Fully Automatic Triggers.
One of the great features that the onslaught of technology in this industry is that every piece can be automated, whether from the end user’s vantage point (the email subscriber), or your vantage point (the email marketer). One of the latest features of Online Outbox is Triggers.
Imagine this: It’s Tuesday morning. You send your weekly email campaign, like regular. One of your recipients — let’s call him “Bob” — skims your email that morning, but comes back to it later in the evening. He likes what he sees. He clicks the link to your web site (the link you’ve conveniently placed near the top of the email) for more information. But he doesn’t buy, subscribe, contact you… whatever your conversion goals are. Maybe he left the credit card at the office. Maybe he gets called away to dinner. For whatever reason, he doesn’t convert.
But you’re smart. You’ve created a Trigger, that based upon a recipient’s action (for instance, when someone clicks a specific link contained in this particular email), a specific action is triggered. In this case, Bob now gets (automatically!) bumped into a “clicked the link” Contact List, which triggers an Autoresponder to be sent, 12 hours later, with more targeted info. Reasons for him to buy. Specials or Incentives, or what have you.
Bob receives the email the next morning. Remembers his interaction yesterday, and follows through with the purchase or escalation.
Remember this: The more you direct your marketing to individuals, rather than the masses, and make their experience interactive, the better conversion rate you’ll experience.
Using triggers, you can send automatic birthday reminder emails, add/remove contacts to/from multiple lists based on an email being opened or a link being clicked.
I hope that inspires…
Get better open rates.
Throughout our resources section, we offer tips for better deliverability, improved open rates, providing more useful content to your readers. Today’s tip is rather simple: schedule your campaigns to arrive on a schedule that is convenient for your readers.
Common sense? Maybe. But take these factors into consideration. Are there specific days that your readers are particularly too busy to read your content thoroughly? Is a certain time of day better than another? For instance, Mondays are horrible for many professions. Chiropractors. IT professionals. Auto mechanics. They’re inundated on Mondays with problems that occurred over the weekend. Mondays are probably not the best day to send your email campaigns to readers in those professions.
Or maybe your campaigns don’t target particular professions. Maybe you target readers with particular interests, particular habits, etc. If you’ll get into the head of your subscribers, you’ll be able to determine an optimal schedule for your campaigns.
This is only a test.
Great post from the experts at the Email Experience Council and our friends at Marketing Profs. Testing is the key to getting results. The concept they push here, A/B split testing, is one of the latest features of Online Outbox. Split testing allows a marketer to get a true litmus of the effectiveness of a campaign. Here goes:
“A great way to capitalize on the democratic medium of email is to put your burning questions, late-night hunches, and out-of-the-box ideas to the test with an A/B split test,” says Megan Walsh in a post at the Email Experience Council blog. Here’s some of her advice for using split testing to try out new ideas and boost results:
Focus on one variable at a time. When testing subject lines, for instance, you want to know how many subscribers opened the message. Clicks and conversions, meanwhile, matter when you’re testing calls to action. Remember that a change in one variable can have an impact on another. Always be clear about what you’re trying to test/achieve, Walsh advises.
Use a random distribution for A and B audience groups. “The sizes of the segments don’t need to be the same if the key metric you are looking to influence is expressed as a ‘rate,’” she says, “but they do need to have the same general characteristics to be a fair test.”
Take it to the next level. As you become a testing junkie, begin to explore how different segments behave. Williams-Sonoma knew that including a featured product’s price on the hero image boosted clicks and conversions. The company recently discovered, however, that the customers driving this response were those who spent more than $100 on an average purchase; customers who spent less were more likely to click on an image without a price.
The Po!nt: Never stop testing. Something that works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow: customer preferences constantly vary.
One advantage of using Split Testing with Online Outbox is that you’re not limited to a single split. In other words, you’re not limited to A/B — you could segment and test A/B/C/D… or more, but you get the idea… Get more info on Split Testing here.
On Time, Every Time
Sending an email to your subscribers on the same day, at the same time, has a positive effect. For example, every Wednesday at 10am. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they expect to receive your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include. After all, who likes surprises on a Wednesday morning?