40 Email Marketing Strategies bt shop.org

1. Dear Online Retail Executive,
Thank you for downloading Shop.org’s 40 Email Marketing Strategies presentation.
It is our pleasure to provide you with your complimentary copy of this presentation
from a panel discussion at Shop.org’s Best Practices in Online Marketing workshop.
We trust that you will find it to be an invaluable source of information and insights
about email marketing strategies for Internet and multichannel retailers.
A division of the National Retail Federation, Shop.org is a forum for online retail
executives to share information, knowledge and lessons-learned. Interactive
executives from nearly 500 leading Internet and multichannel retail companies
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2. 40 Email Marketing Strategies
As presented at the Shop.org
Best Practices in Online Marketing workshop

3. Presenters
• Jason Sutherland
Online Managing Editor, REI
– quot;Top 10 Email Strategies for Driving Traffic to Stores“
• Lisa Dyson
Director of Internet Marketing/Merchandising, Lands' End
– quot;Top 10 Ways to Keep Email Marketing Relevant and Fresh
• Scott Key
Vice President, Marketing, Gap Inc. Direct
– quot;Top 10 Ways to Use Innovative Promotions to Increase
Response“
• Andy Sernovitz
CEO, GasPedal
– quot;Top 10 Email Practices that Lose a Customersquot;

4. Top 10 Strategies for Driving
Traffic from E-mail to In-store
• Jason Sutherland
– Online Managing Editor, REI

5. 10. Don’t assume your customers
know you have stores.
• Customers may only know you from your
online presence, and may not even be aware
you have retail stores.
• Tell them why your stores are great.

6. 9. Use every e-mail contact to
reinforce your store message.
• Don’t limit your store messaging to your
traditional marketing e-mails. There are
numerous order follow-up e-mails where
there’s a perfect place to mention an in-store
feature or service.
• Don’t forget that many in-store customer
service features are ripe for e-mail mention,
such as returns. As long as they’re truly cross
channel, that is.

7. 8. Make sure you’re e-mailing
the right people.
• Or rather, make sure that you haven’t stopped
sending to the right people.
• Before you take somebody off your e-mail lists
because they aren’t spending, cross check
them against in-store sales.

8. 7. Kick the measurement habit.
• With e-mail, it’s easy to get used to knowing a
lot about customer behavior.
• In understanding the hand-off from e-mail to
the stores, get ready to know only a little.
• Set up some good tests, but also be prepared
to take some risks.

9. 6. Make it easy for e-mail
customers to find your stores.
• Put online store finders with mapping
technology and great directions wherever
customers might need them on the site.
• Also consider product pages where items are
either unavailable online or expensive to ship
and going to a store might be good for the
customer.
• Make sure it’s scalable, accurate, and
customizable system.

10. 5. Localize your e-mail content.
• E-mails are a great vehicle for store-specific
events, clinics, speakers and product demos.
• Even if the local content exists within a larger
national shell, it’ll flavor the whole piece and
make it more relevant for customers.

11. 3. Store Pickup/Ship to Store.
• Ship to store is an excellent training ground
for teaching customers how to blur the lines
between online and retail, and it cements the
connection between online and retail stores.
• If that wasn’t enough, it’s proven to be a great
driver of additional sales.

12. 3. Have great stores with
excellent service.
• Think about it: You’ve made the online experience all it
can be. Your customers love it, and they trust you to be
good to them. Then you send them into a store… Will it
be a good experience? Will the salespeople be nice? Will
the customers find what they need?
• Make sure your stores deliver on the online experience
and promise.
• Be sure the salespeople know and use the online
programs such as ship to store, gift registry.

13. 2. Give your customers great
reasons to go to your stores.
• Be explicit in all your communications. It’s
always amazing what a nice discount can do
for a little cross channel love.
• Make shopping features such as gift registries
and other programs encourage and reward
cross channel behavior.
• Highlight store-unique services such as
repairs, fitting and custom work.

