Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

User Manual:

Open the PDF directly: View PDF .
Page Count: 32

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing

Guide

A best practices brieng for high email volume

businesses to take their email marketing to the

next level

Author: Kath Pay

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Advanced Lifecycle Email

Marketing Guide

A best practices brieng for high email

volume businesses to take their email

marketing to the next level

Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................. 1

Why an Advanced Email Marketing guide ............................................................................1

Who is this guide for? ...........................................................................................................1

What does the guide include? ............................................................................................... 1

About the Author ...................................................................................................................2

About Smart Insights ............................................................................................................2

ONE. Lifecycle Marketing ...................................................................... 4

What is lifecycle marketing....................................................................................................4

How to audit your approach with relevant KPIs ....................................................................6

Best practices for building a successful lifecycle marketing programme ............................ 13

Testing and optimisation .....................................................................................................19

TWO. Segmentation and Targeting ..................................................... 22

Four segmenting options for maximum personalisation......................................................23

Best practices in segmenting and targeting ........................................................................24

Success factors for implementation ....................................................................................26

How to optimise for better segmenting and targeting..........................................................26

THREE. Optimising Frequency ........................................................... 27

Summing Up .......................................................................................................................31

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Introduction

Why an Advanced Email Marketing guide

A lot of best practices are shared on making email marketing more effective, for example,

how to improve email creative and copy. For larger brands, email marketing is a vital driver of

sales from prospects and customers, yet to improve results, more complex issues reviewing

email communications strategy need to be improved to get the biggest gains.

In this guide, Email Marketing Expert Kath Pay explains the key success factors that you

need to review in your email communications strategy focusing on advanced techniques

most relevant to transactional Ecommerce businesses and larger organisations in sectors like

Retail, Financial Services and Travel.

Who is this guide for?

This guide is aimed at managers responsible for growing online revenue by integrating

different communications channels in larger organisations or businesses that are already

fairly sophisticated in their email marketing.

This includes a range of managers involved in dening and implementing email

communications strategy including:

þEmail marketing programme managers

þMarketing Directors and managers

þDigital Marketing and Ecommerce Directors and managers

þCompany owners, CEOs and Financial Directors

þCTOs, CIOs and IT managers

It will also be of direct interest to those specically responsible for managing Email Marketing

in an organisation.

What does the guide include?

The guide covers the key strategic communications activities which are Targeting and

Communications from our Email Marketing Benchmarking template.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

It gives advice on planning, implementing, testing and optimising these three key activities:

1. Email value proposition. Auditing and selecting relevant broadcast (newsletter

and campaigns) and automated communications throughout the customer lifecycle

including Welcome sequences, customer on-boarding, repeat sale, engagement and

reactivation.

2. Targeting. Delivering relevance by improving segmentation and targeting customers

with different value including predictive analytics.

3. Frequency. Selecting the best frequency for different types of email depending on the

engagement and value of the subscriber.

About the Author

Kath Pay

Kath lives and breathes email marketing, she is not only a world renown

speaker and trainer but practices her art with her consultancy, Holistic Email

Marketing, where she is Founder and CEO. Many years ago she coined a

phrase, Holistic Email Marketing and not only practices this approach within

her consultancy, but also teaches it to her students and clients. She is one of

the World’s Top 50 Email Marketing Inuencers (Vocus, 2014).

Kath is well-known for her conversion-focused approach and is a huge fan of testing and

optimising. She introduced the principles of consumer psychology and behavioral science

into email more than ve years ago, and this, combined with conversion-centered design; are

applied throughout the customer journey within Kath’s holistic approach to email marketing.

She is recognised as one of the UK’s leading Email Marketers and heads up training for

Econsultancy in the UK on Personalisation and Email Marketing.

You connect with Kath or follow her insights on her LinkedIn page.

About Holistic Email Marketing

Spearheaded by Kath Pay, a recognised industry thought leader, our consultants are some

of the most experienced and successful email marketers in the industry, renown for their

passion and vision for relationship-driven, holistic marketing strategies.

We help companies, across all sectors and of all sizes to better achieve their email marketing

objectives. We equip them to think differently about email marketing and help them to

harness the strengths of email marketing in order to make it work harder.

About Smart Insights

Smart Insights provides actionable learning resources to help businesses improve their

digital marketing results. More than 125,000 Smart Insights Basic members use our blog,

sample marketing templates and weekly Digital Marketing Essentials newsletter to follow best

practices and keep up-to-date with the developments that matter in digital marketing.

Thousands of Pro, Expert members from over 80 countries use our planning and

management templates, guides and video courses to map, plan and manage their marketing

using the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

What is lifecycle marketing

What is it?

A marketing model that incorporates customer data into each email message that

recognises where each customer is in his/her personal lifecycle with your company and

brands.

Email is like clothing: One size does NOT t all.

The “batch and blast” model of email marketing – sending the same message out to all

customers regardless of their demographics, interests or history – is rapidly giving way to

lifecycle marketing, which brings you as close as you’ll get to two-way conversations with

your customers. The benet of this being that the happier the consumer is with your company

& products, the more likely they are to return and recommend you.

Lifecycle marketing integrates your ecommerce and email databases to generate highly

personalised messages to your customers. It’s a foundation for the “customer journey” sales

and marketing model that identies how customers move from prospecting and research

to rst and follow-up purchases, moving on to loyalty and post-loyalty (inactivity, loss to

competition, etc.)

