Email Marketing

Yesterday we posted again to Technorati, this time a two part article titled “Playing to Channel Strength Key to Successful Cross Channel Marketing,” in which we describe the importance of “channel strength” in determining a winning cross channel strategy.  By “strength” I am referring to the relative benefits of various digital channels such as mobile, email and social media.  Outlined are some of the high level distinctions to consider.  In Part 2, an example of cross channel marketing in action is provided that applies to any multi location business, such as a retailer or restaurant chain.

That’s what popped into my head upon reading an article on Brandweek.com today titled “Why Companies ‘Click’ on Twitter.”  The article title is misleading, because it’s about results of a survey conducted by email marketer ExactTarget into the reasons consumers follow brands on Twitter – not why companies host a presence on the social networking service.

Based on the research, it looks like a lot of consumers follow brands on Twitter to participate in a marketing relationship.  Consider this excerpt:

The opportunity to save some money was also prominent among followers’ motives for keeping up with a company via Twitter: 31 percent said they follow a company “to receive discounts and promotions,” 30 percent “to get updates on upcoming sales” and 28 percent “to get a ‘freebie’ (e.g., free samples, coupon).”

Like any channel, it’s not all about marketing, but the research suggests consumers view Twitter like they do any digital channel like email or mobile.

Brands fixated on Twitter as a listening platform to discern positive or negative attitudes among its followers should take advantage of the unique opportunity to develop their “socially loyal” customers – by attempting to understand their preferences and ultimately obtain permission to provide relevant and timely offers – not blanket, anonymous discounts or coupons.

The channels available to marketers to reach their customers are varied, but it appears all are converging on mobile devices.  Text messaging and Twitter are native to mobile, while email, mobile web browsing and social networking are increasingly seeing usage on handhelds.  As we’ve been recently reporting, the marketing battleground for consumer mindshare will be the small screen more so than any other.

Today on eMarketer, an article titled “Email Dominates Mobile Web Time” cites Nielsen research showing that email is among the most common activities of mobile internet users.  Social networking is not far behind:

“Social should continue to make gains in the mobile realm, however.  comScore reported it was the fastest-growing mobile internet activity between 2009 and 2010, rising 80% in usage, while email grew more slowly.  Bridge Ratings predicted in June that mobile social networking would grow twice as quickly as email during the next 12 months.”

It’s going to be ineffective for marketers to target consumers in isolated, stand alone channels like mobile messaging, email and social media with all these activities taking place on mobile devices, most of the time.  Orchestrating marketing efforts intelligently across channels, in consideration of consumer preferences and permissions, will be key to success.

That’s the thought that came to mind upon seeing an article today titled “Online Trends: Mobile E-Mail Replacing Desktop E-Mail.”  This excerpt sums it up:

“According to the Nielsen study measuring online activity of 200,000 users and comparing results from 2010 to the previous year, e-mail use on the desktop dropped from 12 percent to 8.3 percent, and fell into third place behind social gaming like Farmville. Meanwhile, time spent on e-mail on mobile devices went up from 37 percent to 42 percent–clearly dominating other mobile online activities.”

While the article focuses on the viability of desktop email clients such as Microsoft Outlook amid this changing user landscape, it also helps explain why established email marketing software providers such as ExactTarget, Responsys, Lyris and others are all bolting on mobile channel components to their offerings.  Even the marketing services firms that specialize in email are getting into the act, what with Epsilon’s news today on MobileMarketer.  As consumers move away from desktop to mobile email, competition for consumer eyeballs intensifies with all the options available on a mobile device – sms text messaging, mobile applications, the web, and email.  So it’s natural that email providers hedge their bets by tapping into the mobile trend to remain relevant to marketers.

For marketers though, the cross channel marketing challenge is not about accounting for different best of breed communication platforms, it’s about orchestrating marketing campaigns that consider available channels and consumer preferences.  An additional hurdle for marketers will be discerning between the hype generated by email providers and legitimate cross channel marketing solutions such as offered by Interactive Mediums.

That was my response to an article posted on eMarketer recently, titled “How Are Email, Facebook and Twitter Audiences Different?”  Research by email provider ExactTarget not surprisingly found that social media channels like Facebook and Twitter were not cannibalizing email communications.  The gist: email remains a viable marketing channel alongside social media.

Funny enough, an article posted by eMarketer a day later titled “Why Email Metrics Are in Decline”  suggests otherwise.  The challenge, it would seem, is that stand-alone email marketing is struggling against the tide of list fatigue and competing channels.

All signals are pointing to the question none of these articles asks – which is “how do marketers leverage digital channels in unison to meet their business objectives.”  As ExactTarget’s research points out, channels are not cannibalizing one other, but co-exist in the eyes of consumers.