14. And the #1 Strategy for
Successfully Driving Traffic from
E-mail to In-store…

15. 1. Make sure your organization is ready
to send traffic from e-mail to retail.
• In order to successfully and smoothly send traffic from
one channel to another, a company needs to be ready
and committed on many levels.
• Financial and structural organization, bonus structures,
incentives, and top-down messaging all need to support
this approach.
• With a true multi-channel approach, things get complex
quickly. It’s essential to have cross divisional support in
order to do it right.

16. Top 10 Ways to Keep Email
Marketing Relevant and Fresh
• Lisa Dyson
– Director, Internet Marketing and Merchandising,
Lands’ End

17. 10. Balance product features
with engaging editorials
• Create reasons to keep opening over time
• Stories reinforce your brand values

18. 10. Balance product features with engaging editorials
©2004
Lands' End Inc

19. 9. Allow your customers to
define their own subscriptions
• Content
• Frequency

20. 9. Allow your customers to define their own subscriptions
©2004
Lands' End Inc

21. 8. Use intriguing subject lines
• Never deceptive
• But need to open to understand fully

22. 8. Use intriguing subject lines
©2004
Lands' End Inc

23. 8. Use intriguing subject lines
©2004
Lands' End Inc

24. 7. Be passionate to evoke emotion
• About your products
• About your community
• About your brand values

25. 7. Be passionate to evoke emotion
©2004
Lands' End Inc

26. 7. Be passionate to evoke emotion
©2004
Lands' End Inc

27. 6. Write in a consistent,
personal voice
• Real human being -- down to earth
• We deal with the same challenges as
you

28. 6. Write in a consistent, personal voice
©2004
Lands' End Inc

29. 5. Make it fun
• Unusual and interesting
• Gentle humor, light hearted style

30. 5. Make it fun
©2004
Lands' End Inc

31. 5. Make it fun
©2004
Lands' End Inc

32. 4. Provide extra value for subscribing
• First news of overstock savings
• Exclusive chances to win

33. 4. Provide extra value for subscribing
©2004
Lands' End Inc

34. 4. Provide extra value for subscribing
©2004
Lands' End Inc

35. 3. Solicit and use customer feedback
• Source of email stories
• Unbeatable insight

36. 3. Solicit and use customer feedback
©2004
Lands' End Inc

37. 3. Solicit and use customer feedback
©2004
Lands' End Inc

38. 3. Solicit and use customer feedback
©2004
Lands' End Inc

39. 2. Say “Thank you”
• …and nothing else sometimes
• Sincerity is the key

40. 2. Say “Thank you”
©2004
Lands' End Inc

41. 1. Use Top 10 Lists
• Checklists
• Gift lists

42. 1. Use Top 10 Lists
©2004
Lands' End Inc

43. 1. Use Top 10 Lists
©2004
Lands' End Inc

44. Top 10 Ways to Use Innovative
Promotions to Increase Response
• Scott Key
– Vice President, Marketing, Gap Inc. Direct

45. 1. needs assessment
maslow knew what he was talking about. consider the differing needs of
your customers before fulfilling them through promotion.

46. 2. pecking order
campaign response follows a
natural law – list, offer, product,
creative. consider each to
improve response.

47. 3. are you experienced
designing campaigns from a
“customer experience”
perspective lifts response.
1. have you selected a relevant
audience?
2. is the offer relevant, clear & easy
to use?
3. is the product well
merchandised?
4. does the creative treatment
support the campaign objectives?

48. 4. embrace your inner geek
evaluating promotional effectiveness is challenging. response modeling will
help guide customer management & promotion investment.

49. 5. godzilla is approaching the city
for certain segments, campaigns with a strong call to action outperform
those which allow apathy.

50. 6. good to the last drop
customers respond when reminded of an expiring offer.

51. 7. take two they’re small
offers for free “brand-building” items have high response rates.

52. 8. enough about me, what about us
feedback builds essential customer knowledge and done tastefully
encourages response.

