Intelligent Email in 2008: Making your Reader Feel like you Read their Mind

Once you get beyond the inbox, and your email is opened, your brand is still important. Every time a reader opens an email, they have an expectation for content or offers based on prior online and offline brand experiences. This is a challenge that you need to be prepared for when entering the world of email marketing. How can you be ready?

Basic Elements of Intelligent Email you Need to Consider

Preparing for the in-email battle requires that you start with a clear understanding of consumer reality. What is consumer reality? Consumer reality is what the consumer is thinking/expecting when they open your email. It is NOT what the marketing department, or people who work for your company assume will happen. There are four basic elements of intelligent email you should highlight and keep in mind whenever designing an email marketing strategy:

1. Don’t assume your email recipient saw your TV, print or in-store ad
   Cute extensions of a TV spot or print ad, without reference in an email can confuse the reader and hurt the brand. One time, a high-tech B2B client had a funny TV spot showing a forklift emptying a room full of servers to make way for the server of the future. When the email arrived in the prospects in-box, with a photo of the forklift by itself, next to the company logo, the readers all wanted to know if this company was selling forklifts now.

2. Your email recipient doesn’t read all of your emails
   I learned this the hard way, at the Email Experience Council. The Email Experience Council sends out weekly emails. Each week, we slaved over creating brand new content so we would seem fresh and new. Little did we know that people who read these emails have “lives.” Some weeks, they were on vacation and didn’t read their eec email, other weeks they were out sick, or working on a big project. In any event, once we saw key messages and offers were receiving low response we did some testing. The average email recipient needed to receive a key message three emails in a row in order for them to actually view the content one time and garner the highest response. Remembering that your email subscriber doesn’t read your emails is a tough reality to swallow, but pays off in the end.

3. The copy in your email might not work
   This is one of my favorite elements to share with people. Often times, you, or your copy writers will work hard to ensure the copy flows well, has a rhythm that invigorates your reader. Email copy is poetic. OK. Reality check here. If the copy you are using in your email does not align with the search phrases people are using when they visit your site, you are missing the boat. The phrases received in your search box on your website, or even through paid search reflect the phrases that people associate with your brand. Keeping these in mind when you are writing email copy will move the impact of your message up a few notches by creating a synergy between what your reader reads, and what they were thinking.

4. Your email will probably not be read, the first time, inside an email inbox
   With the proliferation of devices people carry with them to enhance their digital lifestyle, there is an increasing chance that your email message will not be first viewed in the email inbox. An rss notification may be sent to a reader, a sms alter may be sent to a mobile device, a blackberry, iphone, or other handheld unit may hold the message or, your message may be diverted to a social networking app.

In any event, creating your content, knowing that size restrictions will play a role in the way your email message appears to your reader is key.

Using This Insight to Your Advantage

Starting off without assumptions as to how your reader will engage with your content will give you a competitive advantage in your email marketing efforts. What if you could take it up another notch and create an email that resonated with your reader as not just effective, but insightful.

Email/Search/Display Integration will Take your Program to the Next Level

Without sounding like a broken record, your email recipient has certain expectations about your email just by looking at the from name and subject line. Not only that, but once they open it, they are reading the content with biases relating to what they may or may have not been exposed to through other marketing and advertising elements your company is running. That said, you might not even recognize that you hold the key to looking like a rock star in your customer’s mind by integrating your email program with your search and display programs. There are two approaches to creating this success; starting with your in-house file, or starting with your display ads. Either one is phenomenal. Here is how they work:

Starting with your In-house File

• When someone receives an email from you, drop a cookie onto their computer (not the same cookie that you use to detect an open)
• (To help visualize this, pretend you are sending an email out to recipe enthusiasts)
• When this reader goes to your site search, web search, or clicks on a display ad, you will receive the insight as to what they are engaging with. (ex. Fried chicken recipes)
• Use this intelligence, including the words they used in the search box and/or the copy on the banner they clicked on, to create a dynamic content block in your next house email, that offers them access to the content they have been searching for. (ex. New Fried Chicken recipes now available)

Starting with External Intelligence

• This process is similar to the process above, but begins with the cookie drop on the search landing pages and/or display ads.
• When this reader goes to your site search, web search, or clicks on a display ad, you will receive the insight as to what they are engaging with. (ex. Fried chicken recipes)
• When they land on your site and sign up for your emails, the intelligence is passed along and included in the welcome email. You can now speak with certainty in the welcome email to create expectations and offers that appear to have read the new subscribers mind. (ex. Thanks for signing up for our recipe emails! We hope you are a fried chicken fan, because that is our feature recipe this month)

An example of the workflow for both scenarios is listed below. Companies who use this type of strategy are seeing results increased over 300% compared to less targeted content strategies.

Jeanniey Mullen
EVP and Chief Marketing Officer
Zinio