It’s time to stop and smell the roses

August 25th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 10:46 am

Figuratively speaking, when was the last time you stopped what you were doing just to appreciate all the hard work you and your company have achieved? I bet you’ve been part of many great projects, large or small that have shaped your careers and often come up in discussions in the workplace time and time again. The big question is here, what made these campaigns so successful and how has the performance of these campaigns changed over time?

Like many marketing teams, the focus seems to be on achieving targets and launching new programs to squeeze in extra revenue. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, however what about the existing campaigns?

Existing projects that continue to circulate don’t offer guaranteed results and are affected by customer messaging, relevancy, style and timing.

Simply by taking some time out of your day can provide great insights such as:

• Campaign performance has dwindled or grown (i.e.  bookings, opens, click throughs)
• Seasonal fluctuations
• Weekly/Monthly buying trends
• Campaigns errors (when things break, you often won’t know about it!)
• Identify new winning or losing recipes from A/B Sampling

Personally, what I love is then presenting these new figures in a nice neat presentation. Not only does it make you look good, but highlights the need for management to focus on the existing initiatives with all the guidance you provide.

What’s even better is just how easy it can be to breathe new life into existing projects and comes with many benefits:

• Low resource impact
• Low risk
• Fast turnaround time
• Gain additional bookings
• No need to re-invent the wheel
• Accurate and relevant copy
• Happy and informed customer

Keeping on top of existing email creative’s/past work will you give you a great edge. Whether your campaigns were one offs or ran continually it’s so important to know what you’ve done before you plan to jump to the next instance. Just by taking just those small steps can help improve your relationships with your customers, managers, stakeholders whilst improving your companies values, bookings, open rates etc.

You’ve all worked so hard to achieve your goals and objectives, so don’t sell yourself short and deny yourself the opportunity the see the rewards you have gained. The insight you and company will achieve through these steps provides fantastic vision and definition to chasing or smashing targets in the next quarter. Best of all, you may find your own career being reviewed, with a nice promotion to match.

Regards,
Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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Email Testing Affectively and Resourcefully

August 9th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 4:45 pm

If you’ve been living under a rock then you may not have heard the term email testing. If you fall into this category don’t panic, because whether you know about email testing or not this post will teach you how to make the most out of your email testing without blowing your budget or painstakingly having to test every single email client.

Best of all, you’ll be satisfied knowing what you see is what you’ll get when the email hits a readers inbox.

Email testing is more than just sending an email to yourself and clicking to make sure links are working or that there are no spelling errors.  When you send an email out to someone you must factor in that what you see is not necessarily what the reader will receive, which is why email testing is so important. Your pixel perfect email piece could turn out like a shriveled prune in some systems, and that is something that could easily be avoid with…you guessed it – Email testing!

To get started you need to follow a few basic principles:

Ensure you email is professionally built

Like any good email, if the guts of an email are poorly built chances are your email will fall over in other email clients. These days you’re dealing with more than just a few email clients, so it pays to build solid HTML campaigns that can stand on their own. A professional email builder will understand the limitations of an email design and can build a flexible and robust template that combines both HTML and in-line CSS to achieve maximum results not only in one email client – but multiple.

Phenom Solutions offers professional email template building, bringing years of experience in email building and email client testing for such a task.

Use a proper email testing tool

While many companies offer a email service platform they tend to lack a proper testing facility. Gone are the days where you’re require to test to multiple email systems such as Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL etc.

Thanks to companies like Campaign Monitor and Litmus App, we no longer have to do this. By simply using these platforms you eliminate the need for individual testing and are presented with consolidated screenshots of all email (and mobile) clients in one dashboard.

If your email is coded right you’ll find there’s often little to fix up to get your emails perfect. You’ll find in some email clients that areas such as text formatting and alignment may different, but for any other issues it’s best to fall back on your email builder professional to fix.

Understand the basics on email supported features

Emails can look great, are flexible,  personal and a fantastic communication tool – but they can’t do everything. Knowing the limitations of email is handy to know so you don’t spend hours and hours designing and building an email that simply doesn’t work across multiple email clients. For example, many people know that features like forms and flash have limited to no support. It’s easy to design a fantastic looking email, but getting the email to function in a readers inbox can be another issue itself.

As the basics of emails across email clients change periodically, the best advice is to consult your email builder professional about what these limitations during or after the design stage for an email.

The End Result

The final result? What you see is what you get! Not only that, but you don’t need to spend hours testing and gain the confidence about how your emails look. You also prevent any hiccups prior to launch with any accessibility issues for time critical or sensitive confidential information that requires a response. If you’re still not sure how to get started remember your email builder professional can help point you through this stage and can consult with you the best practices on how to conduct your email marketing activities.

