SIA Recap: Set It & Forget It – Triggered Campaigns

Think of it as auto-pilot for your eMarketing program, Triggered Campaigns play a valuable role in your overall messaging strategy. Their most attractive feature is the ease of use; you can literally set them up and forget about them… although we encourage a periodic evaluation!

During our call on Friday, we discussed how to move past the base-level campaigns. For instance, enhancing a single welcome campaign to become a series of messages – your opportunity to educate the newly added on your brand, your email program and move them toward that next classification… a buyer. Possible items to add to your initial welcome message are:
1) a simple survey, use this opportunity to gauge their interest, establish a wish list or just solicit their first impressions
2) a recycled campaign, a recent one that has been extremely successful for you – refresh it, tell them it’s your best offer and send it to your new subscribers
3) a great first time buyer offer – if you haven’t converted them yet give them a top, open to no-one else offer to try and move them to buyer status… if they don’t buy, send a follow up/ reminder. After this, put them into the regular mix for your planned campaigns.

Another portion of the call to highlight centered on reactivation and bonding, unfortunately we can lose touch with our recipients. So we have to monitor when someone regresses along the interaction continuum… they no longer open, they no longer click, they no longer buy. Bring them back into the fold by testing your content – what motivates them to open, click or buy? Constantly test and alter your to find your answer and keep them active then look to implement into a reoccurring/ bonding stream for others who may slip off your reports in the future.

For more on the topic, listen to our podcast from Friday; and mark your calendar for our next Service In Action call, September 25, focusing on Email Elements.

Read more >>

SIA: Set It & Forget It – Triggered Campaigns

Are you missing opportunities to reach your customers? Join us today as we discuss various trigger points you can utilize to welcome, strengthen bonds and follow up with your recipients while striving for a higher response rates and greater insight.

Friday, August 28
2:00 pm Eastern/ 1:00 pm Central

Visit the Service In Action site for additional information or to sign up. For details on today's call, send an email for the webinar/ dial-in specifics. We look forward to hearing you on the call!

Read more >>

SPOILER ALERT: August SIA Call

Tomorrow’s Service In Action call focuses on the easiest revenue generator you may not have in place – Triggered, Automated, Auto-Campaigns – there a many names, but these campaigns serve the same purpose. They are the simple auto-generated messages that automatically fire when one of your recipients does something… pretty simple huh? Unfortunately, these are the most overlooked and under-utilized campaigns in eMarketing and could be a missed revenue stream for your program.

Tomorrow’s call focuses on top examples of welcome, follow-up and bonding streams and how you can make the best first impression with your recipients. Many eMarketers throw away the opportunity by never acknowledging, by sending a basic message or a lack-luster first impression.

Join us tomorrow to discuss bonding streams and other ideas – our Service In Action call starts at 2:00 ET!

Read more >>

First Impressions

As an eMarketer it’s easy to focus on the normal email campaigns, these are the ones that you most recently perfected, received management buy-in and the ones with current response data. Odds are you’re planning a couple weeks in advance too, never looking too far back so it becomes easier and easier to forget the welcome campaign that you created years ago… or inherited from your predecessor.

These welcome campaigns may be years behind your current design work or they could be doing only part of their job. Think of the camping(s) as your first impression, it’s the best chance you have for the recipient to add you to their safe sender list; your chance to highlight something they may have overlooked while on your site or simply introduce them to your full experience – either through a purchase, survey or social media offerings.

Evaluate these campaigns quarterly; make sure they are serving your Company 101 needs:

• Show recipients a sample of what to expect
• Collect information from them – i.e. a simple survey (fill-in from the registration page)
• Push them toward other items – cool/ underappreciated part of your site or social media outlets
• Generate sales – this could be your best chance to convert!

Seems like you may need more than one email, huh? A series of welcome emails is becoming a common way to acclimate your newly joined into the fold. The series approach can also help you build standard streams for post-purchase and periodic bonding…

We’ll talk more about welcome campaigns, bonding streams and other ideas during Friday’s Service In Action call – make plans to join us at 2:00 ET!

Read more >>

The Golden Rule

We all know to Do unto others… but I never really considered it applying to email marketing until now. Merritt Colaizzi recently posted 2 key e-mail tips from SmartBrief and her first tip focuses on this rule as a caution to avoid sending too often to your recipients.

