The DigitalMailer Blog

December 20, 2012

The Twelve Days of Electronic Marketing

by Ron Daly

If you’re waiting until the last minute to figure out that perfect gift for a special someone, might I dissuade you from looking into giving them the “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts? Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, and so on, will cost you quite a pretty penny. Plus, where do you put it all? I haven’t really got the room for the 364 total presents I’d be getting. Maybe we could stick the birds outside in the back yard, but all the milk maids and leaping gentlemen would be a little annoying.

I’ve decided none of you is getting all these birds, rings, busy artisans, etc. Instead, I’m giving you the twelve days of electronic marketing! Sing along, if you think you can.

On the 12 Days of Christmas, DigitalMailer Gave to Me:

12 Months of eMailing - A monthly email newsletter doesn’t cost much to send and gives your customers an idea of what’s shaking at your business.
11 major holidays- You’ve got:
1. New Year’s
2. Valentine’s Day
3. St. Patrick’s Day
4. Easter
5. Mother’s Day
6. Father’s Day
7. 4th of July
8. “Back-to-School”
9. Halloween
10. Thanksgiving
11. Christmas/Holiday
That’s eleven easy touch-points with built-in branding to play with – get to work and make something outstanding.
10 fingers typing – Got an initiative you’re trying to get off the ground? Have a fun community outreach program? Got something really interesting to say? Start a blog! It’s never been easier.
9 referrers referring – If you’re looking into NetPromoter scoring, remember – nines and tens are your only “referrers”. Sevens and eights aren’t counted and six and below are detractors. And always ask “why?” when it comes to the score you were given.
8 hours of working – The eight hour workday is disappearing. People are working from home and on the go. Consider how much information you’re hoping they’ll retain. Make your messages clear and concise, and always lead them to an action. Be efficient, you want to be a solution, not part of a bigger problem.
7 days a week – Are certain emails more likely to work on the weekend? How will you know if you’re not split-testing? Consider a weekend email for new home buyers looking into open houses, or car shoppers who might take a Saturday afternoon to browse the lots.
6 month reviews – Check out how your efforts are doing every six months or so. Set benchmarks, evaluate, make changes, and strive for the best.
5 GOLD RINGS! (Just felt like singing that one.)
4 points-of-contact – We like to give people a few ways to get hold of us, if they need us. We welcome people to email us, call, write or tweet at us…whatever works for them, works for us.
3 calls-to-action – In a good email campaign, you’ll want to give at least three call-to-action links: one at the top, in text, for the impulsive; one that’s a big graphic for the visually minded; one toward the bottom for the thorough readers.
2 ways to view – Remember, more and more users are reading their email on a mobile device – ReturnPath estimates that more people will be reading email on a mobile device than on a computer by the end of 2012 (which, I don’t need to remind you, is less than two weeks away). We’re working on a few ways to optimize emails responsively that we’re going to share with our clients in 2013. What are you doing to prepare?
And a cartridge printer in need (of a job) – More mobile documents, fewer things to print out, more ways to save and store those documents…we’re committed to taking our clients further away from their paper needs.

Not to toot my own Christmas trumpet or anything, but that’s a much better list. Better to have good advice and food for thought than a bunch of dancers, geese and hens breaking all your furniture and getting allergy-causing down everywhere.

From all of us to all of you, MERRY CHRISTMAS and a happy, productive, lucrative new year!

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October 23, 2012

Where’d Everyone Go? How to Handle Out-of-Office Replies

Filed under: DigitalMailer,e-mail,email,email marketing,Marketing,member enrollment,smart marketing,SPAM — admin @ 11:48 am

by Ron Daly

We send a lot of emails to a lot of businesses here at DigitalMailer. One thing that always amazes me? How many “out of office” replies we get after a send. Sometimes, it’s as high as 25% of the list. And with list sizes that can go into the hundreds (or even thousands), a high number of out-of-office replies can be a problem.

So how do you deal with these replies? It depends on the message. If the list is large and the message isn’t high priority, missing a handful of potential contacts isn’t the end of the world…you might think about holding off and letting them manage the email in their own way and trying again the next time.

