Pierry Blog

As a journalism major in college, I rejoiced in the fact that I tested out of most math classes and would only have to take one math course to complete my degree. Little did I know that a single statistics class would come back to haunt help me in my career as a digital marketer.

Running a successful email marketing A/B test depends on a few elements straight out of your old stats class. But don’t worry, you don’t need to pull an all-nighter to set up your first A/B test, just follow these simple steps:

1. Develop a Hypothesis:

It doesn’t matter if you’re testing a subject line, a call to action, a button, an offer, or something else, you should have a reason for running your test, i.e. something to prove or disprove. A/B testing is more than just throwing two options to the masses to see which performs “better” and assuming it’s the end all, be all. There needs to be logic behind not only why you are running the test, but what the outcome will be. For example:

• A subject line that teases a “new product” will have more opens than a subject line that simply states what the new product is because people are curious about the new product.
• An email body that has 4 or fewer interaction points (links) will have higher click-throughs than an email body that has 5 or more interaction points because too many options creates no action.
• A subject line that uses the brand name will earn more opens than a subject line that does not use a brand name because brand recognition increases opens.

Each hypothesis includes a rationale at the end. Knowing the reasoning behind the outcome, or in other words the reasoning behind subscriber behavior, is just as, if not more important, than which performed better or worse and can lead you to new hypotheses to test.

2. Choose your test group carefully:

To limit variability and maximize the success of your A/B test, you’ll want to perform your test on a similar group of email subscribers. In statistics, this is known as “blocking,” and it helps increase the precision of your tests.

In email marketing, you’ll want to look closely at the list you are going to use. Hopefully, it goes without saying that you’ll want to only use active subscribers, but did you know that removing highly-engaged subscribers may help your test too? Both represent opposite extremes of your subscriber spectrum and could inaccurately sway your results. Other aspects to consider when it comes to your test group include:

• Email service providers: If one or more of the providers you send to regularly causes problems with deliverability, remove them from your test.
• List segments: Unless your hypothesis is dependent on a particular segment, now isn’t the time to slice and dice your list, meaning you don’t want to target just men or just subscribers in a specific zip code.
• Time of send: If you always send your emails at 3 pm on a Tuesday, you should do so for your test too, unless of course time of send is what you are testing.

In short, you’ll want to eliminate as many variables as possible from your email test. Keep things consistent with what you’ve previously done. Rule of thumb is to make one change at a time so you can really zero in on what is causing a change in subscriber behavior.

3. Analyze the statistical significance of your test:

Just because you performed a test doesn’t mean the results are conclusive. A test shows just one data point and often requires additional testing before you can conclusively rely on the results. We often suggest testing a single hypothesis for at least 3 months before determining a winner.

Once you feel you have enough data to determine what we refer to as statistical significance, you can take advantage of online tools, such as this A/B split test calculator. Just plug in the number of subscribers you sent your control and variable to and the number of conversions for each. The calculator then tells you if the results of your test are statistically significant. You could calculate the statistical significance yourself, but because I don’t trust my mathematical skills—again, journalism major.

Remember, when your test is complete and you’ve analyzed the results, you’ve still just got one data point of evidence. Before relying on that data point, you’ll need to do further testing. Depending on your industry and audience, you may need more than 5 statistically significant tests before you can make any assumptions.

Although that may seem like a lot of work, A/B testing can give you the type of insights that can increase open rates, click rates and more, optimizing your email strategy. Happy testing!

Could your brand use a refresh? The answer is—it depends. There are a number of reasons businesses big and small decide to take on a rebranding. Sometimes it’s because their business has evolved and the branding no longer serves as an accurate reflection of what the company represents. Other times it’s because sales are stagnant or slowing and there’s a belief that it could be due to a stale look or feel with the brand.

But rebranding is not something that should be considered lightly. It is a major undertaking that can take up a lot of time and money—and without the right strategy in place, all that time and money could be for nothing.

So what should you do before you decide to rebrand?

Ask the Right Questions

The beginning of any rebranding strategy starts by asking the right questions, including, why are we doing a rebrand? Consider the end mission or goal behind the rebranding project and what issue or problem you’re attempting to solve.

Other questions to ask before you even begin to strategize include:

• Does our current branding tell an outdated story?
• Has our customer base changed, and if so, in what way?
• Has our competitive landscaped changed?
• What’s our current customer base’s relationship to our current brand?
• Will a new brand turn people away?
• Why does anyone care about our brand in the first place?

The answers to these questions will not only help you feel confident in the choice to rebrand (or not to rebrand, for that matter), while also helping to lead the initial strategy phases.

Elements to Consider in a Rebranding Strategy

A true rebrand goes well beyond just updating your logo and your color scheme. You also need to consider things like tone, story, and overall brand experience, as these elements will effect everything from your business cards to your website.

Your Audience

Who are you speaking to? Has your audience changed as your business has evolved? Or has your audience evolved while your business has remained the same?

Knowing whom you are speaking to is the first step in any rebrand. You need to think about your audience’s likes and dislikes. Consider their favorite brands and what it is about those brand stories that appeals to them. Think about how they talk and how they want to be spoken to and then ask if your brand is meeting them where they are.