Lifecycle marketing and the „holistic“ email marketing approach

Instead of focusing on pushing out one campaign after another, your email team looks at

your customer‘s entire customer journey with your company and its brands and optimises

messaging to align with various touch points along that journey.

Holistic email marketing is a much more comprehensive approach which widens the focus

away from email-only to consider all of the messaging sources, which includes:

þSearch via PPC and SEO

þOpt-in process with the aim of making it more prominent and friction-free

þLanding pages aligned more precisely with search results and email content

þRemarketing to reduce losses from browse and cart abandonment

Three ways lifecycle marketing leads to a stronger customer experience:

þRecognises customers as individuals: You’re marketing one way to prospects, another

way to those who have just made their rst purchases, and still other ways to both

long-term, high-value customers and those who have fallen off the radar.

þAligns with their point in the lifecycle: Lifecycle marketing is closely allied with the

marketing model that matches messaging to key points in the customer’s journey with

your company and its brands. These emails recognise where your your customers are in

their individual lifecycles.

Customers now not only expect this personal touch, but also appreciate it, which in turn

gives your emails greater value, making them more compelling to open.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

þDelivers greater value and results: Because these messages are intrinsically more

valuable, your subscribers are more likely to open and act on them, thus driving greater

results for your email marketing messages no matter whether you measure results by

sales or some other key performance indicator (registrations, opens, clicks, downloads,

video views, etc.).

Lifecycle marketing incorporates but doesn’t center on broadcast email. At its highest

level, lifecycle email marketing is as close to a 1:1 experience as you can get without

personally creating each message yourself.

Broadcast email – a uniform message sent with minimal or no personalisation – moves from

center stage to a supporting role in your email programme.

Many lifecycle email messages use standard templates personalised by a customer’s data

(think welcome or abandonment-reminder emails). This drives an additional benet: You

spend less time creating day-to-day email campaigns and more time focusing on strategy

and other factors that will improve your email programme.

This marketing model adds strategically chosen broadcast messages into a dynamic

message matrix that reects each customer’s interests, past purchase/browsing and

other activity on your website, plus individual personalisation data points such as loyalty

programme status, location, preferred locations and brands, etc.

Best Practice Tip 1 Action identify gaps in your lifecycle marketing

Using the visual on marketing below, I encourage you to take some time to list opportunities

where lifecycle marketing could help you reach out to customers that your current email

programme doesn’t permit.

Source: Holistic Email Marketing

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

How to audit your approach with relevant KPIs

A lifecycle marketing programme requires strategic, long-term planning, not just moving from

one campaign to another as the calendar or the ofce workow dictates.

Dene your overall email-marketing objective and then choose the most relevant key

performance indicators that will capture and communicate your results.

Below are the ve basic stages of a lifecycle marketing programme for ecommerce, and a

chart listing the relevant objectives, tactics and KPIs for each stage:

Acquisition

What is it? Email acquisition

The process of acquiring new email subscribers from various sources, with the

highest-value subscribers being those who opt in to your email programme.

Securing the email address even if the customer hasn’t purchased yet is the key objective

here because the email address, obtained with permission, is the building block for every

email programme in a sustainable lifecycle marketing programme.

Suggested programmes:

þAccount/newsletter registrations using forms on your website

þOverlays (“pop-overs”) shown temporarily to browse abandoners on your website

þBasket Recovery Programme uses an overlay which appears when they’ve added an

item to the basket but are about to leave. The overlay offers to send the basket items to

the abandoner’s email address – permission to market is gained.

þAn opt-in invitation and form placed prominently on every page of your website

þCheckboxes authorising opt-ins included in transactional emails (order or download con-

rmations)

þSocial media campaigns promoting email content and opt-in

þMobile app campaigns within the app itself

Recommended resource Growing Your email list

This online learning topic explains list growth options in more detail.

This Basket Reminder example for Bathrooms.com shows a simple but effective way of not

only capturing permission but also of converting to the rst sale.

One of cloud.IQ’s clients gained the following results from their Basket Reminder campaign:

þ4.22% of those presented the overlay asking for their email address, provided it

þOf those who provided their email, 53.19% clicked through the email to their basket

þOf those who clicked through to the cart, 46.98% purchased.

þThe AOV of purchase was 71.49% higher than the basket value (i.e. when they

abandoned).

þThe uplift of this campaign against the total of sales for this period was 3.13%.

þThe ROI was 11,387%!

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Source: cloud.IQ

What is it? Prospect

Email subscribers who have signed up for your email or have registered for an account, but

have not made their rst purchases yet.

Suggested programme:

þWelcome Subscriber/1st Purchase programme using a set of triggered emails sent

over a dened time period to welcome your new subscribers, manage their expectations

and move them swiftly back to your website to make their rst purchase.

This example of a 1st Purchase Programme/Welcome Subscriber email from Feel Unique

ticks all the boxes. It’s welcoming and makes you feel special, whilst at the same time, it’s

intention it to drive you back to the website to make a purchase.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

What is it? Email conversion outcome

In email marketing terms, what your customer or subscriber does in response to your offer

or call to action.

We often think of conversions as purchases, but they also can include opening or upgrading

an account, joining a loyalty programme, downloading white papers and user guides, viewing

videos, signing up for a webinar or conference – the conversion happens whenever your

customers do what you ask them to do.