What about an important message to a targeted group of contacts? That’s different, because that message might need an action on the other end. Consider this: set a criteria to your email list that’s basically a checkbox, labeled “out of office?”. When your out-of-office replies come in, search for those contacts, check the box and save. A few days later, re-send to selected contacts – this time, only to those with the “out of office?” box selected. If the message is important, you need to get through somehow.

Be sure to check through your out-of-office replies because some might not be out-of-office replies after all. It might be an auto-responder letting you know your point-of-contact doesn’t work there anymore. Keep on top of these, as you might not be reaching the person you should be reaching. Even the best email marketing engines need a little human interaction to make them great.

Now, get back to work! I have an email to send you.

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August 16, 2012

How do you “measure up”?

Filed under: Banks,Credit Unions,DigitalMailer,e-mail,email,email marketing,eStrategy,junk mail,Marketing,marketing on a budget,One Click Campaign,targeted marketing,Uncategorized — admin @ 1:51 pm

A great article just came out of MarketingProfs.com, offering up new insights into the average open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), and unsubscribe rates for financial service email marketing campaigns. To highlight a few important points:

Financial services campaigns had a 22.6% average open rate. This might seem small, but it’s actually pretty good compared to other businesses (especially education, health and retail). If you’re getting open rates higher than 22%, you’re doing well.
FIs can anticipate an average CTR of 3.5%. Again; small in theory, big in practice. You always want this number to be higher than it is, and the more focused your list, the more you should expect a high CTR.
The average unsubscribe rate for FIs is .18%. What?! You read that correctly – that’s point-one-eight percent. It might make you think that people really love getting emails from their FI, yes? Not necessarily. See, that doesn’t account for people who see an email from their bank or credit union and drop it into trash. Nor does it account for “priority inboxing” (thanks, Gmail, for making emails even harder to get read).

So, what can we take away from all this? Well, as an industry, it would be nice if those rates reflected a highly-engaged readership. It can happen, it DOES happen. But we also shouldn’t use this to shame ourselves out of ever using email marketing again — remember, these numbers are actually pretty good, considering.

How can we raise the bar?

Better Content/Unique Content – The short-and-sweet way to increase your open rates? Make sure it’s an email worth opening. Consider special offers that are only accessible via your email list. That way, users aren’t just users, they’re “insiders”.
A Better Focus on Calls-to-Action – As we’ve discussed before, try out different calls-to-action – text, images, text AND images, different wordings, different positions – it all matters, and it’s all dependent.
The “Let-Out” – Don’t hide unsubscribe links from people. If they want out, let them out. It’s only going to improve your open rate in the long-run (after all, the open rate is the number of opens divided the number of emails sent – decrease the bottom number and the percentage will increase. Simple math, yes?)

Learn more about DigitalMailer’s Email Marketing engine, the ARB.

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February 22, 2012

Who “Lost It” in 2011?

Filed under: Banks,Budget Stretching Ideas,Credit Union Tech,Credit Unions,DigitalMailer,e-Statements,economy,electronic statements,eStrategy,Marketing — admin @ 11:18 am

by Jimmy Marks

At the end of last year, we put the word out to our clients about a contest we were running. We called the contest “Move It and Lose It”. Not move it “OR” lose it, mind you, but “Move It AND Lose It”.

The “Move It” part of the contest was moving customers and members to electronic statements. The “Lose It” was losing costs associated with printing and mailing statements month after month. And boy, did our clients “lose it”!

In the contest period, clients added almost 40,000 new eStatement users! Assuming an average savings of $.50 per user per month for twelve months, they’re looking at just shy of a quarter of a MILLION dollars in savings, just from those new users alone! How cool is that?

You can read more about the contest and the results via our press release, and see who won the iPad (the grand prize) on the “Move It and Lose It” page.

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January 19, 2012

Why bother blocking social media? The “Big Guys” don’t.

Filed under: Banks,Blogging,Credit Unions,eStrategy,Marketing,Social media,technology,Twitter,web sites — admin @ 10:20 am

Take a look at this video from Ragan.com that’s all about social media access in the workplace. Erin Moran from the Great Place to Work institute has some insights about how valuable social media can be, how “career-ending blunders” very rarely happen, and how allowing employees to have their say can lead to transparency and a better “trust relationship” with the consumer.

