People often ask me, “When’s the best time to send out email to make sure it gets opened?” Obviously no question which gets asked with such frequency can have a simple answer, but we’re happy to give it a shot.

Traditionally, it has been suggested that Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon are the sweetspot to ensure that your email is opened.  At the very least, others suggest hitting targets just after the morning rush or soon after lunch.

But actually, this is a bit of a myth.  If there really was a single best time to hit audiences, everyone would be sending out mail, inundating inboxes and making this the worst possible time. In fact spammers, who you could argue pay attention to the stats at least as much as ‘proper’ marketers, would also take advantage of this and the spam would further put readers off. These stand out as average highs, not indicators of human behaviour.

Having said all this, there are factors worth bearing in mind when considering when to distribute your email.

Things to Bear in Mind

First up, concentrate on your demographic – who are you distributing to and what are the patterns of their behaviour? Without a doubt, this is key as occupation can be the biggest influence on opening habits and expectations.

The next consideration to be addressed is the nature of your promotion. Ultimately, the call to action, perhaps referenced in your subject line, will play a big part in the likelihood of opening and the hit rate of the message.

Let’s look at some examples.

For Example?

First up, one client of ours is in the business of hair and beauty products.  In this case, they often found a burst of activity on Monday mornings.  This immediately stood out as an oddity so the account manager quickly investigated the logic.

The answer was simple! Those ordering on Monday mornings were people who had split up with the boyfriend or had a terrible weekend and were preparing for the next Friday

For contrast, if the email had been from FHM, reading it on a Monday morning would likely get you disciplined if you were caught by your employer.  On the other hand, opening it on a Friday after you’ve been to the pub with the boss may be a more likely and acceptable possibility.

Above all, content is important.  For the hair and beauty business, weekends presented a quiet time for sales. With this in mind, they’d hit customers with promotions offering buy one get one free if the order was placed that Saturday.  Again this is an example of how content can dictate the best opening time.

Segments

The biggest mistake can be to stick with a distribution time even though you know you aren’t getting many positive hits. It’s always worth experimenting with different options and segmenting your audience in line with their engagement levels.  In this way, the different opening habits become another way of understanding your audience better if harnessed correctly.

Anyone who has been using email marketing for a while also has access to a great reservoir of information which they may not be considering. Namely the historical reports provided by their Email Service Provider.

Often these will reveal discrepancies and other factors to bear in mind. We’ve all had a plan to distribute something Tuesday morning only to have it slip to Wednesday. Has this had an impact on the pickup?

All these considerations can come together and help you work out the perfect time to send email marketing. Not because it’s when they open everyone else’s or because it’s most common in the law of averages but based on the specific habits of your audience.

As with many marketing efforts, it comes down to a little patience, a willingness to experiment and an understanding of who you’re trying to reach.

You may have seen a fun viral going around these past few days about an intern who quits her job using messages on a whiteboard. Indeed, the tale of “Jenny” has been shared somewhere in the region of 240,000 times on Facebook and 31,000 times on Twitter!

The story has become a little more interesting today when photo website TheChive.com, who originally hosted the photos, revealed that it was all a big publicity stunt to drive traffic to their site.

If their claims are to be believed, it sounds like the stunt has been a roaring success with traffic jumping up from 15,000 unique visitors to 440,000 in the space of an hour. This certainly reflects the social traffic that a lot of people saw first-hand on Tuesday.

HOPA and Glory

But what’s really interesting is that, in the interview, Editor John Resig explains that “We came up with a hoax that was completely relatable. It wasn’t spread by TechCrunch and Reddit. It was spread by Facebook and inter-office email.”

The important role that email played in this ‘internet meme’ is fascinating. In the initial seeding of virals like this, email is still one of the most natural and effective ways to distribute content, especially considering the element of authenticity it brings in this case. As long as the content is worth sharing, people will naturally take the next steps for themselves.

So when you launch your next viral campaign, don’t forget to seed it with email and make sure you include lots of social network sharing links where possible.

Our customers regularly quiz us about the different aspects of email marketing, so we thought we’d share the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions here on the blog. This is the first of a series of posts that will aim to give you answers to those questions you’ve always wanted to ask!

