Blog Box

An email marketing review by Andrew Beeston

At Brown Box we regularly help our clients with best practice for their email marketing efforts including, legal requirements, content development and sending practices. When I recently received an email (from a company we do not serve) I felt compelled to show it to everyone and because we are passionate about our work, the decision was made to share with you a few things you can learn from the email received. We appreciate that not everyone has expertise on these matters so we have decided to omit the name of the business who sent the email.

The Problem

Now that is a long email!

Looks pretty long for a text email doesn’t it? Not the type you’d expect to get from a friend let alone a company sending through any email. I know what you’re thinking, ‘how long is that email?‘ Well I did a count and it came to 3028 words. That’s a VERY long email. Nobody will read that email.

Not only that, but the email was very wide. My screen is 24″ wide, so it went very very wide. Click on the image of the email and see how hard it is to read an entire line. Nobody will read that email.

Apart from the length there were grammatical issues, spelling issues and legal issues in the introduction and it got worse from there. It certainly wasn’t an email I wanted to read. Nobody will read that email.

So how can an email like this be fixed? What can you learn from this to improve your email campaigns? Here’s 8 ways to fix this email covering three of the big issues presented here.

1. Make it Readable

The email itself was simply text so traditionally this would be ‘readable’. But even with it being plain text, there was much that was wrong with the email. The email was clunky, wide and boring, to help this:

• Make the text scannable with a bit of bold. In 3000 words, 7 phrases were bold. Use bold at least once per paragraph, if you’re not saying anything worth bolding - remove it.
• Limit the width of the email. This email was as wide as the screen allowed, so on my 24″ screen it was massive, help me - keep your emails at a maximum 600px wide for readability (an industry standard for all email messages).
• Use lists just like this one. They’re easier to digest.

2. Get To The Point

My best guess with this email is that the main article was about chess and business. I saw it somewhere as I glanced through the text in an Internet induced haze. I don’t know because the mere fact that the email was that long meant I never bothered to even start reading it. If you must, link to the full version.

• Get to the point quickly and simply.
• Use images to convey meaning - after all they are worth a thousand words.

3. Link To A Longer Version

With short attention spans and multitudes of choice online people want to know what they are getting before they commit to anything. Entice readers to your full article online by providing:

• Short teaser paragraphs or interesting imagery linking to your longer article online.
• A pdf download link. With 3000 words this is more of a paper than an article. Help people print it off and read it later with a nicely formatted pdf.
• A blog or alternative news site. We create news websites for some clients who cannot or do not want to put articles up on their primary website. This has proven to be extremely useful in performing a function they wanted but could not otherwise have.

A Final Word

There were so many other ways that this email could have been improved that it would have been unfair to bring out them all. Grammar, spelling, the subject line, legal issues with unsubscribing, newsletter archives and other less significant issues. If you are sending emails like this and not getting the results you want, speak to me. I’d be glad to assess your work and help you develop something that works. You can find us on Twitter, email (andrew or rob (at) brownbox.net.au) or Skype me (username: Niphal) or of course contact Brown Box.

Email marketing is something which businesses do in many and various ways with varying degrees of success. Getting people to sign up to your email list, preventing email systems from labelling your email as spam, let alone getting people to read your emails are all steps that need fine tuning on an ongoing basis. With statistics showing a $45.65 return on every $1 spent on email marketing in 2008 it is extremely important that it really is a powerful way of growing business.

So why not see how others do it? I decided on a group of businesses that require regular contact to announce new products, their recent activities and to remind their fickle customers about them. Musicians. From new music, to tour announcements and just general promotion - email marketing should be very important to this industry.

The first step - shaking hands
To start the survey I took the top 15 artists on the Australian music charts and headed to their websites. Their website is a primary area for getting signups to their email marketing so a link or form should be obvious to find and use. So here’s 5 lessons on email marketing from the music industry.

Lesson 1 - Make sure your website works

Not a great way to get signups. Viewed in Internet Explorer the website shows properly.

Apparently Christina Aguelira has sold enough music and has decided not to worry about selling to new customers. This warning ‘you need Flash version 8′ is a stumbling block to people getting in to her site and signing up to her email list. Let people access your site - even if they can’t see all your ‘awesome’ features and tricks.

Lesson 2 - Make sure your signup page works

Make sure your website works - a small hiccup from Pink was fixed.

