What a Deal

A small cataloger offered a great deal – a 30% off coupon with only 150 available. They casually mentioned the offer on their lifestyle blog and noted that the offer was going fast; they then emailed the offer to their prospect file, the first 150 people to call their call center with the special code got the discount, the rest were offered 15%.

The rules were simple – the program was first launched with great secrecy. It was to be an exclusive event for friends of friends only; the blog leaked the offer. To redeem, users were to fill out an online form with their preferences.

The impact of this offer on their list size was quite dramatic; they received over 2000 new names with targeted preferences. They also got a lot of inquiries from others asking about the program. Based on interest, they posted their next offer on their site – Some of you recently redeemed a coupon for substantial savings. We will be doing this more often, offering special discounts on specific items of interest to you. To take part, fill out your preferences and you’ll be the first to know.

This advertising garnered over 6,000 new names along with a massive drive to collect customer preferences. The results continue today, they now enjoy a list that is focused, significant word of mouth and a marketing team that has polished their process of delivering offers for their file.

A Bird in Hand

I had recently had meetings with three organizations; the first was an online retailer that told me that they have very little repeat business despite their selection. Another merchant (catalog, web and B2B store presence) told me that half their hits on search come from existing customers. The third was a bank that gives away $50 to open new accounts, yet only one in 20 of the people opening these accounts actually establish more than one other relationship with the bank. These numbers are disappointing, but not atypical.

We spend so much money on acquiring new customers, but very little is done to take care of the existing – our focus should start from within, by nurturing existing relationships. Start with a thank you email that is personal; follow up with a call (even a voicemail will do). The goal is to establish a dialogue to thank the new customer and solicit feedback to improve your process.

After the initial email (and/ or discussion) put the customer on a recurring campaign to introduce them to your brand; highlight certain parts of your business and make sure that your dialogue is educational. Regularly solicit their feedback on your campaigns.

It might seem like too much work, but keep in mind that if you compare this with the cost of new customer acquisition – it is only a part of the overall cost.

To the first company, I suggest creating an email help desk to call customers, thank them and solicit direct feedback about their experience. Follow this up with two to three campaigns that inquire, educate and introduce recipients to other parts of the business.

To the second company, put the customer on a recurring stream of communiqués – part of your bonding program. Send them a sample, solicit their feedback and keep in touch.

Finally, to the bank, make the recipient tell you more about themselves in exchange for the $50. Then assign a rep to this newly acquired customer – make it their responsibility to stay in touch with them over the first four weeks. The goal should be to make them aware of the services your bank has and see if you can help the new account holder meet their personal goals.

Why Sign Up?

One of the exercises Sundeep and I have incorporated into our regional Panel of Peers workshops is the Why Sign Up? Q&A, we ask attendees to submit good reasons why someone should sign up for email campaigns. Here are some of the top submissions; feel free to borrow – but make sure you personalize and involve your team, it’s the only way to give the reasons life:

From two B2B Suppliers:
– Learn about useful products relative to your industry
– Learn how our products can save time and money
– New product announcements
– Industry news and events
– Keep current on upcoming events

From an Apparel Company:
– Exclusive promotions
– Sneak previews to collections
– Fashion advice

From a Specialty Foods Company:
– Our emails include offers and useful content – all towards feeding your passion
– Tested, proven recipes to add to your collection
– Quick links to new products, ideas and articles

From a Software Company:
– Industry news, updates and regulations
– Case studies and whitepapers
– Product updates and new services value

From a B2C Cataloger:
– Be the first to see new products before they appear in the catalog
– Read the stories behind our products and artisans and to see the economical impact on the regions we buy from

The financial intuitions took a slightly different approach; here are suggestions from three different groups:
– Go Green, Get Green – sign up for our emails and eNewsletters to get your information faster, save the environment and earn cash incentives.
– Tips and tricks to stretch your money
– Secure messaging in the privacy of your home
– Personalized to your preferences

Again, feel free to use these for your sign-up process; just consider a couple additional points:
1) Validate the reasons every quarter – clarify and to adapt to changing market requirements
2) Use the points to educate your teams – front-line employees for certain
3) Tailor to you, after all the reasons are as unique to you as your program

Bag-a-holics Anonymous

I’m a self-professed bag-a-holic; thankfully, there’s no need for a support group or twelve-step program. Due to my condition, I was thrilled when Piperlime started The Bag a Day Game, unfortunately I didn’t win but I was a regular player in the contest.

