Tag Archives: social

Holiday Email Stats: Volumes Increase. Companies Start to Explore Mobile, Social.

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For the past 5 years I’ve tracked holiday season emails to see the changing trends, volumes, and types offers being used.

As email has become more competitive and customers have taken to a variety of communication paths, most notably social in 2011, sends have become much more individualized with companies in the same category and channel sending very different offer types and frequencies.

Looking at the overall trend, it appears volume is up, likely as companies continue to strengthen their digital competency as well as the size of their offers.

The Volume Counts:

  • Brookstone – 114
  • Restoration Hardware – 55
  • Bath & Body Works – 54
  • Macys – 42 [includes sub brands, i.e. rewards]
  • Harry & David – 41
  • Victoria’s Secret – 42
  • Zales – 42
  • Ice.com – 39
  • CircuitCity.com – 38
  • Eddie Bauer – 37
  • NewEgg – 34
  • Pottery Barn – 32
  • NFL Shop – 31
  • Sports Chalet – 28
  • Best Buy – 29
  • Costco – 27
  • Target.com – 24
  • Bed, Bath & Beyond – 23
  • HP – 22
  • BananaRepublic – 21
  • Dockers – 21
  • The North Face – 18
  • Zappos – 15
  • See’s Candy – 15
  • SiriusXM Radio – 12
  • StarbucksStore.com – 11
  • Quicksilver – 7
  • The Art of Shaving – 7
  • Mophie – 6

The misses & future opportunities:

1. Many companies repeated messages, offers and creative. While emails do go missed, trends become notable and as shoppers key in, response is reduced. By diversifying messaging points, even with the same baseline offer, activity increases to see what “different”.

Restoration Hardware is just one example having sent 4 identical titled emails in 1 day.

2. Significant oversending continues to be a wide-spread problem with Brookstone setting the bar at 114 emails in around 90 days. While more volume can drive short term sales, finding a balance helps insure list quality and continued usage throughout the season and minimum opt-out requests.

3. Only a few companies addressed mobile viewing. With the huge spike in mobile this year, the implications of being accessible are significant — increased awareness and offer usage for retail and being a direct alternative for etailers.

Harry & David and Best Buy offered a mobile links on messages improving their shot at converting shoppers on the go.

4. Almost no companies leveraged social to validate messages. By including user generated content such as user reviews, comments from other shoppers, or more abstract programs like gift tips, social can help email become more authentic and lessen the spammy nature of offer only messages.

Samsung keyed in to both reviews and Facebook chatter in one of their email sends.

Note about the data: I track emails starting in September that mention holidays through to new years. Messages are sent to a dedicated account and regularly opened to fire tracking tags but are not acted on [no purchases] to avoid segmentation changes and of course some messages do get lost in the mix, this is not scientific.

Why aren’t you asking your customers why? Using dialogue beyond the obvious.

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I’m on a lot of email lists, dozens, probably more and years and years I’ve collected emails from the internet 100 down to niche boutiques and specialized services, everyone you can think of and a few that surprise even me. From competition to best practices and trends, it’s a great way to see what’s going on in the industry but not surprisingly I don’t “act” on these messages very often. Still, in 5 years of collecting and tens of thousands of emails no one has ever asked me why.

Why. It’s a simple question with vast implications.

A guy starts receiving emails from Victoria’s Secret after placing a gift order – without the details what will those messages say? Are they going to assume he is a direct customer? Why tells the marketing team that instead of multiple-emails a week with personal offers, the message can shift to less frequent suggestions, gift ideas, even useful content that makes the brand useful to him to follow. And the results? Well, I don’t know about you but I don’t know many men buying products for themselves from Victoria’s Secret.

Every day Living Social plays on my Pandora stream, inviting me to become a customer… millions of dollars in ad budgets to reach people with a sign up message who are already signed up. I can close their popups but that’s the extent of the feedback… With a simple question, they could appeal to current customers with value, contextual relevancy, something that doesn’t just make them top of mind but invites consideration. And for the price of one answer, I’d get the benefit of not hearing the same boring ad day in and day out.

Why is the hardest question but digital gives us a medium to answer it every day.

Social has created a frenzy for businesses as well all vye for the customer’s attention pounding them about new products, offers and a host of other campaigns we want to see go “viral” but that’s not where it ends. Customers are ready to spill their guts… not in drawn out forms or lengthy processes but through dialogue.

Not just surveys or expensive focus groups, we can go out with messages to customers in an individualized basis and not only to ask them questions but even to show them that we are asking. And they expect it.