Pink’s website works - in fact the ’signup’ link is quite easy to see as a part of what seems to be the main navigation. However signing up for Pink’s email list wasn’t so easy - when I went to click on the form it told me that her ’signup’ page didn’t exist.
Woops! This is a big problem for someone like Pink, who is doing 14 shows in Sydney alone in the coming weeks. 14 shows! That’s a lot of people who might want to visit her website and might want to continue hearing about what she’s working on and releasing.
Luckily for her - the problem was sorted and the website seems fixed now.

Lesson 3 - Let people find your signup page easily

An easy to find sign-up link on the front page of the Il Divo site.

One way to maximise the amount of people signing up to your list is to allow people to find the signup form easily. Il Divo does this well - in the menu area they have a link to “sign-up for updates” which is just the kind of thing to help grow your list. Hiding it down the bottom of your site, or calling it something not obvious will make it hard for people to find.

Lesson 4 - Follow up with an email. Quickly

My inbox shows just 7 responses from 15 signups and 2 emails since then.

Of the 15 musicians I signed up to - I received 7 welcome/confirmation emails. That’s just under half and if I wasn’t taking notes I wouldn’t remember who I signed up to - and neither would your subscribers if you have the same policy. A sure fire way of helping people remember that they signed up to your email list (and to add you to their email safe list) is to send them an email straight away. Asking them to confirm their subscription will vastly reduce unsubscriber rates too - only 3 of the musicians I signed up for asked me to confirm the subscription: Nickelback, Lady Gaga and Snow Patrol. That’s a paltry 20%. People who really want to hear your message will confirm their email, and if you’ve sent it straight away they will more likely act upon it and keep reading your later emails.

Lesson 5 - Be regular, include news

Beyonce's email provides news.

Since signing up 2.5 weeks ago I have received emails from a single musician. Beyonce (my favourite American female singer with the name Beyonce - of all of them she is by far the best) has sent me two emails, both included news about things being ‘available now’ or ‘recently released’. In other words she’s sent news. Ensure you have newsworthy content and keep it regular. Rob and I send this email monthly, we don’t have enough to tell you weekly or bi-weekly so each 8th of the month we hopefully present you with something of value that is relevant to you. Do the same for your customers - increase read rates by making it predictable and lower unsubscribe rates by presenting something relevant.

My conclusion

These simple pieces of advice will go a long way to helping you grow if applied to your business. It’s easy for people with the right knowledge to set up for your business and it can be left to operate automatically. All you need to do is provide the news and send it regularly.

A Word To The Kings of Leon

Dear Kings of Leon,
I don’t know if you realise this but Sony BMG is not doing the best they can for you - in fact they’re doing a horrible job considering you are paying them for their expert help. Have you seen the mailing list signup page for your website lately? Here’s a picture I snapped of it earlier.

Kings of Leon subscribe page. Nice effort Sony BMG.

Since you guys are so popular right now and all over the radio - I’m sure you would like to keep selling to people once stations have stopped playing you. Give me (Andrew) a call: +61 0414 674 271 and I’ll set something up for you that will actually work, trust me it’s not that hard.

Bad publicity can be hard to overcome - especially if your business relies on reputation for 50% of its income.

In December 2007, Kangaroo Island had some pretty horrible publicity: widespread fires on the island (and media coverage to equal the fires). Now that the fires are out - so too are the tourists. The ABC reports that tourist bookings have dropped dramatically. With the economy of the island being 50% tourism this is a big issue - so is the reliance of the summer period to sustain through the winter down period. Hard times may be ahead for some.

The usual response to this kind of publicity is to communicate your story with the public. With more and more people researching online, your website is an important place to make sure this happens. Kangaroo Island promoters have indeed done this. The ‘official’ Kangaroo Island website have put a notice on their front page:

‘Coming to KI and concerned about the fires? Don’t be. Download K.I OK Map here (PDF 467KB)‘

Download the pdf and you’ll see a well prepared map with fire damaged areas highlighted and the reassurance that everything is ‘OK’. I think this is a good thing - checking the site for up to date news was the first thing I did when I heard about the fires. However I think there are a few things that could be done here to maximise the effect of the communication efforts:

1. Make sure it’s widely visible. One link on the front page is not enough - people will enter the website in other ways and may still have this issue in mind. Under the menu is an appropriate place to insert a site wide link/text/graphic.
2. Combine the power of the Internet. Ozone Hotel is a website of a business on the island yet there is nothing addressing the issue there. Ensure that as many other businesses are on board with you promoting your good news. A simple link on other websites promotes both the freshness and unity of all businesses involved. Both are important in helping people make a decision on travel.
3. Show the reality. I don’t see how showing people what they will get is a bad thing. If people go to the island not knowing there have been fires they may be disappointed. If they expect everything to be they may be disappointed.
4. Tell stories. Allow the personality and people of the island to tell a positive story. A personal response can communicate a greater deal of trust, and persuade those who doubt that the island is still a great place to go. This is done to a degree on the pdf download - where a ‘personal’ appeal is made, I believe a widening of this idea could help.

