Email Branding Tip to Increase Open Rates

This is a quick post on a great tip from Stefan Pollard in hist post: Use Brand-Recognition Elements to Combat Inbox Triage.

Stefan recommends putting your company name in the "view online" link at the top of your email. For example:

"BEFORE: If you can't see the images in this e-mail, please click here to view this e-mail through your Internet browser.

AFTER: If you can't see the images in your edition of Browning eBlast, please click here."

I liked this tip as it's easy to implement and should make a difference. Since this link is typically at the top of the email, it's one of the first things that people see when they receive your email.

The other interesting suggestion was to ensure that not only the email from "name" is branded but also the email alias [brand@domain.com]. For those companies that have an ESP (Email Service Provider) where you can specify this, you'll know what I mean (or you can read his article.

Chad H.

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Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders

As we move into a new week there are some interesting trends and technology enhancements that will start to change the way that B2B companies use email. For those that are thinking "email is email - how can it change?", keep reading.

Trend#1: The Blogletter is Coming - Actually, it's Already Here.

You may recall I blogged about a concept called the Blogletter (combo of email newsletter and blog posts). I don't hold anything against the blog readers out there who unsubscribed from my feed en mass after that post (OK, well a few of you I do). Here's the truth - the blogletter will be arriving very soon and will revolutionize the way some companies can create and execute an email newsletter or any email campaign.

The concept behind a blogletter is to be able to publish blog posts (or any RSS feeds for that matter) directly to an email and send it to subscribers. One of my readers back then asked me how this concept would work. At the time I didn't have any answers except for Feedblitz's tool which allows web visitors to get updated via email every time you submit a blog post (they have some new paid tools as well). This approach works for the average blogger but companies need better tools. The tools are now here and here are two approaches that you can use to take advantage of this technology:

• Integrating RSS feeds and emails. Imagine if you could integrate an RSS feed (if you don't know what RSS is and you are in marketing, you may want to read the following) with an email. For those of you who have feeds already (which include blogs) this would mean that you don't have to update content in multiple areas. You can update an RSS feed and have it publish to your website and email.

• Automating email using RSS feeds. Let's take this a step further with automation. If you regularly post content to your RSS feeds, you could potentially create an automated program that would send an email newsletter (Blogletter or RSSletter) automatically on the date that you defined. The newsletter would consist of the latest articles/posts from your RSS feeds as well as any other elements of your newsletter. What's key here is that the whole process to create a newsletter becomes much easier as you have an automated program that sends the email for you and the content is content that you've created for a blog or other RSS feed. This process works very well for new subscribers to your site as they can get a newsletter with the latest articles from the RSS feeds that you have defined.

Other advantages? As I mentioned in my previous article on the subject, your readers can comment on articles which adds a new dimension to email as it's no longer a one way push marketing channel.

I hope you find this interesting as the technology now exists to do this. The above examples are the tip of the iceberg.

Trend #2: Helping Your Customers/Prospects Organize Themselves

This tip/technology isn't new but it's now easier and thus has many more implications. A while back I wrote about how you can improve webinar/webcast attendee rates by creating a file that when clicked on, can book off the time specified in your email recipient's Outlook (and other programs too) calendar.

This process was a bit of a pain as you need to create the .ics file and then upload it to your server. It's much easier now as some systems will allow you to create this on the fly and integrate directly into your email or website. What does this mean? Here are some ideas:

• Set real milestones: There are many "How to" white papers out there that pose a problem that that you may be experiencing and provide a solution with next steps. For example, a white paper that outlines a ten step plan to turn around their business using your product or service. Imagine if you could create a solution with key milestones including REAL dates that the your prospect/customer can save on their own Outlook/Lotus calender. In addition, this information (email clicks) can be tracked. By tracking this information, you can have your inside sales/demand gen team follow up with these prospects on the actual date of the milestone that was outlined and ensure that they are on the path that was outlined which may include a meeting with someone from your company.
  
  
• Read later reminder: Do you hate an inbox full of email? I know I do. I can't hit the delete button faster in many cases (still waiting for that voice activated delete email function). What if you created a standard feature for all of your emails that was a simple link that said "I want to read this at a later date". By clicking on the link, the user would be presented with a calender item that had an online link to the newsletter and a recommended calender reminder to read the email at a later date as well as a suggested time/day. This approach may book off 10 minutes of a person's actual day to read your email. The email recipient can adjust the date to suite her/his schedule. The mobile folk may also like this feature as they can set a reminder to read the email when they are back in the office. Will this work? maybe. Is it worth trying? Definitely as it's very easy to do with some of the new enhancements out there.

