Continually test your messages for the best approach, relying on both clickthroughs and open rates as testing criteria. For promotions, often the former; for general interest communications, the latter (even though it is an increasingly flawed measure due to mobile devices, etc.).
Experiment with truly new formats periodically, giving each of them several chances to catch on and outperform the current formats you use. For example when we launched an e-newsletters with our donor base at CRS, we tested the basics (length/tone of subject line, acronym vs. organization name), content (which lead story to feature first, second, third and so on), content format (full article in text, headline only, x lines ending with ellipses leading to the web article).
As I recall my staff didn't like it, since this alone entailed perhaps 45 unique combinations, but it was more easily done over several issues, testing the combinations, choosing winners, ties and losers, then testing again to ensure the content didn't drive the findings. (It's interesting as I dug through my own emails to see that the format we tested in has continued to change, so that it looks far more like a personal letter than before ... I hope this also reflects testing more so than personal preferences.)
Pending test results, I'd also seek to maintain a frequency of regular communications focused on industry news and information to be weekly at minimum, then delivered at a regular, consistent time that's convenient for the members.
Rely as much as possible on using your newsletter formats to carry promotional messages for events and products with navigation bars, banner ads, and advertorial copy—i.e. use frequent contact, but put the promotions in their place, a little less important than the content that members tend to value and not see as self-serving to the organization. As with print media, most of us notice ads better when we're reading editorial content than when we're given a purely promotional insert. Standalone promotional emails will seem to perform better, but to use a traditional mailbox analogy, if you're presented with a magazine and a pile of flyers, chances are you will discard the latter and at least glance at the former.
Association Marketing Insights Ideas for, lessons from, and general how-tos for the association community.
Showing posts with label electronic marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electronic marketing. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Advice on Optimal Email Frequency (Part #3 of 3)
It's easy to critique email programs and to philosophize. To end this series, we suggest the following approaches …
Optimal Email Frequency Also Depends on What You're Saying (Part 2)
Through client work, and "show of hands" exercises at several recent presentations, I know many associations apply very conservative limits to their regular all-member communications. Monthly appears to be a common, acceptable frequency. Unfortunately, math is not in our favor. This means for someone receiving 100 emails per weekday, they have a 0.05% chance of seeing your carefully-constructed e-newsletter, all other things being equal.
In this context, it was interesting to contrast this under-communication scenario with listserv feedback from vendors/experts regarding "How many emails do you send for each event?" To quote two: "sending reminders one week, one day and one hour in advance .." and "for Associations with engaged members: 10 'marketing' messages per event Associations with wider, less engaged audience: up to 20 'marketing' messages per event."
This is great to maximize participation in a single event, but it might mean sending more emails for that event than you do all year for the association at large! And if you have multiple events, your 'regular' communications might dwindle to only 5% or 10% of the total messages you send. On the bright side, your odds of being read by the typical member/customer might rise as high to 1 in 100. On the down side, the content map for your e-communications might show a mix that's 5-10% substantive industry news, 5-10% housekeeping/transactional stuff, and 80-90% promotional content ... probably not the mix you had in mind. Depending on how you monitor member communications, you may not even be aware of it and the signal it sends to your audience.
The core messages you want to convey and the value you need to impart through your e-newsletter may be swamped by other, simpler messages that may collectively convey the impression that the organization 'exists primarily to sell you stuff' (to quote Scott) rather than provide pertinent information, educate, and support them and their industry/profession. -Kevin
In this context, it was interesting to contrast this under-communication scenario with listserv feedback from vendors/experts regarding "How many emails do you send for each event?" To quote two: "sending reminders one week, one day and one hour in advance .." and "for Associations with engaged members: 10 'marketing' messages per event Associations with wider, less engaged audience: up to 20 'marketing' messages per event."
This is great to maximize participation in a single event, but it might mean sending more emails for that event than you do all year for the association at large! And if you have multiple events, your 'regular' communications might dwindle to only 5% or 10% of the total messages you send. On the bright side, your odds of being read by the typical member/customer might rise as high to 1 in 100. On the down side, the content map for your e-communications might show a mix that's 5-10% substantive industry news, 5-10% housekeeping/transactional stuff, and 80-90% promotional content ... probably not the mix you had in mind. Depending on how you monitor member communications, you may not even be aware of it and the signal it sends to your audience.
