E-mail marketers can get lost in "big data" analytics and lose sight of the "little data" basics of e-mail delivery that reveal faster response improvements, advises Scott Roth of consumer intelligence company Return Path in a recent ClickZ post. Roth's "little data" fundamentals go beyond engagement rates to inbox placement rates, authentication policies and domain security, and Roth provides a number of real-life examples of how analyzing these basics improved e-mail results. For example, large U.S. retailer Dillard reversed a trend of declining open and click-through rates by checking inbox placement rates across all major mailbox providers. Dillard found that 20% of promotional e-mails failed to reach subscribers, with many e-mail addresses no longer existent. Plus, subscribers who did get e-mail marked it as junk at an above-average rate. The retailer focused corrective actions to pump engagement rates 100% and push open rates above pre-decline levels. Similarly, when another brand saw inbox placement rates drop 50%, they checked their sending basics and discovered that an improperly configured authentication policy for their sending domain had caused most mailbox providers to treat e-mails as spam. With corrective action, the brand saw inbox placement rise 46% to 92%. Financial firms especially need to track basic data for signs of security problems, as Roth points out. For example, he notes how a financial services firm tracking a rise in suspicious domains and call center traffic was able to correlate its e-mail data with phishing outbreaks and then implemented e-mail security protocols. For the whole article, read http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2410356/sweat-the-small-stuff-big-results-through-email-marketing-fundamentals
David Kanter, President and CEO of AccuList, is a list brokerage and direct marketing expert. For more than 30 years, he has helped companies and nonprofit organizations achieve their marketing goals. With David's Direct Marketing Forum, he shares, and invites others to share, helpful direct-marketing industry news, trends, analyses, resources, and tips for success. Please read our Comment Policy.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
The First Step to an A/B Test Win: An Open Mind
Although A/B testing is a marketing given, marketers often unknowingly limit their potential response results with preconceived notions about what audiences prefer. Approaching A/B testing with an open mind can yield the surprise wins that create market leaders. A recent DirectMarketingIQ article by Rohan Ayyar, of the E2M digital marketing agency, cited some telling A/B testing results for marketing efforts as diverse as mobile landing pages, e-mail subject lines and even product design. One example of a surprise test win comes from health insurer Anthem. For a mobile PPC campaign, Anthem A/B tested a landing page with no images and three different calls to action in a text-only format against a landing page with the image of a smiling woman, a single call to action and descriptive copy. Based on common assumptions about the digital conversion power of images, Anthem expected the version with the image to win--but they were wrong. On a mobile platform, the all-text version increased leads by 166% at a 95% confidence level. It turned out that mobile users scrolling small screens preferred multiple calls to action, including an easy call to customer care, to reading small soft-sell text. Another famous example of thinking out of the A/B testing box comes from President Obama's 2012 re-election e-mail fundraising. Politics is serious business, so the assumption was that e-mail appeals with formal subject lines would deliver more dollars. In reality, casual subject lines that even contained mild profanity ("Hell yeah, I Like Obama") or just the recipient's name did better, and the big winner was the famous "Hey" subject line series. The President's name as the sender combined with a friendly personal approach in the subject line to push winning e-mails $2.2 million ahead in revenue compared with the worst performing e-mail. For more on surprise A/B testing wins, see http://www.directmarketingiq.com/article/3-unexpected-wins-that-emerged-from-a-b-testing/1
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