They gave away some 24 bags using an electronic memory-ish game. The initial invitation asked you to provide your info and following the form, a grid of all the bags appeared, they were covered up one-by-one until only one was left. If the remaining bag matched The Bag of the Day, you won. At the end of each opportunity, you were asked to select the bags that interested you most. It was a way to sign-up for reminders specific to your preferred bags.

Maybe you don’t sell purses or want to run a contest – but think about including the preference center in your program. You could collect preferences during sign up, a specialty or suggest tailored emails based on their click throughs… just think of how effective that campaign would be.

Hands in the Fishbowl

I recently heard of a retailer who had a little bad luck with the law due to a group of overzealous employees. Assigned the task of growing their email lists, the employees of a couple franchises decided to approach local restaurants and offer the manager one of their gift certificates in exchange for the email addresses in their “Win a Free Lunch” fishbowl. See the issue – there was a nice boost in terms of emails collected but the recipients never asked for the solicitation, so there were a lot of complaints, unsubscribes and quite a bit of good will to remedy the situation once everything was sorted out.

Although I admire their enthusiasm, maybe it would have been better to have those employees approach the local area restaurants for a co-branded fishbowl. The concept is the same, but the offer includes the opportunity to win lunch from the restaurant and a gift card from your business. Put together the associated collateral; subscribe page and a co-branded welcome email to reinforce the benefits of the program. From this point, you can operate independently until you’re ready to announce the winner… and may we suggest notifying by email too?

Stay Tuned

Email files continue to churn, attrition caused by unsubscribes, address changes and general lack of interest – making list growth one of the key, ongoing, areas of focus for any email marketer. Our loyal readers know that interactive conversations and continued engagement are our top recommendations – but we realize that even the best marketers have recipients on the cusp of unsubscribing. Here are a few ways to help hold onto the names you’ve already earned.

Unsubscribes
Unsubscribes must be handled with a sense of urgency, something has obviously caused the action, so put a process in place to either get them back or close the loop on a positive note. Here’s a starter strategy to help:

1) Immediately acknowledge the unsubscribe request
2) Ask why they chose to unsubscribe, offer to reduce the frequency; change the focus of the email campaigns (if you can) or send to an alternate email address.
3) If you have the option, put out a call to the customer to facilitate the process (point #2). The personal touch and genuine interest may give you the edge in winning them back.
4) Suggest a trial (probationary) period for the potential unsubscriber to reevaluate your campaigns; use this time to put them on the win-back campaign series.

Remember, you have a one in seven chance of winning them back and making them a loyal follower.

Bounces (Soft Bounces excluded)
First make sure there isn’t a domain issue. If it’s address specific, assign the recipient to another channel, maybe through a special direct mail postcard. If you have the ability to flag your CSR’s CRM, put together a script to collect their (updated) address during the next interaction. You can always explore the options of using an ECOA (Email Change of Address) service or maybe an append company.

Remember to act quickly and display a sense of urgency in your actions, this will reinforce the importance of your program both to your recipients and your colleagues.

Bunny Business

There is a new bank in town and they’re doing a lot of grassroots campaigns to promote themselves. Being a new community-based bank, they pride themselves on being different, they’re open seven days a week, have mascots and focus on convenience (Free Checking and Internet Banking.)

