email marketing and Related Posts

Knowing Your Audience: Do You Have A Customer Profile?

December 10, 2015 By Matthew White 3 Comments

“No phone calls?” I asked, surprised.

“Maybe two a day,” my friend responded.

“But you’ve got trucks all over town, driving around with the phone number plastered on them.”

“People don’t want to talk with a human being – they want to type everything.” She added, jokingly, “Don’t you know that?”

Yes, that’s a phone. And, this phone could still be one of your best sales tools. Or not. How do you find out?

I agreed half-heartedly. I certainly would rather type than talk for most tasks and problem solving – ordering a book, researching a new car, arranging grocery delivery, solving a tech support issue . . .

But, what surprised me most is that her business is a more traditional residential and commercial services business. And, it’s a successful one still growing at a healthy rate.

There are some assumptions I’d like to see tested (more about that later), but I was surprised that either:

a) The phone plays such a small role in lead generation, or

b) The online component is responsible for so much more.

Different Strokes, Different Folks

There are of course statistics to support the idea that people are emailing more than they are talking on their smartphones. No surprise there perhaps. However, it stands to reason that certain markets and market sectors would be more phone-friendly than email-friendly (and vice versa).

Without a doubt, different businesses and niches have their unique requirements. The nature of the business, the market’s demographics, and other factors all play a role. These unique requirements – and nuances let’s call them – impact the messaging, marketing tactics, and strategies that end up being successfully employed. Very simply put, this is called knowing your audience.

Knowing Your Audience

Without building a customer profile, you’ve got an empty picture frame.

If you’ve fielded sales calls, responded to questions, or spent any time in customer service, you’ve developed a sketch of who your customer is. And, subconsciously you can make a lot of decisions based on your picture of who that person is: They do or do not like a follow up email, for example. Or, they tend to respond to certain phrases and avoid others. Their eyes light up when you ask certain questions.

This is a customer profile. And, we’ve all developed them – some with more research and analysis, some with more nitty-gritty hands-on experience.

Why The Customer Profile Is So Valuable

The problem is that many businesses do not make as many decisions as they should based on this profile. Individually, they may know the profile. As an entity, it’s often the policy, bureaucracy, and warring agendas that cloud the business’ decision making.

However, lots of answers to common problems can be discovered simply by bouncing it off of your customer profile. Here are just a few of the things a customer profile can help you determine:

What kind of blog articles, social media posts, and social media channels deliver information they actually care about.
How they want to pay, when they want to pay, and how much they want to pay.
Methods for follow up – such as email or phone – and the timing of that follow up.
Is a referral program a good idea? If so, how should it be structured?
How big an issue is reputation management and what channels should we be monitoring?

Building A Customer Profile

There are a number of ways to go about building a customer profile, and as you can gather from the above, you probably already have a start. An outside perspective is very helpful however because you can avoid some of the biases that confuse the process. In addition, there is a great deal of analysis and some metrics that should play a role.

We can help. Share your thoughts below or reach out for marketing and sales help for your business.

In our next article, we’ll continue the topic with more thoughts on knowing your audience and some related pitfalls.

This Email Marketer (Spammer) Has Really Bad Timing

July 30, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

We can all agree that the killing of Cecil the Lion has been a disastrous event. Because of the foolish actions of a few, this unnecessary chain of events will have tremendous ripple effects on the lives and livelihoods of many.

But, apparently, not everyone got the memo. In my spam today, I received this gem:

Sample spam from “Your African Safari.” I hoped it was a phishing scam.

And the email goes something like this:

Email marketing spam for African safaris — Sample from our spammer’s poorly timed “email marketing” campaign on African safaris.

I actually would like this to be a phishing scam, because I don’t want to think that someone would send this message out with this kind of timing. I fear they did though. I checked the links for malware and phishing threats, and it actually checked out.

So, assuming it is for real, let’s use this as a teachable moment in messaging and email marketing (besides, obviously, don’t spam).

Relevance and Timeliness in Social Media and Email Marketing

On the topic of “don’t spam,” keeping your message relevant for your audience is the key takeaway. Our sample email here was purely spam to a mass, unqualified list.

Don't have your head in the sand when email marketing — Yes, the required, cliche, yet safe-for-work clip art illustrating the state of being out of touch.

From a broader perspective, this email reminds me of a presentation by a social media marketing thought leader who warned against scheduling content release. Her reasoning was that a friendly – or at least an appropriate – environment and context can’t always be guaranteed.

At the very least, it requires that you know:

Generally what is going on in the world.
What messages are being communicated.
When those messages are being communicated.

Otherwise, you run the risk of making the wrong statement at the wrong time.

The Right Message at the Right Time

You can however communicate the right message at the right time.

