Internationally, marketers often won’t deploy a campaign without first checking that they’ve chosen the optimal subject line, messaging, calls to action, layout and images by sending it to a random segment of their multi-million-member database, and monitoring the reaction.

Here in New Zealand, that can be more of a challenge: after all, in this country more modest five or six-figure customer databases are the norm, which can make it difficult to achieve test sample sizes large enough to provide statistically robust results.

Kiwi marketers also tend to work with smaller budgets; in many cases they simply don’t have the luxury of producing multiple creative executions.

The appetite for testing in New Zealand does, however, remain strong with marketers here understanding the value it provides in terms of optimising results.

Here’s our guide to the approaches we commonly use with clients. These are simple but effective ways that you can start improving your programme of activity:

1) Apply the 10/10/80 or 50/50 rule

In the 10/10/80 pre-deployment approach one version of an email is sent to 10% of the database, an alternative is sent to another 10%, and then the “winning” approach is deployed to the final 80% based on what was learned.

For the 50/50 test two different versions of the same email are deployed to the entire audience and the learnings then applied to the next campaign.

These approaches are most commonly used to test subject lines, or the best time to send emails.

2)  Mix it up depending on your goal

We recently helped State Insurance test the best day of the week to send their customer emails using a 20/20/20/20/20 Monday-Friday test with a live campaign.

Random segments of their database were sent the same email with all other factors controlled – the only difference was the day of the week the email was sent. They’ve used what they learned to determine the day that all their emails are now deployed.

3) Keep track of trends over time

Whichever way you choose to go, make sure you keep an eye not just on individual campaigns, but also on how the channel is performing for you as a whole over time.

This sort of longitudinal approach is frequently overlooked, but can provide some of the most useful insights for improving uptake of your communications over time. (If you’re a client of our Engage platform, make sure you talk to us about how we can now give you instant access to this level of reporting via our new Insight feature).

If that all sounds a bit too much like hard work, you could always focus on fighting the flab in your customer database instead.

Here are three top tips for getting – and keeping – your subscriber list in peak performance shape.

1. Have a summer clean out

Make a resolution to park inactive subscribers (those who haven’t opened or clicked on a link recently) to ensure you don’t affect your delivery rates.

Over-emailing people who aren’t responding for some reason will both annoy ISPs (Internet Service Providers) – increasing the chance of all your emails being banished to the Junk Mail box – and irritate those customers, potentially leading them to unsubscribe.

Instead, take the hint and back off a bit. It doesn’t mean you have to break up for good; just put them to one side while you focus on doing a great job for the people who want to hear from you. (Watch out for tips on how to re-engage your lapsed subscribers in an upcoming blog.)

2. Commit to regular maintenance

Make it easy for people to stay subscribed by providing them with opportunities to update their address details every time you get in touch.

Many of our clients also run six-monthly “Update your details” campaigns as part of their regular annual database maintenance to encourage customers to keep their preferred communication channels up to date.

People love being given options so offer them a range of alternative ways to stay connected – for example, by inviting them to receive special promotions via TXT instead of email.

3. Plan for churn

In a perfect world, your communications would be so relevant and useful that subscribers would take the time to let you know whenever they change their phone number or digital address. But no matter how much effort you put into your relationships, a few customers will move on at some point.

As a marketer you can expect customer churn of around 3-6% percent of your database annually. Check out my previous blog on database acquisition to put a plan in place to  ensure you’re continually topping up your database with more engaged prospects and customers than you’re churning.

Here are our top tips for getting the most out of your customer engagement programmes for the next 12 months:

1. If you’re not already tracking the engagement level of your customers, now’s the time to start

Customer engagement is all about building relationships – and like any relationship it pays to keep an eye on how the other partner is feeling: do you need to spend more time with them or less? Are you giving them good reasons to notice and interact with you or are you turning them off?

By observing customer interactions with you over repeated communications you can start to see who in your database is highly engaged with your brand and who is just a click away from opting out, then tailor your messages and approach to optimise the relationship – and your results!

Track engagement levels yourself by monitoring your uptake and response rates or make use of tools like our new Insight reporting feature to easily monitor customer engagement scores over multiple campaigns.