The core messages you want to convey and the value you need to impart through your e-newsletter may be swamped by other, simpler messages that may collectively convey the impression that the organization 'exists primarily to sell you stuff' (to quote Scott) rather than provide pertinent information, educate, and support them and their industry/profession. -Kevin
Optimal Email Frequency: How Much is Too Much, and When Don't You Do Enough?
Recently there have been questions on the ASAE listservs regarding optimal email frequency. It's hard to determine, overall and by specific goal: product, event or activity. Frequently the specific and overall objectives are in direct conflict with each other.
Many of us prefer empirical evidence over anecdotal, but we also have to ensure that our metrics show the big picture—impact on overall association performance—rather than metrics for a single campaign or a product (event, publication, etc.). It's very common in our associations to have motivated managers or outsourced service providers who can inadvertently abuse the email list and undermine member satisfaction, leading to unsubscribes, lower open rates, even lower renewals and overall participation.
Thinking back to presentations I've heard and/or given over the past couple months at Great Ideas and DigitalNow! regarding e-communications management, there are a few instructive points to consider:
* Ian Ayres (author of Supercrunchers) made a compelling case for associations that, if you're not conducting randomized tests/trials at least part of the time, you're not really doing your job of maximizing member value and satisfaction.
* In a GI session, none of my panelists and very few attendees had EVER done a randomized, A/B split test of their emails to determine what email approaches (frequency or format) work best for them.
* Another popular GI session featured speakers who were proudly explaining how well they boosted attendance for a single event through a systematic process of carpet-bombing with emails. (Judging from audience reaction/note-taking, they really liked the idea!)
These points embody "the fallacy of composition" reasoning that often applies in managing email:
* Ian is right: the best and perhaps only way to determine what works for your audience is to test alternative options head-to-head, pick statistically valid winners. Then test again, repeatedly against other options to ensure that your overall communications and programs are optimal.
* Without this process, our formats are determined by personal taste, past habits and convenience rather than what leads the audience to read & act. In the short term at least, this may mean being less efficient, but the long-term payoff comes from being more effective with the right format, frequency, messages, and segmentation.
* We also need to manage the process top-down and to avoid letting the 'tail wag the dog.' This means balancing the tactics used for specific events, products, advocacy issues etc. in a manner that doesn't swamp the organization-wide communications.
-Kevin
Many of us prefer empirical evidence over anecdotal, but we also have to ensure that our metrics show the big picture—impact on overall association performance—rather than metrics for a single campaign or a product (event, publication, etc.). It's very common in our associations to have motivated managers or outsourced service providers who can inadvertently abuse the email list and undermine member satisfaction, leading to unsubscribes, lower open rates, even lower renewals and overall participation.
Thinking back to presentations I've heard and/or given over the past couple months at Great Ideas and DigitalNow! regarding e-communications management, there are a few instructive points to consider:
* Ian Ayres (author of Supercrunchers) made a compelling case for associations that, if you're not conducting randomized tests/trials at least part of the time, you're not really doing your job of maximizing member value and satisfaction.
* In a GI session, none of my panelists and very few attendees had EVER done a randomized, A/B split test of their emails to determine what email approaches (frequency or format) work best for them.
* Another popular GI session featured speakers who were proudly explaining how well they boosted attendance for a single event through a systematic process of carpet-bombing with emails. (Judging from audience reaction/note-taking, they really liked the idea!)
These points embody "the fallacy of composition" reasoning that often applies in managing email:
* Ian is right: the best and perhaps only way to determine what works for your audience is to test alternative options head-to-head, pick statistically valid winners. Then test again, repeatedly against other options to ensure that your overall communications and programs are optimal.
* Without this process, our formats are determined by personal taste, past habits and convenience rather than what leads the audience to read & act. In the short term at least, this may mean being less efficient, but the long-term payoff comes from being more effective with the right format, frequency, messages, and segmentation.
* We also need to manage the process top-down and to avoid letting the 'tail wag the dog.' This means balancing the tactics used for specific events, products, advocacy issues etc. in a manner that doesn't swamp the organization-wide communications.
-Kevin
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