Regards,
Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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Relying on outdated communication styles?

July 6th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 11:35 am

Are you or your company still taking part in sending out online communication through outdated methods? These include emails sent with PDF & document attachments used more predominately for the print medium. Other mediums also include Outlook, PowerPoint or Publisher. While these mediums may suit you, they offer little flexibility and absolutely no tracking or reporting.

By using a dedicated email provider or content management system, you can gain full control of your email campaigns, giving you more than just reporting capabilities. The biggest benefit is that once you’ve laid the groundwork just how easy it is the maintain without having any advanced or technical abilities.

Some advantages of using an Email Service Provider/Content Management System:

• Track online activity, such as opens, clicks and conversions
• Can be used without any technical expertise
• Use of re-usable email templates
• Consistent branding structure
• Execute campaigns quickly
• Segment lists and dynamic content
• Develops a solid gateway to your website and social media presence
• Flexible for large and small campaigns
• Easily maintained and self sufficient
• Not dependant on having editing software such as Dreamweaver
• Not reliant on a sole employee to conduct

With all these advantages, it makes you wonder why you still see emails with PDF, Word, PowerPoint & Publisher attachments floating out there. Other mediums give you absolutely no reporting whatsoever and expect your reader to take the time to open your attached file. And of course, using Outlook to send your emails can be just as bad, without any tracking either.

It’s time to educate ourselves and realise the potential of turning to email service providers and content management systems and truly understand our audience better with tailored, relevant messaging styles.  It’s never too late to start and getting setup can be easier and faster than you may think.

Phenom Solutions has its very own email service provider platform, Phenom Mailer which can help you make the first step and set you on your way.

Regards,
Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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What really is best email practice?

June 24th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 2:50 pm

Best practice. This seems to be the buzz word that marketing people love to use but I often wonder do they even know what best practice in email is?

Many people will tell you they have a good idea or have ‘heard from a friend’ about a post telling them the definitive rules on how to conduct yourself in an email campaign. In many cases this is very well true, but there are many conditions that you need to take into consideration before you make any radical changes. The last thing you want to do is cannibalise your existing readers with bold attempts to reach out to new minority groups.

Things to consider with your email campaigns and best practice:

• What has worked today may not work tomorrow
• Focus on your emails weaknesses, not strengths…there’s no need to re-invent the wheel
• Don’t try and be something you’re not…it may just do more harm than good
• Conduct sample testing to see firsthand results
• Just because you read it doesn’t make it true!
• Images vs. Text – The right medium may outperform the other based on your industry
• Different industries behave differently…stay true to the heart of your emails purpose and your reader
• Plan ahead before making any changes…think of the consequences both on resources and bookings

I’m all for utilising the latest best practices in the market and I recommend it should be embraced by fellow marketers. You should however take a step or two back before you get all excited about initiating a new style of strategy such as re-designing a email campaign or adding new features like social media outlets.  Ensuring the integrity of your brand and respect of your customers should always come first so if you plan to make a change then test beforehand.

You may test to a small audience and run a series of experiments over the course of a week or a month to really get a feel of the impact this has on your business and the reader, grow your confidence and become a little smarter about your email campaigns and not from some case study you may have read telling you that all emails should have picture of pink fluffy bunnies.

There will never be a quick fix solution that will turn your email results around in the long term. Popular to many people’s beliefs, we’re highly intelligent people who are quick to see right through any cheap gimmicks so respect your audience, focus on your weaknesses and forecast and test any changes that you think would drive a better return on investment to your campaigns and of course stay tuned to the Phenom Blog for regular insights to the world of email marketing.

Remember, keep on testing, keep on trying and keep on succeeding.

Regards,
Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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Do your online campaigns follow the core fundamentals?

June 17th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 11:30 am

For many online email campaigns, marketers often find big variations in their results which range from the good, the bad and the ugly. You’ve got to ask yourself though, what drives these high and low spikes and what I did to achieve this?

What helps bridge the gap between these results is understanding your audience, focusing on the core fundamentals that help you drive consistent results. Our email inboxes size are growing each day with an average of 37 emails received per day with 50% of those emails not even relevant and then a 36% chance of the remaining emails to be read. Striving to get your email get noticed is vital as you’ll always by vying for the reader’s attention.

By following the simple guidelines you build a rapport with your readers who become attuned to your email communications and take time to read and appreciate your hard work.

What are the core fundamentals that I should follow?

• Relevance – does this email understand my needs?
• Timing – optimal window of opportunity to read & react to?
• Incentive – why should I read more or purchase from you?
• Value – what can you expect to receive?
• Awareness – will this educate and empower me?
• Interests – does this intrigue me to find out more?
• Loyalty – do you recognize my value and show your appreciation?

