10 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS for Email Marketers

An Adobe Digital Marketing Guide

January 2016

January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

If you’re wondering whether you should really prioritize email

in your marketing resolutions—especially when new channels

continually emerge—consider this: 91 percent of marketing

executives agree that email is their most effective channel.1

Clearly, email isn’t just here to stay, it ’s the mainstay. And with

the ability to personalize and contextualize messages, upgrade

mobile campaigns, and better understand customer needs,

email marketing has evolved into a stronger and smarter

version of its former self.

This year, let the resolutions of life guide your email marketing

for a new and improved version in 2016. Here are ten resolutions

you can make that will ramp up your email programs and keep

them cranking all year long.

There’s no time better than the New Year to reboot, start fresh, and sharpen your email marketing skills.

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3January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

RESOLUTION:

Spend more time with family and friends. EMAIL SOLUTION:

Manage the customer profile, not the list.

A good relationship requires effort, work, and compromise. Commitment and unselfishness are essential to remain fully aware of what another person wants, needs, likes, and detests. And sometimes—okay, a lot of times—we fall short. In marketing, as in our personal lives, nurturing relationships reaps big rewards. In our personal lives, when we ask questions, listen, empathize, and remember what’s important to our friends and family, we develop more trusting, mature relationships. With your customers, it’s the same.

When you spend time getting to know your customer, you can communicate with them in relevant and personal ways that deepen your connection. Move beyond the superficial demographics of gender or date of birth when segmenting your lists. Dig deeper—to unearth data that moves and motivates your customer, such as past purchases, preferences, and location. For instance, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston strengthened relationships when it sent recent museum-goers an email with upcoming special events. That program achieved a 12 percent conversion2 in membership—a result that’s in line with an Experian finding that personalized follow-up emails yield 75 percent higher transaction rates than traditional emails.3

Now is the time to look beyond the list, tap into that goldmine of customer insights, and show more love to your customers.

75 percent of personalized follow-up emails yield

higher transaction rates than traditional emails.

1RESOLUTION:

Spend less, save more. EMAIL SOLUTION:

Focus on dynamic content.

If you’re splurging on stuff that doesn’t contribute to your overall well-being, now’s the time to put your focus and energy on what brings you true happiness. Consider the same approach for your emails: don’t put your budget and resources into email campaigns that aren’t satisfying your customers’ needs.

By using dynamic content—HTML content that changes based on the viewer—you engage readers in targeted, relevant ways. A 2015 email maturity study found that only 14 percent of email marketers spend their time and money on personalization strategies that deliver contextual emails in real time to their customers.4 In other words, the majority of email marketers are spending their money, time, and resources on basic email strategies that don’t speak directly to their customers’ needs.

La Fourchette, a restaurant reservation service in France, understands how to serve up context to their customers. It sends recommendations and helpful tips to users based on the location of their search, date of the reservation, and other contextual data provided from website behavior.5

While it may seem difficult to get the right data and personalize the content of your emails, it’s definitely possible. And if it gets you closer to your customer, it’s worth it.

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4January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

RESOLUTION:

Be a better listener. EMAIL SOLUTION:

Use preference centers to give your customers control.

Most of us can relate to this: you’re sitting down to a meal with a friend, swapping stories, laughing, catching up—and then your friend pulls out her phone to check an email or send a text. It’s a rare person who doesn’t give in to the temptation to glance at the phone every now and then. But isn’t it refreshing when your friend puts their phone away and really listens to you? The same is true with your customers.

When you put control in the customer’s hands, you’re free

to listen and ultimately respond in relevant ways. In fact,

eMarketer reported that 70 percent of consumers are more

willing to divulge personal information about their shopping

preferences to retailers when they trust that brands will listen

and tailor their messaging to them when they do.6

Preference centers let customers limit the amount and type of email they get from you. Done right, these centers are a great opportunity to capture user interests and learn more while getting customers to opt down, not out. Preference centers, once a platform that merely provided a place to unsubscribe to pages, have evolved. The best ones now incorporate behavioral data that customers generate through Web browsing, purchasing, email activity, and even offline engagements that tie into subscription data through the email address or other keys.

If you don’t already have a preference center set up for your email campaigns, now’s the time to consider it. You’ll find that by giving some power back to consumers, and by simply listening, you’re providing the experience they actually want and gaining great affinity for your brand in return.

3RESOLUTION:

Practice mindfulness in everything.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Invite customers to re-engage with your brand.