Not all safari trips are hunting trips of course. On the surface, our example here does not seem to be advertising trips for hunting. But, the first thought I had while scanning the subject line was “Cecil the Lion,” because that’s in the news right now. Not good. If this business was working with the right marketer, they would leverage the opportunity and duty to differentiate their work plus highlight the enjoyment of African wildlife’s beauty. At the appropriate time.

Even if this is a hunting safari business, they could use this opportunity to gain visibility on responsible practices in hunting. They could even help make the case for the positive impacts responsible hunting practices can have in a habitat or ecosystem. They would then begin to differentiate their business from others in the hunting tourism industry. Again, at the appropriate time.

Messages in support of big game hunting won’t be popular with everyone. But, you aren’t always trying to convince everyone – you want to speak with those who are interested in engaging with you in a specific way. In other words, by engagement, I don’t mean hate mail or death threats.

Even during what might seem the worst possible moments, you can – and perhaps even should – play a part in a healthy dialogue that often needs to happen.

And yes, there is a difference between email marketing and spamming.

What current events impact your business’ blogging or social media – for good or bad? Need help sorting it all out? I want to hear from you. Please reach out.

How To Not Only Expose, But Engage

July 27, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Feel like your marketing efforts just aren’t getting the desired results? Think you could engage prospects and customers more effectively?

As discussed in a previous blog post, part of the reason is so much marketing gets exposure but doesn’t accomplish much with regard to engagement. And, as mentioned in that post, there is so much more noise now than ever before.

Focusing on email, and MailChimp campaigns specifically, here is a look at real world illustrations of what exposure versus engagement looks like . . . and some tips on how to move that needle from “expose” to “engage.”

A Compelling Message

So your customer gets the mailing. Do they preview, open, actually read, and/or click? At what point do they engage?

Think about the way you scan through the subject lines of email. You probably do this differently than you did a few years ago. And, you are probably looking for something different now.

One thing we know for sure is that how people read their email has changed dramatically and quickly. For example, according to Experian’s “Quarterly Email Benchmark Report” for Q3 of 2014, for the first time, over half of email was being opened on a phone or tablet. It stands to reason that this shift alone impacts what information is being consumed and how it is acted upon.

Now think about how quickly you delete email on your phone or tablet as you scan through those subject lines. We all know subject line construction is important, but I continue to be surprised by the number of campaigns that arrive in this fashion:

<Widget, Inc Newsletter> Weekly Update from Widget Inc! 7/27/15

As a customer, I don’t need to know that this is from Widget twice (you only get one point for brand name exposure before the email gets deleted) or that I get it weekly. And, I can figure out on my own that this is a “newsletter.”

A concise call to action in the subject line would be just as easy to use, more effective, and would likely move this effort from exposure to engagement.

The Difference Between an Open and a Click

MailChimp, a great (and usually free for most) email campaign management tool, provides two key metrics in measuring campaign success: Opens and clicks.

Recently, I grew skeptical on what constitutes an “open.” After all, does the use of a preview pane – whether on a phone, tablet or desktop – constitute a true “open?” Is that really an action that the user took in response to your marketing effort?

I decided to look into it. And, after some study of both MailChimp’s documentation and some real-world results, I’m satisfied with how MailChimp handles and tracks opens. It turns out that the “open” metric is fairly reliable in fact.

However, the major takeaway is understanding the nature of an open versus a click. The difference has applicability in other areas of marketing and advertising efforts. “Open” should not be considered engagement. It should be considered, at best, exposure. It can often be a simple preview of the mail message. And, after all, few companies generate revenue or succeed at their mission based on people opening their emails. A “click” is a more solid measure of engagement and more likely to get customers and prospects closer to that action you want them to take.

A click is farther into the funnel. (I’ll definitely use that again later)

Real World Results

Getting back to those real world MailChimp email campaigns: Across two different organizations, I made some interesting discoveries that can impact not only email campaigns directly but can inform wider marketing efforts:

The number of opens can easily double when the list goes through some level of qualification.
Button-style links in emails are indeed effective and can help focus your audience’s attention.
However, it doesn’t just have to be an email with a button. Providing the audience enough hyperlinks in text is surprisingly important too – many actually are reading that content and looking to click (engage).
Links placed earlier in the email consistently perform better than those placed later in email. Get to the higher value calls to action early.
Segmenting your lists based on interests, motivations, or demographics and better tailoring content to those groups can easily double your results.

Yes, it seems obvious. But, sending the same message to one large group of people and hoping the right people find the right content is actually how most organizations manage their campaigns.

They also tend to approach exposure versus engagement in the same way. In reality, it all takes time, effort, and some experimentation.

Need help implementing any of the above? Need ideas on moving your email campaign from exposure-only to engagement? Reach out.