Their mascots are rabbits, guys in rabbit suits handing out candy and brochures from buckets… I laughed but felt bad when I saw them standing in the rain – imagine a six-foot wet bunny costume holding a bucket that’s half full of water and wet brochures trying to get people to stop. They were a bunch of them walking along the sidewalk, waving at people and encouraging you to take a brochure and come inside.

I was given two brochures accidentally (bunny gloves) and decided to go inside since it was beginning to rain harder. Lucky me, I was spoken to by three suits – they told me about their new community approach, their charter, mission statement and commitment to my success.

They were giving away tickets to a concert, so I was asked to fill out my contact information on a little postcard. It had a lot of space for my name, phone number and address, but very little for the requested email ID. I added my name and phone number and the guy stopped me, telling me that was enough information.

The Miss-Hop (Step)
I can't wait to hear from these people – if they are advertising Internet Convenience, they should have made it more internet-focused, handing out little cards to coax people online where they could check out the website.

Their people should have been trained better, not one person asked to get my email ID. Even for the concert entry, they should have insisted on an email and asked me to check my email to see who won (where they could have asked for more information.)

A lot of financial institutions still have the money to spend on getting started, but you have to think of this money as going away if not spent to reach a wider audience.

Deliveries to the Rear Door, please...

Today’s post is courtesy of Jacob Halstead, he’s from the other coast where butlers are bit more common than here in the south! Enjoy…

In a previous life, I worked as a serviceman for a pest control company. At one point I was given an appointment in an exclusive, gated community; not knowing any better, I went to the front door of the mansion and rang the doorbell. When the butler answered the door he gave me a patient smile and said "Thank you for coming; in the future, deliveries go to the rear door, please.” Chagrined, I took my equipment to the back door where he received me. From then on, I made sure to make my calls at the back door.

What does this antidote have to do with email marketing? A sophisticated web shopper may want you to send campaigns to an email that is not their primary address. There are a number of ways that this can be done:

1) Creating an email address just for newsletters and subscriptions – Much like having a post office box to receive newspapers, magazines and phonebooks, some people create secondary email addresses just for newsletters and email blasts. They still want the information you send, but may only check the mailbox periodically.

2) Using an email alias – Instead of having a second email address, which can sometimes be a pain to keep track of, a person can create an email alias – a second email address that that delivers to the main email address. This may look like a different email address to the sender, but to the recipient the email arrives in the main inbox. Most of the ISPs give the option of creating aliases, though the number created can vary. In essence, they are asking you make your deliveries to the rear door, please. They may do this for any number of reasons:

• Easy spam filtering – By signing up using an address they’ve created specifically for newsletters and general solicitations, they are less worried about their main address being attacked by spam. If spam does take over, they know where it is coming from and can easily shut down the address.
• Crowd control – Even if spam is not an issue, a person can become overwhelmed or distracted by the number of emails they get from legitimate senders, this second address helps them keep a handle on things. They can check the second email address at their leisure, or if they use an alias, set up a filter in their email client that channels the email to a folder they can check when ready.

If you are email marketer, how can you use this knowledge to you advantage? On the surface, not making the main inbox may seem to be a disadvantage; but remember anything that helps a customer to be more organized and make better buying decisions is better for you in the long run.

So, you may want to acknowledge or encourage your customers to use the strategy. If a customer seems hesitant about giving his email address, ask for a secondary address or email alias. If the address is not set up, give the customer time to set one up and then call the customer back, you’ll be the first email in the inbox! If the content of your email may be sensitive, such as financial reports or receipts or the customer is unable to receive emails to a corporate email address, encourage people on your subscription page to use a secondary or alias address. This empowering technique will let you send your message to your client on their terms and give them a valuable strategy to handling their email.

What if they come to you?

So much time is spent on perfecting campaigns for customer and prospects. We focus on the list, the subject lines, the copy & the image, the call to action, some of us even focus on the landing pages. All this with the idea to gradually coax the recipient into responding to your offer. Sometimes, the recipient might just call you up or walk into your store or branch. What are your chances of the person serving the recipient knowing about the offer?