Research suggests that practicing mindfulness can help you be more present in life, rather than shuffle through it blindly. It’s also been shown to help people quit smoking and lose weight.7 Being fully present in life’s moments can free your mind of distractions, uproot you from the past, and bring clarity and joy to your relationships. Mindfulness in email marketing is about being aware when customers drift away from their brand, then responding quickly and purposefully through email.

One way marketers are becoming adept in remarketing—when a company invites a consumer to re-engage with their website—is in response to cart abandonment. Today, with well-integrated data, companies are able to act on a prior activity like a website visit or view of a specific page in a matter of minutes or hours, enabling customers to receive personalized, targeted messages. But there’s a sweet spot. It’s up to you to draw the line between being responsive and being creepy—after twenty-four hours is probably too late, but two minutes is too quick.

Luxury cosmetic brand L’Occitane transformed its marketing success by remarketing to customers who abandon their online shopping carts.8 The company re-engages customers by sending simple thank yous for purchases, invitations to review products, one-to-one product recommendations, push notifications, and private sales.

An in-store interaction can also inform email remarketing. Say you have a customer who makes an in-store clothing purchase in a petite size. A follow-up email that asks, “Have you checked out our petite shop online?” is an example of remarketing using customer data from that in-store purchase.

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5January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

RESOLUTION:

Become a more loyal friend.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Consider context the queen (content is king).

From Facebook friends to lifelong soul mates, loyalty is the cornerstone of all relationships. Your loyal friends know what makes you tick and what ticks you off. Customer loyalty is an attribute that all marketers covet because that deep appreciation leads to brand preference. And one of the fastest ways to build loyalty is through contextual emails that deliver the right content, at the right time.

The context of your customer’s real-time situations means determining where they’ve been and, more importantly, where they’re going. Personalization can be challenging for marketers because it requires quality data and a fairly significant effort to prepare creative and copy combinations. But when you integrate contextual data like weather, time of day, or location, and incorporate preferences that can actually be automated in real time for each recipient, the result is an email that is relevant to the customer’s current situation and need. Relevance is ultimately a byproduct of personalizing content and context for a recipient. By layering context into the equation, marketers can deliver more relevance using less personalized content.

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TO MAXIMIZE REVENUE, MARKETERS MUST SIMULTANEOUSLY DELIVER:

PersonalizedcontentPersonalizing the copy, images, graphics, etc.

Idea

l zo

ne

Co

nte

nt

Rel

evan

ce

Right message Right person

There are millions of ways to personalize content in campaigns— the more granular the personalization, the more content you have to create. Finite resources equal finite time to personalize content. But you can limit the content requirements by personalizing with context.

You can infer a lot about anonymous visitors, but it’s a guess until they identify themselves. That’s why email personalization is for known, consenting customers, which means it’s a great tool for maximizing retention revenue, expansion revenue, and loyalty.

PersonalizedcontextPersonalization based on behavior, time, propensity to purchase, environment, device, etc.

Co

nte

xt

Use business rules or algorithms to dynamically change the email content based on prospect behavior, time, weather, device type, loyalty status, and more. This level of personalization means marketers can pre-configure conditions that dictate real-time personalization when the email is opened. Attributes can be derived in real time, so you don’t have to worry about customer data quality.

Don’t just focus on list growth and acquisition in email marketing. Contextual data can be collected in real-time from customers. Use this data to support their needs in a non-intrusive way. Context helps translate behavior into a call-to-action that’s personalized for each recipient.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFORMING CONTENT AND CONTEXT INTO RELEVANCE IN EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS

Source: “Use Email to Spark Contextual Interactions,” Forrester Research, Inc., January 2015.

Ideal zoneA combination of both content and context in email communications.

6January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

6

93% of contextual marketers

stated they were “very satisfied”

with the effectiveness of their

programs. Only 43 percent

of classic marketers said the

same, indicating that the email

marketing landscape is ripe

for disruption.12

RESOLUTION:

Learn something new.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Expand your email marketing practices.

With the flip of the calendar, you may find yourself with ambitions to take up tennis, cook one new recipe a month, or learn a language. Why not do the same with your email marketing? Taking on new challenges by expanding your email marketing practices will up your game in 2016.

When you evolve from a basic marketing structure to a dynamic and ultimately contextual approach, you’ll join an elite subset of email marketers. Making this shift requires moving beyond re-engagement campaigns, basic personalization fields, and simple cross-selling, to the deeper personalization and segmentation strategies that set contextual marketers apart.