The reason the title of this post asks how the audiences are the “same” versus “different” is because any consumer who opts in or follows your brand is a customer or potential customer. The key then is realizing it’s all about relevance, or how you approach the consumer, that determines success or failure. ExactTarget’s research suggests as much. Consider:

“The report suggests using Facebook for both informative and entertaining communications would be most effective.“

“Twitter appeals most to consumers who want to feel up to date and in the know, suggesting information about new products and services or other brand initiatives would be of interest.”

So it would figure that smartly marketing across these channels is a winning formula.

Emerging cross channel marketing solutions are purpose built for this challenge.  Recent research into cross channel marketing by Forrester, and reported on MarketingProfs.com, illustrates the need:

“35% also cite integrating traditional marketing with social channels (as key).”

That’s the question that came to mind upon seeing an article today on eMarketer.com titled, “Email Still Driving Shopping over Social.”  The timing of the research reported in the article is interesting given this article we just posted to Technorati.

The business case for investing marketing dollars in social media is a work in progress, with the outcome likely similar to that described in the Technorati article.  Businesses simply need to close the loop on their social community marketing efforts by offering anyone interested the chance to participate in a promotional relationship with a brand or business.

The “viral coupons” cited in the eMarketer.com article don’t help foster closer individual relationships with customers.  A focus on customer service or preventing a public relations disaster certainly have value but long term those are just not meaningful contributors to revenue.

This isn’t to suggest “spamming” fans or followers with irrelevant messages – what it does suggest is that there are customers who express positive views of a business or influence others in positive ways that marketers focused on loyalty should attempt a one to one relationship with.

To do so, you need some identifying information, such as an email address or mobile number along with opt-in permission.  It’s really that simple.  Less simple is the system which monitors the social universe, detects and segments the audience and helps connect the loyalty marketer with those “socially loyal” customers who deserve special treatment.

As we have come to find, agencies are often at the mercy of the whims of their clients when it comes to mobile marketing.  Because of the perception – right or wrong – that a mobile campaign such as one featuring an SMS text message call to action is a single project with a limited life, the ultimate benefits of mobile never have a chance to accrue.  Those benefits include the ability to collect interaction data, often across  both SMS text message interactions as well as email and web, and create essentially a mobile datamart containing a goldmine of customer data that agencies often NEVER have access to.

As I blogged about recently, mobile technology firms have the potential to cut agencies out of the loop as more businesses become comfortable and able to work direct with point solution providers to execute their mobile marketing plans.

Why more agencies don’t adopt the viewpoint of mobile as a means of collecting data about their client’s customers, and use that insight as a basis to pitch new business, is beyond me.  Without much thought, imagine:

• Client wishes to employ a mobile sweepstakes as a novel means of driving interest in their products during a slow period.  Client measures an improvement in sales correlated to the client’s locations by virtue of collecting customer zip codes as part of the process.  This data could be obtained easily via SMS text message interaction or via a web form which feeds the same datamart.
• Result?  Value proven, but apparently many agency clients stop there.  Instead, imagine:
• Agency strategists analyze information captured during the promotion in the datamart and discover distinct segments of customers.  Entry into the promotion required customers to provide some very simple demographic and preference details such as gender, marital status, and product affinity.  The agency’s client is constantly striving to increase same store sales by creating offers and promotions that align with their targeted customer but these tend to be very broad brush efforts which often take the form of a mass media effort.
• Agency strategists pitch the idea to re-target the identifiable segments with “buy one/get one free” offers aligned with insights from the datamart.  Client wonders how redemption will happen at the point of sale, how value will be tracked.  Unable to currently capture these offer codes at the point of sale due to technical and operational limitations, the agency prescribes a novel solution – simply inform store managers to expect the offers to be presented and instruct cashiers to honor them.  Post promotion, month over month sales per location can be analyzed related to the distribution of the offers by zip code.  In this way, an indirect yet very strong correlation between the promotion and sale can be established.
• Result?  Value indirectly proven yet the client must certainly be happy having taken a data driven approach to marketing as opposed to a “pray and spray” mass media method.  The client also now has a good sense for its most engaged customers.  Having seen the power of mobile centric marketing, the client decides next to implement a loyalty rewards program:
• The client, now on board with the notion of mobile marketing, calls the agency team to create a loyalty program that initially targets customers by zip code where sales increased the most during the “buy one/get one free” promotion.  These customers are invited to join via SMS text message, and do so by visiting an online web form on the client’s website where more details about their preferences and interests are captured.  These in turn trigger unique initial offers designed to drive more frequent visits and greater market basket value based on business rules established (e.g. mother with two children gets offered product X, single guy age 25 gets offered product Y).  Wouldn’t you know it, but the client recently upgraded its POS systems and the field operations team is no longer averse to extending the checkout process with mobile offer code redemption.  Now, redemption by these very loyal customers can be tracked directly.
• The client advertises membership into the club on its website for anyone to join at a cost – the free offer was only extended to those who participated in the earlier promotion.  These new customers who pay to join, are similarly presented with offers aligned to their interests.