Here are a few things you could (gradually) do to make the 'people channels' part of your program.

1. The easiest thing to do is to make a simple mistake in the copy, targeting your own people. The first person to find the error should get rewarded with a free lunch or a bread or as I have seen in some instances - recognition. This makes your team look for offers and give you advice. Now target the prospect list with the regular email (without the mistake).

2. As the team gets more involved, solicit their advice. Take a copy of your email & pass it around to them. Ask for subject lines suggestions. I know of a few companies that have a betting pool for what subject line will work best - the goal is three fold - split tests with customers, employee involvement, and it gets everyones head in the game.

3. Call up or visit your team to inquire about the effectiveness of your email. Ask them what people are saying or to look out for what people are saying about your campaign. Provide them with your contact information as well so they can reach out to you themselves with suggestions. Try to work this into a process, where every one of your campaigns collects employee and recipient feedback.

4. Put out a special email to your team, explaining the offer to them. Give them options for each segment and if you have a decent database you can even personalize the offers for each recipient if your people were to look it up. This way, there is unison in your messaging and the offers are consistent, yet personalized.

In a subsequent post we will talk about how Casino's, Banks, and some companies with loyalty programs are leveraging their campaigns to make their 'people' more powerful in making targeted offers and in collecting valuable customer information. All this towards building an effective contact management system.

Snap, Tackle & Pop

A few of my friends work in marketing for NFL teams and they are often asked what they do in the off season. Their response, preparation – it’s their busiest time of the year; today's post is dedicated to these guys as they prepare for the year ahead.

The upcoming draft is probably the next big opportunity to engage fans; while new players are being fitted for uniforms, eMarketing is trying to up the number of email IDs, learn more about recipients and plan the email calendar while not neglecting the merchandise, advertisers etc. So here are some thoughts:

1) Solicit advice on the draft picks… but do it with a twist, have three target segments. The first segment should be asked to enter their picks in an open-ended/ text box format. The second through multiple choice, allowing them to choose a certain number of players from your list. The final segment could vote on your mascot’s pick – ask them to agree or disagree. Bring all three segments back to your blog or a special portion of your site, challenge them to show who else agrees with them (your viral twist to the campaign.) Make sure to encourage recipients to invite their friends, via the campaign’s F2F or directly from the site.

2) Make an announcement email with the feedback you get; put out an email that says this is how you voted. People like to send their responses and read what the popular choices; both strategies engage the reader by soliciting personal feedback.

3) Play of the day – Launch a video contest where YouTube videos are submitted of a play recap, the person entering should do their own personal sports cast. Other viewers will choose one winner to be what ever… your personal online commentator… the idea isn’t the contest; it’s to engage while producing user generated content at its finest.

For those of us not in the NFL, substitute players for products maybe even issue a video contest to show durability of your wares… remember BlendTec? Just remember, email is a contact sport, you must talk and listen to keep your readers engaged.

Service In Action: List 409

A colleague of mine ran a seminar for eye care professionals in Miami; he had a list of 1,200 people and 75 spots to fill. Fortunately, he had their permission to market along with email, address and phone number. As he compiled the email IDs he found that he had a little over a 1000 unique addresses.

He quickly put together a short general message to those names – something to the effect of
… I’ll be sending you an invite to a special networking event in Miami. Please look for details next week for details.

About 300 email IDs bounced, many were completely bogus (i.e. junk@junk.com). After weeding out the bad addresses, he retargeted the 700 people with a second email – he had 250 openers (people knew of him) and about 150 unique clicks on the seminar link. His small team called every one of the clickers and secured about 80 people to sign up. He personally called a few bounces, got their correct email IDs and a few more sign-ups – his total registered was 114. The day of the seminar he had 93 people show up. Following the seminar, he sent a direct mail to those people who didn’t have correct (or any) email address on file. These people were encouraged to click through and provide their email id's.

