13. Mobile Mobile
Sign-Up Ads Banner Ads
COST MODEL Cost-per-Valid Email Cost-per- Click
USER EXPERIENCE Seamless Disruptive
USER INTENT Deliberate Accidental?
34. 40% New Email Signups
46% Higher Open Rate
12% Higher CTO Rate
35. Emerging Channels
for Email List Growth
In-Venue Experience Text-to-Join
Mobile-Engaged Mobile Sign-Up Ads
Social Influencers Email Sign-Up Widget
36. Thank You
Manny Ju
mju@bluehornet.com
@mannyju
mannyju.blogspot.com
Notas do Editor
Good morning, my name is Manny Ju.I’m the Director of Product Management at BlueHornet, a service provider for subscription-based email marketing programs.You may not have heard of BlueHornet before. However, I’m sure that you’ve heard of some of our clients including Microsoft, Logitech, Bare Escentuals, LuluLemon, Omni Hotels, Chuck E. Cheese’s, and KFC.I’m excited to lead off our Integrated Lifecycle Marketing Workshop with Emerging Channels for Email List Building.I invite you all to Tweet your thoughts on what I’m about to present. Tweet using the hashtag #EEC12For my benefit, I’d like to get an understanding of you all in the audience. How many of you are responsible for the email marketing programs at your company?
Industry benchmarks indicate that the average opt-out rate across all industries is about 0.2%.
This means that for every thousand subscribers that you have, you will on average, …… lose two.Now that may not seem like much.But it means that there is an inherent leak in your email subscriber database.And if any of you are homeowners, you’ll know that the cost of a leaky faucet adds up over time.
So, a show of hands, please: how many of you have active email list growth strategies in place?… According to the latest Email Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa, …… Email list growth ranks among the top email strategic activities.
Another show of hands please: for your email list growth strategy, …… how many of you are buying your lists from Vinny? OK. Today, we’re not going to talk about buying lists from Vinny. …… No Vinny.
Instead, I’m going to present to you three emerging channels for email list growth …
… starting with Text-to-JoinWith 9 out of every 10 adults in the United States owning a cellphone, a Text-to-Join Email Program is a must-have for any brand having an in-venue experience for their customers.Who offers an in-venue experience? Retail Outlets, Restaurants, and Hotels are the first places that come to mind.But an in-venue experience also includes museums, theme parks, concerts, zoos, automobile oil change service stations, and yes - tradeshows.The best time to get people to respond to a call to action is when they are in the moment. Therefore if your brand is offering any type of in-venue experience, that is the time to sign up people for your email marketing program. Don’t wait until people have dropped their business cards into a fish bowl, or gone back home or to their hotel rooms to turn on their computers and sign up.Get people to sign up right then and there while they are on the show floor, at the conference, in the store, at the restaurant, in the hotel, or at any other in-venue experience, using their mobile phones.Texting in the email address is the best use of the mobile channel because not all mobile devices are smartphones with Internet access; but all mobile phones have the ability to send a text message.Once people have texted in their email address, …… IMMEDIATELY send the welcome email. And if your email system has the capability, send a special welcome email just for those people who opted in via the Text-to-Join program. If you really want to provide a superior customer experience, make that welcome email a mobile-friendly welcome email so that it renders well within a mobile device and it includes some type of thank-you reward that they can redeem right there – on the spot.
When considering a Text-to-Join Email Program there are some things that I advise you to take into account …… first is the cost. There is an inherent cost associated with a text message that you, the marketer, will have to pay. Getting the right service provider is important to keeping your acquisition costs to a minimum. The second thing to consider is the short code that you’re going to use. …… Should it be a shared short code or a reserved short code?A shared short code is best for getting started. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to use a shared short code, and if the shared short code has already been approved for Text-to-Join, you can get your program up and running in 5 days or less.A reserved short code belongs to you and no one else. It’s associated solely with your brand so long as you pay the rent on that code. But a reserved short code is expensive and getting the wireless carriers to approve your reserved short code for Text-to-Join will take anywhere between 12 to 16 weeks.The last thing to consider is …… how you’ll promote your Text-to-Join program. Here’s where prominent signage is important. Don’t have a tiny little 3x5 card taped to your cash register. If you’re a restaurant or a retail store, have nice signage throughout the place. If you’re a museum or a gallery or an amusement park, once again, liberal signage is very important.
So let’s do a live demo right now just to see how easy a Text-to-Join experience is.Get out your mobile phones – c’mon you all have them.You’re going to send a text message to the short code 50203.And your message is going to contain only two words: BHTEST and then your email address. That’s all – just those two works
You should all get a text message response immediately …… and, within a minute or two, your inbox should receive this welcome email.
Our Case Study for Text-to-Join is Chuck E. Cheese’s.Chuck E. Cheese’s is one such brand that is effectively using the mobile channel to grow their email marketing database.They have signs posted throughout their locations inviting people to join their email club simply by texting in their email address to the short code 35505.Subscribers that sign up for the email club via the Text-to-Join program account for about 3% of their total subscriber base.Even though it’s a smaller percentage of total signups, these people are more engaged. Chuck E. Cheese’s finds that they have between 10 to 20 percent higher open rate of emails with a 8 to 10 percent higher click-through rate for the coupon deals.
Keeping with the mobile theme, I’d now like to talk about Mobile Sign-Up Ads from Pontiflex.Pontiflex has a very unique offering that lets marketers place their branded sign up screen directly within thousands of mobile apps in both Android and iOS mobile devices.… Here’s an example of a mobile sign-up ad that they have within the Pandora streaming radio app.Pontiflex reports that since launching Mobile Sign-Up Ads in early 2011, they are generating over 75,000 email signups per day for their clients.
