The budget airline space is a competitive one, but the U.K.s airline bmibaby gets sky high results with its clever and strategic email marketing program. Techniques to be showcased include the following: Cutting through inbox clutter with enticing subject lines, Starting the relationship with a memorable welcome email,l Delivering one to one value through transactional emails, Extending your reach through social sharing.
Presentation was given at the Travel Distribution Summit in London, June 17th and 18th, 2010 by Will Schnabel, Silverpop and Marie Clare Dixon, bmibaby.
7. Background Silverpop Survey of email marketers 4 out of 10 marketers reported their email budgets for 2010 would increase Biggest challenges included “inbox clutter” and “providing timely and relevant content” Irrelevant messaging is the #1 reason for email opt-outs
8. Inboxes are Crowded More marketers embracing email’s effectiveness and high ROI (twice the ROI of any other digital channel) Consumers will receive more than 9,000 email marketing messages a year by 2014
9.
10. Anatomy of the Inbox Messages from friends represents 34% Spam accounts for 29% of the inbox Opt in messages accounts for 25% Messages from school/work is 8% Other messages represent 5% Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Consumer Survey (4/08), n = 2,427; JupiterResearch/Ipsos Insight Consumer Survey (9/07), n = 2,454; (9/06), n = 2,147; JupiterResearch/Ipsos Insight Individual User Survey (6/05), n = 3,944 (e-mail users)
16. Relevancy Delivers Dollars Generated per Month (in thousands) Source: Q1 2009 Global Email Marketing And On-Site Targeting Online Survey NB: Metrics and salary costs are based on a Forrester executive survey. Based on 2.8 million pieces of email per month, CPM ranges grow with program complexity, assuming $39 AOV and 40% product margin.
28. Email address update/password update Current email subscriptions Newsletters, solo offers, company news, third-party offers Content or interest preferences Skiing versus snowboarding, cycling versus running Message format Text, HTML, mobile-optimised HTML Frequency (higher and lower) Update communication channels Email, RSS feeds, direct mail, SMS) Unsubscribe options (for individual mailings or for all) Demographics: gender, locale, birthday, position Types of Choices
30. Send Enough, at the Right Time Email subscriber interest begins to disintegrate as soon as two weeks after the opt-in Test Frequency Analyze differences in open and click rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes Send time optimisation
48. Who are we, baby? Low cost airline launched in 2002 Fly from four U.K. bases to over 30 UK and European destinations Aim to put the fun back in flying!
49. Highly competitive market In-house email program required significant IT involvement Deliverability issues Desired more sophisticated email program Challenges
50. Clean up data Build a preference centre Send targeted emails Lifecycle programs Encourage social sharing Be consistent with personality and value reminder The Solution
51. Data Cleansing Remove undeliverable email addresses Consider new approaches for inactive subscribers Reward engaged subscribers with unique programs and offers
52. Data Cleansing- bmibaby Removed data that was over 1 year old Reactivation and invigoration campaign Over time refined list to a group of active recipients
53. Preference Centres Move from marketer-centric to customer-centric approach What do subscribers want? Ask them Fine line between enough choices and too many
62. Social Sharing Changed the way people interact Shifted relationship between companies and customers Tool for gathering product information Increase in reach of over 24 percent through social sharing
64. Rise Above the Noise 35 percent of email subscribers open messages because of what’s in the subject line Including company/brand name in subject line can result in over 30% more opened emails (a 7 point jump in open rates!) Silverpop has found that only about half of marketers follow this best practice
65. Be Yourself, Baby It’s good to have you on board, baby The offer has landed, baby bmibaby sale: Up to 40% off Every Route, Every Flight
66. An above-average 35 percent newsletter open rate 50 percent increase in social sharing Strong commercial results and high ROI The Results
67. Email remains a core digital tool for connecting with customers and driving ROI Email that’s targeted, relevant and timely uniquely engages customers Test subject line branding and personalisation Use social media links, opt-out alternatives and sales or discount incentives Remain respectful but attentive Remember
68. Thank you! Will Schnabel Email: wschnabel@silverpop.com Twitter: @wschnabel Marie-Clare Dixon Email: marie-clare.dixon@bmibaby.com Find me on LinkedIn
Editor's Notes
£38B spent online in the UK in 2009£1,102 per shopper10% of all UK retail sales now online, and growing
You’re unwinding after a long day of work, watching your favorite TV show, surfing your favorite Web site or listening to your favorite radio station. But just as you’re settling into a state of relaxation, you’re interrupted by a marketing message that’s thrust upon you. You’re mildly annoyed, but since you’re used to being bombarded by messages through every avenue imaginable, you quickly just tune out the distraction.This scenario plays out millions of times a day around the globe (exposing people to more than 3,000 advertising messages each day by 2014 according to Forrester) as businesses remain rooted in the same advertising tactics they’ve employed for the last 50 years. But with the rise of the Internet, is shouting messages as loudly as possible to as many people as possible the best strategy for reaching consumers?