I could go on, but hopefully agency readers and their clients get the point.  Mobile marketing is not about a one-time campaign – it’s a unique opportunity to reach your customers with their personal devices in ways that drive sales and loyalty.  To take any other approach is wasteful, shortsighted, and spells death for any agency hoping to compete for mobile budgets.

In times of economic hardship, the last thing a retailer who often appeals to those most affected wants is to do is anger its customers.  But that’s exactly what happened to Kmart recently, as described in this March 23, 2010 RetailWire.com article titled, “Kmart’s Coupon Mistake Becomes PR Blunder.”

It’s becoming cliche to say couponing is a killer application of mobile marketing techniques, due to the ubiquity of text message enabled phones and the ease by which numeric or alphanumeric codes tied to discounts for various products can be generated.  Often overlooked, however, is the fact that by its nature, mobile is a very location centric medium that forces marketers to think about geographic considerations when developing programs.  After all LBS, or location based services, is becoming a term understood by nearly all those involved in the mobile ecosystem, and collecting zip code via text message interaction is becoming a standard procedure for many.  Email marketing, on the other hand, doesn’t really create the same impression.

In the case of Kmart, an email coupon offer designed for certain markets was instead presented as valid at any Kmart location.  The result was confusion and disappointment at the point of sale, with store staff placed in the awkward position of assuming fraud in some cases:

“Cashiers and managers in stores where the coupon was not valid refused to accept the coupons and, in some instances, went so far as to accuse customers of trying to cheat the retailer.”

Had these coupons been electronic rather than paper, store employees may have been less inclined to presume fraud, the accusation of which is more harmful to customer relationships than simply saying “sorry, but that coupon just isn’t valid in our store.”  Add in the speed by which unhappy customers can communicate this experience via Twitter and Facebook, and it’s a public relations disaster.

As described here in a recent MobileMarketer.com article, another leading retailer, Sears, has mitigated coupon risk by tying coupon offers to specific customers and particular stores:

“Sears has consistently used SMS to drive cross channel store traffic, with customer specific coupon offers delivered via SMS and redeemable at physical point of sale in stores.”

According to research cited in this March 18, 2010 eMarketer.com article, email marketers are behind the curve when it comes to using advanced segmentation, personalization and behavioral targeting, but many are planning to add these high performance elements to their programs this year.

Social media integration is also on email marketers’ radar:

“Social connections are also becoming bidirectional: Marketers are not only encouraging users to follow or fan their brand within e-mail messages but they are also including e-mail marketing links within their social media presence. Close integration between the two channels means more opportunities for consumers to interact with brands they way they choose.”

There is little about email that is truly bidirectional, unlike SMS text message marketing programs such as sweepstakes, contests, polls and surveys where strong calls to action pull consumers into interactive and engaging dialogues.

Moreover, offerings such as Interactive Mediums’ Customer Engagement Platform already possess many advanced techniques which maximize the value of every interaction marketers have with their customers, including email, mobile web and social media integration – to say nothing of advanced segmentation, personalization and message triggering capabilities.

Email marketers seeking to employ advanced marketing techniques should broaden their horizons and recognize a new breed of provider is emerging – one that is not explicitly focused on email but rather customer engagement inclusive of all the ways businesses can interact with their customers while on the go.

Having been in meetings with marketers and via anecdotal third party comments, I know many are sitting on the fence with respect to mobile, uncertain whether it’s a novelty, tactic, strategy, channel or alternative to email.  For better or worse, it can be some or all of these.

When you add to this mix that many businesses are reaping mobile marketing benefits, as shown every day on MobileMarketer.com and other sites, marketers in all industries sense urgency to at least try mobile marketing – be it developing a mobile optimized version of their website, an iPhone application or trying to employ SMS text messaging simply due to its reach.

I think this is the landscape documented in research covered today on eMarketer.com, in an article titled, “Mobile Marketers Demand ROI.”  Results of a survey suggest marketers will pursue mobile marketing efforts in 2010 – even allocating budget – but obstacles remain (as shown in the diagram included in this post).

“It appears that 2010 will be a year of experimentation and education on mobile marketing as marketers struggle to come to terms with its practicality and ROI.”

The greatest challenge – not surprisingly – is uncertainty around building the business case for mobile marketing, followed closely by a lack of ROI metrics and mobile not a part of the “strategic roadmap.”  I’d argue all of these issues fall under the heading of simply “I don’t know where to start, given my business, my product or service and customer base.”

For this reason, Interactive Mediums developed an exercise called “Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy,” that when complete identifies the best candidate projects that align with your existing marketing plans and channels.  This is based on our direct experience and observation of the ways leading companies are going to market with mobile as strategic elements of their business.

Taking time to experiment and educate is simply not an option for marketers given the pace of advancement among leading mobile marketers.  Even trialing various approaches will leave you behind the curve as competition for consumer mobile mindshare escalates.  Taking a thoughtful approach to mapping out a strategy can ensure your business plays a role in the mobile customer relationships that will surely separate the winners from losers.