Simply taking a few step backs and putting yourself in the readers shoes will give you that added edge when launching your email campaigns. Whether these fundamentals mean changing one or two items or the whole communication itself, you’ll slowly start seeing the added benefits these points deliver.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by last minute email campaigns that scream out marketing gimmick to drive a quick dollar as often these may end up confusing and diluting your customer loyalty. That’s not the say you shouldn’t market these styles of messaging but always be well prepared and keep your messaging true to your company and the reader .

Keep it relevant. Keep it interesting & provide values/incentive for reading your email and you’ve made the first step in achieving consistent & growing email results.

Regards,
Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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Refining your campaigns as you go

June 8th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 4:01 pm

It’s a Thursday afternoon and project deadlines are looming. You can sense that you’re going to have put in extra hours to get that campaign launched and ready. Once it’s done the weight of the world will be off your shoulders.

In reality this is true, but the harsher reality is that you’ve got several more projects that are lined up and waiting for next week also. All your time and energy is focused on new initiatives, leaving your hard work to fend for yourself. Some may say it’s tough love, but like any good online campaign it must be nurtured to provide the best results.

Giving your online campaigns their marching orders really leaves the results at the mercy of the readers. This is not saying the result will be bad (often it’s not) but instead what will happen over time. Your audience are highly intelligent and will respond warmly to the right message at the right time, but will see right through you when it’s not. This is particularly related to scheduled campaigns that go out on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and are all fully automated.

You shouldn’t be expected to know everything that goes through a readers mind, but you can sure can leverage your campaigns reporting analytics to give you an idea. This could give you insights into trends such as open times, click reports & amount of non responses. Taking that extra step into profiling your audience gives you the power to understand your readers more and maintain a great campaign without having to re-invent the wheel. You may even find this generates the extra revenue without bombarding your readers with extra email communications, not to mention saving you time to focus on what matters.

Refining a campaign doesn’t have to be hard, and you’ll often find tweaking a few items at a time is all is required. You’ll be totally surprised at the results. Whether you’re changing a colour of a button or sending the campaign an hour later in the day you’ll gain extra perspective into your readers mind. Once you gain enough traction you can use the added knowledge on other online campaigns and repeat the success.  Remember to set yourself goals to address new ways of improving your campaign,  ensuring you don’t fall into old bad habits.

Some great ways to refine your campaigns

• Set an allocated time each month to review campaign performance
• Seasonal and personalised message tie ins (ie Christmas, Easter, Thanks Giving)
• A/B Testing
• Varying launch date and times
• Shift the call to action around (ie moving a button higher up the email)
• Alter fonts, colors and sizes
• Position images vs. Text (see if images are more effective than standard web text)
• Recognising popular articles as higher importance

So remember, give your campaigns the attention they deserve and take the time to refine them as you go and you’ll find the little difference you make will go a long way and both your company and readers will thank you for it.

Regards,

Jordan Hunt
Senior Producer – Phenom Solutions

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It’s the little things that make a real difference

June 4th, 2010
Filed under: Email Marketing — jordan.hunt@phenom.com.au @ 11:00 am

We all have our little things in life that we take for granted. Whether it’s your local barista remembering your morning coffee fix as you rush to work or waking up to a freshly prepared breakfast prepared by your mother, we all get so caught up in our lives that it’s easy to overlook and undervalue their true meaning. When launching online marketing campaigns it’s easy to make the same mistakes, especially when there are limited resources, strict deadlines and a stack of to-do’s in post-it notes spread on your desk.

Ensuring you remember the finer details is what gives you at that added edge, not only for you but for your customer. Your audience may not take these added effort for granted, but they sure will benefit when viewing your campaign and the results will show.

What can you do to give your email campaign an edge?

• Add ALT tags to all your images – paint readers as picture to what you want them to see
• Add Preview Text add the very top of your emails – Believe it not the ‘having trouble viewing this email’ text is visible on most web based email clients and in particular Outlook. A one sentence opener will tell a reader straight up what your email is about.
• Online Version present – A common clicked link, many people prefer reading an email in full screen or have issues reading your email
• Text/Mobile version for Non-image based or mobile based readers
• Ensure that any special characters are correctly formatted – Copyright symbols, quotations and foreign characters can become corrupted on some web mail clients and in particular web versions. Make sure the right encoding is used.
• Campaign is thoroughly tested and by at least one more person – Mistakes can happen to anyone and another pair of fresh eyes can help stop potential mistakes before sending

Putting in that extra ten percent can make a world of difference, giving you that added edge of getting your campaign noticed amongst dozens of others whilst functioning as smoothly as possible once you’ve gained the reader’s attention. Once you’ve become used to the whole process you’ll find that building online email campaigns becomes second nature.

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