Internet Marketing CH 16

Call to action (CTA)

A phrase written to motivate the reader to take action (sign up for our newsletter, book car hire today, and so on).

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

A protocol for sending messages from one server to another.

Email service provider (ESP)

A service that helps you design and send emails

Customer relationship management (CRM)

A strategy for managing a company's interactions with clients and potential clients. It often makes use of technology to automate the sales, marketing, customer service and technical processes of an organisation.

Customer Acquisition

the marketing goal of acquiring new customers

What is the benefit of allowing e-mail subscribers to manage their subscription preferences?

this lets the receiver decide exactly which emails they receive from you, rather than opting them out from all of your email marketing.

What are the Advantages vs. Disadvantages of e-mail marketing

Advantages: Permission-based email marketing can give the highest return on investment of any marketing activities. Technology allows mass customisation, allowing personalisation across a large list of subscribers. When used to foster relationships with a customer base, email marketing can go a long way to increasing the lifetime value of that customer. Email marketing is highly measurable, and databases are able to be easily and thoroughly segmented. Disadvantages: many consumers are email fatigued. It requires ingenuity, focus and dedication to maintain an email database and consistently deliver useful quality emails that will be read. It does not take much for email to be marked as spam, and it can be difficult to recover from being branded as a spammer by the ISPs.

What are steps in building an e-mail marketing campaign:

The first part of any email campaign should involve planning for the goals you need to achieve. Email service providers Email for mobile phones Rules and regulations Growing a database Designing an email Creating content Deploying Measuring Testing.

Open rate

The percentage of emails determined as opened out of the total number of emails sent.

Customer Retention

The practice of keeping customers by building long-term relationships The practice of keeping customers by building long-term relationships

Return on investment (ROI)

The ratio of profit to cost.

Key performance indicator (KPI)

A metric that shows whether an objective is being achieved.

Preheader

A line or two of text displayed above your email header. Most commonly, it's the line of text that will redirect you to "View online"

White list

A list of accepted email addresses that an ISP, a subscriber or other email service provider allows to deliver messages regardless of spam lter settings.

Sender ID

A method used by major ISPs to con rm that an email does originate from the domain that it claims to have been sent from.

Opt-out

Also known as unsubscribe. The act of removing oneself from a list or lists so that speci ed information is no longer received via email.

DomainKeys

An email authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an email sender and the message integrity.

House list

An email database a company generates itself without purchasing or renting names.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address

An exclusive number that is used to represent every single computer in a network.

Sender policy framework (SPF)

An extension of SMTP that stops email spammers from forging the 'From' elds in an email.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

Code used to structure the information and features within a web page. As an example, HTML emails usually contain graphics and can be interactive.

Domain name system (DNS)

DNS converts a domain name into an IP address.

What is some advice to keep in mind as an organization designs and writes the body of an e-mail message?

Don't be tempted to use too many images; they can increase the size of the email, and obscure text when images do not load. Be sure that text is not on the image, but instead can be read without an image being loaded. The structure must allow readers to scan and navigate the email easily. Short paragraphs, emphasis through bolding and colours, as well as sectioning information with bullets and borders, all contribute to a well-structured email.

Spam

Email sent to someone who has not requested or given authorisation to receive it - EVIL!

What are some best practices for optimizing e-mail for mobile:

Generally, most emails are designed to be 600px wide to display well in an email preview pane - and this scales well on typical mobile screen sizes. Host your email newsletters online and link to them from your preheader. Design your email in a grid system. This means your content needs to be laid out in vertically and horizontally aligned blocks, with gaps in between. Doing this will make it easier for various operating systems and email clients to scale your email down to fit a mobile screen. Make sure that you include alt text for your images! Your email needs to convey its message with or without images. Mobile devices that don't automatically scale your email down will display the content on the left of your email first. Make sure that your most important content is placed here. Button links need to be at least 44px to render well on mobile phones.

