Here’s Part II of this 5-part series covering the 5 most common consumer spam-complaint-triggers and how to avoid accidentally pulling them. To see all the articles in the series to date, go to the archive page.
Trigger #2: Irrelevant Content
Consumers expect their email subscriptions to deliver value, but one subscriber’s junk is another subscriber’s treasure. According to eMarketer, 46% of Internet users say the commercial emails they receive are not targeted to their needs. Since your email list is likely to include people with a variety of interests, take your audience’s interests into account before you send.
- Offer a choice of lists on your signup form. For example, some consumers don’t want to receive promotions and others only care about your products when they are on sale. Offering a “discount club” list and an “informative newsletter” list helps identify these potentially opposing interests so you can target future emails.
- Use click data to target future messages. When people click on your links they are telling you what they are interested in. Use your tracking report to help you create different interest lists. You can keep your interest lists private or add them to your signup form so future subscribers can select them.
- Send surveys and polls to test the water. Instead of making assumptions about what to send, ask your audience. You can send a formal survey before starting a major email campaign or use ongoing polls to get small bits of information over time and adjust your strategy as you go.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s Local Expert Program.
Receiving a spam complaint can feel like being betrayed by your best friend, especially when you’ve worked so hard to build a permission-based list of prospects and customers who should be familiar with your business.
Don’t be too quick to equate spam complaints with back-stabbing, however. Some email characteristics cause your legitimate permission-based email to look like spam to your audience, which can trigger ‘accidental’ spam complaints. In this 5-part series, I’ll show you the 5 most common consumer spam-complaint-triggers and how to avoid accidentally pulling them.
Trigger #1: Mistaken Identity
It’s safe to say that clearly communicating your identity is the number one way to reduce accidental spam complaints. According to a survey by the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, 79% of consumers clicked the spam button when they didn’t know who the sender was. Here are the three keys to identifying yourself to your email audience.
- Make your From line familiar. Use the same words your audience uses to identify you or your business. For example, if you’re an online business and your customers refer to you by your domain name instead of your formal business name, put your domain name in your From line.
- Include your brand. Insert your logo into the upper left or center of every email and include image descriptions to identify you in case your audience has images disabled. Choose colors that identify your business when designing your email templates and use the same colors in every template you use. Don’t just use the stock template colors.
- Turn authentication on in your Constant Contact account. Remember that your audience includes Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Yahoo!, AOL, and Hotmail, because these companies control the delivery of your email. Authentication is a new technology that helps ISPs to identify legitimate email, and if your email isn’t recognized it could be filtered or tagged with a warning message.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s Local Expert Program.
Value isn’t what your customers pay for what they get, it’s how your customers feel about what they pay for what they get. Coming up with valuable email content isn’t as simple as announcing your rock-bottom prices and including your phone number or a link to your website. Value is about including something in every email that makes your subscribers feel like they are getting a greater-than-expected return on the investment of time and distraction that your email messages impose on them.
In order for your emails to feel valuable, each one has to contain one or more of the following types of valuable content:
- Valuable offers. Examples include incentives, discounts, special privileges, rebates, and coupons. The type of valuable offer you choose should match your audience’s preferences. For example, not everyone likes discounts. Some people associate discounts with such negatives as discontinued, out-of-favor, or defective.
- Inherent value. Examples include articles, opinions, facts, advice, links to resources, lists, official policies, maps, directions, instructions, and checklists. The type of inherent value you choose should also match your audience’s preferences. For example, sending directions to your store might be valuable to prospective customers, but loyal customers might find the information too repetitive.
- Relationship value. Examples include thanks, praise, unexpected rewards, apologies, encouragement, humor, and privileged information. The type of relationship value you put into an email is highly personalized, so relationship emails are sometimes more effective when they are highly personalized. If dynamic email content and mail merge isn’t a part your Email Service Provider’s toolbox, look for commonalities among your prospects and customers so it’s practical to email them valuable relationship content in groups.
I’ve only encountered a few companies that are proficient at creating valuable content for their emails. Check out your competition and see if they understand valuable content. If not, giving your emails a value-boost can easily put you ahead of your competition and keep your subscribers engaged in your business instead of theirs.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s Local Experts Program.
Most consumers don’t buy every time they receive an email promotion because they simply aren’t ready or able to buy all the time. Sending too many promotional messages to people who aren’t ready to buy feels like sales pressure to your audience, and too much sales pressure usually results in unsubscribe requests and low response rates.
One way to make sure your email promotions are more relevant and desirable for your audience, and more effective for generating sales, is to divide your subscriber list into groups based on their most probable stage in the buying cycle, and send email messages that are appropriate for the people in that particular buying cycle stage.
The following three consecutive buying cycle stages include tips on how to identify the customers and prospects on your email list who fit into each cycle, and tips for targeting your email messages to match the cycle. These three cycles are sometimes known by other names, but I’ve made them all start with ‘I’ so they are easier to remember.