The email template is a very important consideration for any company that is taking email marketing seriously. But how hard can it be? After all, its not as though you are putting together a full-blown website! Surely anyone with a bit of HTML know-how can do the job?

It might not be cheaper in the long run…

We’ve encountered this time and time again. Companies have tried to go for the cheaper option, but getting ‘that guy in the office who knows a bit of HTML’ to have a go or even giving the job to their web design team, can be catastrophic! Because, the inevitable usually does happen; the columns don’t quite match up, that pesky default Times New Roman text keeps on occurring and, for some reason, the email just never looks quite like it did in the editor!

Before you know it, you’ve spent so much time and energy getting it all sorted that any initial money savings you might have got, quickly disappear. This is why having your template professionally designed can save you a lot of time, hassle and money.

What is the financial impact of poor email design on your database?

There is no doubt that poorly designed emails that don’t render correctly due to poor coding will have a negative effect on the ROI of any campaign.

But can you prove it? As you may know, the DMA’s email marketing council did some research a while back, which found that the lifetime value of an email address to an organisation was £9.11. This figure will be different for every organisation, it is an exercise I would recommend every company conducts to find out how much an address is actually worth to them.

So what does £9.11 look like in reality? Let’s say the value is £10 (to make the maths easier) and I have a database of 100k recipients, I then have an asset worth £1 million. We have seen that poor quality design leads to recipients unsubscribing. So, let’s say I see a 10% unsubscribe rate due to poor design. That is a £100,000 loss! This is a great way to build a business case to convince a FD or C-level executive to invest in an email template!

What is the database impact of bad email design or rendering?

You should also consider the ROI and database impact of a less than impressive template design. Should your template look poor, render incorrectly in the inbox or if you have a low text to image ratio, you’re likely to be lowering your baseline ROI on every campaign you send out as you may encounter deliverability issues causing more people to unsubscribe or, even worse, hit the spam button mistakenly, as they assume something so unprofessional looking wouldn’t come from a legitimate company.

Building an email template requires email know-how

The truth is that designing an email template does take skill and know-how. Email clients (like Outlook, Gmail and Hotmail) all have their own little quirks. In fact, they are far more temperamental than web browsers. Emails need to be built using a certain kind of HTML code to ensure they render properly in your recipients’ inboxes.

Not only this, but, as discussed above, having a template that really packs a punch, can really help engage your recipients and contribute to the success of your campaign.

So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch today and start experiencing better response rates from an email template that hits the spot!

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Our friends at E-Dialog have conducted a fascinating research project asking 13,000 consumers across Europe, Asia and the USA about their attitudes to digital marketing. There are a vast number of different conclusions that can be drawn from the report but, as e-Dialog’s MD Simone Barratt says, “the overwhelming message for marketers is that connecting data at speed, from across the full spectrum of channels is the key to future success.”

This ‘integrated’ message is one we totally support here at dotDigital and it is becoming increasingly important for businesses of all sizes as more and more digital channels appear. Effective use of email, SEO and even social media, relies on integration to get the most bang from your marketing buck.

Email remains the dominant digital marketing channel

The key finding of the e-Dialog survey is that email marketing remains the digital channel that consumers most regularly. Globally, 96% of consumers have an email account with 86% saying they prefer to receive new product information by email.

Not only is email popular, it is also vital in driving offline conversions. The majority (58%) of global consumers surveyed said that an email marketing message had driven them into an offline store or encouraged them to ring a contact centre.

Mobile and social media presents a massive opportunity for email marketers

Incredibly, a massive 68% of consumers said they used email on a mobile device even when they were sitting at a desktop computer.  A further 66% said they would frequently act on an email they read on their mobile device.

When we turn to social media, 42% of respondents said that email was the primary driver to their social networking activity.

Just under half of all global consumers (42%) said they would share news about new products with their peers on social networks, making it even more important for marketers to embed social sharing mechanisms in their emails.

Integration, as this survey shows and as we have been stating for some time, is no longer merely an after-thought for marketers, it is  something that should be discussed and considered at a strategic level. The best campaigns are the ones that put channel tactics like email at the heart of a much bigger picture.

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Testing, testing, testing. It’s a word that every skilled email marketer knows well. The data available to email marketers means that, if used properly, campaigns can be honed and updated in real-time in order to deliver the best results.

