What’s happening to email marketing lately?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve been seeing more crappy email campaigns the last few weeks. Bad subject lines, poor targeting, bad timing, poor segmentation, horrific designs etc. You name it, I’ve been seeing it, even from some of my favorite companies with email marketing programs. Are we forgetting the tried & true email marketing mantra of timely, targeted and relevant or are marketers spending too much time with their Facebook and Twitter customers that their email campaigns are becoming second thoughts?

It’s no wonder open rates are declining. Check out my friend Chris Sietsema’s post on email marketing service provider’s Mailer Mailer results for open rates over the past five halves (Chris’ LOVE insights are brilliant too). Their report indicates open rates have declined almost 3% since the second half of 2007. That may seem inconsequential, but it isn’t. A 3% decline in open rates can mean significant decreases in metrics that drive sales.

What worries me more? More companies that ever are using email as their top lead generation tool. According to a recent survey from CSO Insights, respondents said 62% of their companies use email marketing as their top-lead generation tool, compared with 59% who said the same thing a year earlier.

It’s potentially a bad SPAM storm coming together all at once.

So, I thought it was time to dish out some email suggestions that can help make your campaigns awesome–again. And by awesome, I mean worthy of your customers opening and getting them to do what you want.

Make Your Subjects Lines Mean Something to Me

First impressions mean everything and with email you have two opportunities to make a great first impression, your From Name and Subject Line. While your From Name is important, I’d argue that that your Subject Lines will affect your email metrics more. Good subject lines typically have three characteristics.

1. Important words should be front loaded. Want to tank your email metrics right off the bat? Put your most important words at the end of the Subject Line. We live in a world of smartphones and busy consumers. By my count, I only see 31 characters of a subject line on my iPhone. If you aren’t loading the most important message within those first characters, the likelihood of a consumer opening your email is slim. It’s easier to simply delete it.
2. Generalizations don’t exist. Here are things I (and your customers) don’t want to read “New (insert brand name here) Products”, “Learn more about our new products.”, “Newsletter”. They are generalizations and while they may mean something to you, they mean nothing to your consumers. You want me to open your email, tell me what is in it with your Subject Line.
3. If you personalize, you use the right variable. My first and last name are Michael and Barber, respectively, but yet I get a few emails a month that say “Barber, 15% Off (insert product name here)”. If you are going to personalize Subject Lines within an email, please make sure you have scrubbed your data. Bad personalization can lead to a quick click of the delete or spam button.

Really an image? I mean really, your entire email is an image.

Look I get that you love your brand and the lovely typography that goes with it, but spare me the sob story. When I take the effort to open your email, please reward me with your most important content in text, not an image. This way I don’t have to click another button to view or display the images.

See a recent email I received from west elm. I love west elm, but without loading all the remote images I know nothing more about the their new mobile shopping site.

I’m a man and I don’t have a handbag so why am I getting your handbag emails. Good segmentation matters.

A couple of years ago, I bought the misses a pretty sweet handbag. She loved it, however, my Inbox didn’t. Apparently if I buy handbags from a certain Seattle-based retailer, I should receive all female-related product emails. How does that make sense? I don’t wear the latest Jimmy Choos, sexy bikinis or summer’s hottest sandals under $100.

If you want to see immediate increases in your email results, take some time to segment your audience by demographic questionnaire, buying habits or any data that you can get your hands on. The better you can segment your customers and understand who they are and what they buy, need or may want, the better performance you will see from your email campaigns.

I’m not going to lie. If you are years into your email campaigns with hundreds of thousands of email subscribers, data segmentation of those customers could be a huge investment of time and dollars. Consider bitting off chunks of your active subscribers, segment them and test.

Timing is determined by your customers, not my opinion or historical data.

If there is one email-related question I’m constantly asked by marketers, it’s when they should send their email campaigns. Back in the day, I would have given you specific times of day that provided better results, but that doesn’t hold true anymore. Timing of your email campaigns is determined by your customers. If your customers convert higher at certain times of day, then send them emails around that time.