Total daily email volume has stabilized45-54 year olds get the most email; younger demos get the least
The answer is no. A new age in marketing has arrived, one in which consumers are more informed than ever and are increasingly taking brands into their own hands, seeking out relationships—knowledge-based, product-based and community-based—with the companies they choose to do business with.Basically, marketers have lost control.Customers now assert more control over the brand and fully expect companies to participate in dialogues with them.
And those dialogues must be highly relevant. In fact, relevancy is key to success. According to MarketingSherpa, lack of relevancy is the No. 1 reason people unsubscribe from email marketing programs. So, clearly marketers are focused on making sure their emails are welcomed, anticipated and even helpful to their recipients. In fact, a recent Silverpop survey found that 20% of the email marketers who responded felt "providing timely and relevant content" as a challenge they would face in 2010.
Integrating Web analytics data with emailA mix of segmentation/relevancy targeting tactics (preferences, lifecycle, anniversary...). Combining social attributes with email targeting (advocates as a segment, product reviews...)
The good news is, there are tried and true strategies that can help you move the needle.
Start by listening. Today, the goal is to create relationships that benefit customers as much or more than the marketers themselves. So, we have to listen as often as we speak in order to understand individuals—not just audiences—and work to achieve anticipation instead of interruption. Marketers should no longer be the sole voice in building brands but instead should become the ambassadors to consumer and business communities that build brands alongside them.To do so, you’ll need to seek out consumer feedback. By giving audiences the chance to respond to and interact with your company, you’ll build brand loyalty and empower your organization to monitor and be a part of the thousands of brand conversations taking place online.
As you listen, remember that with the wealth of today’s user-generated content, buyers can find out everything they want to know about a brand and the company behind it, and they don’t necessarily need your Web site or product brochure to get the information they need. As such, they will be indifferent to the businesses and brands that are indifferent to them. Creative content is as important as ever, but that alone is no longer be enough. Marketers will need to be able to effortlessly reach into and participate with a rapidly emerging set of channels and mediums. With the permission of their customers, marketers must absorb a nearly infinite array of data points on preferences, behaviors, purchases, postings and dialogues. Most daunting of all, marketers will need to analyze and act on all this data with a sophistication and scale that has no precedent in marketing or any other business endeavor before it. As this new world evolves, you can’t afford to risk customers tuning out your messages by sending them to the bulk folder, skipping over your commercials on their digital recorders, and using Internet browser settings to block pop-ups and cookies. You must nurture an interactive relationship in which customers and prospects expect and look forward to receiving messages from you, you can avoid having to interrupt the activities they enjoy, helping ensure that they stay engaged—and tuned in—to your messages.
Basically, you need to focus not on simply communicating with your audience, but engaging them. And this is different from targeting. Targeting is a one-way conversation in which you send messages you believe the customer will find relevant. Engagement marketing is a two-way interaction in which you ask customers to participate in the dialogue, therefore assuring that these customers are waiting to hear from you. Although targeted marketing is an essential part of any savvy marketing plan, it’s no longer enough. As customers gain more control over the brand, it’s imperative to engage them too.
