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I love testing. I love finding out what works and what doesn't. It's amazing the things you learn by watching how your recipients interact with your content.

The problem? Not enough email marketers try it. Even within my own client base at Delivra, only a handful have chosen to run valuable test scenarios with actual takeaways. This just blows my mind: why are marketers so hesitant to start? It does take time and effort. You will need to be dedicated to your email marketing strategy to run valuable tests. But the rewards are worth it!

So what can you do to get those gears grinding? Below are 3 tips to get started:

1. Get brainstorming on improvements you can make to your email marketing content.
   Know what your competition is doing. Subscribe to other email lists and pay attention to what they're sending. Would aspects of their email newsletters be relevant to your own audience? What is it about your own content that is not living up to your competitor's? This is a great starting point to brainstorm on - what you could, or should, be changing in your emails.
    
2. Have a plan.
   It's not worth your time to blindly test different aspects of your content with no goal in mind. Know the different ways to test your content with multivariate or email AB split testing, and figure out what aspects of your content would benefit from a change.
   
   Let's say you're testing out 2 different subject lines: Don't simply split your list and send one subject line to each half. Where's the benefit in that? Instead, know why your subject lines are different and set up a test group beforehand. Say you send each subject line to 10% of your list. Give yourself enough time (I usually advise 3 days minimum) to review the email analytics and send the 'winning' subject line to the remaining 80%. Using this information, you'll see a much better response to your email campaigns.
    
3. Don't be afraid.
   Yes, there is a chance your recipients will not respond well to change within your content. But if you don't test it out, how will you know what you're sending now is the best content possible? No email marketer wants a negative result, but even knowing what doesn't work for your recipients is valuable information.

What have you learned about your audience through testing? If you haven't tried testing your content, why not? Comment and let us know!

Email analytics help you to understand how successful your email marketing campaign has been. 

It goes beyond the basic email tracking of reporting the number of times your email has been opened, bounced or clicked through. It helps you ascertain your customer's individual behavior including browsing and purchase habits. Armed with such information you can create specific, targeted, and personal campaigns. In short, relevant to your customer.

Here are some basic ways email analytics can help you track your emails:

• Add Social Sharing Links: By adding links to social networks in your email you can use email analytics to track who is sharing your email. By ascertaining the number of “likes”, “followings” or “shares”, you get to know the success rate of your email.

• Adding Video Links: This is not much different from adding social links to your emails. Here you can use email analytics to determine which video links work and which do not with your email.

• Adding 'Calls To Action': Keep varying the calls to action in your emails. Use email analytics to track which calls to action works best with your target audience.

• Adding Relevant Content: Content matters - always! Be interesting and creative with your content to produce maximum impact in your reader's minds. Email analytics help you find out what type of content works best with your audience.

• Adding Successful Subject Lines: Your subject line should grab attention. It is the first thing your readers see. By tracking which emails has the most success rate you can decide if your subject line needs tweaking to make it more inviting or aggressive.

By identifying each users behavior, it becomes easy and profitable for you to tweak your email campaigns to suit their needs. With effective email analytics in place, you can quickly customize your email content to create highly relevant emails.

http://www.listguy.com/email-analytics/

http://www.stratigent.com/community/websight-newsletters/email-analytics

http://www.benchmarkemail.com/blogs/detail/5-metrics-to-track-with-your-email-analytics

My colleagues Doug, Lavon and I traveled to sunny Hollywood, FL last week for the ever-exciting Email Evolution Conference sponsored by the EEC. In her last blog post, Lavon described it as an "email pep rally" and she's spot on.

There were three extremely prominent themes for this year's conference that I picked up on:

1. Rededication to Email Marketing Fundamentals
2. Mobile Marketing
3. Email Marketers are FUN people! (an observation, really)

It's somewhat of an oxymoron to say marketers need to rededicate themselves to email marketing fundamentals and yet have their eye on the new "shiny object" which is mobile, but that's reality. Marketers are faced with these priorities every day.