The traditional model for getting email opt-ins through mobile apps is via mobile banner ads.I feel that Mobile Sign-up Ads provide a better value for you …… First off, Mobile Sign-Up Ads are more cost effective. You only pay for valid email addresses, …… compared to banner ads where you pay for each click which may or may not result in an opt-in.Secondly, it’s a superior user experience …… The entire sign-up process is seamless; it takes place entirely within the app ... … Unlike banner ads which are disruptive and take you outside of the app to a mobile browser – which is one main reason why click-through rates of banner ads within mobile apps is so low.Finally, the user explicitly selects which email program he wants to sign up for, …… and deliberately enters his contact information …… In contrast, an estimated 63% of mobile banner ad click-throughs are accidental.
The Case Study for Mobile Sign-Up Ads is Paper Hat Press.If you’ve not checked out their product before, I think you’ll like what they have to offer.Paper Hat Press is a personalized children’s book company. Using their print-on-demand technology, customers can create personalized books that are truly keepsake items.
Paper Hat Press’ target market is mothers.To better engage mothers in their email list growth strategy they specifically used Mobile Sign-Up ads on specific types of mobile apps.
Here’s a listing of the different apps that their Mobile Sign-up Ads appeared in. The majority of apps were News&Entertainment, Health&Fitness, and Gaming apps.
So here’s how Mobile Sign-Up Ads works from my perspective as the user.When I download an app that hosts Pontiflex’s Sign-Up Ads, and start it up for the first time …… this is the Sign-Up Ad page that I’ll see. I like Pontiflex’s approach because as a user, I get to pick and choose which email marketing program I want to join; if I don’t want to sign up for anything and I just want to get to the app, …… I can skip the sign-up page and it will never be displayed again.If I choose to proceed with the signup, …… I still have the option to bail out if I want.
Immediately after I submit my sign-up in the app, I receive a welcome email from Paper Hat Press
So far Mobile Sign-up Ads as an email list growth channel has been successful for Paper Hat Press …… they report a quadrupling of their email marketing database since they started using this channel.And it appears that these people are highly engaged with their email program …… The open rate for this segment of the email marketing database is 10% higher than the industry average …… And their ROI through this channel is more than double that of any of their other acquisition channels.
The last topic I’m going to cover in my presentation on emerging channels for email list growth is the highly complementary nature of email and social media marketing
As this study from Merkle indicates, people who are highly engaged in the social channel are also highly engaged in the email channel.
Many brands are using Share-to-Social as part of their email marketing strategies.This approach is very effective at leveraging the social media channel to enhance the viral effect of email marketing.There is another complementary effect between email and social …
… and that’s using the social sites as an opt-in channel for email marketing.People who sign up for email marketing programs from social sites are a valuable pre-selected audience.These are people who are already engaging with the brand via the social site. This type of engagement is a many-to-many conversation and it’s pretty superficial.A person signing up for email marketing from the social site is telling you that he so enjoys the conversation with your brand that he now wants a one-to-one conversation with you.
The case study that I’d like to present to you is KFC’s Double Down campaign which won ClickZ’s 2011Award for Best Use of Email Marketing.
KFC decided to integrate email and social media marketing to promote their new sandwich – the Double Down.The first email they sent was on April 1st with the subject line “The KFC Double Down is Real! No Fooling”.The absolute beauty of this email was its sheer simplicity …
One message, one call to action.And notice that the call to action was not a coupon to buy anything. It was an exhortation to share the email.KFC did an A|B test when they sent out their promotion. One wave went to members of their email club that had opened at least one email in the previous 6 months. The other wave went to those that had not opened an email from KFC in the previous 6 month.As you would expect, the response rate from the first wave was phenomenal …
…a 40% open rate and a 10% click-to-open rate.Given that there was only one call to action, this means that 1 out of every 10 persons who read the email shared it within their own social network.
Within the first 24 hours, the email was shared over 12,000 times on Facebook and Twitter.
and during this time, opt-ins for their Email Club went up 30%.
Once KFC realized that there was a strong connection in their customers between email and social, KFC added an email sign-up widget to their Facebook fan pageToday, approximately 3% of all their email signups come from their Facebook site.
These people who signed up to join the Colonel’s Email Club are a highly engaged audience.One in three of these subscribers have opened at least one email in the past 30 days.
The last case study I’d like to share with you is Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa, a high-end vacation resort located in Rancho Mirage, California.
Last year, they launched a new viral campaign to increase awareness of their Facebook site and to grow their email subscriber list. To enter the contest, Facebook users had to “Like” the page, enter their email address, and share the contest on their own walls. The grand prize was- a two-night stay in a suite, - daily breakfast for two, - two 50-minute spa treatments, - unlimited golf, - unlimited tennis, - a cabana rental for one day, - and one dinner for two at their signature restaurant, blueEmber.
Of all the people who entered the contest by giving their email address, …… over 40% of them were brand new email opt-ins.Since the time that the contest ended, people who signed up from the Facebook site continue to be a highly engaged audience with the email program …… This audience has a 46% higher open rate …… and a 12% higher click-to-open rate compare to those who signed up for their email program through other channels.
When considering strategies for growing your email list, I exhort you all to consider these three emerging channels for email list growth. …… If you are a brand that has any type physical location where your customers are engaged in your brand experience, …… then a Text-to-Join email program is a great addition to your strategies. …… If you want to reach out to a mobile-engaged audience – meaning that there’s some demographic overlap between a particular app user and your target market, …… then consider Mobile Sign-Up Ads. …… and lastly, if your brand already has a social network site and you’d like to give your social influencers an opportunity to have the 1-to-1 conversation of email, …… then add a email sign-up widget to your social site.
Thank you for listening and I hope that I was able to provide you with helpful information.