Do Not Reply to This Email

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A full half of the transactional messages I recently reviewed in my inbox asked me not to reply to the email. In this age when most companies are actively trying to engage them in social media, why don't they want email replies? Here are some reasons - along with ways, if you must, to make "" more reader-friendly.

First off, I do understand why companies do this: they don't want to be responsible for reading or responding to people who might reply to their email marketing messages. Many companies are put off by the deluge of email they receive. Others don't want to incur the time and cost of having someone sift through them and, when necessary, respond. As a result, they ask or, in some cases, demand that readers not reply to their bulk email.

Filters, which are effective at pulling out soft and hard bounces and should be able to identify most out-of-office messages, have made monitoring replies easier. But many companies still aren't willing to do it. It's a position that places the corporation's interests above customer convenience. It also takes away one of the inherent benefits of the Internet: the ability to easily interact via two-way communication. It's the online equivalent of those prerecorded telemarketing calls you're supposed to just listen to, since there's no one on the other end to hear you if you speak.

I first recommend clients analyze their replies and see if there's a way to monitor that mailbox and honor that method of communication. For many companies, the response traffic is much more manageable than expected once bounces, out-of-office messages, and spam are filtered. But if you find you positively cannot handle replies, here are a few tips for alerting your readers in a friendly, rather than militant, way.

Don't Use All Caps

Using all capital letters online has always been the equivalent of shouting. Although most people have removed this from their style guides, it's still very much in use with this particular phrase. I know that in a text-only message all caps is one of the few ways you can add emphasis, but avoid the temptation. Unless you want to scold your readers into not replying to your message, don't use all caps to ask them not to.

Make It Friendly

One beauty of language is there's often more than one way to say something. All companies should have guidelines defining their corporate voice, usually in terms like "customer friendly," "professional," and "conversational." "" doesn't fit any of those definitions. Adding a "please" helps but doesn't really go far enough.

It Doesn't Have to Be Front and Center

This type of content is ancillary; it's not the email's primary message, so it shouldn't be featured prominently (as I often find it is). Check your email messages, especially those used for transactional messages. It's not uncommon to have "" positioned so high above the fold that it's visible in the preview pane. That's not the best use of your prime real estate.

Explain Why

Anyone who works with email understands why replies are discouraged, but many of your recipients may not work in email. Explaining the policy can go a long way toward encouraging compliance. If the mailbox isn't monitored, say so. If it's monitored only occasionally, tell them that.

Even better: shift the message from being about an inconvenience to being about a benefit. If there's a better way for readers to contact you, tell them about it and encourage them to use it rather than hitting reply.

Provide Another Contact Point

If you really can't accept replies to the email you've sent, at least provide readers another way to get in touch with you. I'm not talking about giving them the URL to your home page and making them search for contact information. The best way to handle this is to provide a monitored email address. Almost as good: provide a link to a "contact us" page with multiple ways to get in touch with you.

Providing another contact point is especially important for transactional messages, which aren't required to carry a U.S. Postal Service address under CAN-SPAM. Asking (or telling) recipients not to reply to this email, then not giving them any other way to easily get in touch with you is bad customer service.

Recommendations

I like to acknowledge that not being able to reply to an email is a bit of an inconvenience for readers. I tell them why it's in their best interest not to reply to that email. I then offer one or more ways to communicate with the sender, the easier the better. The tone should be apologetic rather than militant. Remember, you're trying to build a relationship with these people via email. There's no tone when you're reading online, so you must avoid anything that could be interpreted as harsh.

Some of the best examples I've seen:

Please do not reply to this message. Replies to this message are routed to an unmonitored mailbox. If you have questions please go to http://www.ourcompany.com/contactus. You may also call us at 202-555-1212..Unfortunately, this email is an automated notification, which is unable to receive replies. We're happy to help you with any questions or concerns you may have. Please contact us directly 24/7 via customerservice

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Good Morning Email Deals!

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It's the holidays, and if you're a marketer or a consumer (or likely both for ClickZ readers), shopping is at the forefront of your minds. With the rise of smartphones, mobile addiction is increasing, and the way consumers interact with email is beginning to vary. Understanding what that engagement looks like can help you find the right moment in time when your emails and offers will resonate most with your customers.