The key then is to tackle realistic, bite-sized projects to move you closer to your overall goal. (you do have email marketing goals, right?)  It's unrealistic to think you'll return from a conference to employ every single tactic you fell in love with. And, sometimes tactics you love may not be right for your space.

So, here are my top three realistic takeaways and tactics from the conference:

• If you've not read Seth Godin's Permission Marketing since 1999 or ever- do it NOW!
• Budget for an email audit. If you have internal analysts and email experts who can block off a week or more for an email audit- Bravo, you are among the very fortunate. For most marketers, email is just one of the many tactics which fall under the job description. If that's the case, make sure to carve off some budget for an indepth email analysis each year.
  An email analysis should paint a clear picture of how you're performing in all key areas of email marketing (i.e.List Growth, List Health, Engagement, Deliverability, Analytics and ROI) as well as clear recommendations for improvement and measurement.
• Mobile adoption in unavoidable. According to Jessica Harley from GiltGroup, over half of their email is opened on a mobile device. Wow! How many of you know what percentage of your subscribers are viewing your emails via mobile (this includes tablets)? If you don't know, find out now.

Intimately knowing the successes and deficiency of your email program will enable you to employ more advanced -shinier- tactics. For more ideas and themes from the conference check out the full agenda, including my presentation called, Combining Text and Traditional Marketing Channels to Boost Subscribers and Sales. We were very lucky to have our wonderful client, Anthony Scott with us from the Eiteljorg Museum to present their personal story with Text 2 Subscribe.

Until next year EEC...

I own two cars. A 2009 4-door sedan and a 2008 SUV. 

The sedan is quiet on the road and handles like a sports car. The SUV, with its high profile and all wheel drive, is perfect for maneuvering after a snowfall. Plus it holds the big stuff that won't fit into the sedan. 

I wouldn't want to choose between them. This got me thinking, can there be a parallel argument for email service providers (ESPs)? 

If I send a simple bi-weekly templated newsletter to the same audience, a basic low-cost ESP may fit the bill just fine. 

However, if I need a high-touch provider with strategy consulting, analytics integration, and transactional messaging capabilities, I will need a more robust solution.  It will cost more, but if the ROI (return on investment) makes sense - I'm good with that. 

So next time an ESP calls, don't say, "I already got one of those." Ask yourself if you need another one. 

I read a study by Marketing Sherpa. It said that 4 out of 10 recipients reported emails as spam only because it wasn't relevant. Sherpa also reports that emails which use segments get 50% more clicks. 

Below are a few segmentation ideas to help get you that needed lift. 

1. Geographic: Send invitations to local events or use geographic limitations on service delivery to choose your audience. 

2. Role: For example, a salesperson has different interests than a marketing manager. Segment with targeted content. Industry verticals also may demand a different approach. 

3. Interest: Review the content your recipients have viewed. Re-market based on this information. 

4. Behavior: You can use audience behavior as a filter for your communications. Of course, you need to have analytics set up on your site and you should integrate other purchase behavior into your email marketing system as well. 

5. Brand Advocates: Your brand advocate segment could contain - frequent buyers, social media fans, or customers who have recommended you. 

Segmentation can grow to be a beast, but even the slightest segmentation can increase your email success rates. Start small and expand as you encounter success. 

Need help? Delivra's professional services team is ready to assist. 

I attended a webinar hosted by Justine Jordan of Litmus last week. Litmus, by the way, provides email preview assistance as well as spam testing and analytics.

Believe it or not, Litmus reports that the percentage of people reading email on a mobile device has increased 150% over the past 12 months to 15% or nearly 1 out of 6 viewers. They should know as their tools report on this kind of information. 

For detailed analysis, as well as more great viewer stats, check out their infographic. 


Now that you have the info, what are you going to do about it? 

At the very least, convert to a skinny email template meaning less than 500 pixels wide for best cross-environment viewing. 
 

Study after study concludes that relevant content outperforms generalized content. Does your organization embrace this view with action?

Below are five yes/no questions that will provide the answer.