His current marketable list is just under a 1,000 names, he takes great pride in keeping it current. His monthly newsletter averages open rates of 85% and gets great click through. Every single bounce is treated with great care – resolving each block or bounce through a phone call. This personal commitment has resulted in a clean list that is totally marketable.

His story is just one on the topic of list hygiene; join our next Service In Action call is this Friday and learn how our friends from Anthropologie, AAA Carolinas, Coastal Federal Credit Union and EBSCO Pradco Brands keep their customers engaged and their lists current. Hope you can make it; visit the Service In Action site for specifics on this 2:00PM (EST) call.

How important is an Email ID?

Promotions are often frowned upon as a means of collecting email IDs. The rationale is that most people sign up for emails and then forget about your brand once the promotion is over. I contend that you can change some of this by elevating the importance of the email channel. Do this by telling your subscribers that you will use the email channel to make important announcements. I still remember Christine and Jeff – this is going back five years (perhaps longer) – they both ran promotions and insisted on making the announcement in the following month’s email.

Look at what Loretta and Avi have done here, they promised $7,500 and a grand prize of $2,500 – at an event. The subject line, “Another Exclusive Email Event” and the conditions “Only those patrons who have or will provide Argosy with an email address will be ALLOWED to participate…” This wasn't the first time they have done an email exclusive event and it definitely won’t be the last.

Now look at the second image – the announcement is done by email again. The subject line, “Argosy email promotion update” and the copy within, “Will you be our next email winner? Check your inbox!”

Every now and then you need to make sure that your readers realize that email is a very serious and important channel for you. This is a means for you to quickly communicate with the reader. Customers and prospects need to be coached as well – proven that email is vital to your organization and they ought to pay close attention to it. Start planning EMAIL EXCLUSIVE announcements to reinforce the importance. The importance can also relate to your call center, coach your CSRs to naturally offer the customer/ prospect information immediately via email – if someone were to call in to get the email only special, give them a partial offer but encourage the customer to sign up, and pay attention to the email campaigns in the future.

Nice work ladies, I wish you much success.

Email Moo-lah

A small cataloger offered its employees $700 a month, and a grand prize of $5000. The rules were simple – every month the rep to collect the maximum number of email ids won $400, second place was $200, third place $100. The rep with the most collected over the course of the year received $5000.

Of course, there was a catch, there was a group goal. The rep only got the $5000 if the group goal was met. Everyone worked hard together; there were training meetings and “rah-rah” sessions. The program was advertised to the reps via email. Not their work email but their personal email.

The program cost $21,000, they had 30 seats and 92 employees over the course of a year. They collected 564,615 legitimate email addresses at 0.26 cents per… 32 employees earned the incentives, the call center was transformed but the customers were the ultimate winners.

I have seen the same approach work with a credit union. Their member base was over 200,000. They had 12,000 email addresses. A systematic incentive program like the above has them with more than 80,000 email addresses and more than 40,000 members signed up for e-statements.

Education, empowerment and getting selling your employees will drive longer term benefits rather than running specials for customers.

Make it Conversational

For a little down-time while at the sales conference, we took a brief trip to the mall next to our hotel; we made purchases at five merchants – cupcakes, shoes, jeans, handbags and goggles. We were genuinely impressed; every single one of these merchants had a sign-up sheet for email. Three of these merchants even had really cute sign-up cards – cards that gave you great reasons to sign up.

The employees we interacted with asked us for an email id. Crisp, clear and directly – their point of service systems even had a field for the collection. Despite these items there was a serious problem, each seemed like a cold exchange.

I believe these merchants missed out on a valuable opportunity to interact with us. After having received our email id, they should have tried to sell the program to us. It would have been easy for them to create a sense of expectation. Those few moments could have resulted in us treating their communiqués a little differently, creating higher open rates and better overall conversion. Their email marketing managers would have been thrilled.