Suggested programmes:

þWelcome Customer/2nd Purchase programme intended to encourage the rst-time

buyer to make purchase again and again. Tactics that belong in this programme include

cross-selling, upselling, information-focused messaging, loyalty clubs and buyer-only

incentives.

The email below, again from Feel Unique, is a brilliant example of a well-constructed 2nd

Purchase Programme/Welcome Customer email.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

þBrowse/Cart abandonment reminders sent to subscribers who demonstrate interest but

leave without converting. Browsers who meet your criteria for number of pages viewed,

movement among pages and time spent either on site or on pages would receive a

browse reminder via email or be shown a pop-over with an opt-in invitation.

Shoppers who leave items in carts or break off processes such as video views or

downloads would receive a sequenced series of service-focused reminders encouraging

them to return and complete the processes.

Alternatively, you can offer to email the cart to your shopper, who might have launched

the transaction on a mobile phone or tablet but prefer to nish it in a less distracting or

more secure environment like a desktop in the privacy of a home or ofce.

As seen below, Woodhouse Clothing make the most of the abandonment touchpoint and

whilst they include the item that has been abandoned, they also provide some other rec-

ommendations.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

What is it? Email retention programme

Keeping the customer an active participant through repeat purchases and outreach

programs (loyalty club, frequent-buyer programme)

Suggested programmes:

þReplenishment reminders tied to normal product cycles sent to customers who

purchase consumables such as foods and beverages, cosmetics and skin care, pharma-

ceuticals, baby products, ofce and cleaning supplies and the like or to products nearing

the end of their expected lifespan such as shoes or electronics.

I love this email from Argos – it’s timely, valuable and very customer-service oriented – and

guess what? It generates revenue.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

þBack-in-stock notications sent to customers who browsed sold-out products and

requested email updates

þStatus/level reminders or other gamication emails that encourage customers to

purchase again or to compete to level up for more benets.

þLoyalty programmes such as Buyer-only offers or frequent-customer benets sent

via email to customers

þBirthday/Anniversary emails – celebrating a special day with a special offer.

Modcloth leverage the information they have – they know when you initially signed up to hear

from them and use it as a great excuse to send valuable offers – on both the 6 month and the

1 year anniversary dates.

What is it? Win-back campaigns

Campaigns targeted toward lapsed subscribers or inactive customers with valid email

addresses who have not acted on email or converted within a set period.

Suggested programmes:

þLapsing programme – a subtle but effective programme that’s triggered when someone

used to buy but no longer does.

þReminders about customer or membership benets or announcements about new

programs.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

þService-focused messaging asking about problems

þInstructions on changing subscriber or customers preferences or opting out in order to

update a customer record

þLapsed programme containing “We miss you” offers that entice customers back to

the website, often with a basic incentive such as free shipping, a discount or special

purchase.

This was a very clever campaign – clever in its simplicity. They used the same offer and

creative to those who had previously been a Premium customer and to those who had

never converted to being a Premium customer. How they personalised it to make it relevant

for each of the lifecycle segments (conversion or win-back) was by using the subject line

appropriately.

Win-back Subject Line: Come back to Premium Kath

Strategy Recommendation 1 Audit your own messaging approach with this checklist

In the Priority column, add High, Medium or Low according to the Business Objectives

provided to you by your company. Then next to this, add the status of the programme –

such as Conception Stage, Creation Stage, Testing Stage, Implemented, Optimisation

Stage.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Best practices for building a successful lifecycle marketing

programme

These tips can help you keep your focus on aligning your email messages with the various

touch points that make up your customers’ journey with your company and its brands:

Determine the touch points that make up your customer journey.

The journey from prospecting to purchase to loyalty and beyond is seldom a straight path or

an orderly procession. Rather, it’s lled with twists and turns, hills and valleys and stops and

starts.

Those are all “touch points” on the journey, and each one can inspire a message that

will keep your customers moving forward. They answer questions, offer help, resolve

uncertainties, suggest alternatives, encourage return visits and guide your customers into

deeper, long-term attachments.

This is where lifecycle marketing, which is keyed to those points, can drive greater results

than just a steady diet of broadcast email.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Here is a list of 10 touch points on a typical ecommerce customer journey. Your mission is

to gure out the unique touch points on your own customers‘ journey with your company,

brand and products.

You‘ll surely end up with more than the ones listed below, but just about every journey

includes these points:

1. Search engine results page (organic or paid)

2. Landing page aligned with those search results

3. Email opt-in

4. Welcome/on-boarding programme following opt-in

5. Browsing on product or service pages

6. Movement to FAQ, user forum, help or customer-support pages

7. Abandoned cart following product selection

8. First purchase

9. Second and subsequent purchases

10. Customer-service contact post-purchase

Align your messaging with your touch points. (Plus pop quiz!)

Naturally, no two customers have the same journey, but you should know enough to be able

to develop a scenario that covers as many possibilities as you can think of.

Once you develop your list of touch points, you can start looking at ways to use email to

address issues that crop up at each of those points.

Now, we could just tell you which emails could go with which touch points, but that would

be too easy. Let’s get creative! Each of the emails below maps to a touch point listed above.

Just to make things interesting, you should know that not every touch point listed above has

an email component listed below, at least one touch point could have two messages, and at

least one email message could apply to two touch points!

Ready? Go!

A. Request to review a purchase, service or download

B. Notice containing product image, informational copy and a link to the product page

C. Invitation to join a loyalty programme or to upgrade a service

D. Follow-up transcript, links to FAQ page and quality-of-service survey

E. Reminder to complete a process, including product photos or activity descriptions and link

to checkout/download/registration page.

