Don’t ‘Spray and Pray’
Have you noticed how accepting many marketeers seem to be of poor email open rates? Part of the problem seems to be that open rate statistics vary wildly depending on industry opinion and analytics. What one company may find acceptable will be totally unacceptable to another.
At LAW Creative we have achieved substantial success with email campaigns for companies like Goodwood. Goodwood is a country estate in West Sussex in Southern England. It is the seat of the Dukes of Richmond and is famous for motorsport (The Festival of Speed), horse racing, aviation and golf.
Mailing a list of some 200,000 opt-in targets each month resulted in typical open rates of over 47%, which by any standards is good. The reason for such success was due to the quality of the data, the segmentation of the audience, the innovative approach of the email itself and the relevance and timing of the emails.
At LAW Creative we have substantial experience across a vast range of hotel and leisure based clients, which includes their expectations and actuality for open and click through rates. As well as the analysis of numerous emarketing campaigns in terms of ROI. But we will never be complacent in terms of achievable success!
Humans are attracted to people and brands that they have an emotional connection to! And getting the right message to the right person, at the right time guarantees revenue. Everyone of us is looking for the ‘silver bullet’. But, however elusive the silver bullet may be, the rules of relevance and timing are critical.
Talking of relevance and timing Google say that 45% of us actually research on our phones whilst out shopping. 20% of us apparently change our minds whilst in store based on that research. And unbelievably 43% of top brands have no mobile site.
Another under utilised area to explore with email campaigns is testing. At LAW Creative we will typically test up to four subject lines, one against the other, across say 10% of our total data base, prior to picking the ‘winner’ for the full mailing. Informed segmentation, timing, ‘tricks’ and triggers will ensure that campaigns have the best possible shot at success.
During a recent DMA Conference in Las Vegas one of the subjects for debate was ‘Is email marketing dead?’ Now clearly it isn’t, in fact despite the massive growth in mobile marketing it still accounts for most of the activity. But email needs to change. The view at the DMA was that to continue to grow email marketeers and designers need to innovate. The more data we have about our customers the more able we are to predict what they need from us. Segmentation is king. We need to know our customers, their interests, their likes, their dislikes, their birthdays, their buying patterns, their decision making process and when they are in the market to buy from us! And we need to fully understand our individual market place. It may take us 30 seconds to decide to purchase a packet of chewing gum, but 3 months to buy a house. Once you know your customers, once you have analysed your data and taken on board the insights there in, you’ll know the tone of voice and timing to use when communicating with them. But beware! 54% of recipients hit the unsubscribe button because of receiving too frequent emails. A massive 49% hit unsubscribe because the emails they are receiving are boring. This email for David lloyd Leisure is well targeted, contains a relevant offer and is fun!
At LAW Creative we combine strategy, experience and creativity (creativity helps to stop emails from being boring and being unsubscribed by 49% of your target audience) with one of the most powerful and intuitive automated marketing platforms. LAW Amp is a game-changing automated marketing platform with CRM capabilities built specifically to manage customer data and broadcast targeted email campaigns. LAW Amp currently broadcasts around 3 million emails per month for a variety of clients. LAW Amp is powered by Copernica software. It’s a multi-dimensional data base system, has unique data warehousing facilities, more integrations, greater flexibility and more data personalisation than many other systems available for clients.
Google says that by 2015 we will have 7.9 zettabytes of data. Data is one of the keys to the success of your business. But however good the technologies surrounding your marketing efforts the strategy, experience and creativity will help to drive your emarketing campaigns in the right direction. If you need help with data capture or to discuss the most effective ways of providing truly targeted communications contact brett.sammels@lawcreative.co.uk
LAW Creative is a registered partner of Copernica marketing software. Copernica is an international developer of powerful marketing software with over 3,500 users.