A suggestion to email marketing managers, train the store/ branch employee – provide them with conversational scripts that will request the id and give them ways to plug your program (after the sale.) More importantly, ask those employees to share their thoughts back with you – issues, remarks and ideas. Keep these employees in the loop, have a call with store/ branch managers, you will do a better job creating a program and maybe raise your click-throughs and conversions.

2008: Five Must Dos...

1) You MUST grow your list
Look back at your list over the past five years (or longer) and see how many new names you have added. Look at your direct mail file. I have checked with financial institutions, catalogs, retailers, travel, entertainment or other companies to find a common thread – the average percentage of names for which people have email ids is less than 20%. Meaning you have another 80-something percent to tap into. More importantly you have to look for constructive ways to grow your list. This means every name counts, so reduce churn and get creative. Your entire team needs to work on helping you grow the list.

2) You MUST know more
About your customers and prospects, that is. Just having an email association is not enough. You need to survey your list at different stages – during the sign-up process, various transaction points as well as stages of inactivity. You need to keep this information in a preference table and also build up operational preferences. Operational preferences are tracking information about a particular recipient – whether they open your emails, they click, or they simply haven't cared. Your approach to asking questions needs to be direct and beneficial; put on your own user hat and see what is really helpful.

3) You MUST interact (across all channels)
No more left hand right hand dislocation – your recipient is on the receiving end of a number of different communiqués. They expect you to make sure they are served appropriately. There is no channel conflict in their mind and you better treat them that way. Some of my friends have started splitting parts of a story across their paper communiqués and online messages… their recipients are beginning to realize that it is the same company that is communicating seamlessly across multiple channels. During a subsequent post, we will discuss ways to make sure your paper communiqués are revered by your recipients.

4) You MUST sizzle
The three Cs – Creative, copy and overall content; focus on what is inside your newsletter or email offer. Recipients are expecting you to grab their attention, keep them tuned-in and steer them towards the offer. Depending on the size of your email program you can have a person or a team dedicated to the online media. You can leverage the same information you put together across other Web 2.0 channels. Think about every email as a piece of art – take time to put it together, and you will see your efforts pay off. The email channel has arrived.

5) You MUST make it to the party
As recipients, we often take deliverability for granted; we expect you to show up in our inbox. As email marketers, deliverability should be monitored and perfected daily. Your other customer touchpoints should be trained on what bounces and deliverability means so they can carry out intelligent conversations with intended recipients. You are legitimate, your offer is legitimate, and you have taken time to put together the offer – make sure you make it to the inbox.

One more… A MUST Attend!
This year we have invited our friends to our Annual Panel of Peers – a peer-based discussion group that brings together marketers across industry in an interactive discussion around best practices. Our event will focus on these subjects and more with real case studies, best practices and practical learning that will help you with your email endeavors. Mark your calendars for March 24-26; visit the site for more details.

Again, happy New Year and best wishes for the year of 1… (more on 1 later.)

The Tax-Free Sale

States have Back to School sales on certain items – these tax-free sales are very popular as people. Families put together lists of items they need and wait for the day; they visit the store during the sale and all are happy – the customer and the retailers. Retailers are happy because in addition to the merchandise on sale, they are also able to move full price items, plus even some taxable items. Because of the amount of ‘money’ they have saved in taxes – the buyers are happy to purchase the additional items.

Unfortunately, this tax-free sale concept has been totally abused, and is being used as an ultimate weapon to close new deals. I have been offered tax-free incentives to purchase furniture, a car, a vacation and even clothing. The retailer is simply paying for the taxes themselves diluting the true magic these words originally had.

My daughter, who is 11, kept rolling her eyes every time a salesperson told us about their Tax-Free offer. She got me thinking about this and was the motivation for this post (Thanks Shivani!)