F. Conrmation and instructions for further action

G. New-subscriber guide

H. Message with links to live chat or customer-support contact information

You’ll nd the answer at the end of this section.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Keep it real (time)

Your customers’ attention is a prized commodity in short supply, and it gets shorter every

time a new channel pops up to distract their attention from the inbox. Moving to automated

messages that incorporate highly personalised data and launch in real or near-real time will

help you stay top of mind with customers whose activities – purchasing, repeat purchasing,

increasing order value, sharing content, etc. – are central to your business objectives.

Automated real-time messaging is the foundation of a growing movement toward “contextual

marketing,” which uses data points such as location, time, weather and social to add context

to a message. When the message also incorporates preferences and behaviour, it creates

a message that’s even more highly personalised and relevant than one which reects only

preferences and behaviour.

The example below from Anthropologie uses both location and social, with a map of your

nearest Anthropology shop based upon when you open the email as well as the latest live

tweets, which keeps the email fresh and up-to-date.

Source: Liveclicker

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Beyond general best practices, these success factors will increase your chances of creating

an engaging lifecycle marketing programme that drives real value both for your customers

and for your company.

Best Practice Tip 2 Name your programmes correctly

It sounds so easy, but having the proper name is your rst step toward success. Your

programme name should reect its objectives. Thus, precision is your goal. Here’s an

example:

“Welcome” or “First Purchase?” Yes, you want to welcome your new subscribers and

customers because it reminds them about the opt-in and tells them what to expect.

But “Welcome” is a vague term. Do you just mean to say hello? Or do you want to get your

subscribers back to your website to make that all-important rst purchase? Personally, I vote

for helping them buy something as fast as possible, because your newest customers are your

most enthusiastic.

So, a name like “1st Purchase Programme” describes your objectives precisely and dictates

your strategy and tactics for a better outcome.

Eddie Bauer’s Welcome Subscriber Programme is a perfect example of what a 1st Purchase

Programme aims to do – eductae, nurture and convert subscriber’s into becoming rst –time

customers.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Ensure Email strategy – not Email technology guides your decisions

Make no mistake. I love the innovation that today’s technology platforms have made possible

in email marketing. Nothing that I’ve discussed up to this point – the data integrations, the

personalisation, even lifecycle marketing itself – would happen without the miracles that

these highly evolved systems provide us daily.

The mistake that many email marketers make, however, is to let the technology lead the

process rather than a well-crafted strategy designed to achieve concrete business goals.

Too often, marketers work backwards, developing programmes that allow them to use their

fabulous new technology but aren’t married to their overarching business objectives.

This is a better protocol:

þBegin with a SMART objective (raising email revenue 20% in one scal year). (SMART

is Specic, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.)

þNext, craft a strategy to support it (creating an abandoned-cart recovery programme

to recover more potentially lost sales and a win-back programme to bring back lapsed

customers). Note – each objective will have multiple strategies to support it.

þThen, go to the technology platform to create tactics to implement the tactics that will

allow the marketing team to achieve the objective (setting up a sequenced series of three

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

reminder emails, each with unique content to answer questions, reduce uncertainty and

encourage action).

Here is an example process that you can go through to develop your email marketing

strategy – beginning with your SMART objective and working your way down. For simplicity

sake the chart below only contains one fully mapped out strategy. But it shows how you

can have multiple Lifecycle Strategies from an objective, multiple strategies from a Lifecycle

Strategy and multiple tactics from a Strategy.

Source: Holistic Email Marketing

Measure success with the right metrics

Email delivers a boatload of metrics: unique and total opens, unique and total clicks,

conversions, shares, engagement and disengagement.

With so much to measure, be sure that you choose the right metrics. Ask yourself these two

questions:

þDoes this metric tell me whether I achieved my programme objective? Yes, you

generated a terric open rate, and you even beat your click rate by 10 percentage points.

But, did you drive enough sales, downloads, upgrades or whatever your campaign

goal was? Don’t be fooled into just measuring the metrics which are easily accessible.

Sometimes these metrics (opens and clicks) can actually misguide you.

þ Will this metric matter to my boss? You have to wow them, but you can do it only with

the metrics that matter to them. They probably won’t do backips over your extremely

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

low unsubscribe rate (which, by the way, is about as meaningless a metric as we can

imagine).

þBut, a 10% increase in order value? Moving 20% of your basic-level customers into a

higher-margin spending bracket without costly incentives? Those metrics could translate

into a fatter budget or even a bigger salary.

Implement new programmes one at a time

Avoid the temptation to “boil the ocean” by trying to introduce too many innovations at once.

Focus on one programme, test and optimise it and be sure it’s performing and delivering

the expected results before you move on to the next challenge. Further more – try to take

learnings away from it to apply to your other programmes.

Plan your entire email-messaging programme to provide a wonderful customer experi-

ence from the start

Pull back from a deep focus on the individual parts of your email messaging programme –

the rst purchaser, the retention or the win-back – and assess how they work together to

keep your subscribers and customers engaged, interested and active but not overwhelmed or

annoyed.

Lifecycle messaging lets you increase your messaging frequency with less risk of pounding

your customers to death. But, it also means customers who hit multiple touch points quickly

could end up receiving more email than you intend, like a scheduled broadcast message, a

purchase or shipping conrmation, a segmented email based on that recent purchase and a

related upselling message. In most cases, the automated lifecycle message should always

take priority over the batch and blast email.