Can’t view the video on the blog or via the daily email? Go see it on Ragan’s website.

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January 4, 2012

DigitalMailer is back! And so is Winter…

Filed under: DigitalMailer,e-mail,e-Statements,electronic statements,email marketing,Marketing — admin @ 10:22 am

by Ron Daly

Brrrrr! It’s freezing out there!

We got through November and December of 2011 without a lot of scary Winter weather. Christmas was a cool-but-manageable 57º Fahrenheit here in town and everyone had a lovely holiday. But the first week of 2012 has seen a big shift. It was 19º on my drive in and won’t get much higher than that today. Yesterday, it blew down a blizzard for a few fleeting moments – not enough to stop traffic, but enough to get the attention of everyone here at DMI world headquarters.

But worry not, o faithful reader! We’re not letting Old Man Winter get the best of us. We’ve got plenty of hot coffee and a spiffy new set of offices that are temperature controlled to ensure you get all your problems solved, your statements loaded and your emails delivered.

We’re going to be making some additions to our site that will make it easier to spread the word about our company, our mission, and our passion for helping our clients. So please, tell a friend or a colleague about us. Tell them to sign up for our newsletter, a once-per-month collection of stories and talking points that goes straight to your email inbox. Tell them to check out the rest of our site, as well as our Facebook page and Twitter feed for more info.

Whatever you do, be sure to keep coming back to the DigitalMailer blog every week. Because no matter how cold it is outside, we’re determined to make 2012 our hottest year ever!

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December 14, 2011

The difference between “Trash” and “Spam”

Filed under: e-mail,email,email marketing,Marketing,SPAM,spam filters,SPAM history.,technology,Twitter — admin @ 11:56 am

by Jimmy Marks

Yes, I get Spam. Even as a person who is very vigilant about where his email address goes when he signs up for things, I still get emails for pills, cheap software and videos of celebrities I don’t like doing things I don’t want to see them doing.

Usually, it goes in my “Spam” or “Junk” folder. Sometimes, it gets through to the top level, into my inbox. And then, I have a choice to make.

Do I hit “Trash”? Or do I hit “Spam”?

It depends. Let’s take an email from a certain online vendor named after a famous South American river. I get these emails a lot, and I get a LOT of these emails. Special offers, coupons, daily deals – I open them, I see what’s inside, I close them. Sometimes, I even buy something from the email. But not very often.

So, when I get an email from this “Famous River” website that doesn’t have an item I want inside, is it Spam?

No.

Why not? Because I have a relationship with the company. They will let me unsubscribe if I want, but I don’t want to. Sometimes, I DO buy something, so I keep the emails coming. But if there’s something in the email I don’t want or need, I just trash it. I’m done with the email and that’s the end of the action.

Now, let’s try a different email. This one’s from some prince who’s emailing me from some country I’ve never heard of before. He wants to transfer money from his account to mine and sell me some cheap prescriptions and blah blah blah… this email is clearly Spam. So should I mark it as Spam?

Yes.

I didn’t want this email, I don’t need this email, there’s no unsubscribe – it’s Spam. And I’ll treat it as such.

What’s the difference? Well, when you mark an email as “Spam”, you’re (typically) telling your email client AND your email delivery service how to process new emails from that sender. If enough people mark an email as “Spam”, the sender’s IP can be flagged and they’ll stop being treated like a real email not only on your machine and in your account, but across the web. This is a double-edged sword. If a legitimate business is sending emails to prospects or users and too many recipients mark an email as “Spam”, that sender can be blacklisted – no matter how “legitimate” their emails are.

So, remember – unsubscribe from a campaign/email series if you don’t like it. And if you can’t use it but don’t want to unsubscribe, send it to the trash. If it’s an unsolicited email from an unknown sender, that’s the right time to hit “Spam”. Keep in mind that this doesn’t just apply to email – Twitter and Blogs deal with a lot of “Spammy” followers and comments. Marking these as Spam helps Twitter and your blog host to determine which tweeters/commenters are gumming up the works. We’re all in this together – let’s get Spam out of the way so the real stuff can get through!