Maybe the best caveat to apply to this tip is that your message needs to have a “perceived value” to the recipient, their acceptance of your message goes a long way in their tolerance of your volume/ frequency. Ensure your message value by focusing on the relevancy and timing of your offer – will the recipient think your message is relevant? Ask yourself that with each campaign you create, be a shrewd editor (another of her other tips,) if your message doesn’t pass your initial test revise it, consolidate, personalize and make it relevant.

For the timing aspect, look to implemented triggered campaigns for some of your frequently needed/ sent items – automate requests for more information, welcome, transactional (shipping) and thank you messages. All of these triggered examples factor outside of your standard messaging and are typically viewed separately by recipients because of the cause/ effect type exchange. They will also be great revenue generators for your brand.

Make plans to take part in our Service In Action call this Friday at 2:00 ET, we’re discussing triggered campaigns and how they can play into your overall gold!

Read more >>

What does the email address say about the customer?

A recent article on TechCrunch discussed the fact that Gmail recently passed AOL as the third largest email provider. This shouldn't be a surprise to most marketers, as we've seen a downturn in AOL users and a rise in Gmail users (though it should be noted that Yahoo and Hotmail still make up between 35 -40% of most email lists.)

What is interesting is a follow up poll conducted by Lifehacker, where they asked readers what email service they used. They found 80% of responders used Gmail as their email client, verses 6% at Yahoo and 5% at Hotmail. If you're unfamiliar with Lifehacker, it's a very tech centric how to blog, described as Hints From Helosie for the Digital Age. It's readers are mostly tech savvy professionals who like to stay on the cutting age of software and tech.


So what does this tell us as email marketers?

There used to be a time when we would segment out AOL addresses and target them with special content because of rendering issues in AOL. Those days have mostly passed; but maybe now it's time to start looking at our lists and determining what the email domain says about that customer or prospect. Maybe today, it's proper for us to infer that a Gmail user is a more tech savvy customer, and tailor our offer and content to target those customers.


The Lifehacker article also shows the value of conducting an informal survey of your customer base. One simple question gives you a lot of information. Perhaps look at at giving customers at your different major domains (Yahoo. Hotmail, Gmail, AOL) a brief one or two question survey. Once you get that information, use the data to target the customers with more relevant content and offers.

And speaking of surveys, click here, and let us know what email client you use for your personal email

Read more >>

Social Sports

Pre-season games are in full swing, college teams are practicing regularly… but a recent policy may throw a flag on the fans. The Charlotte Observer ran an article entitled SEC to retreat on tweet ban, in his article Jeff Elder talks about how this conference may not allow fans to make social networking updates during the game.

According to the SEC’s existing policy, ticketed fans cannot “produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information.” Translation: a fan’s Twitter/ Facebook update, pix or video post would violate existing policy. The cause is likely linked to the existing contracts the SEC has with CBS and ESPN, their spokesperson sites video upload as the major concern.

Since an update is only a few clicks away via mobile enforcing the policy is going to nearly impossible which is why people are Tweeting everywhere, all the time – like one of the New York Kicks players who was Tweeting about his run-in this week.

As for the SEC, Elder sites that it’s likely they will be implementing a change more in-line with the Big 10 Conference who invites their fans to join in.

Read more >>

Project Retweet

Last week Twitter announced that they will soon launch a much awaited retweet function, the LA Time’s Mark Milian was among the first to share this soon-to-be-released feature. Much like an email forward, this feature will allow Twitter users to share tweets they find interesting automatically – rather than the manual cut/ paste activity currently required.

Although there is some concern (mentioned in the article) that users would be put off by the new people in their feed (the original person’s Tweet would appear) I’m certain that it will ultimately lead to more followers for the originator – especially if the Tweet(s) is of high value. At a minimum it will at least create additional exposure for the originator’s profile.

From a marketing standpoint, the likelihood of your top offers being passed along are now just a simple click away… I wonder what the success rate will be for retweeting – log your predictions now!

Read more >>

Socially Speaking

One of the most asked questions about Social Media marketing centers on the who factor – who is using the various channels? We’ve posted articles on the demographics of Social Media users… we’ve also read tons of detail on these demographics.

According to the Consumer Internet Barometer report from TNS and The Conference Board (courtesy of eMarketer) 43% of US Internet users visited social networking sites in 2Q09, the majority of social visitors were female. From an age perspective, over 70% of Internet users visiting social networks were under age 35; percentages decreased with age – only 43.1% of the 35-54 range and 18.9% over 55 were visiting – all three categories saw an increase from 2Q08.

