As we’ve discussed on this site before, welcome campaigns are a critical tool in jump starting profitable customer relationships. This week, Experian CheetahMail has a new case study that illustrates how incentivized welcome emails can earn higher order values, click rates and revenue per email.
In the case study, we see that Sundance Catalog was able to increase average order sizes by 2x just by adding a basic incentive to multiple types of welcome emails. Even better, Sundance was able to prove the value of incentives by testing two types of welcome emails — those sent to new subscribers who opted-in by completing an email sign-up form on the website, and those who opted-in as part of their eCommerce checkout process. In both instances, the welcome emails with the special offer outperformed the standard, control message with no offer.
Of course, incentives are not a perfect strategy for every brand. Sundance was wise in their methodology, performing a thorough test before they committed to making any final changes to their welcome email program. As a best practice, we typically recommend that most brands do the same before they begin offering discounts.
I mean that literally, of course. Take one look at this report, and you’ll understand what this holiday season is really all about: marketing like a rock star.
Want to know how to win over your adoring fans and go double platinum? Let me to take you on a cinematic, guided tour of the data from the report to find out what it takes to be an email marketing rock star this holiday season.
This year, email volumes will “go to 11″
Every year, email volumes peak during the holiday season, managing to surpass the previous maximum output of the year before. But how is it even possible to exceed what was previously considered the maximum?
By taking your email program “to 11.”
Experian CheetahMail estimates an overall email volume increase of 15 percent to 20 percent for the 2010 holiday season in comparison to Holiday 2009.
This means that email marketers, just like Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, have figured out a way to ratchet up their volumes “to 11.”
Volumes just keep going up, so email marketers had better be prepared for the barrage of messages coming from their competition and act accordingly.
I love my birthday. I admit it. I look forward to it every year. I like the cards I get from family and friends. I like the coupons I get from my local restaurant. I even like the birthday card I get from my dentist.
There are a number of key findings within the report, including the following:
Total open rates for birthday and anniversary campaigns are 3 times higher than those of mass promotion mailings.
Transaction rates are five times higher for birthday and anniversary emails than they are for bulk campaigns.
Birthday mailings sent to all subscribers with known birthdays pull much higher transaction rates and revenue per email than those sent only to select or loyalty members.
I don’t know about you, but on my birthday, I want to be a bit extravagant and spend some money on myself, on decorating my home, or on a good time with some friends!
Here are a few examples of birthday/anniversary emails that have really caught my interest:
Today, Experian Marketing Services is proud to release our latest report, the 2010 Digital marketer: Benchmark and trend report. Looking at the data contained within the report, there is certainly a lot of information for email marketers to chew on.
For the loyal readers of Email Responsibly, I thought I’d add some of my thoughts on the report and explain what these data points mean for the email industry at-large and the state of email marketing.
Let’s jump right in and have a look at what the report tells us:
Time Magazine was right Way back in December 2006, a number of people (myself included) had a good laugh at the expense of Time Magazine, who named “You” as Person of the Year. At the time, the decision seemed like something of a cop-out and also bit out-of-touch with technology.
But looking at the data from our 2010 Digital marketer: Benchmark and trend report, I couldn’t help but think about Time Magazine and say to myself that they were right — maybe prematurely, but still correct nonetheless. Email marketing today, much like the rest of the Internet, is about you, sometimes even literally. Consider these points from our report:
Four out of five industries (business products and services, consumer products and services, multichannel retail, travel and entertainment) used the word “you/your” more than any other word in their email subject lines. The fifth industry (catalogers) actually uses the terms “you/your” more than the other four industries (24% of the time), but they also happen to use the terms “free” and “ship” slightly more than that.
The words “you/your” appear in 19.94% of all email marketing subject lines.
According to the report, “The increase in usage of the term ‘you/your’ illustrates increased emphasis on businesses building more personal relationships with customers by addressing them directly.”
According to the report, ”The top term — ‘you/your’ — indicates a clear connection between consumer product and service businesses and their individual customers. The percentages of any ‘top’ word are lower given the wide mix of businesses and product types in this vertical.”
As most of us would expect, abandoned cart messages pull higher open, click and transaction rates than standard promotional messages. However, marketers might be surprised to learn that cart abandoners respond differently to triggered emails that leverage web analytics data. A few specific notes on browsers versus abandoners include:
Emails sent to cart abandoners (those who have placed an item in their shopping cart but have not converted) with an incentivized offer only pull $0.09 more in revenue per email than those emails that do not contain an offer.
Meanwhile, customers that only browsed products but did not add any items to their cart (i.e. ‘browsers’) are much more likely to respond to an incentivized email offer.
This report confirms that email marketers don’t need a special remarketing offer to convert abandoners into buyers. This is a positive development for the email industry in that we don’t effectively encourage our customers to abandon their carts with the hope of receiving a discount email at the end of the process.
Nowadays, many email marketers fill the pre-header area of their emails with “click to view” and message summary information that occupies the prime viewing areas of their messages. Due to this congestion at the top of messages, some companies have begun omitting whitelisting instructions due to a lack of available real estate within the pre-header area of their emails.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term whitelisting, it refers to the process of adding an email address to a list of contacts that the user deems are acceptable to receive email from. This prevents approved email marketing messages from being delivered to the trash or spam folders. Frequently, whitelisting text is phrased in the following manner: “To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add email@company.com to your address book.”
To determine whether including whitelisting instructions in the pre-header area of emails added value to their email program, Origins Natural Resources recently teamed up with Experian CheetahMail to test the effects of including whitelisting instructions in their email template for new subscribers.
As with all redesign projects, our first step was to analyze historical performance data to identify any strengths and weaknesses pertaining to the existing navigation and content layout. We then generated several wireframes to clearly map out the navigation, content organization, and product area layout options that the new designs would encompass.
One of the key areas of Camping World’s email template targeted for improvement was the main product section. Traditionally, this section loosely grouped items in a grid-like structure without considering product type or cost. We also found that the feature section took up too much vertical space within the template, pushing the main product section down below-the-fold.
Today, Experian CheetahMail released 
Nowadays, many email marketers fill the pre-header area of their emails with “click to view” and message summary information that occupies the prime viewing areas of their messages. Due to this congestion at the top of messages, some companies have begun omitting whitelisting instructions due to a lack of available real estate within the pre-header area of their emails.