So what are the components that can and should be tested in an email marketing campaign?

Here are the key ones to consider:

1. Subject line

It’s an obvious one to start with and possibly one of the most important elements of an email campaign. I’ve spoken previously about how to write the best email subject line, but the only way to really be sure what will work best is to test!

2. Call to action

The call to action is the component of an email that propels the recipient towards a conversion point, usually via a click-through. But which call to action works best for your recipients? Test different options to see if they impact results differently.

3. Images

The issue of whether or not to include images in your email is one that divides opinion in the industry. If recipients are likely to have images turned off as standard then there is an argument for using images sparingly in your messages. However, if lots of your recipients have added you to their safe senders list, then you could get better results by increasing the number of images in your message. The only way to know for sure is to test. Don’t forget to segment your database depending on what you find out!

4. From address

The ‘from’ address is another element that can have a big effect on open rates. Is it better to use your business name as the from address or does an individual, maybe your MD, work better? A known contact can be particularly successful for B2B companies, for example, especially if you have a crazy name like ‘Tink’! Test a few different possibilities and see what gets the best results.

5. Personalisation

Personalisation is an aspect of email marketing that has been overused to an extent in recent times. This means that its effectiveness is often muted and, at worst, can look spammy. Try using different forms of personalisation to see whether it works for your recipients. Don’t just change the odd word or piece of copy, change elements of the creative as well.

6. Landing page

What happens when your recipients click through? Do they then convert or does your landing page put them off? Try alternative pages for different segments and see whether this has an effect.

7. Time of sending

The day and/or time of sending can have a big effect on open rates and conversions. B2B emails generally work better during business hours, whereas high street stores may want to send an email on a Friday to tempt buyers to visit their store the following day. For those of you who have been using email marketing for some time, the look back at your previous campaigns and see if certain sending days or times had a better result. You have probably already done some of your testing!

Every company’s audience or recipients will have different preferences or behaviours, therefore testing and segmentation really is the only way to find out what will work best for your business.

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I speak to so many clients on a daily basis, that are missing out on the most basic opportunities for data capture.

They tell me that they have a small list and want more data. At this point, I look at their website and nine times out of ten, the form to sign up to the newsletter is tucked away in a nook within the site or,  even worse, they don’t even have one!

Don’t assume people will look for it just because it exists! People have less and less time on their hands and they won’t waste it trying to find your sign up page.

Here are three simple tips to get your newsletter sign up form right:

1. Put the newsletter sign-up link somewhere really obvious on the site; don’t let people search for it.

2. If possible, try and put it on every page of the site for maximum exposure. Your contacts may not necessarily access your site from your home page

3. Make it clear what they are signing up for and give them an incentive to do so

If you are an existing dotMailer client, you can generate the form which will allow your contacts to be added automatically into the dotMailer database. Click here to find out how to do this.

Another effective data capture method being underused is to have a link to your newsletter subscription page in the emails you send out.

If you know that many of your contacts forward your emails to their friends or colleagues, why not take that opportunity to capture the new contact’s details. Something simple in the header will work like: “have you received this email as a forward? If you want to receive this on a regular basis please click here to sign-up”.

And if you are looking for more advice on how to grow your list, we can help!

A report out last week from Econsultancy reveals that while UK consumers are increasingly using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, marketers still need to focus on targeted and relevant email marketing if they want to enjoy e-commerce success.

Despite the current hype around social media, network adoption and its influence on ecommerce is far from maturity. More than a third of consumers (38%) do not use a social network site, and only 6% have asked for recommendations on social sites during their most recent product search.

The survey also highlights the importance of targeted and relevant email marketing, with half of consumers reporting that irrelevant information devalued the emails they received. Similarly, 50% of respondents said that emails weren’t valuable because there was “no special advantage” to receiving them.

Over a third of respondents (36%) said that receiving an email had prompted them to make a purchase online, whilst around a quarter (27%) reported that an email was the cause of an offline purchase.

When it comes to advertising messages, 61% of consumers said they prefer to receive promotional material for sales and specials by email, compared to 28% who said postal mail and only 5% who said social sites.

The Econsultancy findings are based on a survey of more than 1,200 nationally representative UK consumers, broken down by different age groups to give deeper insight into their behaviour and motivations. The full research can be downloaded from the Econsultancy website (payment required).