Additionally, think about your emails messaging and how it relates to timing. If you are sending me weekend deals, I don’t want your email Tuesday midday because I have about 60 hours of work left before I can care.

Birthday emails make customers smile & drive dollars.

I’m a sucker for birthday emails. They make me smile and research shows they make other customers do the same. Email service provider Experian CheetahMail recently published research that showed total opens and clicks on birthday and other event-related celebrations such as anniversaries garnered upwards of 150% higher rates.

Lesson of the day. When your customers opt-in to receive your email campaigns, ask them what day they were born. All you need is month, date and a triggered campaign in your email service provider and you’re golden.

Bottom line. There are no excuses, minus laziness.

Simply put, I can think of no other reason for poor email campaign performance other than laziness. If marketers take the time to truly understand their email subscribers and provide them with timely, targeted and relevant emails then their email metrics will reflect that effort. If they don’t, then expect to see email metrics continue to suffer because it’s 100x easier for customers to press delete or unsubscribe then spend the time reading your crappy email.

Are you seeing the same poor email campaigns? What other tips would you offer to email marketers to improve their sluggish metrics?

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Check out my guest post entitled 6 Tips (with examples) for Your Next Augmented Reality Project on agencyside’s site today. It provides 6 tips for your next augmented reality project, along with a few decent AR examples and growth statistics.

If you aren’t familiar with agencyside, they offer training and consulting on how to implement digital marketing services within more traditional advertising agencies. Their annual conference, BOLO 2010, is coming up in a few months. Along with tiny little me, they have some fan-freaking-tastic speakers scheduled including Ze Frank, Pam Slim, Jay Baer of Convince and Convert, the delightful Susan Baier of AudienceAudit, content strategist extraordinaire and owner of Brain Traffic Kristina Halvorson, my mentor and friend Brandon Willey and many others.

It’s only $799 per person for 3 days of awesome sessions and Scottsdale sun. I also have a discount code for $100 off. If you are interested, just leave your contact information in the comments and I will send it over to you. I’d also appreciate your thoughts on my AR article, but do me a favor and post them over at agencyside.

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A couple of days ago I attended Social Media Day Phoenix. The event/day was created by Mashable to “celebrate the changes in media that have empowered us to stay connected to information in real time, the tools that have enabled us to communicate from miles apart and the platforms that have given a voice to the voiceless.”

According to Pete Cashmore of Mashable, the event brought together 5,000 people in 500 different locations across the world including one right here in Phoenix. The local gathering was organized by Social Media AZ (SMAZ), Social Media Club Phoenix and the City of Tempe (primarily the great Kris Baxter).

The Good

Lots of New People: When you go to enough local social media networking events, you tend to stumble into the same people, but this event was different. It was an odd gathering of young and old, business owners, marketers and bloggers most of whom I didn’t know well. It’s good to see a more diverse group of social media lovers.

The Organizing Team, or Should I Say Kris Baxter: I could say something about SMAZ and SMCphoenix here, but this event happened for one reason and her name is Kris Baxter. If you don’t know Kris, she is the Community Development Marketing Specialist for the City of Tempe, and a wonderful, generous person. She saw an opportunity to show how Tempe can support the larger community and made it happen. Nice job Kris!

The Band: The Bears of Manitou were awesome. Check them out here.

The Not So Good

The Venue: I want to love MADCAP. It could be an amazing meeting & movie space, but once again it disappointed me. The A/C wasn’t working well causing myself and everyone to sweat their butts off and, for this germaphobe, the dirty seats made my skin crawl. I hope the City or an investment group will one day return the theater to its glory days.

The Ridiculous Story Telling Time: While I appreciate there were some great stories of people using social media change the world, I could have done without some of the grandstanding by teeny bopers talking about how the met their girlfriend or boyfriend through mySpace. Go back to Match.com. Thanks.

