pages to look good on a little screen with idiosyncratic HTML display capabilities?” – Mark Brownlow, publisher, Email Marketing Reports

“Relevance is now required, not optional. Individualized, behavior-triggered delivery necessitates a huge emphasis on testing & optimization.” – Jay Baer, founder, Convince & Convert

Here are a few of my thoughts you might consider for 2010:

• Get your customer engaged with your brand through the social world.
• Gain their trust and convince them to subscribe to your list through a well-constructed subscription form.
• Follow customers in your email program respectfully offer them relevant customer lifecycle campaigns.
• Manage your lists well. Remove bounces and unsubscribes regularly.
• Monitor your IP’s on reputations and deliverability and use the proper infrastructure.

More quotes on http://www.clickz.com/3636273

Kenny Van Beeck

Improve Your Click Through Rate By Using Video

Statistics show that linking to a video doubles or triples your clickthrough rate compared to a regular link.  Unsurprisingly, video in email promises to be one of the biggest email marketing trends in 2010.

True, linking to external video content on a website was your only option up until now. But things are about to change radically. Embedding video in email will no longer be fiction in 2010 – technology is being refined as we speak. This will surely result in an even higher clickthrough rate.

But for now – as these results illustrate – Apple Mail is the only email client that allows you to view an embedded video. However, until then we can offer you a smart and dead simple alternative.

Here’s how it works:
• Take a screenshot of an inviting still from your video.
• Place it on a prominent spot in your email.
• Use the image as a link to the actual video on your web page.

An example? This video of Kenny from EmailGarage at the Digital First Marketing exhibition was “embedded” using this method.

The Miami MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit Overview

After having 3 fascinating summit days in Miami it’s time for a general overview.
What was the general tone of the event?  What where the major take-aways? And in the end: what have I learned?

I must say, again I was surprised about the quality of the summit. There were a lot of very interesting cases to dig into and a bunch of interesting people to meet. This is by no doubt one of the best email marketing events in the world.

The pre-workshop with Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments was a must for every self-respecting email professional. Even if this was the third time I attended one of his lectures, I still learn from each new session. Flint is a tremendous speaker and his mathematical approach on all email marketing aspects based on serious testing is amazing, no less.

Keynote opener Joseph Jaffe immediately set the ton. Retention, customer experiences, permission and social media integration: that’s what this 2010 summit was all about.

The following days where filled to the brim with cases, split into two main tracks: B2B & B&C. Just to give you an impression of the quality of the cases and speakers: Dell, S&S Worldwide, IDG connect, Parenting.com, SalesForce.com, Returnpath, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, … and last but most definitely not least, another keynote by Dela Quist.

In his own quick, direct and motivational style, Dela talked about the importance of permission in a multi-channel world. One of his famous quotes I won’t easily forget: When you buy an email list your thought is “rape and pillage”, not “nurture”.

My overall feeling of this summit? Social media are very hot in the US right now and permission in this opt-out regulated country becomes more important by the day. No doubt deliverability will benefit from this.

Here a a few thoughts you might consider when designing the ideal flow:

• Get your customer engaged with your brand through the social world.
• Gain their trust and convince them to subscribe to your list through a well-constructed subscription form.
• Follow customers in your email program respectfully offer them relevant customer lifecycle campaigns.
• Manage your lists well. Remove bounces and unsubscribes regularly.
• Monitor your IP’s on reputations and deliverability and use the proper infrastructure.

But hey, if your permission-based program is already built upon these foundations, you won’t have to worry about deliverability. And what’s more: your customer will thank you for taking some time to understand his needs and give him the respect he so rightly deserves.

Pity we didn’t get to present the Belgian Unilever Solo case here.  Now there’s a prime example of what this is all about…. Maybe next year?

For EmailGarage from Miami,

Kenny Van Beeck

Day 3 @ the Miami MarketingSherpa Email

The last day of this Miami summit was all about social and permission marketing.
It hits me that the US (opt-out) market is “finally” using the advantage of working in a 100% opt-in concept. That was exactly the link between social media and deliverability and the topics of today.

Social media are used to get the right contacts, expand your network, build relationships and get people subscribing for your opt-in list.

Or like Dela Quist so nicely said – When you buy an email list your thought is “rape & pillage” not “nurture”.  During his fascinating presentation Dela was talking about how to set up permission marketing in a multi-channel world.