In the end - bad publicity is still going to affect the island and people may have their minds made up without even looking at Kangaroo Island related websites. However there are those who can still make up their minds. Don’t let them make their minds up without hearing your side of the story - ensure they can hear it. When/If this happens to your business - the important thing to do is to use the news. Be loud and clear and let people hear your side of the story.

Our ad was “clicked out” within 2 hrs of starting the campaign. So much for free ads on Facebook!

The Last few days

Over the last five or so days we have continued to monitor the ad (you can see it to the right). From the start we had our budget set at $5/day - that stayed the same throughout. However each day we gradually lowered the budget of our price per click from the begining $1 per click to now around $0.30 per click. Each time the ad was clicked out within a couple of hours of it starting again. We were disappointed to say the least - that our ad was so ‘popular’. We were really hoping to have a fair amount of time between the ads being displayed and the ad budget being filled. Anyway let’s get to the results.

• Each day we reduced our budget, our ad had a higher number of clicks;
• Our click through rate was between .05% and .02%;
• On average, the ad had 48931 impressions per day. The highest being 74976, the lowest being 22578.
• The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) was between $0.22 and $0.08

For the purposes of testing how you might get thousands of impressions without many clicks - this might seem like an okay result. The lowest click through rate (CTR) was 0.02% - virtually no clicks compared to ads served. The only problem was that the ad was up for just 2-3hrs before the budget had ran out. We were hoping for a lot more time than that. Even on the days of $0.30 per click our ad budget was filled within a couple of hours. To mitigate this, I had moved the CPC budget to $0.25 for a few hours. This again had its own problems with hardly any ads being served (maybe 2000 in a few hours) but still clicks on the ad.

Visits to the site

Another hopeful result of advertising Rob’s desperation to get a girlfriend - was to get some ‘freebies’ on his site. No I’m not being coarse, what we wanted was people visiting Rob’s site without clicking on the ad itself. Basically free ad conversions without clicks. We certainly did get them I’ve put them below - you can see the higher number visits to Rob’s site compared with clicks on the ad.

The highest day of clicks also coincides with the highest day of visits. On average the site draws 3-4 visits a day (no traffic) so to see it go to 46 visits (28 ‘free’ visits) was an encouraging sign. Though this cannot be only related to the ad itself. Word had spread that the ad was up - so some people may have not seen the ad but still visited Rob’s site.

Conclusions

• Although being written from a first person perspective and following advice from other observers on its image - the ad still did not receive a high CTR. We were hoping for this anyway - so this can be seen as a good result. However from other people’s advice we were expecting a higher CTR. Most likely taking the option to pay per 1000 impressions is going to cost you a lot more than the potential result you will get from paying per click.
• The main problem we had with this ad was achieving a high impression rate with a low CTR over a long time. Either you don’t get seen and the ad is up for a lot longer, or you do get seen and your ad is gone very quickly. You might get relatively free ads served up - but only for a short period of time.
• We are yet to see if this actually works. That is, that Rob gets a girlfriend. He has had a few contacts because of the ad - let’s see what happens.

~Andrew (email me andrew at brownbox dot net dot au).

There have been various people talking about the value of advertising on Facebook.com recently. Most coming to the conclusion that putting an ad up on Facebook will not get you many clicks but thousands of impressions (times the ad was loaded on a page).

Well we decided to do our own experiment with a little bit of humour to see what the results would be. The purpose? To test variations of ads, and recommendations from other marketers online regarding Facebook’s advertising results.

We created the ad to the right for our first test. The ad is uses the Facebook colours and similar style branding to take the advice of one blogger who said it might increase click throughs or noticability. See below for the cost per click, and the budget set at $5 per day. This ad has a run of 7 days, you can see the first results below - at the end of the campaign in 7 days. The “target market” - Women aged between 18-30 from Australia.

Our initial results (after about 2hrs of having the ad up).

Here’s the initial response :

1. 22578 impressions (in about 2hrs)
2. 10 clicks
3. 2 new Facebook friends for Rob
4. 1 filled in the form on the website www.roblincolne.com

See More Results