JustAnswer.com’s email practices evolved when they began personalizing communication with customers based on their site behavior and preferences.9 “If a customer asks a question, we want to be able to go back to them and say, ‘We see you had a legal question last time, but we have medical, auto, veterinary, and other industries that you may be interested in,’” says Kara Douglas, senior manager of email marketing at JustAnswer.10 To further contextualize messages based on their location, age, and site behavior, JustAnswer began linking site visitors’ IP addresses with other customer data.

The Email Marketing Self-Assessment tool by Adobe can help you identify your organization’s strengths and weakness across four key areas of email marketing: data, content, delivery, and strategy.11 Simply answer the questions in the assessment and you’ll be emailed a personalized report with benchmarks comparing your business to your peers.

43%93%

7January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

7RESOLUTION:

Clear out the clutter.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Practice less is more.

Now is the time to let go of stuff you don’t need. Marie Kondo, the home-organizing guru and author of the popular book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, says that if an item doesn’t “spark joy” in its owner, it should go.13 After decluttering your home, Kondo then shows how to organize what’s left. From an organized garage to an alphabetized spice rack, nothing feels better than starting fresh with a place for everything and a plastic bin to put it in.

Inbox clutter can feel overwhelming too, so much so that

in a quest to clear it out, consumers send 24 percent of

emails straight to the trash.14

When you take a less-is-more approach by sending fewer emails, you can actually increase your open rate. But this can be challenging. “Some marketers are inclined to stick with the economics of more is more,” says Patrick Tripp, senior product manager at Adobe. “But they don’t think about the point of diminishing returns. While an initial influx of high email volumes might garner attention, there’s a long-term negative impact on customer loyalty and fatigue of sending too many emails. We believe strongly that it’s about more efficient and effective communication.”15

True Value is an excellent example of a company that does more with less. The global retailer reduced its email volume by 16 percent, while increasing open rates by 60 percent with more relevant messages and better subject lines.16

Your customers definitely notice when you’re dedicated to quality and not just quantity. So, tidy up and declutter emails before your customers do. Send them smarter messages that truly spark joy.

8RESOLUTION:

Create balance in your life.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Integrate a clear email strategy into your overall marketing plan.

Being organized is only as good as the strategy behind it. When you make folders and filing systems but have no deliberate plan for using them, the system falls short. Similarly, when left in its own silo, email that isn’t incorporated into the overall marketing mix is limited in its efficacy.

One digital marketing expert described email as “the closest planet to the sun,”17 meaning everyone in your company—including executives—sees it. And email touches all of your customers. With such huge visibility, you need a well-defined email strategy that integrates across the full marketing plan and works in concert with online and in-store channels. If email content is being driven by a marketing department that’s not synched up, you’ve set your biggest opportunity up to fail.

With an organized and well thought out plan that’s integrated into your overall marketing strategy, your email programs will be destined to succeed.

8January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

9RESOLUTION:

Travel more.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Make mobile email a must.

If you’ve had Spain or Greece or Bali on your travel bucket list for more than ten years, it’s time to get moving. Buy that ticket, plan your itinerary, and go see the world. Just as you plan to go global, now is the time to go mobile. In the U.S., 66 percent of email is now opened on smartphones or tablets.18

The mobile breakdown is as follows: 49.53 percent of email opens

were on a smartphone, 16.81 on a tablet. Of the 66.34 percent

of mobile opens, 58.26 percent happened on an Apple device;

7 percent were on Android devices.19

It’s no longer good enough to merely be “doing” mobile.20 You must go beyond responsive design to ensure all campaign assets are enhanced for mobile—visual, concise, and quick loading—to provide a seamless experience from email to check out. Only 30 percent of agencies and 26 percent of companies in the eMarketer Benchmarks Report survey used mobile-optimized landing pages.21 But as the email world—and the larger digital world—becomes increasingly mobile, such a requirement is vital.

Mobile-friendly marketing means building complete campaigns with a mobile-first mentality. In other words, don’t get caught having to retrofit existing content for mobile—plan for mobile from the onset. Test your emails across multiple devices. Be sure to leave white space around links and calls to action to make them clickable. Keep your copy concise. And keep your subject line to no more than thirty characters.

Mobile communication is where your customers live. Be sure to meet them there.

Source: MovableInk (Q4 2014 data)

9January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

10RESOLUTION:

Get promoted at work.EMAIL SOLUTION:

Boost your email marketing confidence.Many people use the New Year to look at where life and career choices have landed them. Now is the time to evaluate your marketing skills and develop more confidence in your abilities. The email-marketing world needs talented strategic minds willing to take a fresh approach with a channel that’s been around the block.