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September 13, 2011

Wrong Turns in Social Media – Some Tips on Saving Yourself the Trouble

Filed under: Credit Union Tech,Credit Unions,email marketing,Generation-Y Marketing,Marketing,smart marketing,Social media — admin @ 9:59 am

by Jimmy Marks

Picture yourself in a carpool situation. How comfortable can you be treating someone else’s car like your own? How far do you think you could push your carpool for spilling coffee or demanding that you pick up other people buddy before they threw you out of the car?

I’m part of the eMarketing Association Group on LinkedIn, an interesting group with some very good topics. I’d advise you try and get in there, too, if you’re an electronic marketing type. One of the discussions I read recently that really stuck with me was one by Robert Fleming called “The Unseen/Biggest Dangers of Social Media”. Useful insights, especially with regards to some of the hidden pitfalls of online communities.

There’s this (incorrect) idea that you can put anything on any social media network. Thing is, you can’t. If you’re not careful, you can completely alienate your audience by neglecting their attention. That, or you might get yourself thrown off the service because you violate the terms of use. Always remember, with any social media platform, you’re carpooling. You’re using THEIR infrastructure and THEIR tools and if you don’t play by the rules, you don’t get to ride with them.

That works both ways – recently, someone tried to make the case that the best way to talk to people after a disaster is via social media. I think depending too heavily on Facebook and Twitter to get your messages out neglects the people who don’t use social media and puts too many eggs in someone else’s basket. Twitter has reduced the number of “fail whales” you’ll get in a given week and Facebook is building to accommodate its staggering scale, but they don’t owe you anything as a user – if they go down, they go down. Where are your emergency and spur-of-the-moment communiqués then?

Many thoughts such as these go unconsidered when a business begins using social media. To get a healthy perspective and learn more about the decisions that go into a social media campaign, sign up for our learning session, “Social Media 101: It’s All About the Social” on September 20 and 21, 2011. Sit with DigitalMailer and learn what financial institutions and other businesses are using social media for and whether or not it’s making an impact.

Click here to go to our social media page and learn more.

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August 9, 2011

Keeping An Eye on You…What Google Analytics Tells Us About Our Visitors

Filed under: Blogging,DigitalMailer,email marketing,eStrategy,Marketing,technology,web sites,Webinars — admin @ 12:46 pm

by Jimmy Marks

As the person who runs our website, I have to deal with a lot of data. Going out, coming in, passing by, and reading through – I have to keep my eyes on a constant flow of numbers and figures. One of the tools that’s helped incredibly is Google Analytics. With Analytics, I get a pretty in-depth view of my viewers. I don’t get their names and their exact locations or anything like that. I do, however, get a LOT of data about the “typical viewer”.

To show you what I see when I plug in given dates and look at the data, I’m going to run down who my average viewer is and how he/she behaves on our website (based on the data I have from January 1 of this year to now).

The Average DigitalMailer.com viewer:

Is from Virginia, Texas or California
Is an English Speaker
Is visiting on a Wednesday or a Thursday (I’m betting Wednesday is the day you’re reading this)
Views about two pages in each visit to the site
Is viewing our site on Internet Explorer on a Windows machine
If they’re viewing the site on a mobile phone, it’s with an iPhone (I’m not sure which carrier, AT&T or Verizon)
Came to the site directly
Is looking into email marketing, QR Code learning sessions, Webinars, or just basic info about the company

That’s only a little taste of everything I know about my site and my viewers. Why do I think that’s important information? Well…

Our business isn’t locked into one particular region, we can go anywhere. But if I were a business that wanted to identify my typical reader/user and play to their sensibilities and market to them, wouldn’t it be helpful to “hit ‘em where they live”? I not only get to see the average user’s state, but their home town, too.
If I had a high number of Spanish language users and no Spanish language site, I’d be leaning on Google Translate’s interpretation of my content. Is it going to come across?
If my big visit days are Wednesdays and Thursdays, that’s when I’m going to want to make the most “ruckus” with my content. Post blogs on those days, change pages that are heavy volume, check who signed up for our newsletter…
If the site looks absolutely wretched or breaks on Internet Explorer, I’m so dead. As a Mac guy, you can drink a little too much Kool-Aid and think of Safari and Chrome as the view of the user. You have to keep those browsers top-of-mind.
As I mentioned in my “Time to Mobilize” article, that site better work well on the iPhone.
I’m sort of surprised that so many of our viewers came directly to the site – we get a lot of referrals and search traffic. One thing I noticed about our Google Keyword? Most people find us by googling “Digital Mailer”. Has that become the new URL? Just googling the thing you want?