The Slide Show: It was all over the place. I think someone had one too many brews at Robbie Fox’s before operating the slideshow.

Final Thoughts

Two things:

1. Do we really need a social media day? One of the things I have struggled with since hearing about the day was the idea of an official social media day. I thought every day was social media day. Why can’t we celebrate every day that gives us the opportunities this medium provides by simply using social media? The optimist in me believes it is a good way to connect the social media crowd offline. The pessimist part says it was good way for Mashable to promote themselves and gather some more data (names & email addresses) about us.
2. An Annual Event is Enough. Based on a follow up email I received from Mashable and some murmurs from a few friends, it sounds like there are plans to make this a regular event. I think our time can be better time spent finding out ways to create meaningful on and offline experiences via social media than simply celebrating the medium. Once-a-year is enough for me.

Am I way off base here? If you attended, what did you think? Would you attend a monthly social media day? Why or why not?

Related posts:

1. Tools and Trends from Social Media Club Phoenix
2. Thoughts on PechaKucha Phoenix 1

Take 5 seconds and think about the brands that you love. For me, there are a few that come to mind, Southwest Airlines, Apple, In-N-Out, BMW (time’s up).

Then think about why you love these brands. Maybe they have awesome products or customer service. I would also venture a guess that these companies have another characteristic, and that is they have probably never disappointed you. And, there’s probably a reason they haven’t disappointed you because they are really good at setting your expectations.

Why Customer Expectations Matter

Customer expectations matter for one simple reason.  If you don’t set them, customers are likely to be disappointed. Disappointment leads to frustration, anger and allows your customers to think of alternative companies that can do that same thing for them. Disappointed customers can also hop onto their social media profiles or blogs, and vent those feelings with a few hundred characters.

AT&T iPhone 4 Pre-Orders: A Classic Example of Missed Expectations and How It Could Have Been Avoided

If you haven’t heard, Apple’s iPhone 4 comes out on Thursday and last week’s AT&T pre-order process was a freaking debacle of epic proportions. Why? AT&T simply  failed to set their customer’s expectations.

Now you would think that with Apple estimating 10 million or so iPhone 4 orders by the end of the year and AT&T allowing any customer who has the ability to upgrade this year to pre-order the phone, that AT&T would have done 1 of 2 things. Optimized their website and servers to handle a boatload of traffic or set their customers’ expectations appropriately.

A simple email to all iPhone customers leading up to the pre-order date telling us that the process may take a while and you might not get the phone when promised would have been nice. Hell, an official statement from AT&T that they were working their hardest to resolve issues would have been nice, but that never came. Instead, AT&T disappointed tons of customers, proved they don’t really care what type of experience their customers are having and inspired thousands news articles, posts, Tweets and status updates about the issues from popular news websites and blogs. High five AT&T (note sarcasm here).

5 Rules to Follow to Set Customer Expectations

1. Timeliness Matters – If you know your store is closing for remodeling or menu is changing, telling your customers 24 hours before doesn’t cut it. Give customers time to learn about the upcoming change.
2. Notify Your Customers How They Want to be Notified – If your customers have opted in to receive email or text messages from you, then let them know through those channels.
3. Why, why, why – Tell your customers why something is happening. There is nothing more infuriating to me then when I don’t understand why something is happening. If my flight is departing two hours late, telling me that is departing two hours late without telling me why makes me want to pull my hair out.
4. Don’t lie – Need I say more. If you tell your customers that you are closing for remodeling, but they learn it’s due to another reason the likelihood of them trusting you with their business in the future is slim to none.
5. Learn How to Say Sorry & Move On – Of course, no matter how well you try to mitigate customer expectations, there will always be that one person who continues to kick up a big fuss. Apologize, sympathize and move on. It won’t matter what you say to these types of people.