1.	Our organization sends a content specific marketing email based on website visit analytics. Yes. No.
2.	Our organization sends a content specific marketing email based on purchase or offline contact history. Yes. No.
3.	Our organization sends a content specific marketing email based on email activity analytics. Yes. No.
4.	Our organization sends a content specific marketing email based on subscription profile preferences. Yes. No.
5.	Our organization sends a content specific marketing email based on demographic data. Yes. No.

YOUR SCORE:

5 You're a rock star! 4 You're almost there. Don't stop now. 3 You're trying. Keep up the good work. 2 Get some help. You probably don't have time or the resources to do what's needed. 1 Really? 0 Quit your job and find something you enjoy.

Looking for a resource to help move your organization up the yes ladder? Contact me at neil@delivra.com and I'll get you some friendly help here at Delivra.

Transforming abandoned shopping carts into completed sales is a classic conundrum for any e-commerce company, and it's one that had been troubling Rob Schmelz, e-commerce manager for Central Restaurant Products. The company, which sells cooking and serving equipment to restaurants, hospitals, schools and other institutions, was even more frustrated about the problem because, thanks to website and email analytics, it could tell exactly which customers were leaving before completing their sales.

"If you've ordered or [signed up] on the site with an email, we know who you are via Omniture and [Central Restaurant Products' email marketing provider] Delivra," he said.

Hoping to reduce the number of abandoned carts, Schmelz, along with Delivra, implemented a triggered email program that would reach out to anyone who had filled a cart but left the site. The solution, which has been in place for three months, was custom-built for the company's shopping cart, said Carissa Newton , director of marketing for Delivra.

To read more of the B2B article, please click here.

Over time, you may have noticed a decrease in the amount of engaged subscribers you have on your emailing list. Not to worry! You can put together a re-marketing campaign in order to re-engage people with your emails. First, you want to create a re-marketing strategy to make sure that you create a successful, effective re-marketing email campaign sure to bring your customers back to you!

Usually, a re-marketing campaign is put into place in order to remind individuals of an online shopping cart they have abandoned.  Consumers abandon online shopping carts for a number of various reasons:

• High Shipping Costs
• Get Distracted
• Difficult Checkout Process

The goal is to create an email campaign to recapture the attention of the buyer in order to encourage them to complete the checkout process.

1. Evaluate. Use analytics and tracking features in order to determine the amount of abandoned carts you are dealing with and if it makes sense to create an entire email campaign to lessen it.

2. Goals. Once you have an idea of an abandonment rate, establish goals you wish to accomplish with your re-marketing campaign.

3. Details. Figure out what you intend to send and when you plan to send it. Some suggest waiting for several hours, some suggest waiting for maybe an hour, and others recommend waiting at least a day or two before sending a reminder email. As far as content goes, are you wanting to include various offers and coupons?

4. Logistics. I suggest working with an email marketing service provider to set up the logistics of sending an abandoned cart email. These emails have to be set up as a triggered mailing automatically sent based on various click through behavior.

5. Measure & Reevaluate. Using analytics to determine how well a re-marketing campaign is doing. This will help you decide if changes need to be made to the campaign or how successful the campaign is based on how your audience is responding.

Need help creating and implementing a re-marketing strategy to recapture the attention of some diverted subscribers? Contact Delivra today!  An email marketing service provider has the knowledge and resources to assist you in formulating a re-market plan and putting it into action.

Lavon Temple | Marketing

I have been working with a lot of clients who are looking for ways to improve their email efforts in 2011. They usually are wondering how much all the bells and whistles cost. They assume they need to invest more money in their email marketing program to see improvement. Frankly (and don't tell my sales manager I'm saying this), but  a lot of clients already have most of the bells and whistles they need. Occasionally additional financial investment is needed for things like integration, custom HTML design or advanced analytic options but most often it is quality time they need to invest. So now that you have carved out some time, where exactly should that time be spent? Good question. Here is where I would start:

Strategy- Create a flow chart outlining the process from beginning to end. I love those super huge post-its so I usually recommend starting there with some colorful markers to boot, but that’s completely a personal preference. Start with answering the basics about your members (“member” is referring to anyone on your email list).

How does a new member get on our list and where are all the places a member joins our email list?

What communication this member will receive?

