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Here at Delivra we are happy to announce two new email to CRM integrations with NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics. The integrations will allow Delivra customers to sync important database information into Delivra to create highly segmented email marketing campaigns. Important email reporting data is then pushed back to contact and lead records in the respective CRMs.

Click here for more information about Cazoomi. 

For more information about these integrations, check out the press release. 

Creating segments can be tricky when you aren't directly selling online or don't have specific preferences for clients to choose from. If you have been using an email marketing agency like Delivra, then you already have exactly what you need to get started. Create activity based segments. Start out by splitting up your audience based on the following criteria:

No activity (No Engagement)- Never opened, never clicked a link to learn more, or never forwarded or shared with any friends. These people have done nothing with your emails, ever.

No recent activity (Past Engagement)- These members were interested at one time. The time frame you use is up to you, but my recommendation is to keep it under 90 days or three emails. If there has been no action in 90 days or three emails, your members should be in this segment.

Members who have opened an email (Moderate Engagement)- These members have opened an email in the same time frame you set above.

Members who have clicked through (High Engagement)- These members are your most engaged audience. They appreciate and somehow use the content you are sending them.

Start out by sending the same content to each segment. After you establish your baseline then start targeting these groups in unique ways. What ways do you segment your audience?

Still need help identifying your audience for more targeted email campaigns? Check out 3 Segmentation tips for B2B Email Marketers and 5 Segmentation Ideas for 2012. Need one-on-one help? Schedule a consultation with Delivra.

• Consider adding information about their last purchase to remind them of what it included.
• Consider adding recommended items based on what they have already purchased. 

This week, the Email Experience Council and Sponsor, StrongMail, released the results of its "2012 Marketing Trends" survey which provides insight into how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing dollars in the New Year. Conducted in November 2011, 938 business leaders participated in the global survey. 

The 2012 Marketing Trends Survey highlights: 

• 92% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2012
• 60% plan to increase email marketing budget; 54% social media; 37% mobile/search (tied) 
• 45% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2012;
• 43% cite lack of resources/staff as primary email marketing challenge; 
• 40% cite content management as primary email marketing challenge; 
• 48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2012 email marketing initiative; 
• 44% cite improving segmentation/targeting as a top initiative; 
• 32% cite growing opt-in email lists as a top initiative; 
• 68% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 45% with mobile; 17% with search 

2012 is a new year but the survey, for me, merely reinforced what I hear regularly from staff, clients and prospects. 

• Online (Website and Blog)
• Face to Face
• Telephone
• Direct Mail
• Social Media
• Brick and Mortar
• Email
• Other?

1. Segment your data by geographic regions – in some cases your email will be going to several parts of the country, if not world. Be sure to set up your mailings to reflect those time changes to avoid sending emails at 4 in the morning!
2. Look at past data and mailings – Check to see if your email service provider offers the ability to see open rates and when those actions occurred, review this data to determine when those clicks peek. This gives you a glimpse into when your readers set aside time to look at your emails.
3. A/B split tests – Sending your email to just a sample of people with the subject line and content the same but only changing the time can tell you a lot about when your readers are opening your email. Maybe your readers open more in the morning than in the afternoon or Monday vs. Tuesday.

I received an email last week from a friend saying she was creating a new email account so she can get rid of all the "spam." I have thought about doing something similar. How many of your members have abandoned their inbox for greener (and spam-free) pastures? How do you find fatigued members? What will cleaning up your list do for your email marketing program?

• Diagnosis—Review your open, clickthrough and engagement numbers. Are they on a downward spiral? If they are going down or you are not meeting the goals you set for yourself, then you may be suffering from list fatigue.
• Treatment—Find out who exactly is tired. Who hasn't opened a mailing in 90 days? If you are not sending consistently, then you may need to increase your date range to 6 months. You want to make sure you give people an opportunity to receive multiple emails. Segment those email addresses into two groups (engaged and unengaged) and continue sending email. For those that open the next mailing move them over to your engaged segment. Do this for three months or three email sends (whichever comes first). At the end of your observation you should have a comprehensive list of unengaged members.  Run a re-engagement campaign for one last chance and then if there still is no response...mark them as unsubscribed and move on.
• Preventative Maintenance—Depending on your sending frequency, you may need to repeat this once a year to keep your list refreshed. Ultimately,  work on keeping your members engaged. Making sure your content has lots of opportunities for engagement and changing up link placement to make obvious calls to action will give your list members different options for showing their interest.

Scared of unsubscribing "active" emails? Remember that email is not a numbers game. It is not about sending as much as you can to as many as you can. It is about sending relevant content to people who want to receive it. Cleaning up your list will increase your open and clickthrough numbers as well as give you a more accurate indication of your reach.