53. 9. you should see a specialist
different brands own different equity. use
relevant co-branding to drive response.

54. 10. dating on the rebound
bounceback offers have a high response rate & encourage strong recency.

55. this one goes to 11 - summary
concepts
1. assess the needs & wants of your customers
2. understand the relative value of message elements
3. design to a customer experience
4. model customer behavior to better understand promotional response
tactics
5. have a strong call to action
6. start and end a promotion
7. use access &/or freebies
8. solicit customer feedback/qualitative data
9. leverage the equity of other brands
10. use bouncebacks
11. something you can really use

56. Top 10 Email Practices
that Lose a Customer
• Andy Sernovitz
– CEO, GasPedal - Email Marketing Strategy & Best Practices
212-741-8800
http://www.gaspedal.net

57. #10: Use a tricky opt-in
• Hide the check boxes. Hide the permission
request under tiny, tiny type. Write a 30-page
privacy policy with insane permission to
promote.
• Smarmy opt-ins will certainly grow your list
and might provide letter-of-the-law protection.
But you’ll destroy your customer list and scare
away new leads.

58. #9: Let everyone send email
• Why not let sales, marketing, customer
service, janitorial, secretarial, cafeterial, and
the rest of your staff blast away. It’s OK if
someone opts out from one department, just
send email from another.
• When a customer unsubscribes – take them
off every list.

59. #8: Ignore all feedback
• “You have lost a loyal customer,” “Stop
spamming me,” “I hate your company” – that
kind of talk gets old real quick. Delete and
move on. Or let the server delete it for you.
• Feedback from customers is a sign of bigger
problems. One angry email to you is matched
by one thousand customers reporting you as a
spammer to their ISP.

60. #7: Rent a list from a
dude you just met
• Some guy tells you that the list he’s renting
out is clean? He just happens to have 44
million people dying to get more email? Good
enough for me!
• Renting a list is risky business. More often
than not, brokers are spammers or scammers.
If, for some reason, you decide to rent – deal
only with well-known companies.

61. #6: Mail constantly
• There is no such thing as overmailing. Your customer
wants to hear from you every day. If they try and tell
you otherwise, they are just playing hard to get.
• Don’t ruin a customer relationship by mailing too
much. The most loyal customer will turn on you if you
flood their inbox. Unsubscribe rate don’t measure
customer anger. If you think you might be emailing
too much – you are.

62. #5: Sell out your subscribers
• Want to make a few thousand bucks. Let
anyone with a cheesy offer send email to your
entire list. What’s 10 million messages
between friends?
• When you rent your list, you lose. The mailer
gets all the sales, you get all the unsubscribes.
Treat your list like the valuable asset that it is,
and keep it for your own use.

63. #4: I have an extra
$200 million in Nigeria
• I GUARANTEE that this FREE advice will
ENLARGE returns on your financial
MORTGAGE. YOUNG, EAGER analysts are
waiting to talk to you. CP123 d12@ ad14.
• Spammers have taken away perfectly normal,
very effective direct marketing language. Get
a thesaurus or your email will be deleted or
filtered.

64. #3: Pay someone to spam
• Offer pay-per-click fees to anyone who wants
to send out your offers. Let them mail all day
long – it doesn’t cost you anything unless you
make a sale!
• Don’t ask/don’t tell doesn’t work in email. If
you pay for a spam list, you’re spamming.
Think about it: 10,000 clicks at a 0.5%
response rate = 1,990,000 annoyed former
leads.

65. #2: Screw up the
unsubscribe
• When someone wants off your list, continue to
email them for a few days. Even better –
make it nearly impossible to unsubscribe by
asking for passwords, shoe size, and their
mother’s maiden name.
• Unsubscribing has to be easy and
instantaneous. Sending just one unwanted
email makes you a spammer.

66. #1: Use the “spouse test”
• Want to know if an email tactic is safe or sleazy?
Ask your spouse.
• If you’re having trouble justifying it, it’s trouble.
• If you’re sleeping on the couch, don’t even try it.