Implement Lifecycle Messaging within your regular campaigns

Yes, I know we’ve been talking a lot about Lifecycle and automated programmes, but you

can carry the same principle over to your regular campaigns by either segmenting or using

dynamic content. Check out the Segmentation section for more details.

Testing and optimisation

Why it’s important: We repeat: Email is not “one size ts all.”

Ongoing testing – A/B split tests or multivariate testing – will show you what works at different

touch points in the customer’s lifecycle.

Lifecycle-focused emails have many moving parts, each of which you should try out on test

audiences before you launch a full lifecycle programme. Tweaks here and there can pull in

several percentage points’ worth of gains, whether you’re trying to persuade more recipients

to open your emails, click on your call to action, redeem their carts or increase their order

values. As these automated Lifecycle programmes are ongoing, it means that testing these

programmes is all the more worthwhile.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

What to test: Look at testing these elements to nd which combinations drive the best

results:

• Subject line: Does clever beat straightforward, or vice versa? Test specic

(longer) versus generic (shorter) subject lines to see which drive the best results

on your KPIs: opens, clicks on the call to action, actual cart redemptions, etc. (See

suggestions in „How to Test,“ below.)

• Message copy: Try several versions of your introductory copy: shorter and to the

point or longer and explanatory? Does cross-selling, product recommendtions or

social proof move the needle?

• Call to action: Compare a button to a text line. Try different versions of button

copy: „Go to checkout“ versus „Go to cart,“ for example. Always align the call to

action with where they’re t in the buying cycle - a too-aggressive CTA could scare

off customers who are still researching and aren‘t ready to commit.

• Series and timing: For abandonment emails, test to see whether a timed set of

two or three emails instead of a single reminder prods more customers to come

back and either purchase an item or nish checking out, downloading, opening an

account, etc. Also, test to nd which intervals between emails are most effective at

driving action.

• Incentives: Many conversion experts caution that incentives train shoppers to wait

for the incentive before committing to the purchase. Testing whether omitting or

holding back incentives until the nal email drives more action.

How to test: We could write books about the right and wrong ways to test elements in your

lifecycle programme, but we’ll refrain and ask you instead to these three rules in mind:

1. Always develop a hypothesis, which is your guess about what the results might be, such

as “A clever subject line will lead to more conversions than a straightforward one” or “A longer

subject line will lead to more conversions than a shorter one.”

This will help you structure your testing plan more effectively, especially if you use A/B split

testing – the simplest tests to set up and run.

2. Be sure you’re using the most meaningful metrics. Look at the graph below that shows

two variables in an A/B split test of a subject line on a cart-recovery email:

Source: Whichtestwon

A. had a 10.5% lower open than B in the testing period (50/50 split test sent over four weeks

to cart abandoners). It was the loser, right? No. Although it drew fewer opens, it actually

increased total orders by 21% and revenue by 35%. Conversions trump opens!

3. Look beyond one-off test results: A one-time test shows you what worked once. A

longitudinal test, which you set up to run over a longer period of time, can give you more

reliable results which you can use on a permanent basis. Not only this, but you can also use

these results within your other marketing channels – such as website, PPS ads, Banner ads,

Social networks etc.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Testing is like email. The more you can automate it, the better your results will be over time.

Build testing into your programme from the very start, and your time, energy and resources

will be rewarded with in-depth knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, and that

knowledge can be tied directly to revenue.

The chart below shows us how if we create sound hypothesis’ that are looking to gain

insights from the tests, rather than just a one-off campaign uplift, we can also implement the

ndings into other marketing channels.

Source: Holistic Email Marketing

Answer to 10 Touchpoint quiz

[Answer key: 2-B, 3-F, 4-G, 5-B, 6-H, 7-E, 8-A/F, 9-C, 10-D]

As we noted, the touch point „First purchase“ can launch more than one message, and both

„Landing page“ and „Browsing“ could launch the same message. Did you spot those?

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

TWO.

Segmentation and Targeting

What it is: Targeting makes up the second essential foundation of advanced email marketing.

Like lifecycle marketing, it combines automation and customer data to identify the best

recipients in an email database for specic email messages and to provide the highest level

of personalisation in message content.

Targeted messages can be launched manually or triggered automatically whenever a

customer’s data matches your rules for a specic message.

See this online topic on Smart Insights on 6 Targeting options for email,“ for detailed

background about targeting in email, including six options for identifying prospective

recipients:

þProle data

þLifecycle

þResponse and purchase behaviour

þMultichannel behaviour

þPersonas

Key Steps in Setting Up a Targeting Programme

1 Review the two methods to target emails: Segmentation and dynamic content

Targeting based on segmentation involves dividing a database into relevant segments

based on specic characteristics and then creating a marketing strategy and specications to

target a mailing to that segment.

At its simplest, segmentation is essentially a more precise form of broadcast email. Although

each segment receives a different version of an email message, everyone in that specic

segment will receive the same message.

Segmentation can use a single data point, or a combination of data points, to identify the

recipients. It can be a manual process – for example, simply segmenting an email database

by age, location, gender or new-versus-longtime tenure on the list.

However, the more layers of data you can use to create your segments, the closer your

emails will approach 1:1 messaging. The more relevant your messages, the more valuable

they will be to your recipients and thus more likely to be seen in the inbox, opened and acted

on.