Ideally, you’ll start seeing an increase in the number of highly engaged customers over time – that’s a sure sign that your communications are hitting the spot.

2. Segment your highly engaged customers and target special communications just to them

This group are your goldmine and deserve VIP treatment. Consider incentivising them to become your brand advocates with unique offers or opportunities and make it easy for them to share relevant content and messages with their own community, using features like our share-to-social function.

3. Consider re-engaging lapsed customers with a win-back campaign

Absence makes the heart grow fonder: if customers haven’t opened an email for a while, give them a mini-break for three or four months before welcoming them back with a “We’ve missed you” approach.

4. Start thinking more broadly to make connections that count

Provide customers with a range of ways to engage with you; don’t be afraid to ask them for their preferences and give them a choice of channel options for different messages, such as the ability to receive TXTs instead of emails for special offers/promotions.

Consider integrating direct mail (DM) and digital experiences by sending customers and prospects an intriguing piece of DM and then inviting them to respond via TXT or coupon.

5. Finally, don’t forget the basics

Some rules don’t change: the key to keeping your existing customers engaged is to provide relevant, timely content.

Segmentation by location can be a great way of delivering a highly personalised experience, and thanks to fuctionality like dynamic content change-outs, it doesn’t need to be expensive or resource-intensive.  Simply set rules around what information you want a customer to receive depending on their physical address, and a platform like Engage will automatically add or delete content based on that customer’s profile, removing the need for you to manage multiple templates.

Great examples of relevant local content include providing in-store specials for the franchise or outlet nearest each individual customer, or sharing details of any local sponsorships or community initiatives that your brand is involved with.

By ensuring you’re relevant you’re more likely to win your way into your customer’s heart, continue to earn their attention and ultimately enjoy an ongoing – and profitable – relationship.

As part of our new in-depth reporting feature Insight, we’ve been looking at the devices Kiwis use to read the millions of emails deployed via our Engage platform each day, and while it’s still too early to draw statistically significant conclusions there are some interesting trends emerging.

Over the last two months 5% of emails sent by our clients were opened on an iPhone, while 1.4% were opened on an iPad, compared to less than 0.5% on devices with Google’s Android operating system, and less than 0.1% on BlackBerry.

Of course, as I mentioned in my previous blog Three Simple Steps to Optimising Mobile, the most important thing when drilling down into this sort of data is the observations that you make about your own customers’ actual behaviour. Depending on their particular demographic they may or may not follow this pattern.

If you’re a client of Ubiquity, and haven’t already started mining Insight for deeper knowledge of your own database, please let us know and we’ll provide a tour of this new Engage feature.

In the meantime, we’re looking forward to bringing you more insights into the broader digital engagement behaviour of New Zealand customers over the next few months – let us know if there’s a topic you’re particularly interested in.

But there’s nothing like a real case study to help bring buzz words to life, so I thought I’d share some work we’ve been doing with Harvey World Travel who place a huge emphasis on keeping in touch with their thousands of customers.

Late last year, they began managing all their email communications using our Engage platform and since that’s been running smoothly with great uptake, we agreed that it was time to take the next step and focus on further enhancing the end-to-end experience for their customers.

The result is a really great example of a multi-channel automated customer on-boarding and engagement programme, and the marketing team has kindly agreed to let me share it with you here.

So what’s the secret?

1. Automated welcome email

• As I mentioned in a previous blog, this is quite simply best practice when it comes to customer engagement.
• In Harvey World Travel’s case they’ve gone the extra mile by creating a variety of templates that are automatically sent depending on how each individual customer signs up. For example, if they’ve signed up in-store, the message in their welcome email acknowledges that.

2. Minimum information required on sign up

• Sign up forms can look pretty intimidating if they have a long list of questions and this can act as a barrier to uptake.
• Harvey World Travel’s subscription forms now just capture the minimum of information.
• We still extract a richer data set from customers but we do it further down the track, once the relationship is established.
• Four weeks after sign up customers are automatically sent a follow up along the lines of: “Hope you’re enjoying these emails – to help us provide you with useful info and offers, tell us a bit more about yourself.”

3. Aim for fewer emails but make each one more relevant

• As a first step towards being able to segment customers and send them more targeted relevant messages we ran a data capture campaign to ensure Harvey World Travel had just one set of up-to-date data for both new and existing customers.
• The marketing team can now start using that information to automatically provide customers with only those offers that they have indicated are relevant.