These findings, especially those concerning promotions in email tie in very closely with recent research from the IAB and ICD, which shows that although the majority would delete emails without opening them if they didn’t feel they were relevant, 70% were more likely to open an email if it contained an offer incentive in the subject line. Offers of money off scored highly too with prior knowledge of the brand also important.

Last week, I put together a series of top tips for marketers looking to make the most out of promotional emails.

Why not follow Tink and/or dotMailer on Twitter!

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As you’ve probably read already, Facebook has announced that it has hit 500 million users!

That’s equivalent to:

• One in every 12 people in the world
• The entire population of the USA, UK, France and Germany combined
• Half the number of people that own computers in the world

So what’s the secret behind this success story?

In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg started thefacebook.com while at Harvard University. The website allowed students to register their details and post information or pictures about their activities across campus with early reports stating the site generated 450 visitors in the first 4 hours of going live and 22,000 photo-views.

While these early numbers pale into insignificance compared to the figures released this week, the future was bright for the new service. Despite thefacebook.com being forced to close briefly over security concerns (sound familiar?), when it reopened it quickly expanded across every University in the US.

By 2004, Facebook received its first investment from the co-founder of Paypal and purchased the domain name facebook.com for $200,000. In 2006 it opened its doors to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address and today, only four years later, facebook.com has reached 500 million users and $1.1 billion of revenue.

So the big question is: what’s next for the social giant?

Banner advertising has been the largest source of revenue for Facebook to date and, with a wealth of data about every user, banner advertising has never been so targeted. Users supply their age, interests, location, gender and occupation, which allows advertisers to target an exact demographic.

Facebook cites the example of a company called CM Photographic (PDF link) that specialises in wedding photography. CM invested only $600 dollars on Facebook, targeting 24 to 30 year old women whose relationship statuses on Facebook indicated they were engaged. An amazing 60% of users who clicked on the ad became a qualified lead and generated the company nearly $40,000 of revenue.

Despite this, Facebook’s advertising click through rate is only 0.04%, compared to Google’s 8%. Compare this to open rates than can be achieved other digital areas, such as email. Facebook’s challenge is to leverage their user base and overcome user perceptions of marketing on social channels users ‘see ads as not always relevant to them, but don’t like personalised ads either as these are an invasion of privacy” (source: IAB /ICD research July 2010).

So is there another way for Facebook to make more money in the future?

Social gaming

The answer may come from another favourite pastime of Facebook users: gaming. With games like Farmville bringing in over 61 million Facebook users regularly monitoring their farm growing crops and raising livestock, does online gaming offer a financial opportunity?

Facebook credits have remained fairly low key so far, but we think this could just be the next big thing.

Currently you can buy Facebook credits (one credit is equal to $0.10) using a credit card, Paypal or a mobile device. You can then use these “credits” to purchase premium items in some of Facebook’s top games or applications and send gifts to friends.

We’re not the only ones that think this could be big with RockYou, Facebook’s largest game developer, recently signing a five-year exclusive deal to use Facebook credits as its online payment method. Companies like RockYou will earn 70% for every credit it sells and Facebook takes a healthy 30% too!

Facebook credits

But using credits for games is only the start. What about the ability to convert credits back into money? Would this allow social games like poker/roulette to reward users with credits which they can then convert into money that they can spend? Or how about using the service to pay your friends back money you borrowed? What about earning loyalty points in day-to-day retail stores in the form of Facebook credits?

Only two weeks ago, MOL announced it will allow customers in its stores in Asia and Australia to purchase Facebook credits in-store but also convert “MOLpoints” into Facebook credits.

Take this to its natural conclusion and you could even see brands giving Facebook credits to fans that post products on their wall and encourage their friends to purchase. Could this start a whole new affiliate system?

So is this the next Facebook money making idea? We suggest you watch this space!

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Let’s face it; the subject line is one of the most important elements in an effective email marketing campaign. It’s often the first thing recipients will see (alongside the recipient name or email address) and so will convince them either to open the email or just delete it.

A study by Jupiter Research found that 35% of recipients will open an email specifically because of the content in the subject line.