How many of you roll over in the morning, grab your phone, and check your email? I know that I am not alone in this behavior. There is a growing group of folks who are opening their email first thing in the morning, and actually converting. So let your email messages rise and shine - and wake up your consumer! How do you make this happen? It isn't actually too difficult. Here are there easy steps to letting the early email bird get the conversion worm:

Look at the last six months of email engagement data, isolating an audience who has opened and clicked on a specified number of email communications during the morning (rise and shine) hours as determined by their time zone.Examine the behavior of this audience. Is there certain content that they gravitate toward? Are there thematic subject lines that grab their attention more than others? Are they converting or spending more time on the site than others? Get to know these folks and what motivates them. It wouldn't hurt to look at the demographic/psychographic profile of this group either - do they skew more female, parents, etc.?Create content that addresses this audience specifically - and provide them with some sort of added incentive or benefit for engaging with you early in the morning. Maybe it's a 15 percent discount or free shipping for all orders placed before 9 a.m. You should test the incentive to see what best motivates your audience, but giving them a reason to pay attention to your emails in the morning is a good way to train them to expect your messages at the same time every morning.

The goal here is to create or drive an incremental behavior that would not have otherwise occurred. So be sure to maintain a control group and test the performance of the test group against it - if you are only driving conversions that would have happened anyway, it doesn't much matter. However, you may find that you are able to increase sales by reaching your customers before they get distracted by the day's activities - or offers from your competitors.

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Is Big Data the New Email Marketing Catchphrase?

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In the world of email marketing, the word "relevance" used to be the catchphrase du jour - followed closely by every email strategist's favorite, "it depends." But these both seem to be losing ground to "Big Data." According to IBM, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. That data is generated through myriad places - online footprints, purchase behavior, weather beacons, take your pick. We are tracking everything these days - the challenge becomes making it actionable. The issue with big data is not the acquisition of the data elements - it's the digestion and application of them.

Typically catchphrases are just that - catchphrases. They carry very little weight or meaning to the end goal, but big data is actually a pretty meaty topic that marketers and PhDs alike are trying to digest. It's a reality that marketers, politicians, parents, and yes, email marketers need to consider.

For email marketers, where there is big data there is...relevance. There are many phases to the big data challenge, but as we turn an eye to email, there are some additional elements that should be considered and applied to your approach.

Do Your Own Analysis

Analyzing large data sets and learning anything from it is no small undertaking. It's a very labor-intensive task - but for an email marketer the challenge is oftentimes even bigger. Not because we aren't capable, or that we have more data, but because we're often at the tail end of most analytic efforts. The email team inherits personas and segments - so to rally at the front end to drive it can sometimes appear preposterous to internal counterparts. The recommendation here is to stand firm. There are elements that you can leverage from previous engagement (or lack thereof) with your email program that help to develop very effective lookalike models and predictive modeling that can drive long-term success for your email program.

Watch Out for Hyper-Targeting

Achieving a near 1:1 email communication experience has long been the Holy Grail of the email marketing vertical. With the highly dynamic tools and technical capabilities available today, the ability to communicate in that manner is relatively easy to accomplish - the challenge arises when you want to learn what the engagement means to your business overall. Many times, the success or failure of leveraging big data to drive targeting and segmentation doesn't happen because of your ability to do it - rather your ability to measure it. So if you're going to leverage big data to make your email hyper-relevant, be extra diligent on the reporting front. The takeaway here is to make sure you continue to analyze the data, leveraging the engagement metrics associated with each person you communicate with. It's no longer about a target audience but rather about an individual.

Know What to Say

Once you have found your golden child (or children) among your massive data set, you don't just stop there. It isn't about just finding the right audience; you have to message to them in an effective and efficient way. If the messaging appears too "big brother," then you're going to create a "creep factor" with the recipient. Or if you get the data wrong, you may put the customer off entirely. Regardless, it's imperative that the audience you have identified is getting messaging that actually matters to them - otherwise all the analysis of that big data was largely useless.

Whether big data is on your radar as an analytic effort for your marketing department or your email program specifically or not, you are certainly hearing the conversations about it. We all have the ability to be more prescriptive with the consumer today and oftentimes there is an expectation that you "just know" these things about them. Acting contradictorily to their expectations could be detrimental in the long run. After all, you don't want your recipients closing out your email, asking themselves, "Don't they know me at all?"

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This column was originally published on October 2, 2012.

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Email Auto-Filtering - What's a Marketer to Do?

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There has been a lot of conversation recently around the increasing presence of auto-filtering for managing inbox clutter. With companies like OtherInbox, SaneBox, and AOL Alto, the reality of your email communication being filtered out of the inbox and into a folder may be a reality you already face. And if not, it will be one you will likely face soon as adoption of these types of tools continues - both by consumers and business users alike. While there has been a lot of conjecture around this reality, very little has been shared around the considerations we need to make as marketers, such as how it will affect our engagement rates, offer adoption, and impressions on subscribers. Let's dive into these considerations a little deeper.