Email is going well beyond the traditional approach where it was used to just push out information. The interactivity described above is part of a trend in B2B marketing which is focusing more on the ongoing conversation with prospects and customers rather then a one-off batch and blast approach. The ideas described above may seem a bit off the wall but should be considered along with other ideas on how to make email more interactive and to integrate it with overall marketing processes rather then as a tool in itself. I hope I have at least made you start to think about new approaches.

Chad H.

PS - Thanks for the image Just Say Hi

Technorati Tags: blogletter, blog newsletter, calendar reminders for events, deleting email

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Are Webisodes Just for B2C? Who Hired Bob?

Kraft has an interesting new microsite that follows the life of Bob at his workplace and his quest to replace the existing coffee machine with a Kraft Tassimo. Bob is one of those crazy co-workers that has a few screws loose. In fact, you could probably open a Home Depot with the trail of hardware he leaves. However, as someone that has seen like 20 different coffee machines at work over a span of three years that all produce putrid coffee that makes me run to the local Tim Horton's (Dunkin Donuts for the Southern Folk and I go for Starbucks when I'm working around the clock and need something superhuman to keep my eyes open - what is in the bold coffee? Probably something that Nasa found on mars), I can sympathize with Bob. You can check it out at www.whohiredbob.com. Here is a clip I found on Youtube.



While I think the webisodes are funny and entertaining, will it bring Kraft the desired effect of getting businesses to use Tassimos in the workplace rather then just at home? Possibly. I watched the first video and I got bored fairly quickly. There was little mention of Tassimo and what it can do until well into the video. What I did like was the contest that was encouraging web visitors to submit stories about their own Bobs to win a prize. We'll see if this site brings about the desired objectives but I think it's a step in the right direction on how to use video and user generated content (of course the fact that I'm blogging about this probably helps. You can thank me later Kraft).

Using Paid Search to Enhance the Campaign

I would use a tool like WordTracker to see which terms are searched on the most in search engines like Google and Microsoft but Tassimo may want to consider creating sponsored ads on Google for Keywords (have you checked out www.google.com/trends? it rocks!). I checked out SpyFu which tells you which keywords your competitors are bidding on. They don't seem to have any Google AdWords that are specific to this campaign. Here are some examples of keywords for Kraft to consider if they go this route:

• Tassimo
  
• Crazy co-workers
• Coffee in the workplace
• Bad coffee at work
• Who hired bob
• Don't you hate when someone drinks the last cup of coffee at work and doesn't make another pot? Don't you want to find that person and hunt them down?
  

Ok, that last one may be a bit extreme but it may also be part of the long tail of search. Some additional ideas may include advertising on The Office's (TV show) official website.

Webisodes and B2B Companies

The budget for this Tassimo campaign is probably out of the reach for most companies and is most likely only doable on the B2C side. However, B2B companies are creating entertaining videos to draw attention to their product and services. Here are a few samples (click on these - they're great!):

• Get the Cat by Lawson Software. This is a good laugh.
  
• Bob Kent by Bluecoat Systems (by far the funniest - why is it not on YouTube?)
• NetQoS Netcosm by NetQos. The success of this campaign was featured on MarketingSherpa.
  

Well, I hope you enjoyed these. Let me know if you're company has done anything similar or if you're planning to.


Chad H.

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Anything Goes Marketing is Attracting Attention

Although I`ve slowed down my blogging (too many things going on and I have a new project brewing - more details soon) I`m getting some attention from around the marketing universe.

Bulldog Solutions has quoted me recently on their BullBlog from my post on using video with email: ``Anticipating concerns about the complexity of video, blogger Chad Horenfeldt of Eloqua notes, "If a three-year-oldcan play Guitar Hero and have it posted to YouTube, your marketing team can handle this." Thanks Bulldog! You even spelled my last name right (it doesn`t happen very often).

I also just found out that my post on Google Customized search was selected as one of BtoB Magazine’s Blog Posts of the Week. Thanks BtoB Magazine!

I will write more soon but I thought this post may inspire other bloggers out there to keep writing as your posts do get noticed. I would be interested to hear from Bulldog and B2B Magazine how they found these articles. I suspect it was through searching or via a customized RSS feed. In any case, people are listening out there and blog content is like a search engine magnet or a web traffic firecracker.