Ultimately, the goal of engagement marketing is to create relationships that benefit both customers and organizations. In a survey of 1,300 marketers, 38 percent said the value of engagement marketing is that it increases customer lifetime value. But nearly the same percentage (34 percent) said it is about increasing the value the company delivers to the customer. In fact, it is both.
Embracing a marketing philosophy that enables you to connect deeply with customers is a smart way to build brand loyalty and weather the current economic storm. And when the economy eventually rebounds, the benefits of engagement marketing will put you in a position of strength compared to your competitors. While studies find that marketers recognise the importance of customer engagement, the December 2008 “Online Customer Engagement Report” from Econsultancy found thatfewer than half of organisations actually have put a defined customer engagement strategy into place.1 How to go about establishing a deeper and more beneficial relationship with customers and prospects eludes most organisations.So, let’s talk about how we do this.
A preference centre gives customers the opportunity to pick and choose from a set of messaging options. Let customers shape their marketing by deciding what types of content they want to receive, such as newsletters, sales notices or birthday promotions, and in what channels, for example email, RSS or mobile. And, make it easy for them to change their subscriptions or update their information by offering a link to your preference center in your messages and on your Web site.
Unfortunately, less than half of the reviewed U.K. retailers (46 percent) are starting their subscriber relationships by asking for information about each recipient’s specific interests, making relevancy largely a guessing game. Still, these companies are doing a better job than their North American counterparts, where only a third of the Top 500 retailers ask new subscribers for their preferences.
But, unfortunately, too many retailers may be experiencing shrinking lists unnecessarily. Just more than a quarter of the U.K. companies reviewed connected their unsubscribe link to a preference center, compared to 40 percent of the Top 500 retailers who did.
What’s the best time to send customers email? For years marketers have agonized over this question. Different preferences among users complicated the situation, a fact highlighted by research that indicated that 34 percent of U.S. Internet users check their email “throughout the day,” while 23 percent prefer to read their messages “as soon as they wake up,” and others indicated email was top of mind right when getting home from work, during lunch and right before bed, according to AOL/Beta Research Corporation study Now, a new technology called Send Time Optimization can analyze recipient behavior on a rolling basis to predict the ideal email delivery time for each address on your mailing list. The system then individually delivers messages to recipients at the precise day and time they’re most likely to be in their inboxes. By decreasing the chance that an email gets buried in the inbox, open, click-through and conversion rates increase.
Today, marketing budgets are scrutinized more closely than ever, leading many marketers to shift more funds toward email due to its effectiveness and high ROI. But it’s important for marketers to remember that simply turning up the volume on their email program doesn’t directly correlate to better results. In fact, it can be disastrous if the messages aren’t welcomed. At the same time, however, if you don’t remain top of mind, consumers may have already forgotten about you by the time they are ready to make a purchase. Apparently U.K. retailers believe less is more when it comes to email frequency. Eighty-percent of those evaluated distributed at least one message during the review period, and most sent exactly one. None sent more than 14 messages within the 30-day window. In North America, the majority of the Top 500 sent between 5-10 emails and 3 percent distributed 30 or more. In 30 days! Not a good practice unless you have something really, really important to say each and every day of the month.
Hundreds of millions of people actively connect on social networking Web sites every day. The reason is simple: people want to know what their friends are saying. Social email marketing is a way for marketers to join this conversation. By placing links to popular social networks inside your email message you can encourage subscribers to share the message with friends. The message can then be viewed, clicked and re-shared by friends, then shared again by friends of friends. With the right analytics and reporting tools, you’ll gain the ability to understand your most avid brand advocates—who they are, what motivates them and how they differ from the rest of your customers. Armed with that knowledge, you can deliver the content they love and are most likely to repost.
Viral marketing with share to social
Developing an effective subject line is more art than science, but studies have shown that including the recipient’s name can increase open rates. While U.K. retailers are using this tactic more often than the Top 500, neither group makes it a common practice. Only 11 percent of the U.K. retailers sent messages with personalised subject lines into their campaigns compared to just 4 percent of Top 500 retailers that did. One thing they both need to remember is that no personalisation is better than incorrect personalisation. So, if you plan to do this, make sure your data collection process is reliable.