You've Been Relegated to the Folder

Whether it's a folder or a "stack," your email marketing message has found itself tightly aligned with other email communications from competitors and other vertically aligned organizations. Many systems have default categorizations that look at a variety of information within the marketing message and the email envelope to tuck the message away neatly for the recipient. There are a number of challenges associated with this, but one of the biggest is that it doesn't matter when you sent that message - you aren't appearing at the top of the inbox. You may be at the top of the "travel" or "shopping" folder - right alongside the likes of your competitors, or the other four messages you sent in the last seven days. The landscape and view of how and when your subscribers see your email is changing. Does this fact impact your business? For some of you the answer is absolutely. For others, you may be less concerned.

Pre-Disposition to Engage

Let's take a more positive look at what this might mean for a marketer. Let's say you are a travel and hospitality organization and your email has been placed into the "travel" category. The act of the subscriber clicking into the "travel" folder means that she is likely already in the mindset to engage with a travel offer or communication - otherwise she would be in the "social" folder or someplace else. While the impressions may be slightly more limited, it's very possible that a recipient looking at messages with a very specific focus might just be more inclined to engage than if the message were in the inbox.

Why Can't You Be More Spontaneous?

Every "pro" has its "con." One of the advantages of sending messages that resonate with the customer, leveraging behavior and predictive opportunities, is to "remind" the customer that she wants to engage, subconsciously. By removing the message from the inbox and placing it in the "travel" folder, the consumer has to make a conscious choice to look in the travel folder. Sometimes the mere act of seeing a great deal in the inbox is enough to drive the engagement - even if the consumer didn't "know" she was looking for it. The ability to engage spontaneously is greatly minimized, if not removed completely, by email auto-filtering.

Longer Offer Periods May Be a Reality

Unless the consumer is regularly checking a specific folder (or all of her folders), the days of last-minute deals catching the eye of the customer may be gone (or greatly impacted). Imagine if a customer opens up the travel folder only to find a number of deals from you and your competitors that are all expired. This reality may frustrate consumers. A potential solution here is to use technologies and partners that optimize and render content at the moment of an open (Moveable Ink is an example). While it has historically been applied in very specific situations, the need for such an ability may increase if auto-filtering really takes hold.

Do Your Analytics Need to Change?

Delivery and inbox placement aren't going to be enough to gain proper insight into what is happening with your email. And the reality of an open action occurring days (vs. hours) after a message has been sent is a strong reality. If you're starting to see great lag times in engagement metrics or decreasing engagement, it may be time to consider the possibility that auto-filtering (or auto-foldering) is impacting your performance.

There isn't a lot of fodder out there right now about how to combat, address, or embrace the possibility of auto-filtering really taking off, but it's important to start thinking about it now. Consumers are increasingly fatigued on email clutter. This just may be their solution to it. How are you going to address it?

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Data Is Growing Up, Are You?

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As marketers progress rapidly toward the analytics 2.0 horizon brought on by the ability to collect and store more data, one phrase has echoed through my mind: "It's time to get mature about data."

The opportunities and problems brought on by "big data" are nothing new for marketers. We've always had to deal with information on who our customers are and what they do. Ever since we've realized that "half our advertising dollars are wasted," we've been driven to better understand how exactly our marketing spend influences behavior.

And for the past 20 years or so, we've done alright. We've built systems that track bounces, opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and complaints. We've connected that with on-site behavior to understand conversions. We've linked customer data back to the email to drive dynamic personalization. Well done.

But have we begun to understand statistically how our campaigns that don't drive conversions influence behavior? Do we know which factors out of that set of customer data are better to target when personalizing? And, for these two questions and hundreds more, can we justify our answers using data and analysis?

I'm guessing that for many of us, the answer is no.

Time to grow up.

As the realm of measurement moves out of the purely technical and shares importance with the marketing side of the house, are we in marketing prepared to use this awesome capability that we're about to gain?

Here are five things you can do to create a data maturity growth spurt:

1. Ditch the single channel mentality. Email affects behavior, but so do other channels. Recently, a major company's marketing department presented the revenue generated by each digital channel to their financial leaders. When they summed all the channels, they showed $200 million generated, which made the CFO laugh, since the company had only generated $120 million.

Research the methods and new tools available that make it possible to more accurately attribute revenue and understand better how channels influence behavior.

2. Get better metrics. The fundamentals remain important, but other methods of analysis will provide deeper insights into your performance.

