February 2009
Copywriting Curiosities
 
Write Better Marketing Copy Now!
In This Issue
Email Marketing Case Study
Quick Links
Book Shelf:

BUSINESS:
HubSpot Forums

Search Engine Guide

PLEASURE: 
Perfect Match
by Jodi Picoult

The Shack
by William P. Young
One of
My Favorite Things
 
 

Michael Katz is the king penguin of this firm. He's an electronic newsletter guru.

Anyone who sends out an email newsletter should subscribe to his and take advantage of the abundant free resources on his site.
Join Our Mailing List
Dear Robyn,

I've been encountering many businesses lately that have databases of email addresses collected specifically for email marketing, yet they haven't sent out one e-newsletter.

Why? Most often, the reason has to do with people not knowing where to begin. For some of these clients, these email addresses have been collecting dust for months or even years, so there's concern about the addresses' validity and whether the owners of these addresses would even remember having subscribed to the company's newsletter.

While I could spend hours talking about email marketing, I thought I'd share a recent customer story that shows the steps involved in getting your email newsletter back on track so that it's working for you and making you money.

Enjoy!

Best,
Robyn
 
Email Marketing Case Study

One of my website copywriting clients, Design A Mosaic (DM), wanted to start up its email marketing with postcard style promotional emails (about six a year) to communicate specials, discounts, and other news to its customer base.

The folks at Design A Mosaic understood the benefits of email marketing, but they also knew that in order for it to be effective, it had to be "permission based."

Permission-Based Marketing
The phrase was made famous by marketing guru Seth Godin in his book by the same name. Simply put, if customers give you permission to market to them, they're much more likely to hear--and act upon--your message. The philosophy behind it is that it's much easier (and more cost effective) to market to the customers you do have than it is to get new customers.

Design A Mosaic's Dilemma
For the last eight months or so, Design A Mosaic had been opting people into its email mailing list. In other words, it asked people for permission to market to them through email (in email marketing parlance, this is known as "single opt-in"). However, it also had an existing database of 15,000 customer email addresses. While an email address is a required part of DM's buying process, DM did not specifically ask for permission to keep marketing to the customers who held these email addresses.

Design A Mosaic had three options:

1. Forget all the email addresses from the 15,000-address database and just use the ones it had been opting in over the last eight months.

2. Add the 15,000 email addresses into the new opted-in database.

3. Run a confirmed opt-in (COI) campaign to the database of 15,000 email addresses and then merge those who confirmed their opt-in into the current opt-in email list.

The problem with option one? If DM chose to ignore the people attached to those 15,000 email addresses, it would no doubt be losing out on some happy customers who would likely welcome getting updates from DM.

As for option two, if DM chose to simply add the addresses to its new opted-in list, the company would be violating the CAN-SPAM Act because it would be essentially harvesting a database of non-opted-in email addresses.

This leaves option three, which is what I recommended. Option three would allow DM to ask its former customers for permission to keep marketing to them. Those who "wanted in" would need to confirm by clicking on a link in the email. Those who did NOT confirm would not be contacted by the company again.

We weren't expecting a high number of conversions. But even if only one to two percent of people from the database confirmed their opt-in (which is pretty typical in this type of campaign), we'd be talking 150-300 emails--emails of customers who wanted to receive promotional messages from Design A Mosaic.

Our COI Campaign Strategy
DM wanted the copy to be short, yet compelling. I recommended offering some sort of incentive. If people signed up for the newsletter, they would receive a discount or coupon. DM liked this idea as well. I wrote three different emails and crafted 18 subject lines from which the client could choose.

We decided to run a smaller split test first: one email with one subject line would go to 500 email addresses and another email with another subject line would go to another 500 email addresses. The one that produced the best conversion would end up being the control email for the other 14,000 names.

For the split test, we used the most recent email addresses from the database of 15,000, figuring these addresses wouldn't be as likely to bounce since they were "freshest."

In terms of email marketing vendors, there are myriad ones to choose from: Constant Contact, iContact, SubscriberMail, and MailChimp are all good choices.

The COI Copy:
Here's Version 1:

Subject Line: Remember Us? Here's a Special Offer

Hello,

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for choosing Design A Mosaic to create your photo mosaic. Whether you gave it as a gift or kept it for yourself (or maybe you did both!), we hope you enjoyed the experience--and the memories.

Would you like to receive an occasional email from us about specials and other news? If yes, great! You can sign up by clicking the confirmation link at the bottom of this email. We promise that we'll never share, rent, or sell your information with a third party, and you can unsubscribe at any time. (Privacy is important to us, too!)

As a thank you for signing up before November 9, 2008, you'll receive a 15% discount off your next Design A Mosaic creation. You'll receive the coupon code once you sign up. And if you'd rather not sign up, no worries. You don't need to do anything, and we promise that we'll never bother you again.

Best wishes,
Kevin Mann
Design A Mosaic

confirmation link redacted

Here's Version 2

Subject Line: Stay in Touch with Design A Mosaic

Hello,

Thank you for using Design A Mosaic in the past. We hope to be part of your future. Sign up now by clicking the confirmation link at the bottom of this email and receive occasional (about 6 per year) emails about our photo mosaic specials. You'll receive a coupon good for a 15% discount on your next order just for signing up before November 9th, 2008.

And please know that we'll never sell, rent, or share your info with a third party, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Don't want to sign up? No problem. Just delete this email, and we promise we'll never bother you again.

Best wishes,
Kevin Mann
Design A Mosaic

confirmation link redacted

Results of the Split-Test COI Campaign
Here are the results of the split-test COI campaign: version 1 had a 5% rate of sign up and version 2 had a 4.4% rate of sign up.

Results of the Full COI Campaign
DM went with the better performing email from the split-test campaign (v1) and sent it to the rest of the database (around 14,000). The conversion rate was 4.3% (602 people). The client was quite pleased to add close to 650 email addresses (600 from the full COI campaign and 47 people from the split-test campaign) to its existing database of 1000 opt-in email addresses. And we were happy with the results as well.

Thinking of Running a COI Campaign?
Here are some useful resources to help you:

Constant Contact's Confirmed Opt-In User Guide
Email Marketing Metrics Report--November 2008

Have you ever run a COI campaign before? What were your results like? What issues did you encounter? I welcome your comments!

**Parts of this article appeared on a post I wrote for Blue Acorn's blog. Blue Acorn is an eCommerce development firm based out of South Carolina.
 
 
Don't know about you, but I'm ready for spring. See you next month!

Best,
Robyn Bradley
E.T. Robbins Productions
E. T. Robbins Productions logo 
E.T. Robbins Productions | 1630 Worcester Road | Suite 501C | Framingham | MA | 01702