Email Marketing Guide by ann h

EMAIL MARKETING A GUIDE TO ESTABLISH & GROW RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS, DONORS, FANS AND OTHER SUPPORTERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. WHY ENGAGE IN EMAIL MARKETING? II. AUDIT CURRENT EMAIL MARKETING EFFORTS III. CREATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY i. LIST BUILDING ii. EMAIL SENDS IV. NEXT STEPS V. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

CHAPTER ONE

WHY ENGAGE IN

EMAIL MARKETING?

WHY ENGAGE IN EMAIL MARKETING?

EMAIL MARKETING Email marketing is an excellent way to establish and grow relationships with your customers, donors, fans, and other supporters. Email marketing encompasses a wide range of marketing messages—from promotional messages (e.g. announcing an annual event) to transactional messages (e.g. auto-sending those who donate online a thank you message and receipt) to relationship building messages (e.g. a happy birthday message to your donors).

WHY ENGAGE IN EMAIL MARKETING? Before we dive into strategy and tactics, let’s visit the “why” of email marketing. While opinions on and sentiments about email marketing vary, the data speaks for email marketing best : • The Direct Marketing Association puts email marketing's ROI for 2011 at $40.56 for every $1 invested. The figure for 2012 is predicted to "fall" to $39.40, when email will account for $67.8 billion in sales. • 72% of respondents to an Econsultancy survey in early 2011 described email's ROI as excellent or good. Only organic SEO [when your site is found by someone searching Google and the visitor clicking on your link in the organic search results section of the results page] scored better. • A 2011 MerchantCircle survey of over 8,000 local business owners in the US found email marketing cited by 35.8% as a Top 3 most effective marketing or advertising method. Only social network profiles and search engine marketing scored higher. • In a 2011 Focus survey of marketers, the channel cited most often as the best performer over the previous 12 months was email. • Looking back slightly further in time, in Datran Media's 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email. To set yourself up for success, take time to map out your email marketing strategy for the next six months. While it may seem daunting or like a large amount of work to spend time now contemplating what emails will be sent in six months, doing so will in the long run reduce the resources and time invested in email marketing. With today’s automated email systems, you can design and set up all sends as far in advance as you would like. You can make use of email templates and planning ahead to reduce the workload associated with your email marketing campaigns. Planning ahead also allows you to spot where you may lack the resources (whether it’s people resources, design resources, or development resources) and allows you to address these ahead of time, thus avoiding any kind of last-minute crisis.

CHAPTER TWO

AUDIT CURRENT

MARKETING EFFORTS

AUDIT CURRENT EMAIL MARKETING EFFORTS

AUDIT CURRENT EMAIL MARKETING EFFORTS First take inventory of the lists, subscribers, sends, and email templates you already have. Answering these questions before beginning your forward-looking strategy brainstorm will allow you to make the most of what you have already built. If you have never created an email marketing program to support your initiatives, skip this section and move on to the step three. If not, collect the answers to these questions: 1. How many subscribers do you currently have? When using a new email service provider it can be beneficial to send your first email to a set of subscribers already familiar with your organization. This ensures a low complaint rate (more on this later) which establishes a solid baseline level of credibility (think of it as your reputation as an email sender). 2. Where did these subscribers come from (e.g. your website, sign ups from an event you held, etc.)? Understanding the source of your subscribers tells you more about how to engage with them. Did they sign up for your newsletter? Did they sign up in person during an event? Using this information as context when sending to your current subscribers can strengthen the integrity of your email campaigns. 3. How many lists do you currently have? Subscribers are typically assigned to lists much like you may group your contacts offline: “Professional Contacts,” “Donors,” “Friends,” “Close Friends,” etc. Are your subscribers segmented into lists of any kind? You may have your subscribers segmented by source (e.g. all those who signed up for your newsletter appear on one list and those who signed up at a particular event on another) or perhaps you have everyone in one list. Take this into account in order to make the best use of lists moving forward. (We will discuss lists in further depth later in this guide.) 4. Who are your readers? What do you know about those who engage with your current email sends? What do you know about your readers? Do you know what content they enjoy consuming? Take a look at the analytics of your current email platform to see which emails received the most click-throughs (that is, the most number of clicks on the email) and take note of what exactly was clicked.