In an age where organizations can communicate directly to their customers via social media, text messages or email, and blogs/new sites can get stories up in a matter of seconds, companies have no excuses not to try and manage customer expectations. The more organizations do, the more customers will continue to trust them and, hopefully, embrace them even when crap happens. You’ll never see me post something negative about Southwest or BMW because even when negative things happen, they’ve proved to me that they care, or at least they try to care.

Do you think companies should be trying to set expectations better? If so, how? If not, why? What other rules should companies follow to ensure they set expect expectations appropriately?

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It’s 3:43am and I’m still awake. I’m sick, sore throat, running a fever, green snot, the whole kit and caboodle. This isn’t the greatest week to get sick. We are launching a phase two build of USAEnergyGuide.com (but it might as well be an entirely new site) later tomorrow, my parents are arriving on Thursday, Ignite Phoenix 7 on Friday and then I’m off to Southern California for FashionCampLA on Saturday.

And, then I look over and see this.

McDoogle asleep on his bed. Not a care in the world. Just dreams of kibble and treats, scratchies and play time. He reminds not to worry to much about my current worldly troubles and remember the simple things that make you smile and laugh. Looking over and seeing him is one of those simple things. I need to remember to enjoy the simple things more often.

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Last night I attended the first PechaKucha Phoenix event, and I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you don’t know about the format, it’s based on a simple idea: 20 images for 20 seconds. Similar to Ignite, the presentations are quick and to the point, but, dissimilar to Ignite, the topics focus solely on design and its related subjects. Think user experience, architecture, photography, information architecture, art…more creative subjects.

Attendees saw presentations ranging from Nan Ellin, an ASU Professor of Urban Planning who has worked to bring the Canalscape project to life, to user experience legend, Robert Hoekman Jr, who gave his opinion on what usability testing actually helps web strategists do, to Cyd West, who is helping to understand and better define Phoenix’s DNA.

Kudos to the organizing team and crew for putting on what looks to be like an event that is here to stay. If you have any interest in all things design, I’d encourage to attend the next PechaKucha Phoenix.

Related posts:

1. 10 Thoughts about SXSW 2010

The social media explorer and bourbon man himself, Jason Falls, is heading to Phoenix for a little biz. As such, I can think of no other reason to get together for a little Tweetup action. If you haven’t had the opportunity to meet Jason, he is a super friendly guy who knows just a little about social media strategy . Read more about him here or follow him on Twitter @JasonFalls.

So, let’s knock a few pints back, have a bourbon or two and mingle. RSVP using the twtvite here so we can tell Robbie Fox how many to expect.

Related posts:

1. Tools and Trends from Social Media Club Phoenix
2. Social Media Day Phoenix: The Good & Not So Good

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting on the Tools and Trends panel for Social Media Club Phoenix. The panelists and I talked about what we heard and liked at South by Southwest 2010, and the tools and trends we thought will be important to watch and leverage.

Lots of juicy goodness in this video including information on local marketing and its implications on local and search marketing, mobile payment applications and the integration of social across different marketing channels. For more information and notes on the session, go to http://smcphoenix.com.

Thanks to the following panelists for the fun and sharing great information. Also, big kudos to Jeff Moriarty and Oden Hughes for moderating the panel and taking notes, respectively.

Kevin Gawthrope, Sr. Manger of Web Services – Isagenix International, @gawthrok
Katie Van Domelen, Social Media Manager – Off Madison Ave, @ktvan
Kathy Jacobs, Social Media Credit Analyst – The Social Media Party, @callkathy
Chuck Reynolds, Strategy & SEO at rYnoweb, @chuckreynolds

Social Media Club Phoenix: Tools and Trends from Stephen Murphey on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Day Phoenix: The Good & Not So Good
2. Notes from SXSW: Future of Social Business
3. Engagement via Social Media: 3 Examples of Smaller Organizations Outdoing the Big Boys

Well, I’m waiting at gate 7 to board my flight back to Phoenix from Austin and I thought I’d share a few of my own thoughts on South by Southwest Interactive 2010. Thanks to all the friends, old and new, who made it memorable.