Why is it important to design e-mails for the preview pane? What are some tips for success in designing for the preview pane?

Given the number of emails people receive on a daily basis, many do not open emails but prefer to view them in their preview panes. • There is no set width, and we reiterate that testing is the way to go. A width of 600px works best for preview pane display. • Preview panes favour the top left-hand side of an email. While each preview pane may vary according to client or user settings, the most commonly favoured preview pane dimensions cover the area in the top 300-500px of your email (Hamilton, 2012). Given the width of 600 pixels, you're then (generally speaking) looking at the top 600px x 300px of your email as being most likely to be displayed in a preview pane. • Ensure that plain, email-friendly fonts are used toward the top of your email in order to ensure that the first text encountered is properly displayed. • Consider carefully what images you display in the top section of your email, and test display accordingly. • Placing your logo prominently in the top left of your email can ensure optimal brand recognition and exposure. • Try to include your Call to Action in the area displayed in the preview pane. That way, even if subscribers choose not to read your email, they'll still see your primary message. • Some successful email templates use the area likely to be seen in the preview pane to provide a table of contents for the email. Users know what they can look forward to when opening the email.

Opt-in

Giving permission for emails to be sent to you.

Specify how an organization maintain a high reputation score.

ISPs offer various authentication standards such as Sender ID, Sender policy framework (SPF), and DomainKeys. Quirk highly recommends the use of these standards. • Remember that a huge but inaccurate and outdated database is far less useful to an email marketer than a tightly maintained, smaller database. Strive to boost your database, but don't forget to clean as you go. • Ensure that email broadcast rates are not too high. • Respond to complaints and unsubscribe requests - if someone requests to be unsubscribed, do so. If you don't, there's a good chance you'll face stiff penalties. • Educate users about white lists.

Database

In email marketing, the database is the list of prospects to which emails are sent. It also contains additional information pertinent to the prospects.

Direct Marketing

Making a concerted effort to connect directly with a certain segment of the market.

What are commonly measured/tracked KPIs of promotional emails? Newsletters? E-mail campaigns?

Promotional emails will usually have an immediate goal: • Users make a purchase • Users download some content • Users request further information Newsletters tend to focus on longer-term goals and are usually geared at creating and retaining a long-term relationship with the reader - so your KPIs are more important here. Useful KPIs include: • Open rate • Clickthrough rate • Number of emails forwarded • ROI • Number of social shares • Database growth • Conversion rate (activity on your site generated by the email) • Delivery or bounce rate Key measurables for understanding the performance of email campaigns include: • Number of emails delivered. • Number of bounces (this should be separated into hard bounces and soft bounces). • Number of unique emails opened: an email can be delivered, but not opened. • Unsubscribes: significant or consistent loss in subscribers is a key indication you are not meeting the needs of your subscribers. • Pass-on rate: a high pass-on rate (forwards) indicates that your customers value the content enough to share it constantly with others. Putting an easy 'forward to a friend' link in every email can increase this. You'll want to measure this link specifically. Adding a sign-up link to forwarded emails will organically grow the opt-in list. • Clickthrough rates and conversion: These measure the effectiveness of an email via the links placed in the content. When a reader clicks through to a web page, these can be easily measured as a percentage against the number of delivered, opened or sent emails. It reveals which content or promotion was the most enticing for the reader.

Hard bounce

The failed delivery of email communication due to an undeviating reason like a non-existent address.

Interest-based segmentation

Segmentation is the division of email subscribers into smaller segments based on set criteria. Typically, segmentation is used as a personalization tactic to deliver more relevant email marketing to subscribers based on their geographic location, interests, purchase history, and much more. Segments are created so that the marketer can cater specifically to each different email list and that list's independent interests, rather than creating one mass message for all.

Prospect (prospective customer)

Someone who is not yet a customer, but who has the potential of becoming one.

Text

Text emails or plain text emails do not contain graphics or any kind of markup.