The more you know, people. If you don’t already have an Analytics package in place (and you know that Google Analytics is free, right?), you need to get on it. It’s 2011 and your greatest weapon is what you know. Talk to your web designer/developer today and get going.

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August 3, 2011

Tortillas, Sharks and Email – Marketers, Take Note!

Filed under: DigitalMailer,email,email marketing,Marketing,smart marketing,spam filters,targeted marketing — Tags: Cal Tort, California Tortilla, Newsletters, Shark Week, Taco Talk — admin @ 12:19 pm

by Jimmy Marks

One of our account managers sent me this email she got from California Tortilla. For those of you who don’t know, California Tortilla is a Tortilla restaurant that serves good food and prides itself on having more hot sauces than the competition – namely, Chipotle (which is sort of the “Top Dog” of Burrito Fare around here) and Baja Fresh (which has great tacos and burritos and a salsa bar). I’ve never been to a California Tortilla that had fewer than twenty hot sauces to choose from at any moment. The food’s pretty good and I’m a huge sissy, so I don’t use much hot sauce. Still, if you’re a hot sauce fiend, this is your Graceland.

Another cool thing? California Tortilla (or “Cal Tort”, as they call themselves) has ties to Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week”. You can get a fin hat and a fish taco at their stores. Pretty cool, right?

Anyway, our account manager forwarded me this email. Immediately, I fell in love with it. Take a look at the image below:

Image of the "Taco Talk" email from California Tortilla

"Taco Talk", the California Tortilla Newsletter

If you want to read the email for yourself, click here.

Now, why is this email so special? Well, it’s got all the ingredients of a really great email newsletter.

Starting from the top:

“View in Browser” link – Email programs have differing style rules and sometimes HTML emails don’t look the way you want them to look. Include this link and you allow the reader to open the email in their browser.
“Taco Talk” – A fun name for a fun email. The content of this newsletter is well written and very funny! Pam, the “Queen of Burritos”, really nails the tone and makes it an easy read.
4 and Under – There are only four images in this email. Keeping your image-to-text ratio low is important. Lots of images mean your email’s chances of getting tangled in a SPAM catcher increase dramatically.
Hip to be Square – Not a lot of crazy colors or formatting in this email – simple, easy-to-read text and branded header colors. If you had to print this out (say, for a coupon or something), it would probably fit snugly on one page…maybe two.
Community Spirit – A contest winner’s drawing of her company earned her company a party catered by Cal Tort – how fun is that?
Social, Without the Stress - If you’re inclined to follow Cal Tort on Facebook or Twitter, those links are at the bottom of the email in plain text. Nobody’s going to drive you nuts about it – you’re already on their newsletter list. That’s also two less images of a bird and the “F” that you have to include in an email (see point # 3).

What’s the most important of all of these? The account manager who forwarded this email to me liked the email AND she acted on the information she was given. She took her son in (it’s his favorite restaurant) and got him a Shark Week tie-in hat and his free taco. She’s a member of the “Burrito Elito” club now and she’ll keep coming back, not because it’s her favorite but because it’s her son’s favorite. A repeat customer is made before he even hits Kindergarten.

If you want to get started with an awesome email newsletter, contact us about the ARB Email Engine today.

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The DigitalMailer Blog

Where’d Everyone Go? How to Handle Out-of-Office Replies

How do you “measure up”?

Who “Lost It” in 2011?

DigitalMailer is back! And so is Winter…

The difference between “Trash” and “Spam”

Keeping An Eye on You…What Google Analytics Tells Us About Our Visitors

Tortillas, Sharks and Email – Marketers, Take Note!

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