Monitoring more sophisticated metrics helps you quantify the performance of your marketing initiatives. Armed with this data, you can act on your insights and make adjustments to your strategy as needed. Yet 59 percent of email marketers only use basic metrics such as opens and click-through rates (according to Forrester) failing to properly measure engagement and missing an opportunity to improve their understanding of customers and prospects, tighten the efficiency of their marketing programs and be better able to defend their budgets and emails’ worth. To avoid drowning in a statistical deluge, don’t try to evaluate every possible data point. Select a measurement you believe would have an impact on your program and focus on that. But don’t make your focus too narrow, relying on the measurement equivalent of a snapshot. Instead, develop a more holistic view of results, observing how metrics trend over time, the implications of anomalies and outliers, and what changes can be made to improve results and increase satisfaction and ROI. Rather than focusing solely on open and click rates, monitor an email’s effective rate—the percentage of people who click after opening—to gain a better measure of your message’s relevance. This is a powerful metric for gauging the success of retention and loyalty-based campaigns. High effective rates indicate that your message content was relevant to those who open the message. Conversely, low effective rates mean your content isn’t sufficiently targeted to recipients willing to take the time to glance through your messages. Conversion rate is obviously an important metric. If you find your conversion rates are lagging, make the call to action clearer and more prominent; design attractive, focused landing pages that match your brand and email campaign; and make the process easy by prepopulating forms with the person’s information when possible. Savvy marketers realize that you can only achieve solid improvements on campaign elements that you actually take the time to measure. If you’re not measuring campaign performance, you’re missing out on key insights that can create happier customers, improve results and prove your marketing team’s value.
Average CTRs are all in a close range of low to high 4% - small differences between country performance is not significant.Two key findings are:Top quartile performers achieve CTRs of roughly25% higher than the average And about 300% and greater over Bottom Quartile performersSo while a 1 percentage point difference between average and Top Quartile CTRs may not sound like much, in clicks from a 100,000 delivered emails = 4,000 versus 5,000 clicks.At 10% conversion rate and average of 75 Euro, the difference is:30,000 Euro versus37,500 Euro
Sometimes a better metric...takes out the other issues with open problem
bmibaby is a British low-cost airline and part of the bmi group. Marie-claire: Online Brand Manager
MC: Launched in 2002, bmibaby flies from four U.K. bases to 31 European destinations. Tiny is our spokesbaby who embodies the brand’s character: cute, charming, friendly, cheeky and playful.We like to concentrate on how great it is to fly, to go on holiday and to see new places.
MC:Several years ago, we were using an in-house email solution to send blanket messages to our subscriber base. The system required significant IT involvement, which made it an onerous process to send emails. Meanwhile, there were unexplained deliverability issues that needed to be addressed, prompting us to begin a search for a commercial email solution to help it with these challenges. Ultimately, were were looking for a more advanced email solution that would make our marketing team increasingly self-reliant and provide us with features to send out more targeted, relevant emails. In short, we realised we would need to become more sophisticated with our email marketing to remain at the forefront in successfully delivering from this media channel and remain competitive with other low-cost U.K. airlines.
MC:After a competitive selection process, bmibaby chose Silverpop Engage due to the strength of its features and Silverpop’s credibility in the email service provider space. We are no longer dependent on and engaged in time-consuming, back-and-forth discussions with IT. We can now completely rely on our marketing team to build and send emails. This allows us to focus more on our email tactics and planning and take on larger, more strategic endeavors. In short we have more controlWe began the new program by cleansing our database of inactive subscribers. This was we can ensure that we are communicating with our most engaged customers while also improving deliverability.We also built a preference center. Based on recipients’ preferences about their preferred departure airports and destinations, we can send targeted emails that are highly relevant. By adding a social sharing feature to our emails we can extend our reach via multiple social networksWe also now make a conscious effort to always remind recipients of our value proposition. For example, we are careful to drive home bmibaby’s unique advantages through a “Why fly bmibaby?” checklist that’s consistently included in the majority of our email communications
WS:A good way to start any new email program is by examining your list. It won’t matter what you are saying if your messages never make it into inboxes, and treating each recipient the same will also be unsuccessful. A thorough data cleansing process allows you to make sure you messages are received and that they are relevant to each and every user based on his/her activity level and engagement level.