From optimized campaigns to operational learnings, there’s a heck of a lot of value in knowing why.

The Franchise Dilemma: Building credibility in spite of “independently owned & operated”

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A customer, let’s call them Sally, walks into a store, say Quiznos, and hands them a coupon along with her order only to have the cashier say something to the effect of “sorry, we don’t take that here… we’re not part of corporate… we’re not required… we’re not!”. Slightly confused and totally upset, Sally pays the full bill and heads home vowing to tell all her friends to stay away. But when Sally heads over to Facebook her post isn’t going to read “avoid this local, independent branch”, it’s going to say that Quiznos failed to deliver. The logo on the door is Sally’s target.

Franchise compliance is not new problem, nor a simple one… independent owners, local markets & a personal p&l to live by, but in a world where Sally can reach 100s of people who trust her opinion in seconds, it’s become a whole new risk.

So how do you bring together a single brand in a business that shares one logo and many autonomous owners to avoid a negative social onslaught?

It starts with education.

Just as your franchisees have to know about menu changes, marketing campaigns, uniform updates and all the other components that go into the training program, they have to understand how social media works and what you’re doing with it to impact their business.

Whether it’s an incident like the Domino’s viral video taking a brand down or a case study on results driving things up, it takes showing the reality that a connected consumer is having on the industry to invoke an understanding that things do indeed have to change.

Empowerment creates buy in

It’s typical for corporate to run campaigns, to invest in learning the new tools and make the big plays but it’s also someone’s livelihood and investment and chances are, they want the keys to drive their own success too. Since the franchisee is on the front lines already making, or breaking, the experience, it’s only logical to pair your education with programs and access.

You may not be ready for the next great campaign but the franchisee needs a way to play now. Whether they’re a social guru or think Facebook is a new best selling hardback, that means partnering up to deliver tactical ideas now and to accept in local programs rather than simply handcuffing stores down. In the same way that corporate benefits by distributing social across marketing, product, support and other areas, bringing it out the store owners is the best way to scale up.

Social as a means of communication

It’s not just about what the customer sees, franchise and corporate relationships are often strained by limited contact and a constant request for more marketing or more compliance depending on which side of the table you’re on. Enabling protected communities for owners, bringing together store level employees to serve as ambassadors or even just see the great programs from other stores not only gets the dialogue flowing, but it’s a practical way to demonstrate the value of a social program.

Franchise – Brand; Brand – Franchise

No matter what they mean to you, make no mistake that they’re synonymous to the customer in their expectations. This means that any visible component from support to products to that coupon Sally got in the mail must be globalized to insure the service is the same. It’s not what the business is use to, it may not be what the master franchise agreement says has to happen but it’s what’s required to survive and that means either getting buy in cooperatively or changing the rules.

Note to anyone from Quiznos. While I have been to locations that didn’t take my coupons, I’m a regular customer… downfall of being top of mind is ending up as a hypothetical example.

Are you leveraging advocacy to drive discussions in places where your social marketing team can’t go?

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View of Yosemite Falls and the Valley from from Glacier Point

As the photo above shows, my view right now is pretty impressive… In many ways it’s easy to think of this setting as completely detached from the world of social marketing or brand but as I listen to the conversations of the people around me they tell a different story: first a remark on the view, then a comment on how great it is to get away from it all followed by a quip about their energy drink, the new shoes they’re breaking in for the hike down, the car trip for those who drove in. Truth is, for better or worse, products are a part of our everyday lives and they don’t get talked about simply on a public Twitter stream – they get brought up in context.

Whether its chit chat on a 4-mile hike to reach an amazing view like this one or on a closed Facebook group, most of the conversations that happen about our brands takes place in a world which we as marketers have no direct access to. Yet in an attempt to become more transparent by speaking to customers, we’ve unwittingly backed into a corner and become stuck on only what is right in front of us — monitoring and “owning” the public conversations but missing the big opportunity.

Rather than focusing on what’s “in the open” and trying to be the master of every conversation, it’s best to focus on the power advocacy can bring to all mediums – whether it’s responding to a late night plea for support, sharing a review, or combating a negative belief in the line at the cafeteria. A trusted friend tops any other marketing, social included, and it doesn’t care what channel or privacy rules apply to the conversation.

Next time you’re out of your controlled environment, whether it’s a camp ground or an amusement park, listen to what’s being said about products & brands and ask yourself not how you could be speaking in that conversation but rather how you could win the attention of one of the participant’s time so they speak for you, or at least about you.

[This post was recorded on the trail to Glacier Point 7/16/2011 and typed up later. Thanks iTalk!]