How many emails does the member receive (or want) on a monthly basis?

How I will measure this member’s engagement?

How will I measure my ROI and what are my goals? Special event coming up? Need an increase in sales or sales leads? What am I really trying to accomplish? Surely it’s not just improving an open rate statistic.

Reports—Use reports and statistics as your benchmarks. Try not to compare yourself to others. This is about you and not industry standards. Really dig into your reports.

Where is the activity happening? If it’s all at the top then maybe your content is too long. Save yourself some time and cut a couple things out. If there is little or none at all, then maybe your content needs a makeover.

Conduct split tests on subject lines and from lines. Spend some time analyzing what is working and what isn’t working.

You probably won’t be able to figure everything out after sending one email , but that’s ok because you are ready to invest some time, remember?

Evaluating and updating your strategy—Schedule time to review and be prepared to make changes about once a quarter. If you aren’t meeting your goals, then maybe there are some pretty big changes to be made. If you are not that far off from your goals then, maybe a few tweaks every quarter or so will do the trick. Just keep on scheduling the time to review. Regular maintenance or tweaking time is important. Plus, being dynamic is one of email marketing’s greatest assets. You can change what you’re doing (or not doing) at any time.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Some email marketers go overboard when creating an email by adding a ridiculous amount of interactive graphics and links in the content. Instead, a better idea is to store some of this information on a landing page.

When using the Delivra application to create a landing page, you have the ability to track the results. For example, when a customer is directed to a landing page, you can receive analytics that inform you of the links they clicked on.  This gives you a better indication of what information they are interested in allowing you, as a marketer, to better segment your emails and write content that is more suitable for your audience.

What are some best practices for creating landing pages?

Here's an article from HubSpot that will help you avoid some making common mistakes when creating your landing pages.

For more information about landing pages, check out these Delivra blog posts:

Make Your Own Landing Pages

Successful Landing Pages: 3 Tips

Creating a landing page can give you detailed information regarding your subscribers, allowing you to provide more content that interests them. It also eliminates some of the clutter in your emails making them more effective and encouraging your subscribers to read the email in its entirety.

For more help on creating a landing page for your emails, contact Delivra today!

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Delivra, one of the original email service providers, announced it's integration with Adobe SiteCatalyst®, powered by Omniture®. The integration enables marketers to send email messages to specific list segments based on the online activity of customers. By tying email marketing and web analytics together, marketers can optimize conversion of online transactions and increase revenue.

"The integration of Delivra and Adobe automatically merges email and analytics data and is providing additional insight to help us understand how our email recipients utilize our website and how our email affects other sources of web traffic," said Rob Schmalz, of Central Restaurant Products. "I am equally impressed with the ability to create custom segments within Adobe SiteCatalyst that trigger timely and relevant emails in Delivra to target specific behaviors."

For more information about the Delivra and Omniture integration, click here to be directed to the press release.

The dog days of summer usually signify really hot, lazy days where little progress is made.

Are you in the dog days of summer right now?

Feeling unmotivated and unmoved by anything?

Shake it off, get moving and give your email marketing plan a kick in the rear! Here are 5 things you can do with your email marketing efforts to beat the dog days of summer:

1. Welcome new subscribers- Set up a warm welcome message for new subscribers. Include what your emails are all about, allow them to select their preference of interest and frequency and maybe include a nice coupon code for them to use.

2. A/B split testing- Are you getting the open rates you want? How effective is that subject line you’ve been using for your newsletter? If things are slow right now and you have some extra time, pay a little extra attention to your analytics and test your content.

3. Segment- Think about your recipients. What are they really interested in? Don’t know? Do a survey and offer an incentive for filling it out. Find out frequency or interest or both. Then respect those preferences and plan your emails around what your recipients want. Watch your engagement soar.

4. Clean Up- Use the engagement segment to find out who is not doing anything with your emails.  Come up with a plan to either reach these people in a different way or remove them. Why send email to people who don’t read it anyway?