Chad H.

Technorati tags: blogging success, b2b magazine, bulldog solutions, bloggers unite

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Give web visitors the resources they need - Customized Google

Raise your hand if you answer yes to all of the following questions:

• My company has a website
• We have great resources on our website
• Some of these resources help our customers and prospects learn more about what we do and affect the buying process
• It's difficult to find these resources on our site
  

Your hand raised? I've got a fairly simple solution. If you're on my blog (that's directed to my RSS reader friends), you'll notice a shiny new Google search box at the top of the site. This is an example of AJAX (new technology that doesn't require the browser to reload). Try it out! Search for anything you want (here's a good one: "Google Rocks"). Notice how the search results appear as a layer over the current page - isn't that cool? What I like about this is that you don't need to worry about the design of the search results pages and you get the power and authority of Google on your site. In addition, with this Web 2.0 technology, you never leave the page you are on so it's a better web experience.

The best news is that it's easy to implement Google Custom Search Engine and it's FREE. Here's what you do:

• Go to: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
• Click on "Create a custom search engine"
• Fill out the form fields on the next page (add in any number of sites you may want to index)
• Within the search results hosting option section, select the new "overlay" option. The drawback for bloggers is that you can't get Adsense but hey, if I was blogging for the money I would have quit long ago.
• Copy the code and paste it on your site
• You can customize this but I really didn't do any customization and it looks fine.
  

There is also a business upgrade for $100 a year. I've set this search engine up for a non-profit site (because I make tons off this blog - heavy sarcasm) which means that no ads will appear in the search results. Businesses will probably want to purchase the business edition as you'll not want ads on your internal search engine (could be competitors). I think it may be the best $100 your company has spent. If you don't have a site search, you're missing out on an opportunity to help web visitors to find information on your web site and better leverage your web and overall marketing investments. The easier it is to find the right information, the better chance at conversions and eventually closed deals. I haven't tested this out but you can probably use Google Analytics to track what people are searching on and additional data. If you have an enterprise site, you may want to look at some of the more feature heavy tools out there like Inquira.

Let me know if you have questions or tried it out.

Chad H

Technorati tags: Google Custom Search Engine, AJAX

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Email Tips for the New Year Part I

Greetings! I've finally had the chance to go through a number of email newsletters and reports and I wanted to highlight some interesting email tips.

Email Subject Line Tips: Use Personalization and Search Engine Optimization

I can blog about keeping your subject lines short but you already know that and I just reminded you. :) Here are some additional interesting tips:

• MailerMailer's latest Email Marketing Metrics Report (pdf) indicates that personalized subject lines (eg: "Chad, open this amazing email") dramatically increased open and click rates. The average open and click-through rates for non personalized emails were 15.86% and 2.09% respectively while the averages for personalized emails were 18% and 5.02%. This is very easy to do and worth testing
  
  
• Use the search engine optimization terms that drive the most traffic to your site within your subject lines. This is also easy to do by examining the search terms from your analytics program. Thanks Stefan Pollard over at ClickZ for mentioning that tip
  
  If your marketing database and your CRM data are synched, you may even be able to find out which words are used by customers vs. prospects and further segmenting the search terms to use for various campaigns.
  

How to Target the "Inactives" in Your Database

Wendy Roth explains in her article 6 tips to win back inactive subscribers suggests targeting those people that have not responded to your emails in the last 6 months. One suggestion is to send on an email to these "inactives" with an incentive to update their profile by entering them in a contest. This does a few things. It lets you know if these "inactive" contacts are still alive if you get a response and you can use the opportunity to ask these people additional lead qualification questions to round out their profiles. With this additional information, you can target these people accordingly. You may find out that there are some diamonds in the rough (as well as some bad apples). Overall, it's most likely cheaper to give away some IJunk (I use that word to summarize IPods, IPhones, ITouches etc...) then the cost to re-build your database.

This process can be automated by creating a program that sends 2-3 emails over a 3 week period with the offer described above. Other strategies may include further segmenting these inactives by the lead source and other qualification data and creating customized messages for the different segments and using different marketing channels (call campaign, direct mail). I would recommend that the first step is to determine the number of inactives in your database. This should give you an indication as to how active or inactive your database really is.

