A couple of years back, a colleague and I visited Las
Vegas to demonstrate a "sales person-controlled
marketing technology" for representatives of a
large PC company who were attending a tech convention.
(The idea was so good that the large company
eventually copied it and didn't bother to tell us.)
The
night after the pitch, an inconvenient thing happened:
I lost my wallet. Now, I realize that many folks visit
Las Vegas and, figuratively speaking, lose their
wallets, but I literally lost my wallet: all the
credit cards, cash, business cards, my driver's
license, etc.
This,
for those who know firsthand, is not a good feeling. A
cold sweat beads on your forehead. The palms of your
hands turn clammy. There's a hole in your gut. You
feel as though you've been cut off from who you are.
What
I didn't know at the time--as I was anxiously calling
various credit card companies and trying to establish
that I was who I was and wondering how I might buy an
airplane ticket without a driver's license and
lamenting the fact that I was not going to have any
fun in Las Vegas--was that my wallet was beginning a
grand and amazing adventure.
Over
the next several hours and into the next morning, my
wallet and various of its contents were off for, what
would have been, the time of my life: terrific food
and bottles of wine, all manner of night clubs, a
night at one of the best hotels, and so on. (Later, I
was able to reconstruct much of the wallet's journey
thanks to photocopies of receipts.)
Similarly,
when you let loose of your e-mail newsletter, a
marvelous and (to a great extent) verifiable journey
begins.
Some
Important Background Information and Qualifiers.
Owing
to the advanced technology of a campaign metrics and
web site analytics provider that our firm is working
with, I recently got the chance to observe quite a lot
of the marvelous, mysterious life of an e-mail
newsletter.
The
technology allows us, among other things, to know
exactly who's opening (and reopening) the newsletter
and when, what they click on, where they subsequently
go on the client's web site, how many times they
forward the newsletter to colleagues, and more. I
won't name our client. But, you do need to know some
key facts about them, their "constituencies"
and the newsletter, itself.
The
company is a clear market leader and known innovator.
The business-to-business newsletter reaches a variety
of constituencies: purchasing professionals around the
globe (our client's customers and prospects),
corporate suppliers who are having to come to grips
with the realities of online sourcing, current and
prospective employees, industry analysts, members of
the press, shareholders, and academicians.
The
client's average deal size is around $700,000. The
lifetime value of a long-term contract numbers in the
millions.
One
key fact about the newsletter: although we try as best
we can to insist that the newsletter be
"opt-in" only, we have not been able to
control the client's sales organization in this
regard. As a result, the list of some 11,000
subscribers contains a thousand or more who were
opted-in, presumably without their permission. I don't
like that fact. But, I have to put it out on the
table.
Another
important point: the data I am about to share is based
on watching the "deep" metrics associated
with just one issue of the newsletter. Obviously, this
is not enough data to discern any meaningful trends.
Signs
of an Interesting Life: Metrics and Musings.
When
observing the life of an e-mail newsletter, what you
look for are signs that recipients are engaging with,
using and interacting with the message. Roughly put:
the more interaction, the more valuable the
newsletter.
Couple
these signs with knowing which constituent categories
the recipients fit into-- legitimate prospects,
existing customers, suppliers--and you have the
beginnings of data that you and your sales team can,
with care and common sense, act upon.
For
example, you may want to identify the newsletter's
"power users" and survey them to improve the
quality of the overall effort. The survey can also do
the duty of fleshing-out the profile of an important
prospect: their challenges, fears and greatest
interests.
Another
example: let's say that that you are able to determine
that an as of yet unidentified prospect is forwarding
the e-mail to twelve colleagues. This information
could be quite valuable to your sales team.
Some of the signs of an interesting life are
fundamental and unequivocal. For example: the
percentage of folks who are opening the newsletter.
Others require interpretation: if somebody opens the
e-mail newsletter and just reads the article summaries
and introductory copy, but does not click on any of
the article links, does this mean they're not
interested in the content, or what?