5. Start thinking about the holidays- This may be the last thing on your mind now…but if you sell or promote anything during the months of October-December and don’t have a plan yet…get one soon! Plan ahead and your life will be so much easier during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  The plan can be simple: Define your goals. How many emails are you going to send? When are you going to send them? What are you promoting? Create the content and schedule the emails so you can breeze through the holidays.

That’s it folks, just a few ideas to spice up your email marketing this summer. Do something different today! Need more ideas? Give us a call at 317-915-9400. That’s what we’re here for.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Yesterday, we released our Semi Annual Update. We'd like to take this blog post and outline it for our blog readers and those that may have missed the press release. 

Delivra reports continued growth through new and existing business along with an award highlighting that growth and innovation even further for 2010. 

"Each year, we like to reflect back on the first half of the year to keep our customers, partners, and other interested parties apprised of our progress," said Neil Berman, President & CEO.

Highlights for the first half of 2010 include: 

• 20% increase in revenue for core hosting business
• Signed 112 new clients & grew existing accounts to higher sending volume
• Partners with Flimp for Email Marketing with Trackable Video
• Integrates Email Marketing with Cantaloupe's VideoHere Online Video Management System
• Delivra Named as One of the 2010 Indiana Companies to Watch

In the first half of this year, we have already surpassed our historical growth pattern," said Berman. "In addition to that growth, 2010 has marked a year in which we have seen marketers evolve in the ways they are utilizing the power of email marketing. That power is also being harnessed through various partner integrations along with expansion in the volume and types of email marketers are sending today." 

As we move on to complete 2010, we reflect on a portion of the year where growth and innovation were accomplished, and yet there is still much to do to ensure we are that resource to each and every email we work with everyday. For example, Delivra has focused on providing email marketing education both in webinar, blog, and best practice expertise yet as resources are developed we find the need for even more content to address the flood of possibilities. 

"I believe that if our customers are not successful marketers, then we are not doing our job efficiently. Everyday Delivra helps our customers focus on their business, while we provide the engine to send, the software to create, or the analytics to track each campaign. We look forward to serving your email marketing needs for many years to come," said Berman.

Neil Berman recently used the analogy of a wedding to explain the importance of planning your marketing efforts, but it got me thinking how much email marketing is like a relationship.

Imagine your prospective recipient's first visit to your site as the first date.  Perhaps a friend set her up (through a personal recommendation or link from a trusted site), or she used a dating service (you showed up in a Google search).

You begin spending time together, getting to know one another (through browsing and analytics). One click leads to another, and before you know it, you're popping the question ("Would you do me the honor of becoming my subscriber?")

She says yes. The wedding is set and when the Priest/Rabbi/Judge asks "Do you..?" (in the form of a confirmation email), she says "I do!" (by clicking the link.)

You embark on your honeymoon (in the form of a Welcome message). You're staring into each others eyes and laying out the future (setting expectations, collecting more info, adjusting preferences).

What follows is the marriage.  Everything has built to this point, and it is important that both parties are active and engaged and honest.  For example, if one of you has stopped communicating, that's not good, and could likely lead to the eventual breakdown of the relationship.

From the sender's perspective, a silent recipient (no longer opening, clicking, buying...) could be due to a number of reasons:
"I need a break" - are you sending too often?
"I'm just not that into you anymore" - content not relevant?
"We never talk" - is your email getting blocked?
"There's someone else" - in a crowded inbox, someone else is more relevant?
"You never listen" - not honoring recipient's preferences?
"I didn't know what I was getting into" - signup form unclear/misleading?
"I've changed, you haven't" - Is your information timely and up-to-date?

While I don't want to trivialize the complexity of human relationships, I do want to emphasize the importance of planning your email marketing efforts beyond just getting people to sign up.  You want a relationship that is going to last.  Make sure you're paying attention to the signals and responding to them.  Try something different.  Make your subscribers feel special. If you have a group that's gone quiet on you and you are looking to re-connect, let us know.  We can help identify where to focus and provide some tips for campaigns to revive the relationship.

Oh, and I can't leave this whole analogy without going through the signs that it is indeed over:
A hard bounce is coming home and finding her closet empty.
An unsubscribe request is a "Dear John" letter.
An abuse complaint is a restraining order.