Targeting based on dynamic content makes segmentation more precise and thus more

useful, because it integrates email, website, ecommerce and other data to select recipients.

Here, you construct a basic email template but create a “container” in your messages where

you can switch in content that matches specic criteria.

You could, for example, add store locations and hours based on your recipient’s street

address. Or, you could provide message content that relates to customers who use similar

search terms or click on specic paid search links.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Data you can use to segment your database for targeting fall into three general categories:

þExplicit (expressed) data: This is information your customers give you when lling in a

form (account registration, requesting a product download or using a preference center),

such as name, age, location, gender, brand preferences, etc.

þImplicit (observed) data: These are the behaviour-based data trails your customers

leave behind: links clicked in emails or on paid or organic search results, website pages

browsed, products viewed, time on pages or next-previous page trafc, information

requests, customer support contacts, etc.

þTransactional data: This is data generated whenever your customers complete an action

with your company, such as a purchase (online or ofine when you can tie it to a specic

customer), download, payment, email subscription, etc. Even an abandoned transaction

(cart, download, account creation) can be a valuable data point for targeted messaging.

Although some marketers value implicit over explicit data, both are necessary to create the

most accurate targeting programmes. Why? Because your customers don’t always act in

their own interests.

Christmas shopping is a prime example. Your customers, especially your newest ones, are

more likely to shop for others, not for themselves. A customer who buys a man’s ski jacket

but lives in Spain might be a tourist planning ahead or a mother shopping for a ski-loving son

in Austria.

Continuing to send her cold-weather-related emails could turn her off, but giving her an

opportunity to express her own preferences or to indicate the purchase is a gift can help you

classify her more accurately and send her more relevant messages.

On the ip-side, only providing the customer with content and offers based upon their explicit

preference, may not result in sales, as the old saying goes “Actions speak louder than words”.

The ideal scenario is to layer both explicit and implicit data to achieve the most effective way

of personalisation.

Four segmenting options for maximum personalisation

The more data you gather on your customers – both explicit and implicit – the more exible,

varied and accurate your targeting programme will become. Everything your customers do or

tell you can become a data point for segmenting.

The four options below are general categories you can use to divide up your database and

create rules to set up and launch your targeted messages:

Customer personas

Personas help you put a face on your masses of data by envisioning the kind of people they

represent and creating email copy that would be most appealing to them.

A persona is a summary of the characteristics, needs/wants and platform preferences of a

specic group of customers. It includes gender, age, buying habits, lifestyles, personalities

and psychographics (attitudes, opinions and motivations).

Recommended resource Customer Persona Toolkit

See our Persona Toolkit for more guidance and examples of creating Personas.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Lifecycle

Who are your new customers, and which ones are about to lapse into inactivity? Segmenting

by where your customers are in their journeys with your product helps you target information

more accurately.

Customer lifetime value

CLV is your prediction of all of the value your company can expect to derive during your

relationship with a customer. Segmenting based on CLV lets you create one messaging

stream for your VIPs and other streams for customers who have lower estimated values.

RFM (Recency, frequency, monetary value)

Although similar in concept to segmenting based on customer lifetime value, RFM reects

actual customer behaviour from the rst purchase to the present. Segmenting based on RFM

can help you identify and reward your best customers but also tip you toward those who have

fallen off your radar and would be ripe for win-back marketing.

What retailers can learn from Judy, Jennifer and Jasmine

Those are the three personas developed by retail data marketing guru Kevin Hillstrom of

MineThatData [http://minethatdata.com/] for an online catalogue brand, which helped

them to spend their acquisition budget more wisely and to market more effectively:

þJudy, 59, who buys mainly through paper catalogs

þJennifer, 43, who bargain-hunts aggressively via email and the Internet

þJasmine, 27, shops curated collections of high-value/low-price merchandise she views

through social and mobile.

Neither Jennifer nor Jasmine has the same catalog love that Judy does, Hillstrom says.

Unless their own data says otherwise, retailers who insist on sending catalogs to Jasmine

or who try to force Judy to shop only on Facebook are wasting their money.

Buying music illustrates the differences, Hillstrom says. Where Judy might buy a CD at

a big-box retailer, Jennifer will download a single on iTunes, and Jasmine will access it

through her Spotify subscription.

By sending these personas the types of offers and deals via email, they’re personalising the

experience for them and by combining Personas with merchandising personalisation they

received a 20% increase in annual sales attributed to email marketing.

Best practices in segmenting and targeting

þUse your data, but don’t be creepy. Target, the U.S.-based discount retailer, used

data-driven predictive marketing so precisely that it outed a teen girl’s pregnancy to her

parents.

The tip-off came when the retailer sent her a coupon mailing for baby-associated

products based on the purchase data tied to her Target customer ID. Her angry father

berated his local Target manager and accused them of trying to encourage his daughter

to fall pregnant, but later admitted his daughter owned up to actually being pregnant.

The retailer has since become wiser with its marketing, according to Forbes by mixing

data-driven offers in with general promotions, so the personalisation is not as obvious.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

þThe best targeting strategy builds on layers of both explicit and implicit data.

The most effective marketing comes not just when you keep selling customers what

they’ve bought before (based on transactional data) but also by suggesting purchases

based on their browsing habits (implicit data) and explicit data (cold-weather gear as the

temperature starts to fall for customers whose location data tell you they live in northern

latitudes). Added to this, also include content that meets your business objectives,

persona-based content as well as a general mix of other content/offers to ensure you’re

discovering more about them.