4. Move beyond offer-based emails to adding value with relevant content

• Together, we’re working to ensure that Harvey’s World Travel’s reputation as a trusted advisor extends to its email with really useful travel advice.

5. Surprise and delight

• With the unique customer insights available to Harvey World Travel via our Engage database, they can now set up automated emails with a personalised “birthday” or “anniversary” offer to each customer, further deepening the one-to-one relationship.

6. Offer TXT options for time-specific messages

• Harvey World Travel recognised that email may not always be the best way to reach customers, so we’ve now built a database of people who want to receive TXT alerts. When an email with a great – but short turnaround – offer goes out, these people now automatically receive it via SMS.

7. Triggered programme of emails and texts

• It’s always nice to be welcomed back: when a customer returns from their Harvey World Travel holiday, their travel agent can choose to automatically send them a personalised “welcome back” email or text.

Like to find out how automated marketing could help your business? Contact us.

The Marketing Association’s new Copy Essentials Digital course could be a good place to start. It promises to help you learn to write more effectively for the web, email, banner ads and search.

When: Wednesday 16 November, 8.30am – 5.30pm

Where: University of Auckland Business School, The Owen G Glenn Building, Auckland

Check out the Marketing Association site for more information.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favourite online writing tips:

1. Ready, set, type

Before you even put a finger on the keyboard, make sure you’re clear about what you’re trying to achieve. Is your aim to inform, entertain or entice your reader to do something? If you’re unsure of your goal, your copy is likely to wander aimlessly and leave your reader similarly confused.

2. Break it up

Your reader’s time is valuable and in the digital environment it’s likely that they’ll scan things quickly – you have seconds to attract their interest and prove you’re worth their attention. Help them out by breaking your content into easily digestible chunks, for example by using sub headers with short paragraphs, bullet points and numbered lists.

3. Use links for further information

If your content is enticing enough, they’ll want to read more – just don’t bombard them all at once. Instead, use links through your copy to take them to more in-depth content. For example, you could tease the first paragraph of your blog in an email newsletter and then provide a “Read more” link which takes them to the full article on your website.

4. Get to the point

If you want your readers to do something, such as register for an event or enter a draw, make sure you provide a clear call to action. In the case of email, this should ideally be above the “fold” ie on the first part of the screen they see so they don’t have to scroll down the page to find it. A separate button can make sure this message stands out. If your communication is long, consider repeating the call to action – perhaps at the start and again at the end.

5. Invest in a spare pair of eyes

It goes without saying that you should check your copy for correct spelling and grammar but it can also be useful to ask someone else to read it for clarity – is your message clear? Are all the links and necessary information included?

6. Monitor what works and repeat

While the above tips are generally best practice conventions, it’s always worth keeping an eye on how your own customers respond to communications. What links do they click on? What content catches their eye and how is it presented? Over time you can begin to use these insights to make your communications even more relevant – and more engaging – for the people you most want to reach.

But measuring success can be more of a minefield so I thought I’d share a simple overview of what the different metrics mean, and how to decide which one is right for your next campaign.

A big part of determining the best metric for any communication is defining your goal at the outset: are you trying to achieve sales or conversions, or are you wanting to motivate people to click on a link?

If it’s clicks you’re after, two of the most common measures are CTR and CTO.

CTR or Click Through Rates refer to the number of people who have clicked to open a link in your email as a proportion of the total emails you sent.

The downside to this measure is that it can give you a distorted picture of the effectiveness of your email. For example, a low CTR number may not reflect on the quality of the message within the email itself, instead it may indicate that your subject line just isn’t grabbing your customers’ attention so they’re not even opening the email. While there are many factors that can affect CTR, you can rest assured that your result is right about average if you’re regularly attracting a CTR of around 7 – 8%.

CTO or Click to Open rates refer to the number of people who clicked through as a proportion of those who actually the opened the email.

To my mind, this is a more useful benchmark because it measures how effective the messaging in your email was in motivating a customer to take action and click through to a link. As with CTR it can be dangerous to compare your results to averages with so many different factors involved, but a respectable CTO is generally considered to be around 21%.