For example, consider building cohort analysis into your reporting practice. You'll get a better idea of how customers gained through different marketing mixes perform over a certain period of time, possibly identifying key insights in lifetime value that could not be had attributing value from the most recent purchase only.

3. Understand the stats. Statistical analysis that used to be seen only in the world of insurance and finance are now being leveraged by marketing departments to better understand big data.

It's unrealistic for most marketers to reach the same level of proficiency that these Masters and Ph.D-level quants have. But that doesn't mean a marketer can't learn enough to understand what methods are being used and how to interpret the results. Learn to speak the language of the quants; be able to ask intelligent questions that a quant can work with; and be able to understand the relevance and limitations of the results she presents.

4. Look outside to find success. Research other companies that are using data and new analytical approaches to understand their successes and failures. Attend conferences, ask colleagues, and read plenty. Identify key takeaways for your business, tools you should consider, pitfalls to avoid, and results to expect.

5. Use it. This principle is as true as it ever was: all of this maturity is worth nothing if you don't use it to test new things and improve.

"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read." - Mark Twain

Grow up, and join the marketers who are always striving for the next level of data maturity.

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Quantity vs. Quality: The Email Marketer's Dilemma

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In a perfect world, a brand sends the perfect number of perfectly composed emails to elicit the maximum response possible. In the real world, email marketers must balance between quantity and quality.

Total email volume per sender is up about 5 percent year-over-year, according to the Experian Q4 2012 Quarterly Benchmark Study. The same organizations that are sending more haven't hired more people to manage that increased volume. And so they must make a decision: spend time creating more emails or better emails.

If we have the same underlying offer and target, how do we decide between making our emails better vs. managing sending more emails to the same group?

Arguments for Better Emails

Something about the quality of a single email makes a difference in response rates. Thousands of tests and studies tell us this. But just how much does quality help?

Imagine a welcome email for a typical retailer with the following engagement:

Open rate: 20 percent
Click-through rate: 5 percent
Value of a click (calculated by on-site conversion rate and average order value): $1

If 1,000 people received this email, then:

200 would have opened
50 would have clicked
$50 revenue was earned

Now, what if we improved subject lines to increase open rates by 10 percent? Then:

20 more people open
Five more people click
Five more dollars earned

Not bad, especially considering the increase will likely stick. Let's say we spend more time and improve the creative, possibly investing in a responsive design for better rendering on mobile email clients. Let's say this improvement increases click-through rates by 20 percent. Out of the original 1,000 who receive the email...

200 still open
60 click
10 more dollars earned

Again, we assume this gain will be incremental - lasting throughout the subsequent sends to this campaign. (This is especially true if you invest in something like a responsive design that can be used in other mailings.)

Of course, the primary tool to drive qualitative gains is the A/B test. Making a subtle change to your email and measuring how the change affects your response rate can easily add those incremental gains that last and make the investment in the setup worthwhile.

Arguments for More Email

We know better creative can drive a better response rate. The fact remains, however, that a majority of people won't open your beautifully crafted email. Whether the recipient is on vacation, triaging her email from a mobile device, or just isn't particularly interested in your brand at the moment, the time you invested in improving quality, at least for this one email, is wasted.

We've all heard that there is a certain number of touch points required before a customer will buy (anywhere from five to 11, I've heard). The important point is that the optimum number is more than one and less than 1,000. In other words, it's possible to send too little or too much.

There's a balance, and it's tough to find, because…

Unlike quality, we can't continue to increase quantity without negative consequences.It's tough to know when too much is too much.Different recipients have different expectations, rules, and sensitivities to volume, and it can be difficult to elicit this from customer data if not explicitly requested (e.g., a preference center with volume options).

Difficulty aside, the hunt for an appropriate email cadence is critical for email marketers. Let's discuss the example above once more:

1,000 people receive a welcome message
20 percent (200) open rate
5 percent (50) click-through rate
$1 per click earned ($50 total)

Let's say we add two more emails to the series. It's likely that average open rate will fall, as will click-through rate. But if we assume that those who are clicking through on subsequent emails either didn't make a purchase earlier on, or, if they did, are likely to make another, we can assume that the revenue-per-click remains the same. With three emails then, we see:

1,000 people receive three messages (3,000 total delivered)
18 percent average open rate for all three messages (540 total unique opens)
4 percent average click-through rate (120 clicks total)
$120 total earned (at $1 per click)

So just by sending a few more emails we see a 2.4 times increase in revenue. Nice! But don't go sending more email just yet.