This example of placements for dynamic content is from Alchemy Worx:

þCT1,2 & 3 pods are using content that is relevant to the subscriber’s behaviour – both

implicit and explicit.

þR1,2 & 3 pods are providing content that meets the business’s objectives

þPT1,2 & 3 pods are promoting content relevant for the persona of this subscriber

þA1, 2 & 3 pods are displaying additional random content that if clicked/purchased may

help to dene future personalisation for the subscriber.

Source: Alchemy Worx

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Success factors for implementation

þAutomate wherever you can. Automation plus data equals targeting success. It allows

you to create micro-segments for more precise messaging, which is essential when

including real-time or dynamic content, or when trying to achieve the 1:1 marketing that

we all desire to achieve.

You can create segments manually, but automation makes it easier to create the kind of

complex layering that can drive better results.

þAvoid manually creating segments that are too small to drive a measurable return.

Segmentation precision is good, but not if the segment has only 10 customers and

none of them clicks on your offer. Increase your segment size and you’ll likely pick up

responses from people you might not expect and ensure you gain a healthy ROI.

þChoose segment data according to strategy rather than guesswork. Just because

you have a particular data set doesn’t mean it makes sense to create a segment with it.

Test different segmentation setups to see which drives the greatest return.

How to optimise for better segmenting and targeting

þUse machine learning to use data mining in email marketing.

Machine learning is an automated process that not only processes information based on

a complex series of rules and algorithms (think search engine results and spam ltering)

but also applies what it learns from its interactions with users to rene and improve

results for greater accuracy.

Email marketers currently use machine learning for external benets such as improving

deliverability, pinpointing the best times to send messages to specic classes of

subscribers and for ongoing A/B or multivariate testing programs.

But they can also use it to generate 1:1 emails: messages personalised specically to

each recipient based on data and automation. There’s more to this marketing Nirvana

than hyper-relevant messaging, though.

Marketers can also continually learn from and improves their efforts. The more data that

is available, the more accurate, personalised and valuable the results become.

þContinually test to see which message structure works best for each segment.

Bad execution can torpedo good segmenting. Case in point: A U.S. women’s clothing

retailer once sent two versions of an email message to the same email address. The

subject lines indicated which segment each message was designed for: one for casual

buyers, the other for high-value, loyal shoppers.

Inside the email, however, the messages were identical. Same offer, same call to action,

same images. No personalisation. So, why bother to segment? Expect different segments

to respond differently to subject lines, copy (tone and content), offers and CTA. If you

segment using an RFM model, see how your VIP segment differs from your once-a-year

buyers.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

What is it? Optimising Frequency

Finding right frequency is one of an email marketer’s greatest issues. If your frequency

annoys subscribers, they’ll tune out, unsubscribe or click the ‘report spam’ button. Pull back

too far on frequency, and you lose branding and sales potential and risk ‘leaving money on

the table’. Building value and relevance into every email you send can help you increase

your email exposure without spurring more unsubscribes, spam complaints and inactivity.

Understanding issues in email frequency

Let’s understand one thing straightaway: There is no magic “right frequency” for every email

audience. What you sell, who buys it, your relationship with them, how you build your emails

and what your customers expect will help determine whether sending once a week, once a

day or even twice a day will drive the greatest return on your email investment.

This section, therefore, is dedicated to helping you gure out what will work best for your

company, your customers and your ultimate email goals.

Here, everything we talked about in Part 1 on Lifecycle Marketing and Part 2 on Segmenting

and Targeting will come together to help you nd ways to increase your email frequency

safely and with greater value both for your company and you customers.

Smart Insights‘ „7 Steps to Success“ guide, „Email Marketing Strategy: A Practical Guide

to Improving Email Communications,“ has tips, advice and best practices on establishing a

workable plan for email frequency. Read the topic on Timing and Frequency.

A brief history of email frequenc y and why it makes marketers go mad

In the beginning, when email was a novelty and overcrowded inboxes a thing of the future,

marketers emailed often. Customers were happy because they could order in minutes instead

of waiting in line at stores or on the telephone.

Then, shady merchants began bombarding their inboxes with emails hawking cheap pharma-

ceuticals, sexy playmates and shady nancial schemes. Now, even marketers who had their

recipients’ permission to send messages were lumped in with these spammers.

Email experts counseled them to send fewer but better emails, and a malaise of fear and

self-loathing fell over the land.

Email and the ‘nudge effect’

All of this fear and uncertainty leads many marketers who opt for the “less is more” approach

to go to the other extreme: not emailing their customers often enough.

That means they’re losing out on potential sales and the branding effect that just being seen

in the inbox can provide as well as their ability to boost other marketing channels (driving

trafc to websites and social media channels and even store visits).

A study performed by the UK DMA showed that when a subscriber receives an email of

interest to them, 35% of subscribers will visit the website via another route, 45% save the

email for later, 38% bear the information in mind for later and 30% will go to the shop.

This study shows the power of email – not everything results in a click yet we tend to

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

focus on only measuring opens and clicks, which as this chart shows, can be a faulty

method of attribution.

Source: DMA Email tracking Study 2014

Email, after all, is a “push” medium, which is why it can deliver such phenomenal results. You

don’t have to wait for your customers to nd you. You can push messages to their inboxes –

messages that deliver value and utility beyond trying to drive a sale and which provide a little

brand boost even if your customers opt not to open or act on them – by ‘planting a seed’ in

readiness for when they are ready to purchase.