Questions? Contact us.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Email marketing is a great tool to help you reach your overall marketing and sales objectives. However, sometimes it's hard to know where to to start to make the leap from sending everything to everyone to really utilizing the targeted and dynamic power of email marketing. Here are some tips that should help you get started:

Define your Goals- This should not be confused with your email marketing statistics. Email open rates and clickthrough numbers are good indicators of how you are performing, but not necessarily end goals. Define what you want to accomplish. Is it to increase attendance at an event, raise more money or sell more of a widget? Define what the goal is and create an attainable (yet stretch) goal that is measurable and use email metrics as indicators of your success towards that goal.

Create your Baseline- Compare a series of mailings that have gone out to your audience over time to observe any trends.

Clean your List of Unengaged Members- If a member is not doing anything with your emails, then why continue to send to them? A re-engagement campaign pools all of your unengaged members into a segment so you can attempt to re-engage them. After you send your re-engagement emails and there is no activity, then change their member status so you are no longer sending to them.

Segment your Audience- If your audience is diverse and will likely respond differently to email content, time or day sent, then consider segmentation. For example, if this is a campaign to raise money, maybe define segments based on past donations. Another good option would be to segment based on age ranges or member engagement/previous activity.

Start Testing and Sending Email Campaigns- A/B Split testing is a way to test different pieces of content among your defined segments to see which piece of content gets the best results. The best way to utilize this is to test one or two variables at a time and evaluate which content gets the better results to send to the rest of your segment.

Evaluate and Make Changes-Review your baseline statistics to your new statistics coming in. The frequency of sending your emails to that audience will determine how long before you can really evaluate your results and start making changes to your content, sending frequency and subject lines.

Refining your email marketing tactics can take some time, but is well worth the effort. Need help? Contact us today with additional questions!

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

I recently received a notification from one of my User Groups on LinkedIn that another member wanted to know what should be "an acceptable rate of opt-outs".

Another group member provided the following statistic,  "Studies done in the past have consistently shown a ~30% per year churn rate (unsubscribes, bounces and complaints) which is 2-3% a month."

While this may be an acceptable industry statistic, I asked: why be happy with what is statistically acceptable?

I pointed out that if you are seeing a high opt-out rate, it would be best to look at things like segmentation, relevancy, frequency of emails, content and even subject lines. As we say all the time, you should really TEST to find out what email is going to get you the most engaged recipient. For instance, you can A/B test subject lines to see if that improves open rates. Or, test content blocks within the email to see what message resonates better with the audience. The combination of tests you can do to improve your campaigns are nearly limitless.

At Delivra, we help our customers build relevant email campaigns every day. If you can't keep your list healthy and growing, you are not going to be satisfied with your email marketing efforts.

David Turpin | Account Executive

I started this blog post at exactly 8:30:00 and I have the clock running on my screen while I type. The pressure is on to produce three hundred words as quickly as possible, but more importantly to make a serious point: great online marketing is about efficiency and effectiveness. I want to be fast, of course, but I also want to write great copy.

As I pass the one minute mark (yes, just now---I type pretty fast) the core message I want to share with you is that all marketing is about storytelling. In the email format, our ability to tell stories has some constraints and some advantages. We generally can only use the written word and a simple images, but we also have the tremendous advantage of knowing something about our customers. You can insert their name in every post. You can localize the email message to their city or cross reference the campaign to past purchases. You can segment messages by employer or industry. You can tell the story that makes the most sense for the audience at hand.

At the same time, however, you also have the powerful opportunity to strike quickly and leave your customer with the desired frame of mind. As I approach three minutes and forty-five seconds, I'm hopeful that you are impressed by how fast I am producing this content. I'm especially eager for you to recognize that this is possible because of Delivra's great technology as well as my writing process. Since both systems are up-to-date and well-maintained, I am approaching the 250-word mark in just over five minutes. I'm ready to complete this post in perhaps only seven minutes of writing time.

There's more to the process, of course. Someone else will double-check my work for errors and typos, and make final preparations to schedule this blog post. The content will also be automatically picked up for use in email marketing newsletters by Delivra. It is these procedures, however, that make marketing effective. By leveraging our time and our resources intelligently, we can offer useful, practical and powerful information to customers. We can share our stories over and over again and build a reputation among those who want to do business with our organization. Marketing, in essence, is storytelling to an audience for the purpose of making commerce meaningful.

Eight minutes. Enjoy the rest of your day, however you choose to spend your time.

Guest Blogger | Robby Slaughter

Robby Slaughter is a Principal with Slaughter Development, an Indianapolis-based business process and workflow consulting company. His new book, Failure: The Secret to Success is available now at www.failurethebook.com.