Many times as marketers we try to reuse something that works well, running the risk of trivializing the offer. Anticipation or creating a genuine sense of expectation is much more effective in helping create superb offers. Get your openers, clickers and buyers to yearn for that special offer is a great way to personalize and create that special sale. Here are three examples that stand out in the year ahead:

First Look: 70–90% OFF
A major retailer segmented its list into buyers and non-buyers. Non-buyers were further segmented into clickers, openers and non-openers. These people were targeted with the email being trickled over a few hours – buyers got it first, non-openers last. Each group was asked to update their preferences; all responders were told to look for the next season clearance event and learned that the more attention they paid to the emails the earlier their notifications.

The Employee Discount
An apparel retailer offered employee discounts to some of their best customers as a thank you for their purchases over the year (2006.) Additionally each CSR was given ONE coupon to share with ONE customer. Come 2007, these buyers were aware of this closed door special sale and looked forward to this event. In 2007, each buyer was also given ONE coupon to share with their friends/ family. It was very effective, for not only did it create revenue but it created a special bond with the receivers of the offer over the entire year. This segment of customers had a much higher attention rate.

The 10% CD!
When interest rates were less than 5%, a financial institution offered a 10% CD – only 500 were available. It was a phenomenal event, more than a quarter of their list inquired about the CD, filled out preferences and more than 500 CDs were given away in less than 45 minutes! Oh, and talk about paying attention – the email-only offer was launched at 8.00 am EST.

The lesson from today’s post is that we shouldn’t ride the Tax-Free sale offer or the same offer to extinction. Another key learning is that the best thing to do is to remind people about an event and start a build-up leading up to the special event.

Hope your 2007 was great, best wishes for 2008.

Chuck-A-Puck

Once upon a time there was an email marketing manager for a regional hockey team; the team was a start-up in an area not very familiar with the sport so ticket sales were low. They managed to sell 4K of their 12K seats in season tickets, another 2K would typically sell on their own and their sales team was able to move an additional 1K through corporate sales/ event nights. This left them with 5K empty seats.

Disappointed with the empty seats, the owners tasked him with boosting ticket sales – the email manager tried everything, promoting to his email list (approximately 7K names), working closely with the advertising group for television, print and bill board ads. He tried PR initiatives and even dressed up in a sandwich board to hand out tickets. Nothing really worked.

So one afternoon, while stuffing envelopes, he decided to promote a contest. He put out an email to his entire list (7K names). Asking recipients to print out the email and bring to the game, those who did would receive a puck to chuck into the goal during half-time. From his list only 700 opened, 200 brought in the email as instructed and had their chance to chuck-a-puck. There were five winners, who received merchandise, free tickets or photos with the players.

After the contest, the announcer told everyone where to sign-up for the next game and their chance to play. By the next week he had 1,400 new subscribers, the email went out and had 3,600 opens – 2K people printed to play at the next game (he still had five winners). By the third game he had even more subscribers, an open rate above 60% and a huge conversion. Response was so overwhelming that he pressed further by giving the non-winners an opportunity to fill out an online preference survey with the chance to win box seats for the next game.

So the moral of this story is that a little interaction goes a long way. This one contest helped the manager 1) grow his list; 2) get more “cheeks in seats” and 3) actually CONNECT with customers (he collected personalized information that could be leveraged for future campaigns.)

You could do the same, think of ways to solicit interaction, it could revitalize your email campaigns, reduce direct mail cost and give you access to the personal information you need to attract advertisers… you may even unload some of those expensive “Jack Nicholson” seats.

On Time Communications Mean More Relevance

About a month ago I went into a local retailer's brick-and-mortar store to purchase something. I was happy to see that at the register, they had a notebook for signing up for email communications. This is a great idea, and everyone should be doing this.

Where they failed is that they never sent me an email; until today. It's been at least 4 weeks since I signed up, how am I suppose to remember who and what I've signed up for? Worse, the text of the email read as follows:

Your email address has been entered into our mailing list. If this was done in error, feel free to unsubscribe by clicking the link below.

I'm sure many folks might be prompted to unsubscribe right away, especially since there were no images or any other branding to tell me who the mail was coming from or why I should want to continue to get their emails.