That branding power is email’s “nudge effect.” But it works best when your messages are

in the inbox regularly with attention-getting subject lines that encourage action when your

customers are ready to buy.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Considering how much email ows through your customers’ inboxes every day – including

your competitors’ emails – it’s no surprise that once or twice a month isn’t enough to make

you memorable.

Frequency is not set in stone unless you make it that way. Moving to automated lifecycle

and targeted messaging frees you to experiment and vary the content of your messages,

personalising them and adding value and utility beyond what’s possible in a steady stream of

undifferentiated broadcast emails.

Instead of emailing by the calendar, you email whenever you have something relevant to say.

Provided, however, that you don’t limit your frequency to a specic number of messages in a

single time period – say, one a week – in your opt-in messages.

Marketers adopt that tactic because they don’t want to scare away prospective subscribers

who fear an onslaught in their mailboxes, but what they’re really doing is hamstringing their

own operations with articial time limits.

As email thought leader Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx says, “Send more email, but don’t be

stupid.” That is, don’t pound your customers with a steady stream of ill-considered messages.

Instead, let common sense, strategy and analysis guide your decisions – combined with a

sincere desire to deliver value to your subscribers.

How to audit your current approach using relevant KPIs

Although opens, clicks and conversions are popular metrics marketers use to measure the

effects of increased frequency, other marketers also factor in changes to the unsubscribe

rate.

However, the unsubscribe rate, according to Quist of Alchemy Worx, can be a particularly

unsatisfactory metric to use when deciding whether to increase frequency.

Marketers typically don’t want to do anything that would prompt customers to unsubscribe

from email, but the agency discovered that holding back from increasing frequency could

cost a typical company signicant overall campaign revenue that outweighs revenue lost from

unsubscribed customers.

For example, the agency researched two of its clients (a B2B brand and a B2C brand) who

were sending different segments both 4 emails a month and 8 emails a month. It found that

unsubscribes did not increase out of proportion and that both clients netted additional prot

that far exceeded lost potential revenue from unsubscribers.

By delving in the data and applying an average purchase value per moth, Alchemy Worx

discovered that the B2B client net an extra $3.99 million prot while its B2C client realised an

extra $5.9 million prot per month.

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Source: Alchemy Worx1

Best practices for implementation and testing

Naturally no one is encouraging you to ramp up your frequency without developing solid

strategic objectives, testing and a close watch on analytics. Here are some solid practices to

keep in mind:

þAdd informational or educational messages where sales and selling are secondary

concerns. These non-promotional emails can help your customers buy better, learn more

about your company and brands and the products you sell or burnish your brand identity.

þStep up your engagement monitoring, including unsubscribes, spam complaints and

open/click rates. Watch for disproportionate increases in negative engagement and

drop-offs in opens and clicks and their subsequent effects on conversions.

þGive customers the option to “opt down” to less frequent delivery but don’t restrict

yourself to a specic frequency.

1 http://www.alchemyworx.com/emailworx/2014/strategy/is-this-common-best-practice-costing-your-email-

program-millions

ONE.

Lifecycle Marketing

THREE.

Optimising Frequency

TWO.

Segmentation

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

1-minute case study: Boden ties higher frequency to increased value: The UK-based

clothing retailer normally sends one email about every four to ve days. But in a run-up to

its regular sales, the company increased frequency to one email roughly every other day

(one email every 1.75 days).

Customer interest remains high. Alchemy Worx found that the number of opens rose

proportionately and without a concurrent hit to inbox placement or spam complaints or a

signicant and time-consuming alteration in the email template.

It works, the agency theorised, because Boden‘s more frequent emails are bearing

signicant value through higher discounts and innovative sales tactics. Changing up the

cadence occasionally can also have a positive effect on opens and clicks.

Success factors for implementation

þBe selective. Use segmenting and analysis to identify your most active and loyal

customers and potentially target them for increased frequency. Don’t do a blanket

approach when it comes to increasing frequency – be wise and do it via a segmentation-

approach. Take learnings and then apply learnings to other segments.

þDon’t always assume you know best: You may well be surprised how different

segments will respond to increasing frequency. Your best customers, who buy from you

reguarly and frequently and who you think would respond well to more emails, may not

increase their sales – because they’re already buying at their peak and there may not

be much more room for improvement. However, your inactives – those who you have

mentally ‘thrown away’ and believe will hate you forever if you send them more email,

may surprise you and happily reactivate themselves.

þDo a series of A/B split tests to determine whether some kinds of content – subject

lines, message copy, offers or calls to action – drive greater unsubscribes.

Summing Up

The preceding sections show you how to realize major gains for your email-marketing

programme by incorporating data and automation in three advanced marketing techniques:

þLifecycle marketing: Takes a holistic view of email marketing, mapping email com-

munications to key points along the entire customer journey from acquisition through

conversion and on to loyalty.

þSegmentation and targeting: Allow you to create 1:1 email messaging for maximum

relevance and value, using implicit, explicit and transactional data to shape content.

þFrequency: Builds on strategic visibility in the inbox to help you grow revenue, develop

deeper and regular communication with customers and boost the impact of your other

marketing channels.

Best wishes for your future email marketing.

We do hope you have found this guide useful – do let us know any comments via our Contact

Us or the forum.

Kath Pay, Holistic Email Marketing and Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights

Advanced Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide

Navigation menu

Versions of this User Manual:

Views

Navigation