MC:Understanding the data and the levels of activity were key. Our target was a data set that was receptive to our brand communicationsWe started by focusing on data that was under a year old. Anything older was cut out.Undeliverable, spam and old email addresses were deleted from the list. Early emails were designed to reinvigorate the list with new creative and strong messaging designed to make recipients sit up and take notice. After this period of reactivation we concentrated on recipients who had been active within a rolling 6 month period assured of a minimal level of activity.
WS:A solid preference center allows you to personalize communications for the specific needs of your customers. Using preferences as a key component of your e-mail campaigns will move your e-mail program from the old, marketer-centric system to the more effective customer-centric approach, yielding greater results over the long term. The preference page should consist of two components: administrative and content options. On the administrative side, marketers often include: A clear and easy way to unsubscribe (or subscribe) from all mailings; Password change (if appropriate) ;E-mail change of address. On the content side, you need to figure out how much control you can give recipients without offering an unmanageable number of preferences. The No. 1 mistake marketers make is providing too many content choices on the preference page. If you include more than eight to 12 options, you might bewilder your customers and drive them to just opt-out of everything by default.When you list your message choices, be sure to include a description of each option and, wherever possible, a link to an example of the type of e-mail the customer could expect to receive. You should also include a box that "selects all" and "unselects all" so the customer won't have to manually click a bunch of boxes. Anything that makes the experience easier for the user, the better.Options PreferredAnother benefit of the preference page is the ability to catch customers before they opt themselves out of all communications. By driving a customer to a preference page to opt-out of communications, you provide an additional opportunity to remind or inform a customer of all your communication offerings. In a world without preferences, the only option for recipients is to opt out of all communications, resulting in an unfortunate end-of-the-line for your e-mail relationship.Preferences bring individual choice back to e-mail communications. They make the customer an equal partner in the transaction with a stake and an interest in the outcome. When the customer is involved in the communications, the messages become more relevant and the sender's brand value soars.
WS:Transactional emails are those which companies send to customers to confirm a purchase, notify of shipping dates, deliver warranty information, etc. While commercial emails are increasingly ignored or considered spam, according to an eMarketer report, recipients say transactional messages are the type most worth reading. And six out of 10 consumers state they don’t mind receiving marketing messages included within transactional emails. Yet far too many marketers fail to exercise control over this powerful channel, ignoring the revenue-generating potential of improved branding, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities afforded by this communications channel.
WS:Unsophisticated email campaigns treat all people the same, regardless of their interest level and lifecycle stage. But to strongly engage customers and generate improved return on investment, you need personalized messaging that targets specific segments within your customer base, thereby communicating with them more effectively than just blasting everyone with the same message. Despite the advantages of lifecycle marketing, many marketers are confused about where to begin and are concerned about the additional work required to implement a one-to-one strategy. If you’re not sure how to get started, try splitting your list into three simple groups, each with unique goals that align with the customers’ mindsets for each lifecycle stage. • New Customers—email recipients who have expressed some desire for communication • Unique goals: moving them to opt in to receive regular messages from you, visit your Web site, make an online purchase or visit a retail location • Ideal messaging for achieving these goals: educational campaigns, welcome messages, promotions for first purchase • Engaged Customers—consumers who are actively involved with the brand and expect to receive communications and, potentially, promotions from you • Unique goals: maintaining or increasing purchase levels, strengthening loyalty, encouraging recommendations to friends, and the delivery of efficient customer service • Ideal messaging for achieving these goals: renewal notices, transactional emails with upsell or cross-sell offers, special promotions for top customers • Lapsed Customers—people who have stopped opening and clicking your emails or who no longer make purchases • Unique goals: gaining an understanding of their concerns, attempting to re-engage them with the brand, and preventing them from switching allegiance to another company • Ideal messaging for achieving these goals: surveys that identify reason for lack of engagement, incentives to revisit the Web site, promotions to encourage purchases As with many elements of sophisticated email marketing programs, the key to lifecycle marketing is getting started. The more you deliver relevant, targeted messages to prospects and customers, the better your results will be.