AUDIT CURRENT EMAIL MARKETING EFFORTS

5. How frequently have you sent to your lists? (An outdated list that has been sent to hundreds of times may not be the best place to start when building your email marketing campaign. A good list is one whose subscribers have in some way qualified themselves as interested and active readers.) In email marketing there are concepts called list fatigue and list hygiene. List fatigue describes the condition of a list to which too many emails have been sent and the value of the email addresses are in essence worn out. List hygiene describes best practices used to make sure the integrity of a list is maintained; that is, to make sure a list does not have inactive/dead email addresses on it or that it is not bloated with uninterested readers who no longer wish to be on your email list. Knowing these two concepts sets context for finding out how frequently you have touched (sent emails to) your lists. If your lists are dated and fatigued, perhaps it is best to start anew and leave these contacts behind, saving only those with high engagement (click-through) rates. 6. Do you have email templates? Email messages are typically built off of templates coded in HTML (a programming language). Check to see if you have any templates available for potential future use.

CHAPTER THREE

CREATE YOUR

EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

CREATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

CREATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY Once you have taken inventory of all email marketing assets, it is time to craft a strategy for the next six to twelve months. Planning in advance can alleviate resource constraints and can align email marketing with other marketing efforts. Email marketing strategy encompasses email sends (who to send email to and when) and list sources (where and how to obtain email subscribers).

I. LIST BUILDING When building your email list there are two distinct list types to consider: house (or retention) list and acquisition (or rental) list. The former is the list of subscribers you build through your own efforts; the latter describes the lists available for purchase. It is strongly recommended that you avoid purchasing lists as there are risks associated with this (e.g. being blocked for sending what is perceived as SPAM) in addition to the potential low quality of these subscribers. Instead, focus your list building efforts on your own marketing campaigns, taking care to grow your list steadily over time. Remember to group subscribers into lists as they sign up; never add all of your subscribers to one giant, “master,” list. The best way to start grouping subscribers is by source. For example, add all individuals who sign up through your homepage to a “Website Homepage Newsletter Sign-Up” and those who signed up in person during your annual fundraiser to a “Annual Fundraiser 2012” list. Breaking subscribers out by list now will assist you segmenting (grouping your subscribers) into more meaningful buckets later. Consider these opportunities for offering individuals a chance to sign up for your email communications: Your website – Offer a sign up option on your homepage. Events – Allow people to opt-in to email communications when signing up for an event (whether on- or offline) and when at the event itself. Donations – Allow those who donate to opt-in to email communications upon donation (whether on- or offline). Social media – If you engage in social media and contests or registrations of any kind are involved, allow individuals to opt-in to email communications at the same time as signing up for a contest or completing a registration. Use these opportunities as a launch point for brainstorming where else your donors, fans, and supporters of any kind might wish to sign up for email communications. Build these into your marketing efforts on- and off-line from the beginning, not as an afterthought.

CREATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

II. EMAIL SENDS With list in hand you are now ready to develop the email communications you will send to your subscribers. The next seven steps outline how to strategically construct your email sends. 1) Identify opportunities for email sends. There are two primary types of email sends:

TRANSACTIONAL MESSAGES

Transactional messages are messages that are sent upon a certain action or “trigger activity” occurring. The trigger activity must be the same for all individuals to quality a messages as a transactional message. Examples of transactional messages include: • Thank you message and donation receipt upon donating on your website • Confirmation message upon registering for an event online • Confirmation message upon signing up for your newsletter