A quick overview of his quotes:

• Email subject lines are the new Twitter for e-marketers. Use that space and be creative!
• Opens and CTR are a stethoscope: they can only tell you if the person is not dead.
  But what % opens at least 1x/yr?
• Forget relevance – it’s about value! Value has relevancy. Relevance may not have value.
• Don’t drive people to your website, seduce them.
• Difference between B2B & B2C? Same guy, suit vs. baseball hat – still need to deliver value.
• You’re NOT sending too much email. You’re not. You’re sending permission mktg. Stop fear and self-loathing in email!

After lunch we had some great cases on how to use social media in your email marketing strategy.
Everything was there: Mobile, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Video, Email…

Major take-aways of the day:

• Permission marketing is a load of CRAP! “Customized, Relevant, Anticipated, Personalized”
• Start using tiny url links on your website and emails
• Test email rendering for mobile phones
• Monitor your IP’s on reputation – that’s why permission is so important.
• Twitter business info: http://business.twitter.com
• Adding your email subscription call to action to every page in your site can result in 10x increase in subscribers.

That was it for today, hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for the next Email Summit overview post.

Kenny Van Beeck

Day 2 @ the Miami MarketingSherpa Email – part 2

Impossible to do all the sessions in one day; since it was a duel track of B2B and B2C cases.
I mixed according to my personal interest. A small overview and key findings on some of the slots:

Must-Have triggered email marketing campaigns for every business

A very complete overview of every possible triggered email campaign you can set up.

Here’s the list:

• Confirm emails
• Search and browse emails
• Follow-up emails (events, …)
• Catalog request emails
• Abandoned cart emails
• Product review request and notifications
• Anniversary or reminder of last order emails
• Reactivation campaigns
• Survey emails

Some interesting figures also:
Only 11% of internet merchants sent email to abandoned cart shoppers.
SAS client case stats: 25% respond to abandoned cart emails, 1/3 of them order afterwards.

Lifecycle marketing – Starting at the Zygote stage

Parenting.com case – different content e-newsletters depending on the lifecycle of moms and their pregnancy/kids stage.

Fascinating, Parenting.com have set up the same lifecycle email marketing strategy as EmailGarage did for Nutricia Baby in Belgium. Soon-to-be-moms, new moms and experienced moms are getting valuable content based on the lifecycle of baby expectations, pregnancy and having kids.
Everything is also entirely automated.
Results: 51,66% opened rate and 36,42% in click-to-open rate

A great extra in the approach is a pregnancy planner; interesting idea to start even before the actual pregnancy. Also adapting the length of the copy according the lifecycle is cool as well.  We should look into it.

3 key final take-aways:

• Capture and leverage the data
• Engage with customers (eg. the copy adapting story)
• Automate and Optimize

Be an email creative “top chef”

Orbitz case – B2C emails: Reminder drop-out emails on price-drops for previous searched flights.

Good thinking, nice designs, great perso and fully automated.
Just one thing, isn’t it a strange idea to integrate a search form in a “top chef” email!?
Results: 25% opened rate and 15% transactions increase via this new approach.

SalesForce.com case – B2B emails: A re-design of the e-mail marketing communication, texts and visuals. The goal was to differ from competition.

Changes made: refreshed design, including a pre-header, giving the possibility to switch to text emails (Smart phones in mind) and conditional based content.
Honestly, nothing really chocking, although it is a good idea to give business users the possibility to switch to text messages.
Results: unique click-through rate increase of 27%

These were my findings of today’s afternoon. Hope you enjoy it!
Stay tuned.

Kenny Van Beeck

Day 2 @ the Miami MarketingSherpa Email – part 1

Keynote speaker Joseph Jaffe presented his new book and theory “Flip the funnel”.
Joseph is mostly known as being an expert in social media and is a famous speaker on that topic.

What is this new theory anyway?
I think it is something like Fred Reicheld’s customer loyalty, but more social media style.

Some snapshots:

Hypothesis:

• Retention is the new acquisition
• Customer service becomes the new key in marketing
• The real role of social media is retention

4 levels of engagement & activation:

• Product
• Brand
• Experiential
• Communal

The 3 step plan:

1. Unify inbound/outbound service
2. Marry customer experience with word of mouth
3. Formalize the process:  A New Customer Activation Model
   - Content , Conversations, Commendations

2 out of the 10 famous rules in customer service:

1. Customer Service doesn’t stop @ 5PM on a Friday
2. All customers are equal (but some are more important than others)

So, overall it sounds very interesting this new theory. I think I know what book I will be reading this evening!