A related eMarketer article gave additional data on the user preferences, typically those using LinkedIn were more interested in luxury activities, Twitter users focused more on pop culture and MySpace users were interested in comedy and gaming. All placed the importance on the networking capabilities regardless of age.

Let us know if you see other interesting articles on Social Media demographics!

Read more >>

Tell a Friend

Social media has done more than just change the way people connect; it’s altered search marketing and done wonders to enhance the oldest marketing method… word of mouth.

eMarketer talks about the dollars associated with this evolution in their, Word-of-Mouth Posts Big Gains article detailing a PQ Media study. PQ Media’s research focuses on US word-of-mouth spending in online communities – based on their findings, there was a 26.6% increase in 2008 (yielding $119M.) Their estimate for word-of-mouth spending in 2009 is over $1.7B – an increase of 10.2% year-over-year. Not surprisingly, consumer goods firms spent the most in this category (17.4% of the total) with food and beverage at 12.2%.

To make the most out of word of mouth advertising, marketers have to do more than just hope for an endorsement – you must actively seek testimonials from customers and then make the most of them. Meryl Evans wrote a great article, How to Collect High Quality Testimonials, for Web Worker Daily providing tips on the best ways to solicit feedback from your customers and, most importantly, what to do with those testimonials, some of the most creative ideas include:

• Asking clients to add their testimonials as recommendations in LinkedIn
• Add testimonials to your social network profiles
• Write a success story blog post explaining a problem and solution with the clients’ quotes in the story

Give us your feedback on how you currently earn, collect and publish your customer’s opinions!

Read more >>

600 and Counting!

We’re starting off this week by celebrating a milestone… you’re reading our 600th Post on the Email Yogi Blog! Our momentum and readership has increased since we posted the 500th article in March and exploded since beginning the forum in November 2006.

We’re going to continue posting, but we also need your help to make sure we’re meeting your needs. Our main goal is to make this forum more interactive, so send us your comments and let us know your opinions on what we’ve shared. You can also submit ideas to us directly, so feel free to email topics, articles and/ or suggestions.

Some of Our Best
In the spirit of gaining more interaction, we’re including posts that have garnered the most comments since article #500; hope you enjoy:
- Access Denied
- Capturing IDs Correctly
- Inbox Filtering
- Twitter, Twitter Everywhere
- The Future of Print

Keep reading and thanks again!

Read more >>

Is this thing on?

Social Media is a wonderful for interacting, increasing your brand and staying on top of the latest and greatest info… but it can also be hazardous. Today’s post serves as a reminder that you may need to be careful what you Tweet!

ABC’s Ki Mae Heussner recaps the Top 10 Social Media Gaffes, one of which we posted about a few weeks ago – remember the post about the Arizona man who was robbed while Tweeting about his vacation? He made the top ten list along with Governor Schwarzenegger, Al Roker and others who may want the do-over a Tech Expert received after he over-Tweeted (see #10 on the list.)

So remember that what you share may not be completely personal and that your posts could lead to professional consequences.

Read more >>

Consumer’s Language

eMarketers around the globe put a great deal of thought in planning their campaigns, but typically send as quickly as the final draft is ready. With the fast moving eMarketing activities, marketers try to streamline the campaign content preparation (layout, design etc.) by developing a default campaign with single language, most likely, English.

But as the world continues to get smaller, multi-cultural environments increase which leads to opportunities for marketers to speak to customers in their own language… a challenge from the campaign content and design perspective. A multi-language campaign approach can be considered; this can be achieved by creating a design template, a default version in the most commonly used language (depends on the target area) and offering the content translated in the second most common language.

By showing your recipients that you speak their language, it gives them the viewing option, extends your reach and gives a signal that their needs are important to you.

Today’s post is courtesy of our associate, Ashraf Arafeh, coordinating efforts in the Middle East.

Read more >>

Social Strength

You can learn a lot from a blogger; not only does the practice help you become a better communicator it’s an excellent way to set yourself/ your brand apart. In a recent MSN article (repost from CareerBuilder.com) Anthony Balderrama discusses Why Blogging Is Good For Your Career.

While the article is mainly geared toward setting yourself apart from other job applicants, the same ideas translate to setting your brand apart from competitors – for instance, Balderrama points out that a blog is an excellent supplement to a résumé, but it’s also an excellent companion to your website and helps to expand your reach.

