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Archive for the ‘B2B’ Category

Quick Tip: What Fonts to Use

April 30th, 2009

What font type should be used with HTML emails?

Have you ever received an email that has bright pink cursive font on a dark pink background? Pretty tough to read. This may be an extreme example, but don’t make it a challenge to read the copy in your emails. Your subscribers are already busy and if they afford you the compliment of opening your email, don’t screw it up by trying to get fancy with your font.

Aim for readability which is generally on the basic end for body copy. Stick to text fonts that are 10 or 12 point, in either Verdana, Arial or Times New Roman.

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Other posts you might find of interest:

Best Day to Send Email

Introduction to Email Segmentation

Email List Building Mistakes

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Posted in B2B, B2C, Design, Email Marketing Strategy, Quick Tips

Best Day to Send Email

April 22nd, 2009

A question often asked is “what is the best day to send emails?” And of course the answer… “Well, it depends.”

Too many marketers try to follow ‘day of week’ trends from big stats groups. I recommend against paying too much attention to what national surveys say for two reasons:

A. If a report says ‘Tuesday’ is the best day to send, and everyone in the country starts sending on Tuesday (I know it’s a bit exaggerated), then Tuesday would quickly diminish in quality with everyone being blasted with emails.

B. More importantly — every industry is different, every company is different, and every list has the capability of behaving differently.

So then what is the best day to send email? Let’s look at a few elements:

1. B2B or B2C? If your subscriber persona is a strict 9-5 business employee, then Friday at 4 or over the weekend probably isn’t the best idea.

2. Are Weekends Always Bad? No. In the example above, I wouldn’t recommend weekends. But what about a B2C product that targets mothers age 35-45? Might they be logging in some email checking over the weekend? I vote yes. I had one client that tested a weekday vs. weekend for a similar type of audience and saw a 85% increase in conversion with the weekend groups.

3. What about Monday? Going off of the 1st example, Monday probably isn’t too great either (aren’t you quite busy getting back to work on Monday?). This leaves us with 3-4 days for testing our B2B sends.

4. So Tues/Wed/Thurs for B2B? That looks like a decent starting point, but still does not completely answer our question of what the best day is to send email.

What to Do:

A. Know what you want to accomplish. Is your main goal a quick read for a timely notice, a click through to read more content, a click through and purchase of a product? etc…

B. Understand your recipient’s profile. Create a persona around them and among other things, determine what they are doing at different times and on different days. When will they be most likely to engage in the way that you want them to?

C. Use some common sense to eliminate some possibilities.

D. TEST. We love to throw this around, but it’s true. Do some day of week and time of day testing and you may be very surprised at what you find. If there is a huge difference, then great – you have now identified some valuable information for YOUR email program. If after significant testing you find microscopic difference between day 1, 2, or 3 then you now have some flexibility.

E. Test again.

For those marketers that don’t want to take the time to work through the elements above and must have a quick answer, I vote Wednesday at 3:00pm or Thursday at 9:30am

- Forest Bronzan

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Other posts you might find of interest:

Introduction to Email Segmentation

Email List Building Mistakes

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Posted in B2B, B2C, Email Marketing Strategy, Frequency, Metrics

Spammers Ruin Legitmacy of Email

April 10th, 2009

I read an article on Yahoo Wednesday that indicated spam levels had declined to 97% in the latter half of 2008. – According to a report from Microsoft.

When many people hear ‘Email Marketing’ they immediately think spam. Unfortunately with so much actual spam out there, people’s views are naturally jaded. This trickles down to affect many elements of legitimate email marketing. With more spam coming to everyone, it reduces our ‘inbox share’ – the ratio our legitimate communication represents compared to all email that subscriber receives. It reduces our ability to provide compelling creative due to default blocked images with so many email clients. It hurts our deliverability due to many issues.

This list goes on, but you get the point. Spam can cause unfavorable aftermath. We all must do our part to support the legitimacy of the email channel.

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Posted in B2B, B2C

Review of SCORE’s Sign-Up Process

April 8th, 2009

Yesterday I was going through a list of newsletters that I am not yet a member of and noticed that the small business resource group SCORE was one of them. After going to their site to opt-in, I noticed several good and bad things going on with their process. Let’s walk through it. (Images below)

Step 1. On their home page, there is a link in the upper left for ‘Get eNewsletters’ – Points for having this above the fold, but negative points for not having the option to fill in my address right there and submit. Every additional page I have to go to is another opportunity for me to leave and not complete the process. Get my most basic info (email address) right away while I’m interested and then ask for more information.

Step 2. After clicking that link I get to a page with a few options. First they give the option to view a sample of their newsletter. Major points here – it’s a good idea to give a preview of what a subscriber is going to receive. Set expectations from the beginning and you’ll start the relationship on a good note. Major points were also deducted on this page, as it asked me again to follow a link to sign up. I already said I wanted to sign up on the home page, why must I go to a 3rd page just to enter my email address? This is a major flaw. If they must go to this 2nd page, put the actual opt-in field here, in addition to the ‘preview’ link.

Step 3. Finally on the 3rd page they ask for my email address.

Step 4. On the 4th page (yes, 4 clicks and counting to sign up for the newsletter) They are asking for a lot more information, but it’s unclear if I have been signed up already. I thought that’s what I did on the previous page. But with no welcome email, I continue on. On this page they ask me to confirm my email, plus make First Name, Last Name, City, State and Zip required fields. Additionally, they have a security check for input of text from an image. For the contact info, that’s great that they are collecting it as it will be useful for segmentation and personalization later, but why make it required? It’s a nice to have, not a must have. For the email confirmation, why not have that on the previous page, or just have a double opt-in (where I must confirm by clicking a link in an email)? They do give me newsletter options, so are on the right track of an email preference center, but are way off on so many other elements.

Step 5. Finally on the 5th page I get a confirmation and the shortly after I receive a welcome email.

This 5 page process could have been reduced to 2 or 3 pages. On the home page they could have had a quick opt-in field and then taken me to a 2nd page to put in more personalization info (after I was already in the system and about to receive a confirmed or double opt-in email).

If they didn’t want to mess with the home page, they could have left the link as it was there, and then on the 2nd page had the opt-in form with a preview image on that page of their newsletter. On a 3rd page they could offer more personalization options.

I’d be very curious what their sign-up conversion rate is, from start to finish. While they are making efforts to implement some sound best practices for list acquisition, SCORE is dropping the ball with some red flag mistakes.

Screen Grabs from the process (click image to enlarge):

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