And more recently, the IAB and ICD have conducted research amongst UK consumers, which shows that although the majority would delete emails without opening them if they didn’t feel they were relevant, 70% were more likely to open an email if it contained an offer incentive in the subject line. Offers of money off scored highly too with prior knowledge of the brand also important.

Our guide to writing killer subject lines is worth looking at, but I’ve also pulled out here some of my top tips for getting subject lines right:

1. Focus on the first 40 characters

The DMA Best Practise Guidelines suggest recipients will make their mind up, on average, based on the first 70 characters of the subject line. However, it’s important to note that, with some smaller preview panes (e.g. vertical preview panes, especially due to the increased use of hand held devices), some recipients may only see 40 characters. I have also seen compelling research where much longer subject lines have generated results, but still remember to get the most compelling content up front, within the first 40 characters. This might seem a small number, but we all write in 140 on Twitter, so see this as a further social media brevity test.

2. Include a call to action

Be clear about what’s on offer. Make the one key benefit or proposition the main call to action of the subject line. As the IAB and ICD research shows, offers or money off discounts advertised in the subject line can increase the likelihood that your recipient will open the email.

3. Be relevant

Think about who your recipients are. Don’t be vague or mysterious, make it clear why this email will be of interest to them. Misleading subject lines may generate great open rates, but it’s the click throughs that really matter and, more importantly, conversions. Recipient trust will be eroded the more you mislead them.

4. Tell, don’t sell

If you are quoting an offer then keep the wording factual and steer clear of ‘power adjectives’ like ‘amazing’, ‘unbeatable’ or ‘stunning’.

5. Split test the subject lines

Always test different subject lines to see which one gets the better response.

6. Avoid spam words

Don’t include any words that are likely to get flagged as spam as your message may be dumped into the junk folder (remember this is not the be all and end all of delivery; always remember to test). Compare what you have written to subject lines that appear in your junk folder. Do they pass the coffee table test and leap out at you or not?

7. Write your subject line last

Many marketers start by writing the subject line, but you’ll just end up with a line that doesn’t reflect the content of the email. Write your subject line once the copy of the email is complete and approved.

Have you tried any of these? Are there other tactics you find work well? Let us know in the comments!

Why not follow Tink and/or dotMailer on Twitter!

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Last week we looked at some of the World Cup emails we’d been sent over the last month or so and this got us thinking: what’s the best way to use email marketing to piggyback off popular events or seasons?

From the British Grand Prix and the Ashes to Christmas and Valentine’s Day, these landmark events and seasons provide a great opportunity for marketers to increase brand awareness and drive sales.

Here’s our list of top tips for getting making the most of them:

1. Launch a competition

Competitions are great for data capture. Come up with a fantastic prize (a Vuvuzuela for example!) and encourage your recipients to give you certain details when they enter. This data can then be used to better segment and target your emails in the future.

2. Remember your audience

Before just launching into it, think very carefully about whether the event or season you are using is actually likely to be of interest to your recipients. If your list is made up of young teenage boys, running a campaign around the new Sex and the City movie won’t be particularly effective.

3. Don’t be too contrived

Don’t just email for the sake of it. Make sure you have something relevant and valuable to say. For example, we were particularly impressed that Figleaves came up with a special range of ‘England’ knickers to celebrate the World Cup. This gives them a reason to email.

4. Plan well in advance

It is important to think about what you are going to do far enough in advance to really make the most of the opportunity, rather than just a kneejerk response that isn’t well thought through.

5. Don’t forget the basics

It’s tempting just to let the event or season speak for itself, but don’t forget some of the basics of good email marketing, from split-testing to segmentation and targeting.

6. Run time-based offers

Why not run a special discount or offer to coincide with the event or season? For example, at dotMailer, we offered a special discount while England were still in the World Cup (granted, this wasn’t actually a very long offer!)

7. Have something for everyone

Remember that not everyone is a football or cricket fan. Try and offer something for everyone or, even better, segment your list based on responses to previous campaigns. If a batch of recipients responded well to a football-related email in the past, then send them more of the same next time round.

8. Build a campaign specific landing page

Maximise conversions once your recipients have clicked-through by putting together a campaign-specific landing page on your website. You could even go one step further and create a targeted microsite.

Have you tried any of these? Are there other tactics you find work well? Let us know in the comments!

Why not follow Tink and/or dotMailer on Twitter!

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