Book time to discuss your messaging program with our email expert, Brian Gruidl, VP of Email Marketing at Hansa.
By Roy Wollen on May 8, 2024 10:49:41 AM
By Roy Wollen on Feb 11, 2024 4:10:34 PM
Are Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) worth the investment? What are the business outcomes CDPs deliver? What is the Return on Investment (ROI)? These are the questions Marketing leaders must ask to prove the value of a CDP as an investment, just like a new product, new store, new capital equipment. And to do that, we need a business case. Like all business cases, our CDP business case should:
By Roy Wollen on Dec 8, 2023 9:32:08 AM
Technology leaders want a strong Marketing partner. They look to Marketing to be articulate, visionary; to build a consensus. They want Marketing leaders to define success and measure business outcomes. But are we- as Marketing leaders - up to the task?
There is a lot at stake. Without Marketing leadership, IT runs the risk of over scoping a solution or missing critical requirements (and under scoping). Either way that means trouble:
By Brian Gruidl on Oct 26, 2023 3:17:38 PM
Everyone talks about email personalization. And Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can finally make this a reality. But are brands willing to listen? Do brands have the courage to send fewer emails? What if CDPs could improve email experiences and produce more revenue?
By Roy Wollen on Sep 14, 2023 2:25:58 PM
CDP readiness series - getting the most out of customer data
No surprise: brands are inundated with customer data from various touchpoints. That’s why a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is important - to help businesses make sense of customer data and provide important benefits...
By Roy Wollen on Aug 1, 2023 11:49:49 AM
Marketing leaders already know that Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can provide a big step forward for brands. CDPs vastly improve the way brands recognize customers. CDPs can help personalize the customer experience seamlessly and across channels.
By Roy Wollen on Jan 24, 2022 11:23:06 AM
Where do good ideas come from? Is there a science to innovation? How important is intuition and imagination?
By Roy Wollen on Oct 21, 2021 2:19:01 PM
Email is still the darling of digital when it comes to ROI: Email is low cost. By definition, email marketing is addressable media, so brands know immediately who is responding. In a survey, eConsultancy showed that brand managers feel email marketing is best at ROI, relative to other channels.
By Roy Wollen on Dec 1, 2020 9:57:29 AM
Research shows that consumers receive more than 300 emails per day. As an industry, we spend tons of energy figuring out how to stand out in a crowded inbox. Maybe we should insert a consumer’s first name in the subject line? What if we repeat back what a consumer browsed on a brand’s website? The tactics make a difference, but we’re missing the most important part.
By Roy Wollen on Nov 20, 2020 10:01:12 AM
I had the pleasure of interviewing Akin Tosyali, one of the nation's leading Direct To Consumer (DTC) experts. No surprise: DTC is on fire. Most brands are accelerating their digital programs to meet consumer demand; some have adopted subscriptions and membership programs. As usual, Akin was open to sharing best practices from around the web and I guarantee you will be a better digital marketer after you read this, so meet the expert.
Akin Tosyali, DTC expert
By Roy Wollen on Jul 28, 2020 12:14:30 PM
Enough with the good ideas already
By Roy Wollen on Jul 1, 2020 11:26:05 AM
Not everyone wants your email. If that's true, why do customers signup anyway?
Many customers register their email address, but don’t opt in for email marketing. This is surprisingly common, and is a mystery to email marketers. Clients struggle to explain why 20% of their e-commerce customers are on a poorly named “suppression list”? What’s going on here?
When customers don’t opt in, are they saying they don’t love the brand? Could it be: our “fabulous deals” fall flat? Is it a matter of love the brand/hate the email?
The marketer in me doesn’t want to admit customers don’t want promotional email. Maybe I didn’t explain the benefits properly. If I used magical words, maybe that would’ve changed a customer’s mind. The best practice here is obvious.
The best email marketers set expectations properly. What types of emails will subscribers receive? How often? What are the benefits of receiving marketing email (not just sales incentives, but value-add)? How are subscribers in control?
Nordstrom has given this some thought. Their signup form says “Yes, sign me up for emails about the latest looks, sales, events and more.”
Amtrak features discounts, but there is value-add for news and information
Remember customers who love your brand, look forward to your emails. They pick them out of crowded inboxes. This DSW fan enjoyed getting 2 emails the same day. But not everyone wants to receive promotional, deal-centric emails. What are the best practices for how communicate without email?
Opt in, Opt out – make up your mind
Are you afraid of subscribers who opt in but subsequently opt out? From my experience, these are true opt outs in the sense that they experienced the email marketing program then said “forget it.” Fortunately, most brands discover these numbers are tiny as visualized using a brand in the home improvement industry.
By Roy Wollen on Jun 2, 2020 3:06:24 PM
What brands do with the 1P data they collect is the key to success. What customers share with the brand is not nice-to-know information. It’s customers telling brands two things - What they expect to get back and their level of trust. The greater the brand trust, the more customers will divulge.