Double opt-in

The act of getting subscribers to con rm their initial subscription via a follow-up email asking them to validate their address and hence opt-in again.

Internet Service Provider (ISP)

The company providing you access to the Internet, for example, MWEB, AOL, Yahoo.

Soft bounce

The failed delivery of an email due to a deviating reason like an overloaded email inbox or a server failure.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

The total clicks on a link divided by the number of times that link was shown, expressed as a percentage. Measures the percentage of email messages that drew at least one click.

Where can you begin signing people up for e-mails (building your organization's database)?

There are a myriad of ways to attract prospects to opt in to a database. An email sign-up form on a company website is vital. Visitors to a website have already expressed an interest in a company by clicking through - this is an opportunity to develop that interest further. Following the same principle, any other properties where newsletter sign-up can be promoted should be taken advantage of. Consider a sign-up form on your company blog, email signatures, Facebook page, and mobi site, or perhaps mention it during presentations you deliver. And don't forget other offline marketing channels that you're already using, such as flyers, posters or in-store displays.

Unique forwarders

This refers to the number of individuals who forwarded a speci c email on.

Business to Consumers (B2C)

When businesses sell products/services to consumers.

Business to Business (B2B)

When businesses sell products/services to other businesses and not to consumers.

Benchmark

a familiar number used as a point of reference Baseline values the system seeks to attain

What is a preheader and why is it important?

a line or two of text displayed above your email header. Most commonly, it's the line of text that will redirect you to 'View online'. With more and more people viewing emails on mobile phones, the preheader is also the ideal space in which to redirect to the mobile version of your email.

Pain points

a problem or need a business or company aims to solve.

Personas

a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.

Touchpoint

any point of direct interface between customers and a company

What should be included in the footer of an organization's e-mail message?

helps to build consistency, and is the customary place to keep the contact details of the company sending the email. physical address and contact email of the company. It can also include the privacy policy of the sender. One way to grow the email list is to add a 'forward to a friend' link in the footer. The most important part of the email footer is a clear unsubscribe link. Some ESPs enable you to place social media sharing buttons and links in the footer, allowing subscribers to share your email on their social networks.

A/B Split Test

involves testing two versions of the same page or site to see which performs better..

E-Mail Marketing

is a tool for customer relationship management,is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic means to deliver commercial messages to an audience. It is one of the oldest and yet most powerful of all digital marketing tactics. The power comes from the fact that it is: • Extremely cost effective due to a low cost per contact • Highly targeted • Customisable on a mass scale • Completely measurable is a tool for building relationships with both existing and potential customers. It should maximise the retention and value of these customers, which should ultimately lead to a greater return on investment.

Lead (lead generation)

is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.

Qualified Lead

is the point at which marketing determines that a lead is ready to be handed to sales

Sales cycle

is the process that companies undergo when selling a product to a customer.

What are some things to keep in mind as an organization writes the subject line of an e-mail message?

may be the most important part of an email! you should avoid using characters, for example, '#2$%&^^%###' or '!!!!!'. Consistent subject lines, using the name of the company and the newsletter edition, can build familiarity and help readers to sort their inbox.

Responsive e-mail design

means that it provides optimal design across devices.

Advice that is mentioned repeatedly in the chapter is the need to test your organization's e-mails. What are some reasons to test e-mails prior to the campaign?

• Open rates across different subject lines and delivery times. • Optimal number of links in an email for clickthrough rates and conversions. • Different copy styles and copy length. • The effect of video on delivery rates, open rates and conversions. • Balance of text and image ratio.

What are some best practice tips for e-mail sign-up forms?

• Put the sign-up form where it can be seen - above the fold and on every page. • State your anti-spam stance explicitly, and be clear that you value subscribers' privacy. • Clearly state what the subscriber's information will be used for. • Use a clear Call to Action. • Tell subscribers what they will get, and how often they will get it. Include a benefit statement. • Ensure the email address is correct by checking the syntax. • Test to see what works best!