During a rebranding, you should dive so deep into your audience that you’re able to talk about them as if they are close friends you’ve known for years. And keep in mind, your audience is not just one personality type. You likely have three or four main buyer personas that you need to consider.

What’s the best way to get to know your audience? You can start by simply listening to them, whether that’s in person, on social media, or through ratings and reviews.

The Brand Story

Many consumers, particularly millennials, are most loyal to the brands they connect with. And that connection is generally gained by the story the brand tells.

What do you want your brand to represent? And can you build a story around it?

Start by revisiting your mission and value statements. Are they still accurate? If not, update accordingly. Does the style and tone of the mission and value statements fit your audience? If not, be sure to make those changes as well.

Even if your mission and value statements are never seen verbatim by your audience, they do serve as a guide for how your brand will express itself. By setting these in the story and tone of the new branding, you’ll lay a foundation that you can build upon moving forward.

Longevity

How will this new branding look a year from now? Three years from now? A decade from now? Your business will continue to evolve, and your branding should be able to evolve with it. When planning for a rebrand, think about how it represents where your brand is now, and where it will be in the future.

Introducing Your New Branding

Once you know what your branding will be, put a plan of action in place as to how you’ll present it to the world. Announce your new look via a press release, an email campaign, on social media, and your company blog.

And make sure this announcement comes a few weeks before any rebranded items go live. This will not only add some hype to your new branding, but can also make your current consumers feel like they are a part of it. It can also help avoid any of the confusion or frustrations that come with customers encountering a change from a brand they enjoy.

Remember, clear communication isn’t just for your customers. You also need to keep your employees internally aware of what’s going on and when they can expect to see changes on their end.

Mistakes to Avoid

Not all rebrands go as well as we plan. Take for instance, Gap who in late 2010 changed their iconic logo by giving it a new typeface with a gradient blue box in the corner. The new logo got such a negative reaction from customers on social media that 6 days later, the brand went back to their previous logo.

And while there’s no way to guarantee your rebrand will be a hit, there are a number of mistakes you can avoid to give yourself a fighting chance:

Don’t Fix What’s Not Broken. If customers like your current brand, and there’s not a clear, business impacting reason to change your branding, the choice is easy—don’t change it.

Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse. Make sure you establish the need for a rebrand, as well as the overall goal and story you want your new brand to tell before you start pulling in graphic designers or web developers. While their job is to help you bring that vision to life, it’s best to come to them with your background research first, and not work based off what they think your brand should be. And remember, working with a design firm in any capacity should function as an on-going collaboration.

Don’t Forget the Small Stuff. When people think of rebranding, they put a lot of attention on their website. You’ll be amazed by the amount of stuff your branding is on. Do an inventory of everything you currently have, including letterhead templates, presentation templates, business cards, billing or invoicing sheets, conference banners, brochures, case studies, signage, swag (such as shirts, pens, mugs, etc.), company vehicles or company uniforms, online directories, and social media icons/headers.

Don’t Use Rebranding as a Bandage. For some brands, rebranding can bring a much needed revival to their business. But changing your logo or website is not a quick fix for all the issues in the company. There’s a wide range of reasons that company sales could be poor or stagnant, such as quality of products, lack of interest, or poor customer experience. Before a rebrand, make sure to look at what’s currently working for you, what’s working against you, and identify and remedy any core problem areas before moving forward.

Rebranding takes strategizing and planning, but if done well, can pay off big for brands. It’s important to remember that your logo, color scheme, tone, font, and style doesn’t just represent your brand. It represents a story that you want your customers to have a connection to and give them a reason to keep coming back.

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series we discussed SEO strategies of the past, technical SEO, and evolution of the non-technical side of SEO.

The fact of the matter is Google will never stop changing. Their goal is to help searchers find the information they need, when they need it, in the format they want it. And so, SEO will have to continue to evolve and adapt to meet those changes.

What’s coming next for SEO?

Content and SEO will Continue to Combine Forces

There’s a lot of noise out there that says SEO is dead and Content is King. Admittedly, I roll my eyes when someone tells me that “Content is King”. Maybe it’s just my natural aversion to buzzwords and phrases. Or maybe it’s because “Content is King” is insanely misleading as it suggests you can just create content and ta-dah! you’re done.

In fact, content needs SEO, and SEO needs content. Why? Because both play a major role in the user experience—a growing ranking factor with Google.

The opportunity for an SEO specialist to make content work hard for the brand, means taking a deep dive into what questions your audience is asking and how they’re asking it. In the past, SEO specialists would spend hours doing keyword research; today, SEO must move away from short-term keyword research to a more long-tail keyword approach, one that takes those specific audience questions in mind.

You also need to know how users are interacting with your current site. As the technology advances, we’ll see the use of heat maps and user experience analytics used as SEO tools, as well as a bigger push towards A/B testing of content and layouts. Finally, SEO specialists will become a growing part of helping brands provide more personalized, dynamic content.

In the meantime, your SEO efforts should support content by making it easy for Google to crawl and ensuring the user experience is optimized on all fronts—including desktop and mobile.