Overall, I highly applaud this company's efforts in collecting new email addresses from the foot traffic in their stores, but I'm disappointed with the slow response after signing up.

To maintain relevance with your customers, send them a brief email immediately after sign up telling them what they can expect to see from you in regards to future emails. This way they remember who you are and why they signed up for your emails in the first place.

Rub People the Right Way

On Thursday we are conducting a workshop on how to make your call center reps advocates for your email marketing program. The learning is based on real experiences at call centers throughout the world and focuses on how to engage customers and prospects in a dialogue, build trust and then ask them for their email ID.

As we prepared for this seminar, we picked up the phone and spoke with a number of different call centers, some of these companies are coming to our workshop. Our questions were simple – we asked about products, shipping, returns and we asked the company to share user feedback. In some cases we were asked for our email, when we weren’t, we gave them a few opportunities to gather. It was interesting to see how many companies actually took time to listen to us and engage in a relevant conversation; there were others eager to get us off the phone. One of the exceptional conversations was with Badger Balm.

Rub People the Right Way
Badger Balm sells truly amazing body care, straight from the natural world. They have a number of balms on their site, many sound alike so I called to ask the difference between a couple – like Night Balm versus Sleep Balm and Stress Soother versus Meditation Balm.

In my conversation with Stephanie, I quickly learned the differences between the balms and given a quick introduction to the other great products they had. She very nicely put a little care package together for me and was nice enough to ask for my email ID. Not only did she get my email, we even had an email exchange; she was friendly, knowledgeable and listened to me, but more than anything else, you could see the passion she felt about the products she sold. It was this excitement that got me to pay attention to her.

So other than great customer service – take some time to train your staff on the following:
1) The value of your email program
2) Give them scripts that allow them to converse with the customer – don't let them read verbatim scripts that say “Our company collects email id's for promotional, and informational purposes… blah blah blah blah. You can unsubscribe from us at any time.” Learn to make it conversational so the reps can offer the customers help or better service via email.
3) Give them the power to give something away to gain the prospect’s trust – it can even be a sneak preview into something that is generally not available.

Badger Balm's theme is all about Rubbing People the Right Way! They mean it, both with their products and exceptional service.

It’s not too Late
We will be going through a variety of best practices in Lebanon, NH, on Thursday (11/15.) This series of workshops are being shared across the country. To inquire about our next round of workshops or to attend this one in Lebanon – simply email us or visit the Panel of Peers site.

Why sign up?

We routinely put people on the spot by asking them why we should sign up for their email campaigns, the most popular response is… “ummh”

To combat the Ummh-factor, you should list five of your own reasons why someone should sign up for your email program. Ask people who work for your company to provide you with reasons, intercept a couple of customers and ask them why they would like to receive emails from you. Now list all these reasons and come up with conversational ways of saying it.

Providing no answer is bad, providing a canned response is worse – having an “ummh…” here and there won’t hurt you. Here are some good core reasons:

1. Be the first to know,
2. Useful information, fabulous offers
3. Personalized to your preferences
4. Delivered immediately
5. Because we care about the environment

Keep the reasons listed so your front-line people can easily access; this conveys the importance of collecting emails through all channels and makes them feel important. To introduce the concept, provide scripts/ excerpts from conversations:

• “Miss Smith, the stickers you just ordered are really cute. Have you seen the new puppy stickers? They’re just great – let me send it over to you. What is your email please?”
• “Miss Smith, the muffin mix that you ordered is all set. Did you see the newsletter article that PJ Hamel had about this mix a couple weeks ago? Let me send it over to you, what’s your email please?”
• Start off by reading part of the instructions – stop after two lines and say “How about I email this document over to you, and I can walk you through the instructions. What is your email please?”
  

Make all your channels interactive, and make it conversational. People are beginning to accept email as a natural means of communication. Do it well, and you will excel. I would love to get your favorite reasons why someone should sign up for email.