Kris Dougherty | Operations

Over the years Marketing has evolved tremendously, and with the addition of new methods often comes confusion in terminology.  Recently, I was asked this, "What is an 'impression' anyway?"

In traditional advertising terms, an "impression" is a measurement of how many people an advertisement can reach, often measured by the audience size.  When you are talking about television or radio, this definition of the term makes sense because you are measuring how many people the advertisement might have been exposed to, not how many actually saw it.  However, as marketing has changed to incorporate the potential of online media, the term "impression" has taken on a new meaning.

In a Web 2.0 world, an "impression" became well-known as a measurement of how many times an advertising placement would be served up on a web site.  Then, along came social media into the mix, and the word "impression" became even more confusing, taking on yet another meaning.  When used in reference to email marketing, video, and social media, the term "impression" has become widely used as a descriptor for the end-user action.

Why the marketing lesson today you might ask?  Here at Delivra we are often asked about the measurement and tracking analytics behind our platform and it is important to understand the differences among the metrics.  First, email marketing uses these basic definitions:

• Open:  registered when the recipient either previews or opens the email (very similar to the "impression" metric for an online ad).
• Click-Through: registered when the recipient clicks any link within the email.
• Unique Open or Unique Clickthrough: the total number of recipients who opened or clicked, without regard to how many times they opened or clicked.

Beyond these standard measurements, we added additional metrics when we introduced our social media sharing functionality.  We wanted a way for our customers to embed social sharing links within their emails to make the content sharing process easy for their recipients.  Now that email marketers are incorporating this feature in their campaigns, it's time to circle back and talk about how to understand the tracking behind it--including "impressions"--and how three simple metrics can affect your future marketing efforts:

1. First, once content in an email is shared to a social network, our social tracking enables the sender to view exactly which recipients are sharing.
2. Second, they are able to see exactly how many times that content has been shared out to each network.
3. Third, they can see how many "impressions" occur once the content is shared--how many people, beyond the email recipients, viewed the email content as a result of it being shared on a social network.

How can you can apply these metrics?  Once you know who within your database is sharing content, you can tailor future communications and incentives to encourage further sharing activity.  Even more powerful is knowing which networks they are sharing to.  If you know the majority of your audience is sharing to Facebook, then focus your marketing efforts to that audience.  Provide incentives within that network and encourage those members to become fans of your organization.

As for the almighty impression, let's look at an example.  Drumroll, please...

Suppose you have an email campaign that you send to 10,000 recipients. Of those 10,000 recipients, 5% (or 500) share the email content with their social networks.  Of that 500 that shared, 80% (or 400) shared to Facebook.  If the average Facebook member has over 125 friends, the link to that shared content was seen by potentially 50,000 friends.  If just 2% of those friends click the link  and view the content, that's 1,000 "impressions"--additional people that took action to click and read more.

That's powerful when you think about it.  With social media, you compound your reach when your recipients share out content.  In addition,  you are potentially also attracting new fans, customers, and prospects during this process.  In fact, you may even gain subscribers when all is said and done.

Still think social media is a waste of time?  I sure don't!  Have questions or want to learn more?  Contact us today at 317-915-9400 or at info@delivra.com.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

Join me, Wednesday, October 21st, at the 2009 Masters of Business Online Conference. I'll be joined by 22 other marketers as we bring you actionable strategies to to grow your business.

My session will focus on how you can 'catch' all the business you can through segmented and targeted communications -- and maximize ROI on your email marketing.

Other speakers will be presenting topics on:

• Getting the Data You Want out of Google Analytics
• Developing a High Performance Landing Page Program
• Advanced Link Building Strategies for SEO
• Marketing Automation: From CRM to Email
• The Business Case for Twitter
• Engaging Users with Video and Flash
• And much more!

Plus, 25 attendees will win a copy of Douglas Karr's
Best-Selling eBook: 25 Steps to Success: Search Engine Optimization and Business Blogging!

Don't miss out. Register Now for ONLY $109!
Use Promo Code: delivra109

Kris Dougherty | Deliverability & Operations