Various E-mail Tips from MarketingSherpa' Marketing Wisdom Report

I've read through MarketingSherpa's "Marketing Wisdom for 2008" which includes 101 real life marketing stories and lessons learned. Here are a few items I liked:

• Send a text follow up email to those that didn't open or click on your initial newsletter/event (my tip: automate this process if possible using email automation tools). However, text based newsletters may not be received too well if they are used instead of graphical based HTML versions. The best bet is to conduct tests to see if this boosts response.
  
• Have emails sent from Account Executives if possible. The more personalized the email, the better the response. Consider adding a personal touch above the email header image. For example "Chad - check out this great newsletter below. I think that there are some interesting articles that may be interested in."
  
• Slightly change a headline or subject line in emails sent to different contacts using standardized information in your database. For example, for a newsletter change the subject line slightly for your different database segments by highlighting an article in the subject line that appeals most to that specific segment.
• Consider using social media sites like Facebook and MySpace to grow your lists. Does your company have a Facebook group? Create one and use it to advertise events, product releases etc... Have a look at MarketingSherpa's facebook group. There are videos, pics, job postings, discussions - it's awesome!! PS - you will need to join Facebook to see it so stop saying "Facebook is for my 14 year old and I have enough 'friends' and have no intention with reconnecting with people from high school that I didn't really know in the first place". Seriously - join already. There is no such thing as private information in the 21st century.
  

I just realized that I waited too long to blog as I have a bunch of tips saved up. I will post a part II soon - I need to go see if any of my Facebook friends is celebrating a birthday this week and finish up that game of Scrabulous with my mother in law.

Hope the tips helped!

Chad H.

PS - feel free to look for me on Facebook.
PPS - Thanks Bulldog Solutions for mentioning my blog and quoting me for my post on using video in email.

Technorati Tags: email marketing, segmentation, tips, e-mail best practices

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Lessons Learned in Cost Rica - Being Customer Centric

My brain is slowly de-fogging from my trip to Costa Rica. My wife and I had a wonderful jammed pack week full of tours, hikes and R&R at the beach. Beyond the beauty of this country and the relaxing siestas in the sun, I was reminded of a valuable lesson - go above and beyond for your customers.

We booked an eco-tour which means that we travelled to various areas of Costa Rica to learn more about this wonderful country and the different species that inhabit it. We thought that we were going to be traveling with a bunch of other tourists but we ended up on an empty bus with just a driver and a tour guide. Over the next 5 days we were treated to an entertaining and informative tour through the rain forest and beautiful country side of Costa Rica until we reached the beaches on the pacific side for a few extra days.

Going that extra mile for the customer

What made the trip was our tour guide Jonathon and driver Daniel from Central American Tours. Whatever we needed, they provided for us. They ensured that we got the most value out of our trip by:

• helping us save money
• telling us what was the real coffee to buy to bring back home (and taking us to a shopping center to buy the coffee for the best price)
• suggesting authentic yet inexpensive restaurants
• taking the time to answer all of our questions about the thousands of plants and animals as well as the culture, history and politics of Costa Rica.
  
• providing multiple touring options that enabled us to do what we wanted.
  
• being as flexible as possible.
• Doing the unexpected. Here are two examples:
  1. We wanted to buy a special rosewood walking cane for my father in law. Our tour guide overheard my conversation with my wife and called ahead to the souvenir shop so that they would reserve the cane we wanted (it was the only one of its kind that we saw and we knew what it would mean to my father in law).
  
  2. Our driver provided us with a CD of some beautiful photographs of the Arenal Volcano that he took because it was cloudy when we went and we couldn't see that much. I've included one of his photos (while he couldn't speak any English, he was a wizard with his camera and loved showing off the photos he took).
  
  Now that is going above and beyond. Did it take a lot of effort on their part? no. Was it expensive or resource intensive? no. Would I recommend this tour company and my tour guide? I don't think I have to answer yet. They key here is the effort that was taken, the thoughtfulness and responsiveness. This experience is a good reminder for everyone as you begin 2008 -how can you easily provide greater value to your customers?
  

Happy New Year everyone!

Chad H.

PS - Here are some pictures from my trip that I posted on Facebook if you are interested.
Here are a few sample videos that I posted on UTube:

• Our monkey adventure
• Attack of the crazy creatures called Quadimundi

PPS - We met some great people from our trip and some of them joined our tour when they found out what a great tour guide we had. I plan to keep in touch with many of them via Facebook. Thanks for help making our trip a great one!!

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