Here's
what I and we observed over approximately six days of
data. (Incidentally, up to nine days after the
newsletter was distributed, there were still some
folks opening and reading it):
Open
Rates and "Reopen Rates"
The
newsletter was opened by about 40.5 percent of
recipients. I assume that you know the limitations of
measuring open rates (i.e., HTML vs. text, and
previewing in Microsoft Outlook), so I won't belabor
this point.
The
e-mail went out at 6:00 p.m. CST on a Tuesday night.
One thousand recipients opened it that first night.
Over two thousand opened it during the next day.
Interesting
side note: I think there needs to be something called
"reopen rates": a measurement of those who
revisit the e-mail newsletter, going back to engage
with more articles and click on various links. I was
heartened to see several legitimate prospects
re-opening the newsletter and engaging with more of
the content.
Measured
over more than one issue, reopen rates could be an
important gauge of the intensity of interest of a
given reader.
Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Slightly
less than 1 percent of the list decided to
unsubscribe. And almost half of that number chose to
subscribe. While one month alone of this data isn't
particularly helpful, I just wanted to touch this
important base.
In
my opinion, any kind of action by a e-mail newsletter
recipient is good news. I'm happy that 1 percent
enabled us to not waste any more bandwidth on
educating or courting them.
Reader
Feedback.
This
particular issue of the newsletter had the first
segment that actively solicited reader feedback. We
created a realistic scenario with a negative result
and asked readers how to avoid the problem in the
future.
Only
four responded. Is that disappointing? Nope. One of
the four is a customer. The other three are important
influencers in companies where the client is actively
seeking to begin a sales cycle. And, the responses
themselves were helpful, informative and quite
detailed.
Content
Analysis.
To
"frame" this observation, I focused on the
top 200 readers of the newsletter as measured by how
many articles they clicked on.
A
link to a third-party article featuring an interview
with a well-known business author about how to
encourage change in a large organization, netted, by
far, the highest click-through rate.
And
this was despite the fact that it was placed in the
lower half of the newsletter.
Two
points here. One, don't think for a moment that,
because of the crash of the New Economy and those that
got burned in the process, that business innovation as
a topic of interest to readers is dead. However, you
have every reason to believe that it's hard to get
anyone in the enterprise to go beyond reading about
innovation and start actually funding it.
Second
point: though the article wasn't about or by the
client and didn't even mention the client's name--and,
in fact, had only one sidebar devoted to the client's
core competence--it was, to repeat, the most popular
link.
There's
a message in that data point, one that I'm always
quick to reinforce. Whether it's your e-mail
newsletter or any of your marketing messages,
remember, it's not about you. It's about them:
prospects and customers and other key constituencies.
If your issues (the things you advocate and champion
and, with palpable conviction, believe in) are not
their issues, you've got some serious re-thinking to
do.
Who's
Forwarding?
In
the life of an e-mail newsletter, those who are
forwarding it are in the process of educating their
colleagues and attempting to build a
"culture" that could support what you have
to offer.
Four
active prospects and one growing customer forwarded
the e-mail newsletter to a total of over sixty
colleagues. One of those prospects who forwarded the
e-mail is the Chief Financial Officer of a large
industrial valve company. Ideas that flow downhill
from such high points on the organization chart have a
little more urgency attached to them.
It
was also interesting to note that numerous competitors
(who up until this point had not been purged from the
list) were among the most active forwarders.
The
"Power Users".
Again,
focusing on the top 200 readers, I was able to find
approximately twenty "power users."
These
"power users" include those folks who:
-
may have won recognition in their industry (awards,
published articles or event speaking engagements);
-
are the client's most high-profile, most-quoted
customers
-
might be members of the press or industry analyst
community
-
and/or are CXO-level prospects.
In
order to assign the (arbitrary, I grant you)
"power user" status, our team had to do
in-depth Google searches and, of course, compare the
data to the client's database and list of
prospect/"sales pipeline" organizations.
Even
if the "power user" isn't a customer or
prospect, you know that an industry best practitioner
is using your e-mail newsletter to enhance their
careers. That's great news. It means you are creating
something of objective value that will, over time,
translate into sales