Social Media is a great way to evaluate potential new hires to your marketing team, as we posted last week, social searches are becoming more common for hiring companies looking to see how applicants present themselves, communicate and what they could add to the company. Granted, social media rules are still forming but potential applicants must know that a social media check is likely on the radar. So today’s lesson centers around presentation, put your best efforts into using social media to find a position, make a hire, extend/ strengthen your brand, or enhance your existing marketing/ media efforts.

Read more >>

Easily Forgotten

They have many names – an auto-responder, trigger(ed) or reoccurring campaigns, welcome, transactional, thank you messages, campaigns on demand – regardless of what you call them, these types of campaigns are often overlooked by eMarketers. This oversight could prove to be a costly mistake, not only are there potential sale dollars associated with their absence but you could be missing new IDs or delaying the use of addresses collected. As eMarketers, we must capitalize on this top-of-mind factor and respond as quickly as possible after the consumer interacts.

Immediate interaction is easy through automatic campaigns, they also play to your recipient’s need for instant gratification while insuring that you collect an accurate email address – sending what your recipient is seeking through email insures an accurate exchange for your whitepaper, confirms activation before a free trial or before you offer the best price/ status of what they’re seeking. Here are a few other considerations:

• Sharing – Emails are easily forwarded, which gives you additional data on what happened to your offer… was it downloaded, was it shared with others etc.


• Lifestyle – Your recipients are busy and can be easily distracted; an email has greater shelf life than a confirmation page. Your recipients can hold onto the message until they’re ready to read through attachments/ download or complete your questionnaire.


• Technical Issues – If you’re offering a download, odds are the user has settings in place to prevent/ deter the action… is it worth missing the contact?


• Contact Info – The automatic email gives you the chance to make the follow-up/ second touch… odds are the message is going to sit in the recipient’s inbox for a couple days; this is great awareness and the perfect vehicle to house your contact information.

Be sure to join us for our upcoming Service In Action call on August 24, at 2:00 ET, we’re focusing on these campaigns, success stories and how you can successfully apply to your marketing plans.

Read more >>

Access Denied

Think back to the early part of this decade… you probably worked for a company that restricted internet access, either completely or to certain sites, maybe that’s still the case so that you don’t goof off during work hours. Back when this was the norm, we worked with a cataloguer who allowed open access and encouraged their call center reps to track a competitor each. In their weekly meetings, they would discuss that competitor’s activities and what they could learn from them. Their reps felt more connected and were motivated to help grow the business – and grow they did, dramatically!

I’ve thought about their success as I’ve read recent coverage on companies blocking social media – some headlines include ESPN’s banning reporters from using social media sites, the Marines have issued a similar ban. While I see the security concern associated with the armed forces, social media must play a vital role in family connections while they serve; we even wrote about how it helped a young soldier whose ideal contact was through Facebook.

As companies evaluate their policy on social media access, considerations have to include overall marketing plans, customer expectations, competitor activities… and the fact that your employees can easily access these sites on their smart phones. Instead of blocking, look into ways to make the most of granting access, set a policy/ guidelines so that you can turn the privilege into a benefit for your marketing.

Read more >>

Mad Men Yourself

Confession time! I’m a huge fan of AMC’s Mad Men; create your own avatars and a good viral marketing campaign… which is why today’s post highlights the success of Mad Men Yourself, a campaign sponsored by the 150-year-old coffee brand, Eight O'Clock.

In addition to the retro-fabulous, create-your-own avatar Eight O’Clock is soon to debut a Which Mad Man Are You? trivia quiz to determine which character you’re most like as well as Mad Men eCards with messages/ reminders from the characters about their third season debuting August 16.

These social media campaign elements are the brainchild of Eight O'Clock's agency, Boonton. Their overall goal was to create buzz about the third season, generate virtual chatter and encourage viewing parties. All efforts are being coordinated through branded sites, AMCTV.com, banner ads and apps for Facebook, Twitter, iPhone and AIM… efforts that would definitely impress Sterling Cooper.

In addition to making social media apps available, Eight O’Clock also sought to establish their social media presence – they began following others on Twitter based on profile characteristics, they then tweeted about the avatar app a few hours after the go live… reiterating the importance of the channel and mediums. I’m sure campaign success rates will soon follow, until then be sure to read more about their efforts in the Media Post article and check out the avatars your resident bloggers have created – Ebony, Philip and my avatar alongside Joan and Peggy!