WS:Social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have changed the way people interact with friends. And they’ve also shifted the relationship between companies and their customers. With four out of 10 social network participants using these sites to gather product information and recommendations (according to Jupiter) savvy engagement marketers use this new medium to connect more strongly with customers. Much like successful email marketing requires more effort than blasting away at your customer list, getting your recipients to share your emails on social sites requires more effort than just dropping icons into your message template. For starters, you’ll need to educate your readers about how and why they should share your content. Feature your social-sharing option in your welcome messages. Devote prime space in your regular mailings to highlight the location and use of your sharing icons or links. As with other aspects of email marketing, testing is key. That’s because while some of the best practices of email marketing still work when encouraging recipients to post messages on social sites, there are differences and nuances in what generates the highest results. Since the social medium is still so new, the various best practices are still emerging and have yet to be agreed upon. So experiment with the placement of social network links in your messages (top, middle or bottom), what social networks you link to and how many social network links you include in your messages. If you want your content to go viral, you’ll have to make sharing worth the effort. Give customers a good reason to share your promotional emails with their friends. Turn them into a powerful extension of your acquisition and awareness efforts, helping you to reach highly qualified prospective customers who share the same interests as your brand’s most engaged email recipients. Done correctly, social sharing is well worth the effort— Silverpop research estimates that a posted email message has an average increase in reach of 24.3 percent.4
MC:We employ social sharing in all of our communications as standard thanks to the really positive results we’ve seen.It puts the power back in the hands of the recipient and helps them to share what’s relevant to them through their favoured networks.It affords us the opportunity to connect beyond just your immediate database.
WS:JupiterResearch found that 35 percent of email subscribers open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line.And Silverpop found in its study of hundreds of email subject lines that most marketers wisely include the company name and/or brand. More than half (55 percent) of B2B marketers included the brand and/or company name in the subject line compared to 46 percent of B2C marketers, who are slightly more likely to include product names in subject lines. Both B2B and B2C email campaigns that included the brand or company name in the subject line had significantly higher open rates. B2B emails had an average open rate of 32 percent compared to just 20 percent for messages without branding in the subject line. B2C emails with the brand or company name in the subject line enjoyed open rates of 29 percent on average, compared to 22 percent without branding. The difference in open rates is substantial. For B2B companies, the 12 percentage point increase translates to 60 percent more opens. For B2C companies, the 7 percentage point jump averaged 32 percent more opens when branding was included in the subject line. So for example, if a B2C company sent out 50,000 messages with an open rate of 20 percent, 10,000 emails would be opened. Bumping that rate up to 32 percent with the addition of branding in the subject line increases the opens to 16,000.
MC:bmibaby rises above inbox clutter with unique and witty subject lines, in line with the brand and also constantly reminding recipients of its value propositionThe subject line might be very limited space wise but it’s really key to the open rate success and deserves some focus.The secret is to test and keep testing subject lines, formats and offers to find out what works best.For bmibaby we have found that including the brand does in fact have a positive effect.
MC:One of the top benefits for bmibaby has been its ability to analyse the results of our email campaigns and make decisions based upon this information. With our previous solution, we didn’t have the ability to analyse the impact of our emails through detailed reporting and analytics now we can be more strategic and better understand how to optimise our email programme.In addition, we have had great success in broadening the reach of our messages by giving recipients the ability to easily share their messages to their favorite social networks. In fact, we’ve seen a 50 percent increase in social sharing over last year and are very pleased with those results. Today, bmibaby is able to better deliver relevant content to our subscribers. The result is a strong connection with customers, as evidenced by an above-average 35 percent open rate on our newsletters, 59 percent higher than the open rate typically experienced by U.K. marketers as indicated by Silverpop’s recent international email benchmark study. And we continue to optimise our email programme as we look for new opportunities to engage with customers in a personal manner.