Interflora email stands out

We all get too many emails these days, especially unsolicited emails. Email broadcast supplier Dotmailer recently reported that spam now accounts for 85 - 95% of all emails sent. Most of my emails are caught by the spam filter or I delete them instantly after a sub-1 second glance.

One recent email that stood out for me was the one below for Interflora.
















Firstly, it came from My Reminders (an Interflora company) that I had previously opted in to receive email from. The chances of me opening an email from someone I hadn't opted in with are virtually zero.

The subject title 'Want to avoid the look?' was OK but combined with the image (given the email was designed to work inside the preview pane of my email software) it was intriguing. It compelled me to open the email to read it in full.

The copy included the fact that 36% of men admit to forgetting birthdays. It offered a solution - an online event manager to remind you of key dates. This is a great web marketing strategy from a customer lifetime value perspective. By incentivising you to provide them with birthday / anniversary dates for the special people in your life, it helps them target appropriate gift ideas and crucially the best time to email you to ensure they get the best marketing ROI.

It is well designed:-

• the headline and the image work well together
• good use of white space - not too crowded
• strong brand message - top right corner links the brand name with the line 'the gift experts'
• navigation acts as a reminder of their key product areas e.g. flowers, food & drink
• additional notes /ads for Easter & St Patricks day
  

In a world of excess emails, mostly filled with dross copy and a lack of strategic marketing thinking, it is still possible to stand out and increase customer lifetime value...if you do it well.


Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing specialist with Brand New Way, a UK web marketing agency which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

UK internet sales out performing the rest of the economy

BBC News recently reported new data supporting that UK internet sales continue to out perform the rest of the UK market. Referring to a CapGemini report, UK online sales increased over 50% in the 3 months before Christmas compared with the previous year with electronics and clothing performing especially well. Internet share of retail spend grew from 10 to 15% over the year.

A CapGemini spokesperson said 'There can be no doubt (that) online is growing its share at the expense of bricks and mortar retailers and we believe this trend will continue.' 

Argos reported online sales were up a third and now accounted for nearly a quarter of their sales. Waterstones internet sales doubled and a slowing M&S saw internet sales up 78% in the last quarter of 2007 compared with the previous year.

This report confirms the finding in my earlier blogs

• Record UK Web Shopping On Christmas Day
  
• More about Christmas web sales

Lessons for UK businesses (large or small)

• Overall the UK market & most other countries are expected to have a difficult time in 2008, but all indicators continue to show that online continues to out-perform the market. How well are you set up to compete online?
• Does your web site deliver real value to your business?
  
• Does it effectively attract target prospects?
• Does it effectively convert web visitors to valuable customers, (either directly or indirectly)?
• Does it effectively increase customer lifetime value by getting more customers to spend more, more often and over a long period?
• If not, you should be seriously reviewing how to improve your website performance across these areas. If you don't have the expertise in-house to do this, then use an external web marketing specialist with a successful track record. It will be worth it.

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

Smart email marketing strategies get better results

Many businesses now use email marketing to communicate with their prospects and customers. However, some are failing to take advantage of the major benefits possible by sending relevant personalised emails with dynamic content.

With most email broadcast systems it is so easy to include personalisation. By including the contact's name the open rate and click rate is likely to be higher.

Dynamic content means changing some of the email's content based on specific criteria. A retailer with  number of stores might include a line of copy in the email saying 'Your nearest store is....' with the store name depending on the customers postcode.

Segmenting the mailing

Leading companies are increasingly dividing their mailing into specific segments with content relevant to that segment. The UK Direct Marketing Organisation recently issued a press release about their Email Marketing Benchmarking Report for Q3 2007. They showed that only 15% of their Email Service Provider's clients sent out single segment campaigns compared with 50% earlier in 2007.

By segmenting the email campaigns companies are able to send more relevant messages to specific audiences. e.g. for an online bookshop some people may prefer audio books. For car dealers, some people are interested in MPVs and others in coupes. You may want to send one message to new customers and a different one to loyal customers.

Of course, developing segments and specific messages for each segment can add to the complexity but leading companies have discovered that it's worth doing because they see better business results and improved marketing return on investment.

Segmentation is not just for big corporates

Like marketing testing covered in a previous blog, segmentation is another example of the marketing techniques that I have used for over 20 years helping Britain's best brands to transform their Marketing ROI. 

The good news is that with the advances in web marketing capability, I can now apply the same techniques to help small and medium sized businesses. 

Related blogs

What do you say to your valuable customers? - Comparing Amazon's 'lifetime' emails with copy from another company that leaves a lot to be desired.
Are you doing too much web marketing? - How Sainsbury's have got the 'lifetime' email frequency wrong.

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

Is your web marketing message as good as it could be?

UK advertising research agency Millward Brown has just completed its 50,000th  ad copy test, 20 years after launching its Link pre-testing service. The system is used by major advertising clients to test whether their new ad (usually TV) is likely to work. It helps identify whether target consumers are likely to find the ad memorable as well as whether it fits with the brand and whether consumers have a greater intention to buy.

You may think it prudent that a company about to spend over £500,000 producing a new TV ad and another £2M on advertising the new ad will want to invest some money in testing it first. However, many don't for a variety of reasons.

Why doesn't everybody test their marketing first? 

In an ideal world, everyone would test their marketing before gambling everything on 1 role of the dice. With traditional media like TV, radio, press etc, testing is often not done because:-

• it is (perceived) to be too expensive - compared to the the cost of advertising
• the results can be unreliable - too small a sample or an indirect correlation between advertising research and purchase behaviour
• there is insufficient time to wait for results
• of a lack of marketing expertise to test robustly & cost effectively

Why is this relevant to SMEs & web marketing? 

Whether your web marketing strategy is trying to attract target leads, convert web visitors to customers or to increase customer lifetime value, you will want to ensure that your web marketing is giving you a high marketing return on investment.

Many of the reasons (or excuses) to avoid testing in traditional media do not apply online. e.g. with Google Pay Per Click advertising it is possible to:-

• test multiple variants of an ad for a low cost e.g. different headlines, copy, propositions, pricing
• tests can be conducted with consecutive people seeing different versions of the ad until you reach a statistically significant sample size
  
• it's possible to make a PPC ad live the same day (within the hour) and depending on the popularity of the product / or service you could get statistically significant results within hours / days
• it is possible to directly track individual ads to online purchases to identify the marketing ROI of each ad version
• although not as critical as for traditional media, it still benefits from having people who know how to put a smart robust web marketing test programme together

Having spent over 20 years helping some of Britain's best brands to transform their marketing ROI, I am excited that testing is another area where the internet has leveled the playing field and enabled small and medium sized businesses to use some of the marketing secrets of Britain's best brands.

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and keep valuable customers online.