Stay tuned

Kenny Van Beeck

Day 1 @ the Miami MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit 2010

The kick-off of this Miami MarketringSherpa Email Summit started with a pre-workshop hosted by MarketingExperiments. Keynote speaker was Dr. Flint McGlaughlin. I’ve met Flint 2 years ago and every single one of his courses are still an eye opener to me.  The scientific approach on email marketing effectiveness is not only efficient; it also gives you a clear view and a reference method on each email marketing approach you are setting up.

Here are some key findings I took from Flint’s workshop:

General findings

• People don’t buy from websites, they buy from people. Pour that feeling into
  your website.
• Clarity trumps persuasion.
• Too many of the emails look likes magazine ads. The problem is that many emails are created by agencies that are used to creating paper ads.

He also handed us an effective three-step approach to email marketing effectiveness:

• Optimize your capture forms
• Create effective and relevant emails
• Provide smart and crystal clear landing pages

Here are some general rules for each one of them…

Optimize capture forms

• Use quantity to promote your company, product or services.
  Quality has to be proven by others.
• Don’t use generic buttons like: “Click here”, “Submit now” … but be specific: “Get your free product”, “Download your full report now”.
• Only use images if they add value to the site or guide your users to the important content.
• Minimizing friction elements is one of the most effective ways to increase conversion.
  - Make your webforms look short
  - Limit the minimum amount of information
• A privacy policy line improves conversion. Let it pop open in a small new window.

Create effective and relevant emails

• The most important goal of an email is to generate clicks.
• The first 2 lines of the email are the most important in reflecting the relevance of the email.
• The frequency of email sending is directly influenced by the relevance of the email message.
• Testing is the only way to determine what your ideal frequency is.
  Frequency can differ according to a specific target group on your list.
• Don’t tell the same story in your email and on your landing page.  The email needs to motivate people to click and start the conversation.  
• When creating a landing page, always ask yourself:
  -  What is my objective?
  - What is the best way to achieve that objective?
• The value proposition is the answer to the relevance question of every email :
  ”If I am your ideal customer. Why should I buy from you, instead of any of your competitors?”
  If you can not formulate your value proposition, every optimizing process is useless.
  “We are the only company… “ could be the most important words in a value proposition.
• The relevance of the subject line improves the opened rate. The relevance of the body copy increases the click-through rate.

Landing Page optimization

• You’ve got 7 seconds to convince a visitor to spend more time on your landing page.
   And yet you get to give him have an answer to his questions:
       -   Where am I?
       -   What can I do here?
       -   What should I do here?
• The headline must convince the reader within 2 seconds to read the first paragraph.
• Minimize navigation on the landing page.
• A two-column lay-out is rarely effective for a landing page.
• Sometimes it’s better to radically re-design a landing page instead of trying to fix it.
• 2 elements contribute to friction: length and difficulty.

There you go. I had a great time tapping into the skills and knowledge of some of the
greatest email professionals on the planet. I hope you’ll find this summary helpful.

Next report straight from the Miami MarketingSherpa Email summit coming up tomorrow.
Stay tuned!

Signing off…

Kenny Van Beeck

Luc Robijns verlaat na 17 jaar het marketingbureau LUON

In januari 2010 verlaat Luc Robijns (1962) het customer marketingbureau LUON dat hij samen met Onno Hesselink in april 1993 oprichtte. Dat jaar zag Robijns op de grens van de vakgebieden sales en marketing een gat in de markt van de bureaus. In zijn vroegere carrière als sales manager had hij ondervonden dat verkopers en marketers niet altijd dezelfde taal spreken. Vooral als het om de meetbaarheid van resultaten gaat. LUON zou als bureau campagnes afleveren met meetbare resultaten die door bedrijven makkelijker kunnen geconverteerd worden naar verkopen.

Meer info

Meet EmailGarage at the Email Summit ‘10 in Miami

This year MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit again takes place in Miami, Florida.

Kenny Van Beeck, EmailGarage’s business development manager and senior email marketing consultant will also attend and will blog daily about the Email Summit. So be sure to stay tuned to http://blog.emailgarage.com on January 20-22.

If you want to meet Kenny Van Beeck in Miami, just send an email to kvanbeeck@emailgarage.com . He will be delighted to share some insights about e-CRM and email marketing in Europe and the challenges of international or multilingual email campaigns.

More on:

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/
http://www.sherpastore.com/EmailSummit2010.html
http://blog.emailgarage.com
http://twitter.com/emailgarage