Unlike quality, when quantity increases too much, negative consequences occur. If you email too much, your unsubscribe rate will increase. You may get more revenue for the email series you've just sent, but you've lost the ability to reach out to some of those people ever again, which translates to lost revenue. Also, if you email so much, people may respond now and ignore you later. The current email results look good, but you see dropped engagement down the lifecycle.

Of course, the question is what is the reality in your business? How are open rates, click-through rates, and revenue-earned affected when quantity increases? If you can get 2.4 times more revenue from a program, these may be questions worth investing time in over creating better creative.

What Is the Best Mix for You?

Only you can tell. While the two scenarios above seem to paint a clear picture that quantity should be increased over quality, beware of the long-term negative effects of emailing too often or too infrequently.

Also, gains made in quality can more easily become persistent gains than gains related to quantity, which tend to center around a certain promotion or point in the lifecycle.

To better measure the effects of quantity, investigate implementing cohort studies to test different quantity mixes and improve your understanding of how quantity affects response rates.

The next time you're working on your campaigns, take a step back and ask, "What use of my time will result in a bigger long-term gain?" The answer will depend on your products, your current mailing mix, and your ability to measure response by email and over time.

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Forget RPE, What's Your PPE: Personality-per-Email?

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Since the recession of 2008, many companies felt a winning strategy was to cut costs, cut "unnecessary" spending, and focus all marketing on lowest-price offers, trying to win a race to the bottom.

Yet, as the waters calm, and we count the companies still around, we find that some survivors chose a different strategy: staying true to their values. In their operations and their marketing, these companies stuck to the things that defined their perception in the mind of consumers.

In my recent work with clients, especially bigger companies, I've discovered a near fanatical importance placed on revenue-per-email (RPE). While revenue is important as a measure of immediate value that a company derives from its efforts, it is only one of a collection of results that define the value of an email or cross-channel marketing program. Just like the diet that focuses on the exclusion of carbohydrates and nothing else (like, say the benefit of healthy fats), overinvestment in the RPE metric can lead to an unbalanced and suboptimal marketing mix.

People buy from companies they like and trust. Where does that affection and trust come from? Certainly not promotions, specials, and clearance items. Affection and trust come from personality (what some may call brand).

Zappos has become a well-known example of a company with a well-defined personality. It delivers happiness. That simple goal, along with a few others, defines almost every step it takes as a company, including its email programs.

Every email from Zappos, from promotion to shipping confirmation, reflects the company's personality. For example, rather than the standard "Hi Justin..." greeting, Zappos greets me with "Hello Zappos Zealot!" What follows is usually some fun and quirky language letting me know my order is on the way or what's new. Plus, each email includes one of Zappos' 10 core values, such as "Be Humble," near the footer. Reading these is like peering into the journal of Zappos - I begin to know the company, and I like what I learn.

Why spend time on such personality? Why not just send a simple shipping confirmation with a tracking number, and say "Thank You For Your Order"? I imagine the RPE for a single Zappos email is on par with the RPE for many other clothing brands. But I can almost guarantee that the lifetime value (LTV) of a Zappos customer is higher. It's so much easier to like and trust Zappos.

Another example of a brand with high personality-per-email is JibJab. Unlike Zappos, JibJab inserts its personality through intelligent use of visuals in email. Since JibJab makes customizable e-cards (the one's you can put your face on), it's natural to leverage the fun and playful visuals in its emails.

But it's not merely screenshots of the e-cards that make JibJab's emails have high personality-per-email, but the selection of e-cards to promote. As the Harlem Shake became a viral video, and then an Internet cliché, JibJab sent an email highlighting all of its dancing-themed cards, subject line: "No Harlem Shake Required." Fun, witty, playful - clearly JibJab. Even emails for its new venture, StoryBots, reflect the fun videos and activities for kids in a way that is appropriately appealing to parents and representative of the StoryBots personality.

JibJab has free cards as well as a paid subscription, so perhaps it is lucky that a focus on RPE is probably not viable for its business, forcing the company to think of other metrics to measure the success of its campaigns. But even Zappos, a straight-up retailer, sees the benefit in promoting its personality along with product offers.

Overreliance on RPE comes from a combination of the following pressures:

The pressure to show short-term financial resultsThe pressure to show growth in a measurable wayThe pressure to attract customers through promotion (in other words, the pressure to make up for a lack of personality)

Not everything that is valuable, even to a company, is measurable. And, as history shows, too much focus dedicated to short-term financial results can become a cancer that slowly destroys the company, even as RPE is high.

Our customers are people, and so are we. As we pay revenue its appropriate due, let's not forget to leverage personality in our marketing to build relationships with our customers founded on affection and trust, not short-term gain.

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