Many email programs collect lots of 1P data. Customers expect value in exchange for creating a login, building a profile and sharing what they want. The way brands start the conversation is called a welcome email and the best come in streams of communications, not just one automatically generated “hello” from a robot. From our experience working with hundreds of email marketers, here are the best practices:
Nordstrom’s welcome stream explains the benefit of the email program as well as its loyalty program and is customized to reflect recent purchases
By Roy Wollen on May 26, 2020 1:00:00 PM
The way users sign up for email and what happens next is a best practice in email marketing. This is a chance for Marketing leaders and Technology to show the organization they can work together. The problem spans marketing technology, content management systems (e.g., forms), tag management, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) etc. Without Marketing leadership, they become disjointed tools. But how brands use 1P data is foundational to success.
What are the best practices for customer signup?
By Roy Wollen on May 15, 2020 10:54:12 AM
I was just featured on Northwestern University's thought leader series on digital marketing. The topic was how retailers are embracing digital as fast as possible to not only counter the Covid crisis, but improve the customer's UX in the process.
By Lizzie Hoffman, TowerData on Apr 15, 2020 9:00:00 AM
It’s easy to market to loyalty program members; their extensive history with your brand provides you and your marketing team with the necessary data to know what they love, what they hate, and what they’re probably in the market for next. That said, how do you extend that same level of customer service to your newest customers, or even those who haven’t made a purchase yet? In 2020, everyone is looking to AI for marketing help. Sure, a great marketing platform can help segment your database and schedule your content, but it can’t perform at its best if the customer data in your database is a little lackluster.
By Roy Wollen on Apr 3, 2020 8:46:08 AM
You may be asking yourself: should I write to my customers about Covid-19? What about sending promotional emails? Is email still a good way to communicate? The answer: Email marketing was there to help in 2008 and it is indispensable now.
By Roy Wollen on Oct 16, 2019 9:53:00 PM
Analytics is the key to an effective email marketing program. Email campaign analytics usually have numbers for the basics including:
By Roy Wollen on Oct 16, 2019 9:51:12 PM
It’s easy to forget – email marketing is part of a brand’s Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). The best email marketers see email holistically along with mobile, social and offline marketing. The broader our vision of email, the more successful we can be in the eyes of the customer. The customer sees brand not channel. How does email integrate with Customer Service? Field sales? Store associates? Each of these touchpoints can- and should trigger an email. If we ignore this, we will never get off the wheel of batch and blast and our customers will become numb to email communication.
By Roy Wollen on Oct 16, 2019 9:50:33 PM
The best email marketers I know welcome “failure.” What I’m referring to is cultivating a culture of continuous testing where failure is seen as learning. Marketers play offense by testing everything and that moves the ball forward. But failure is a way to play defense and a test result can be an early warning not to rollout a message, price change or offer and make a costly mistake.
By Roy Wollen on Oct 16, 2019 9:49:28 PM
By Roy Wollen on Oct 16, 2019 9:45:48 PM
The most successful marketers leverage email to strengthen the bond with their best customers. Customers seek out brand emails in a cluttered inbox. Customers feel like they are having a conversation with the brand. We have spent years analyzing email strategies from the best marketers in the world to uncover five things that make them great:
By Hansa Marketing on Sep 1, 2019 9:55:00 PM
By Wayne Marks, President, Hansa|GCR
Marketers confront a real paradox when dealing with business customers, and this paradox is often not realized or addressed in approaches to understanding what drives corporate decisions. The paradox is: Am I selling to a person or a company? The answer is “both.”
At a basic level, interactions between companies are simply interactions between people. That may sound silly, but consider its implications. Buyers who work in companies don’t change their bodies when they leave work and then they go home and become purchasers of consumer goods and services. As consumers, they walk around as a package of thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, along with a history of experiences in buying goods and services and an ever-evolving set of expectations. None of this goes away when they go to work the next day and dress up in their corporate buyer persona.
By Roy Wollen on Sep 1, 2019 10:27:00 AM
By Roy Wollen, President, Hansa Marketing Services.
By Roy Wollen on Jan 31, 2013 10:43:00 AM
By Roy Wollen, President, Hansa Marketing Services.
If you’re responsible for marketing dashboards, you know you’re off to a bad start if you hear people say: So what? That’s nice to know, but what do I do with it? It’s pretty, but what’s next?
Business people are already inundated with numbers. To help you cut through the clutter, let’s discuss some pitfalls to avoid and top tips for developing marketing dashboards. But I will start by telling you the main takeaway: it’s not about creating cool gauges and dials, it’s about solving business problems.
Dashboards require planning. Dashboards embed actions. Dashboards have champions that socialize the work. This doesn’t happen because of a cool gadget.
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