- The information cycle is the time period during which prospective buyers are learning about the options available to them when they are trying to meet their needs. For example, someone who recently began a new career might be looking for workplace fashion advice and information and is therefore reading lots of fashion articles, visiting websites and stores, and seeking advice from fashion experts.
- Identifying prospective customers in this cycle: You should assume your audience is in the information cycle unless you see one of the signs (below) that they have crossed into a new cycle.
- Targeting your messaging within this cycle: During the information cycle, promotional offers should be avoided and your emails should focus on informative content.
- The interest cycle is the time period during which your audience engages in the information you provide during the information cycle. For example, the aforementioned fashion conscious shopper might become curious enough to click on a link in an email newsletter article to view more detailed information.
- Identifying prospective customers in this cycle: The sign that someone who has crossed over from the information cycle to the interest cycle is generic activity. General clicks, phone calls, forwards, and replies are all signs of the interest cycle.
- Targeting your messaging within this cycle: During the interest cycle, begin sending emails with specific product information or include some specific product information in your informative emails. For example you might want to add a side column to your email newsletter featuring the benefits of a particular product line that relates to the information in your newsletter.
- The incentive cycle is the time period during which your audience seeks justification for following through on a purchase decision. For example, the fashion conscious shopper in the aforementioned examples might decide that a particular pair of shoes meets his or her needs, but he or she isn’t compelled to make an immediate purchase decision because there is no incentive to act immediately.
- Identifying prospective customers in this cycle: The sign that someone who has crossed over from the interest cycle to the incentive cycle is product-specific activity. Clicks on specific products or services and subsequent website or in-store browsing are the most common signs of the incentive cycle.
- Targeting your messaging within this cycle: During the incentive cycle, send distinct promotional emails with specific offers featuring the products or services your audience has clicked through to.
List segmentation takes some effort and patience, but it doesn’t have to involve a lot of manual email personalization. Low-cost Email Service Providers can handle simple database merges that allow you to easily populate your promotions with personalized information, and some high-end email services and boutique providers can help you generate dynamic offers and even dynamic auto-responders. Remember that any amount of targeting is better than sending every message to everyone. Walk before you run, and add more targeting tactics as your strategy unfolds.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s local expert program.
A December 2007 study by Jupiter Research indicates that 40% of consumers think the emails they receive come too often. How often is too often? Unfortunately, for those of you in search of simple answers, it depends. Consumers will tolerate almost any frequency as long as the email content you deliver meets their expectations of value and relevance. I know of businesses who send an email to everyone on their list twice per day with great success, and others who only send one email per year with decent results.
You could determine your audience’s frequency tolerance by trial and error, or by sending a survey and asking your audience how often they would like email from you, but that just wouldn’t be clever enough for a seasoned marketer like you who is used to reading this blog. Here are some ways you can estimate your optimum email frequency and come closer to hitting your audience’s expectations before you start sending.
- Use frequency dependent content to justify your desired frequency. For example, a coffee shop that has a need to deliver information daily might include a weather report in every email along with a coupon that features the beverage matching the weather (i.e. snow = coupon for a latte, sun = coupon for an iced coffee). Since weather is a daily event, a daily weather report reinforces the daily frequency and allows the coffee shop to capture more interest.
- Match your frequency to your average buying cycle. For example, a hair salon could send an email every 30 days if their audience is likely to need a haircut about every 30 days. They could also divide their list into 4 parts and send an email to a different part every week to achieve a 30-day frequency while accounting for people who are in different stages of the 30-day cycle. If your customers have a buying cycle that is months or years long, you’ll need to keep track of recent purchases so you don’t ask someone to buy right after a sale. For example, if your average customer needs to buy your products or services only once per year, exclude customers who made purchases during the previous 6-8 months from receiving promotions and offers, and deliver relationship-building content instead. When your customers are within 4-6 months of their next purchase, start sending more promotional information and increase your frequency.
- Scale down your content. Shorter, more concise emails work better than longer emails almost without exception. If you have a sense for the amount of content you need to deliver in order to be effective in selling your products and services, divide your content into equal parts and send a series of emails instead of one long email that repeats the same content. For example, a computer retailer might send a single article describing how to use a single feature of the new Macintosh line in every email, until all the features have been described. If you use this technique, make sure you include a link to a list of all the features so someone who is ready to buy can get all the information they need. Those who are not ready to buy should be well informed when the are ready, because they have received several concise emails over time.
- Use a frequency planner to help predict your audience’s reaction. A frequency planner is a spreadsheet calendar that allows you to mark down all the emails you plan to send so you can visualize the amount of content your audience is going to receive. If your content and frequency looks overwhelming on the planner, it’s probably going to be overwhelming to your audience. You can download a free frequency planner on my email marketing tools page.
No matter what your frequency plan entails, remember that frequency and content are interdependent. Shorter emails always have a better chance of being acceptable at higher frequencies than longer emails. It’s also important to check your tracking reports for signs of over-communication. If your unsubscribe requests are increasing or your click-through rates are declining, it could be a sign that your frequency estimate isn’t accurate. Making adjustments and refining your strategy are part of every marketing plan, no matter how cleverly you begin.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s local expert program.