Read more >>

Those who Tweet

We’ve posted articles and hosted SIA calls on the demographics of social media… a recent eMarketer article gave some insight on Why People Use Twitter. Most do it to keep in touch with friends, over 20% use the social medium for work-related endeavors (apply to yesterday’s post.) and another near-10% are using it to research.

From a demographic perspective, those under 35 were interested in updating their status and the 35+ crowd preferred to keep things business as usual. Women were more likely to interact with friends, family and celebrities than men; however, men were more likely to follow bloggers. It’s also noteworthy that friends tell friends about Twitter – over half the total population said a friend or family member introduced them to the site, another 35% were there because of a co-worker.

Remember that you can get your latest Email Yogi info through Twitter, follow us today and re-Tweet the posts you like!

Read more >>

Social Jobs

We’ve all heard stories about how job seekers have missed out on opportunities because of their social networking pages… but it seems that it could get you a job.

A couple great articles of late include, Need a job? Show them you can Twitter, in this article Benny Evangelista of The San Francisco Chronicle highlights how social media skills are becoming basic job requirements, along the lines of your Microsoft Office skills and ability to email. Benny also talks about how many HR Directors are weighing the way someone presents themselves socially as a hiring criteria; there are also some great tips for those of you still looking.

Unfortunately, the NY Times Social Media Editor already has the position filled. In an article from May, John Capone writes how their new editor, Jennifer Preston, is helping shape their interaction and improve their reader’s experience. Check out the article on Media Post.

Finally, CareerBuilder (courtesy of CNN) listed Five jobs for Facebook addicts – maybe your social media future is there.

In any case, consider these options when you’re hiring/ interviewing prospective teammates in the future… eMarketers need to know these things!

Read more >>

Health on Social Media

Social Media has become the go-to solution for eMarketers for quite a while now… and has recently attracted new successes including non-profit health groups and drug companies; here are a couple great articles of groups finding a new home online:

Diabetes and Twitter
A recent AdAge article highlighted the venture Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company, has made into the space with through a branded Twitter page. @racewithinsulin is updated by professional racecar driver, social-media fan and diabetic, Charlie Kimbal. For the most part, the tweets have been about his day-to-day racing activities with branded tweets featuring Novo Nordisk prescription drugs, Levemir and NovoLog, in a subtle way. There are also links to prescription drug information.

Lupus and Facebook
Another success story is that of the Lupus Foundation of America (LFA) and their Facebook presence; a SmartBlog on Social Media post detailed how Wick Davis from the LFA took over a dormant site and increased donations 790% through the channel.

He also learned that his recipients like to receive information through many mediums, including their message boards, Facebook, Twitter and blog sites in addition to their biweekly e-newsletter. His donation success on Facebook has sparked the need to examine other mediums like Twitter for additional charitable giving campaigns.

Please send links to any similar success stories you’ve seen, they may be featured in a future post!

Read more >>

SIA Recap: Mobile Marketing

How well do you know your recipients? It’s really easy to sort through email statistics and draw conclusions about their interests and future segmentation needs – but are you ignoring the channel within arm’s reach?

Your recipients may benefit from a mobile version of your message, might prefer an SMS for important information or could be open to receiving sales, updates etc. through something other than an email. Consider these stats from Deliver Magazine:
– 22,400,000 people accessed news and information daily from their mobile phones as of January 2009 (up from 10.8M in January 2008)
– 31,000,000 people viewed mobile ads on their device (June – September 2008)
– 42% of teens say they can text blindfolded

Mobile marketing has a couple different entry points – one of the simplest is offering a text-only/ mobile version of your planned campaigns (see Monday’s post, Mobile Versioning, for more information.) Just be sure to keep a few items in mind when creating your mobile version:
– Subject lines have to be much shorter, approximately 20 characters or less as compared to the 30-45 characters that can be used for PC-based emails.
– Messages also have to be smaller, a standard PC email is 600 pixels wide, mobile is 120 pixels (if you’re lucky)

SMS is another option, but know your medium, the rules for opt-in/ -out are different from email, talk to your multi-channel communications provider to learn more about the specific needs, rules and costs. Also check with your consumers to see what their interest level is in receiving SMS from you.

Always watch the marketplace for new updates, there are tons of success stories, lessons to learn information to gather on your recipients. Find out what fits your brand/ demographic and move forward.

For more on the topic, listen to our podcast from Friday and mark your calendar for our next Service In Action call, August 28, focusing on Reoccurring Email Campaigns.

Read more >>