1. Austin is for foodies.
Most of you know I love food. Minus family and friends, there really is nothing that makes me smile more than food. Austin is chocked full of unique, independent food haunts. From street vendors to uber-chic eateries, Austin has something for anyone.

We had the chance to check out plenty of hot spots, but I’d recommend the following when visiting Austin: Frank | Hot Dogs & Beer, Imperia, Pizza Vendor at 6th and Red River, Maria, Maria, Moonshine Bar and Grill,
Ironworks BBQ and Iron Cactus.

2. Mobile marketing didn’t get the spotlight it needed.
2010 has been called the year of mobile. If SXSW is truly a reflection of upcoming trends, then I’m concerned we may have to wait till next year to see a strong focus on mobile marketing strategy. Sure, there were plenty, if not too many sessions on geo-location, mobile commerce and mobile advertising (see my notes on Mobile Advertising), but there was a big missing hole without a session on mobile marketing and based on what I heard from participants it was needed.

3. AT&T’s network can be great.
Contrary to 99.9% of people who enjoy the loveliness of AT&T’s patchy network, it can actually be great when AT&T wants it to be. You only needed to walk around Austin to see the massive investment made to make sure the blogosphere didn’t unite in razing the company like they did in 2009. From massive cell towers atop and around the convention center to mobile tower trucks sprinkled strategically around hot party locations, AT&T made a major effort to ensure the network was solid. They only time I experienced any issues was inside Ironworks BBQ. If only they could replicate this experience around the country, we would have a happy group of iPhone owners.

4. Jay Bear has a twin. We call him Gowalla Baer.
Apparently, the world is large enough for a Jay Baer lookalike. Cindy Kim, Scott Kaufmann, Elizabeth Hannon and I call him “Gowalla Baer.”

5. Where were the social media measurement sessions?
For all the talk about ROI and measuring social media’s impact on business from practitioners, it’s clear that we have a long way to go. I attended several social media sessions (see notes from the Future of Social Business)and none of them focused on metrics.

Even when audience members asked ROI questions, many of the panelists skirted around the answer and didn’t offer specific metrics for different objectives. Major disappoint for me, and I think others too. I hope to see a decent set of panelists from different sized brands that offer specific metrics next year. There a lot of companies that need help in defining those metrics so they can sell the plan up the chain.

5. Foursquare will win the location game.
Location, location, location. Everywhere you went at SXSW, people and panelists were talking about Gowalla and Foursquare, location-based social apps that allow users to check into locations and potentially earn deals and/or virtual goods.

My opinion is Foursquare is going to win the battle of the current location apps out on the market. It has a better user interface, larger user base and will appeal to both businesses and consumers as they roll out some of the upcoming features. Businesses will be attracted to the dashboard services that will offer them a deep understanding of their most frequent and core customers, and consumers will be attracted to the Yelp-like model of being the most frequent user, or “mayor” as they are called on Foursquare. Sure, Gowalla and other platforms, including Facebook, will share a piece of the pie, but I’m putting my money on Foursquare.

7. It’s about way more than the conference.
Like everyone on Twitter, I saw a boatload of tweets knocking SXSW as simply being a conference to go party and have fun. Sure, most of us stayed up into the wee hours of the morning and partied our assess off, but South By is about much more than that.

If you are new to the web space, you can get a lot of value out of the sessions. And if you have been around the block for a few years, chances are you have made some like-minded friends across the globe. SXSW gives you the chance to reconnect with those friends and make new ones. You never know when a conversation is going to lead to new business or when a session will spark an idea for a current client.

Stop bashing SXSW and come see what the hoopla is all about.