Of course as mentioned earlier, your strategy for an email may not include a call to action or an invitation for recipients to link through to a url, in which case CTO and CTR rates become redundant. An open rate (also known as a read rate or render rate) – which measures the number of unique users who open or preview your email divided by the total number of emails you sent – then becomes a viable metric. However, note that tracking of render rates relies on viewers enabling the images in your email – if they choose to view your email as text only, their view will not be captured as an “open” in the render rate.

It won’t surprise you to know that the Ubiquity platform Engage monitors and reports on all of the above measures – get in touch if you’d like to know more.

And for those who care more about measuring sales or conversion rates than clicks? While the effect of a single email in this process is much harder to track (as it is usually just one of many influencing factors) we will certainly do our best to help you with this – so if in doubt, just ask!

This mobile trend is definitely one that we marketers should take notice of, but does it really mean we should be producing our email campaigns in multiple formats optimised for every device ever invented?

Here are three easy ways to ensure you reach your customers successfully, whether your message arrives in their hands or on their desktops.

1. Stick to the basics
   The first rule is don’t sweat it. Stick to the principles of best practice email design such as a maximum width of 600 pixels and you can’t go wrong. Remember that images are often blocked by default so allow for that by keeping a good balance of content and images in your design. For other general tips you might like to check out my earlier blog on deliverability here.
2. Monitor actual customer behaviour
   By all means keep an eye on international trends, but save your real  focus and effort for understanding your own customers; what devices are they actually using to read your emails  right now? Our platform Engage makes it easy for you to track this information through our standard reporting, and with that data in hand, you can always consider adjusting your approach for different devices if you choose to. For example, if the stats show that a high proportion of customers are viewing your emails via iPhones or iPads, you know they’re also seeing your images because these are automatically enabled on Apple devices (whereas the Blackberry default suppresses them), however keep in mind that these same customers may not be able to see Flash when they click through from your email.
3. Keep subject lines short and sweet
   Many smartphones will only display the first four to six words of your subject line so make sure you frontload it with the most  important content, and remember that “from” details are also important: ideally, the sender should be immediately recognised by the recipient.

For more information about how to optimise your emails, or for insight into the email clients and devices your customers are using, feel free to contact us.

According to the research, email and search have consistently ranked as the most popular adult online activities in the US since the Pew Internet Project began in 2002.

The report notes that the most significant change over that time is that both activities have also become more frequent with  60% of online adults now engaging in each of these activities on a typical day, compared to 2002, when 49% of online adults used email each day, and  just 29% used a search engine daily.

The Pew Internet Project is published by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. The Project studies the social impact of the internet.

You can download the free report in full here.

You may not know it, but if you’re a Ubiquity client and using our platform Engage, you are actually already ahead of the pack and “working in the cloud”. Here’s a brief intro to the technology and how it can benefit you as a marketer.

The concept of cloud computing or “software as a service” has been around for more than ten years, and it’s great to see that it’s now gaining momentum in the marketplace.

Essentially, it means you no longer have to worry about installing particular software – such as one-to-one marketing technology or data storage – on your team’s in-house PCs. Instead, you rent access to a third-party platform which is housed off-site, and that brings with it numerous benefits:

1. You don’t need your own computer infrastructure and there’s no hardware to purchase or maintain.
2. You get access to marketing software without paying upfront or needing to get your IT department involved.
3. You and your team can access it from anywhere – all you need is access to the internet and a login.
4. It reduces the risk of investing in software only to discover that it doesn’t meet your needs. For example, at Ubiquity you’re not locked into a long-term contract – one month minimum rental and then one month’s notice is all you need.
5. You no longer need to actively upgrade your software as your subscription typically includes access to all platform upgrades.

For many companies, cloud computing also provides a faster turnaround solution because the lengthy approval process associated with high upfront costs or infrastructure development isn’t required.

Of course as with any external provider, it’s important that you choose a reputable partner who makes security a priority. Checking out their clients can be a good place to start – if large corporates and banks are on the list, you can be pretty confident those companies will have done a thorough audit on the system, making it a safe bet for you.

If you’d like to know more about how we’re using cloud computing to provide one-to-one marketing technology solutions to New Zealand’s leading corporates, feel free to get in touch.