MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

The MECLABS team is back from last week’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit, where our Managing Director (CEO), Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, presented a two-hour session about email optimization, complete with live optimization of audience emails.

As usual, the audience wanted more. So in our next Web clinic, Crafting an Engaging Email Message: How a properly focused email message can increase conversion by 85% (plus live optimization, ten email campaigns will be selected (double the amount we usually choose) from attendees who send us their email marketing efforts when they register.

Live optimization will allow us to give hands on advice in the practice of crafting engaging email messages. Plus, Dr. McGlaughlin will review a recent, never-released experiment conducted by our researchers using the findings from this experiment to help you optimize your own email campaigns.

But before we share some effective tactics, we asked your peers – how can marketers craft an engaging email message? (hey, we don’t know everything, we’re making new discoveries every day). Here are a few of our favorite responses… Read more…

Earlier today at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011, in front of 700 marketers at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin worked without a net and engaged in live optimization with actual examples provided by Summit attendees.

Live Optimization #1: Email newsletter

The first was an email from Savings.com. The objective of the mail was to drive clicks and the mail itself is Savings.com’s email newsletter, so the mail went out to the entire newsletter subscriber base.

Flint’s immediate comment is that the information isn’t being presented at the right time in the right way, the mail doesn’t look like a typical email newsletter so there could be confusion on the part of the recipient, and the mail does not have a clear value proposition.

The submitter commented, “We’re trying to deliver the best coupons for that particular week.”

One attendee commented, the best value of the mail — the 30% off offer, etc. — is the hardest to find and read.

Flint’s additional comments were that the mail has no eyepath, enormous friction with seven calls to action and there’s no way to tell the difference between brands and button. Read more…

(Editor’s Note: Marketing strategist and best-selling author, David Meerman Scott, will be the keynote speaker at our sister company’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit ’11 in January and every attendee will get a copy of his new book, “Real-Time Marketing & PR.” So we invited David to add his thoughts to the blog about email marketing. Here’s what he had to say…)

I travel all over the world, speaking to business audiences about Real-Time Marketing. That means I stay in a heck of a lot of hotels—40 or more a year. And because I do my own reservations online, I’m in an excellent position to observe how hotels communicate with customers via email after reservations are made.

This is a perfect example of an industry that screws up email marketing. The reason? Emails are sent on the hotel’s timeframe, not the customers. And it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, the rules of real-time apply to you too.

Nearly all hotels send confirmation by e-mail soon after the booking is made. And a few send reminders a week or so before check-in. Typically, that’s all I get before a stay.

Read more…

Email marketing is a very popular topic and most likely you’ve read a number of articles covering different ways to improve email marketing campaigns. Whether you are an experienced pro, or relatively new to the subject, it never hurts to review the basics and think about the process of email marketing optimization from the building blocks on up. I recently joined MarketingSherpa as a reporter and I’ve been taking the online certification and training courses offered by MarketingExperiments. A couple of weeks ago I had a popular post at the MarketingSherpa blog on email marketing optimization, looking at the process through the lens of email capture. This week I’m covering email messaging, the heart of email marketing. Read more…

At the recent MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit in Boston, I had the chance to interview noted marketing strategist and best-selling author David Meerman Scott about email marketing…

Read more…

Editor’s Note: In a recent interview with MarketingSherpa Editor Sean Donahue, Research Analyst Corey Trent outlined errors even experienced email marketers make when conducting tests. (My personal favorite – #5). We thought this information was valuable, and wanted to share it right here on the blog for those who do not have a MarketingSherpa membership. Special thanks to our sister company for allowing us to republish the below article…

SUMMARY: Before you conduct your next email test, make sure you’re not falling into a trap that can muddy your results or limit the gains you might otherwise achieve.

We spoke with an email testing expert from our sister company, MarketingExperiments, to uncover common mistakes marketers make when running email tests. Read why good analytics and segmentation are crucial forerunners to testing, and why a blockbuster discovery from one test actually can be a risky thing for a marketing team.

by Sean Donahue, Editor, MarketingSherpa

Testing is an essential component of a strong email marketing strategy. But only if the tests are conducted and analyzed properly to ensure you’re helping – not hurting – your email performance.

“There is a cost for bad testing,” says Corey Trent, Research Analyst, MarketingExperiments. “Bad assumptions based on bad tests can cost you a lot of money and cause you to lose out on a lot of business.”

Trent routinely conducts email tests as a member of the MarketingExperiments sales and marketing optimization research team. Through this work, he’s seen how mistakes, misconceptions and simple oversights can derail a well-meaning marketer’s testing strategy.

We asked him to share his advice for avoiding testing pitfalls, so you can achieve your goal of improving email performance. Here are seven common mistakes he’s observed: Read more…