In a recent Adobe survey, marketers expressed doubt in general about their skills, effectiveness, and ability to measure impact. In fact, 82 percent said they learned digital marketing on the job. A large percentage—48 percent of digital marketers—said they don’t feel competent in their job.22

“Probably the biggest issue facing marketers today is a lack of confidence,” says Ann Lewnes, CMO at Adobe.23 “This is a time of great change in the marketing profession. We’ve done a lot of research with marketers and what they’ve told us is that they are not necessarily well-prepared for the changes that are happening.” In fact, a poll of 1,000 marketers revealed that 76 percent of them felt that marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the previous 50 years.24

For newly-minted marketers breaking into the working world, consider launching your career with a strategic focus on email marketing, where you can learn how to give customers what they want, need, and expect while giving your company’s bottom line a boost. If you’re a seasoned marketer with a wealth of expertise and real-world experience, make sure your email strategy integrates with your overall plan, as well as new technology, tools, and data.

Digital marketers said they don’t feel competent in their job.22

48%

January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers. 10January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers.

New year, new you,

NEW EMAIL PRACTICES.It’s time to move forward by breaking free of old habits and

ineffective marketing practices. Resolve to give your customers

more of what they want, not just more emails. They deserve better.

Make it your best (email) year ever.

Adobe can help. Let Adobe Campaign help you make the shift to contextual, cross-channel email marketing that’s engaging, relevant, and effective. We’ll help you deliver a compelling customer experience by using the perfect blend of data, tools, and strategies to make 2016 your best year ever. To learn more about delivering personalized, contextual, and real-time emails, visit http://www.adobe.com/campaign.

Adobe Marketing Cloud empowers companies to use big data to effectively reach and engage customers and prospects with highly personalized marketing content across devices and digital touch points. Eight tightly integrated solutions offer marketers a complete set of marketing technologies that focus on analytics, web and app experience management, testing and targeting, advertising, audience management, video, social engagement, and campaign orchestration. The tie-in with Adobe Creative Cloud makes it easy to quickly activate creative assets across all marketing channels. Thousands of brands worldwide—including two-thirds of Fortune 50 companies— rely on Adobe Marketing Cloud with more than 30.4 trillion transactions a year. To learn more, visit https://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud.html.

© 2016 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.Adobe, the Adobe logo and Creative Cloud are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

January 2016 | 10 New Year ’s Resolutions for Email Marketers. 11

1 “Email Marketers Benchmarking Research,” Adobe Report, August 2015.

2 Adobe Customer Story, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

3 Q4 2014 Email Benchmark Report, Experian.

4 Nicholas Einstein and David Daniels, “Assessing the Return on Email Marketing Strategy: Insights from the Email Maturity Framework,” The Relevancy Group, September 2015.

5 Adobe Customer Story, La Fourchette.

6 eMarketer, “Personalization Sees Payoffs in Marketing Emails,” January 2014.

7 Cortland J. Dahl, Antoine Lutz, Richard J. Davidson, “Reconstructing and Deconstructing the Self: Cognitive Mechanism in Meditation Practice,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 16, Issue 6 (2015): 515–523.

8 Adobe Customer Story, L’Occitane.

9 Adobe Customer Story, JustAnswer.

10 Ibid.

11 Email Marketing Self-Assessment, Adobe, http://www.emailmaturitymodel.com.

12 Nicholas Einstein and David Daniels, “Assessing the Return on Email Marketing Strategy: Insights from the Email Maturity Framework,” The Relevancy Group, September 2015.

13 Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (California: Ten Speed Press, 2014).

14 Return Path, Deliverability Benchmark Report, Analysis of Inbox Placement Rates in 2015, http://returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-Deliverability-Benchmark-Report.pdf, accessed November 30, 2015.

15 Personal interview with Patrick Tripp, September 28, 2015.

16 Adobe Customer Story, True Value.

17 Ryan Deutsch, DVP, Digital Marketing at Sears Holdings Corp, was quoted as saying at the 2015 MediaPost Email Insider Summit.

18 MovableInk, US Consumer Device Preference Report, January 28, 2015.

19 Ibid.

20 eMarketer, “Email Marketing Benchmarks 2015: Are Performance Metrics Revealing Signs of Consumer Fatigue?” Lauren T. Fisher, August 2015.

21 Ibid.

22 “Digital Distress: What Keeps Marketers Up at Night?” Adobe Study, September 2013.

23 EconomistGroup.com, “Lean back CMOment: A shot of confidence, Q&A with Ann Lewnes, CMO, Adobe,” November 17, 2014, http://www.economistgroup.com/leanback/channels/cmoment-adobe-cmo-ann-lewnes/, accessed November 30, 2015.

24 “Digital Distress.”