PROMOTIONAL MESSAGES

Promotional messages are any kind of message that are not transactional messages. Promotional messages include: • Birthday greetings • Event announcements • Newsletters • Coupon or discount offers o Member feature (e.g. “Customer of the Month”)

2) Identify objectives of each send. With email send opportunities in hand, identify the marketing objective of each send. The marketing objective may be to simply stay in touch or it might be to solicit donations. To determine the objective, ask yourself, “If the subscribers takes no other action than __insert action here__, this message would be a considered a success.” For example, a birthday send’s objective may simply be to engage the reader and stay at the top of their mind. If at all possible, tie in metrics to tell you whether a send was successful or not. For example, if a birthday send’s ultimate action is a clickthrough to a particular landing page, then perhaps click-through rate of this group of sends can indicate whether these messages are a success or not.

CREATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY 3) Select and prioritize sends. Now that you have a list of sends and objectives for each, choose the key sends you think will have the greatest impact now. If you are eager to try all sends, phase your strategy to make sure that you’re both not biting off more than can be chewed, but also because dividing sends into phases allows you to apply the insights from phase one to phase two, making phase two immediately more effective than it would have been without these data-driven insights. 4) Identify lists of subscribers to receive these sends. Who should receive these transactional and promotional messages? As mentioned above in the list-building section, grouping subscribers into lists upon subscribing will allow you to maximize the potential of your sends. 5) Determine frequency of sends (including trigger actions and send dates). When should your email sends go out? We encourage mapping out all sends for up to two quarters (six months). While transactional messages are ongoing and triggered by an activity, promotional messages require a different kind of planning as they are date driven vs. action driven. While things are going to evolve over this time frame, allocating and effectively using resources is easiest when your able to anticipate needs in the coming months. For example if two upcoming email sends require new email templates, know this in advance allows you to see if there is a way to reduce resource use and perhaps create one template for both email sends. 6) Determine key content to appear in email message. Review the objective of each send. Develop copy and imagery to match. Remember to maintain the look and feel of your website within your email message. Please see The Ten Important Parts of an Email Message for more guidance on how to construct a successful email message. 7) Determine relevant navigation to appear in email message. While copy and content are key to engaging users, navigation and links in your message are key to you gaining critical insights into your subscriber base. By providing links to your website both in the navigation at throughout the message, you are able to use analytics to see what people are clicked on in each message. This tells you a substantial amount of information about your subscribers; if all subscribers in group A click “DONATE” on every email message while group B clicks “Why Donate” or “What We Do,” then you immediately can segment these subscribers into two groups for more targeted communication at a later time. Please see The Ten Important Parts of an Email Message for more guidance on how to effectively use navigation and links in your email messages. After completing these steps you will have a plan for who to send what email message and when and are prepared to execute on your strategy. Make sure to read The Ten Important Parts of an Email Message before moving directly into execution.

CHAPTER FOUR

STEPS

NEXT STEPS

NEXT STEPS These next steps move into execution rather than strategy. They are outlined here to connect the strategy you just created to the Vertical Response Userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guide and to provide direction as to where to head next. Please see the Vertical Response guide for more information on execution. 1) Create email template if current templates available are insufficient to meet the needs of the content and navigation needs outline above. 2) Upload email template into Vertical Response (see Vertical Response Guide for more information). 3) Populate content (copy and images) in email templates. 4) Insert Forward to a Friend or sharing functionality. 5) Send messages (you made it!) 6) Review data and analytics pertaining to your email sends to improve all future sends.

CHAPTER FIVE

ADDITIONAL

RESOURCES

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

ADDTIONAL RESOURCES Thirsty for more? Here are various resources we find useful in learning more about email marketing:

Vertical Response Resource Library www.verticalresponse.com/resources Vertical Response Email Glossary www.verticalresponse.com/education-support/glossary Marketing Sherpa www.marketingsherpa.com/email-marketing-category.html Bronto Blog www.bronto.com/blog