8. Phoenix has it better than most.
The number of folks I talked to about what is and isn’t going on in their hometowns was incredible, and their insight has given me a fresh new perspective on the little city I call home. Yeah, we aren’t San Fran or Silicon Valley, nor are we Boulder, Portland or Seattle, but Phoenix has a lot more going for it in the marketing, creative, web development and community space then most towns.

You won’t find me complaining any more about our gem in the desert. We have some of the best marketing and creative minds in the country, one best Ignite’s in the World, coworking spaces like Gangplank and others that most cities don’t have and we all have done a pretty decent job of getting to know each other. Let me know tell you that these types of events, places, organizations and the connected community that we have are not found in many places.

9. Long hashtags suck.
Nothing more to say here, but long hashtags suck. Even if the SXSW committee is going to compile the conversation based on those hashtags and publish them, find a better way. Maybe each session can have a unique number (i.e. SXSWi109). Sure you’d get some rogue tweets or messages, but at least every freaking panelist and audience member wouldn’t be complaining about the excessive number of 20+ character hashtags. Long hashtags mean less context. Less context means crappy conversation.

10. Content strategy is still not getting enough attention.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a few sessions on content strategy, but only one of them was worth the time and that was Kristina Halvorsons’ (see the notes from Mike Corak or read her book). I’m not sure why SXSW and other digital conferences are not this discipline more focus. Businesses with any sort of web presence are going to get bit in the ass if they don’t start paying attention to their own content strategy. Those that do will win.

(Photos by yours truly.)

Related posts:

1. Notes from SXSW: Mobile Advertising in 2010. How to pay the bills?
2. Notes from SXSW: Future of Social Business
3. Notes from SXSW: Peter Shankman on Self-Promotion

Much like social media was last year, the hot topic at SXSW Interactive 2010is mobile. There have been a ton of panels, sessions and talks about all things mobile from QR codes to Foursquare and everything in between.

I had the chance to attend the Mobile Advertising in 2010 session which focused on how mobile platforms are paying the bills. In other words, how they work with advertisers to keep the lights on. The session included Foursquare Co-founder, Dennis Crowley, and a rep from MocoSpace. Here are my notes.

Mobile Advertising in 2010: How to pay the bills?

MocoSpace

http://mocospace.com
Most visited mobile site after Facebook, MySpace and Google

Audience

• 95% from US
• 75% is on mobile
• Site users is 1/3 caucasian, 1/3 hispanic, 1/3 African American
• Faster growing segment – iPhone and Android

Monetization

• Work with the ad networks (3 billion pages per day), robust mediation layer, targeting abilities (gender, ethnicity, location, age).
• Working with music labels to distribute music to create instant feedback loop.
• SpikeTV Video Game Awards: get people to vote on video games through MocoSpace.
• Branded experiences.
• Virtual currency. Example, MocoGold creates ancillary benefits within the experience.

Foursquare

http://foursquare.com
Launched 2009 at SXSW, smarter city guide with gaming on top. Exciting way to find places.

Monetization

• Didn’t like the mistargeted ads. So created specials within the app.
• Created branded experiences with Bravo, NY Times, working with CPGs and other brands.
• Take offline experience to the phone. Bravo example. Find out celebrity chefs

Additional topics/questions discussed:
How do you go beyond the media buy, CPM etc?

• Leverage the features of the phone, call-in, audio and visual impact.
• Branded experiences that go beyond the CPM, badges, etc.
• Content creation mentioned again, create content that matters to audience where they are.
• Foursquare potential idea is cost per checkin with an action that has to be taken to complete conversion.

Look to the future.
Foursquare – Local biz opportunity. Give them incredibly easy dashboards to use, active their fans and drive repeat business.
Moco – Better experiences within mobile browser, virtual goods.

Related posts:

1. 10 Thoughts about SXSW 2010
2. Notes from SXSW: Future of Social Business
3. Notes from SXSW: Peter Shankman on Self-Promotion