Mobile Will Be Mandatory, but Not the End All

In 2015, it was confirmed that the amount of searches performed on a mobile device had surpassed the amount of searches performed on desktop. Yes, it’s official. 2015 was the year of mobile. And mobile use will continue to rise. This means you want to make sure your business has a mobile friendly or, ideally, a responsive design website. You want to make it easy for users to interact with your pages and content, as well as convert, from their smartphone or tablet.

But that doesn’t mean you only need to worry about mobile users; desktop will likely never go away. And there are still many industries that get higher desktop traffic than mobile, particularly in B2B. So while we may have moved from the Year of Mobile to the Mobile Era, don’t forget to consider your audience across all platforms and devices.

And as new ways of viewing content are introduced, whether it’s in the form of wearable technology, such as smartwatches, SEO specialist will have to adjust their methods accordingly, focusing on how content on new devices can be viewed, and how to help those users find content as quickly as possible.

The Move Towards Instant Answers will Become More Commonplace

Google’s Knowledge Graph will continue to grow and evolve in order to provide instant answers to searchers. This means SEO specialists will have to pay even closer attention to technical elements, as well as schema and rich snippets.

Finally, this move to instant answers will leave SEO specialists having to consider the impact voice-based searches will have on their strategy. Technology like Google Now, Siri and Cortana are already impacting how consumers search. And over time, it will make searches more conversational in nature, meaning the move toward long-tail keywords and optimizing with sentences and phrases in mind will completely trump just optimizing for keywords (if it hasn’t already.) Voice-based search will also increase the importance of proper tagging and schema, and perhaps will one day lead to special mark-up for voice search specifically.

Right now, there is no data around traffic that is brought in specifically by searches performed via a voice-based search, but as these types of searches become for frequent, perhaps that’s something we will see in the future.

SEO Won’t Die, but it Will Evolve

Every year someone puts out an article claiming SEO has officially died. But rumors of its death have clearly been greatly exaggerated. SEO will never die. It is too engrained in our Internet experience. However, it must continue to evolve to meet the new challenges presented by changing Google algorithms and new technologies—which is something SEO specialists should be used to by now.

In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed SEO strategies of the past and explored the technical elements that SEO specialists need to employ to be successful. But those behind the scenes elements, while important, are only a piece of the puzzle. In the past, non-technical SEO was mostly concerned with keywords. Today, keywords still play a role, but its importance pales in comparison to newer, emerging methods.

The Non-Technical Side of SEO

There are still many visible, on-page elements that SEO specialists are focused on. You should still expect to receive recommendations on how to optimize your existing content. This would include things like better incorporation of keywords/phrases, and working to ensure each page has an appropriate level of useful, relevant content.

But you can’t just stop there.

Today, more than ever, Google is looking for websites that deliver an optimized user experience. Just as Google’s algorithm has moved towards anticipating searcher intent, so should your digital marketing strategy.

What does this mean for today’s SEO specialists? It means working with other areas of your digital marketing department to ensure the digital marketing strategy is, as a whole, focused on driving traffic to your website through relevant, useful content and promotion of that content on the appropriate channels, such as on social or email. While SEO is mainly concerned with organic traffic, these non-organic sources can help boost your authority with search engines, as they see how all visitors coming to your website are engaging.

SEO specialists also need to pay particularly close attention to metrics around organic traffic such as time on page, exit rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates to not only get a better sense of how users are entering your site, but what they are doing once they are there.

For example, let’s say, like most brands and businesses, you get the highest number of page views on your homepage, but you notice average time on page is less than 10 seconds. This could suggest a couple of things. First, it could mean that users are searching for a term or phrase related to your business, clicking on your link in the search results, and pretty instantly clicking back to the search results.

Ping ponging back and forth from the Google results page and a website suggests to Google that the user didn’t find what they were looking for…signaling the infamous Google algorithm to adjust itself in hopes of helping searchers find what they need as quickly as possible.

Of course, if you look at your pages/session metrics and see that those coming in from the homepage actually view more than one page during their session, and you see that the bounce rate (rate at which users exit from the same page they entered) for your homepage is low, it could just mean that users aren’t spending a lot of time on your homepage because they are able to quickly find the next step they need to take to get the information, or complete the purchase, they want.

Again, you have to think about searcher intent and user experience. What experience do you want visitors to have when they come to each page? Does the data support this is happening? No? Then it may be time to make an adjustment to the copy, the navigation, etc. Or it could be a more technical issue, such as a slow page load time. Keep in mind that survey’s show nearly 40% of searchers will click off a page if it doesn’t load fast enough.

This type of analysis and the actions you take based on the data you have, is a growing part of the new way to approach SEO.

What’s coming next for SEO? We’ll tackle that question in Part 3 of our series.

How can I improve my SEO? If you asked this question in 2009, the answer would be “keywords and rankings”. If you asked this question in 2011, the answer would be “meta data and keywords.” But if you’re asking this question today, you’re really asking the wrong question.

Today, businesses and brands should be less concerned with improving SEO. Why? Because SEO has moved beyond just considering search engines. And because of this, the question you should really be asking is: How can SEO help improve my user experience and guide my strategy in a way that allows me to provide something useful to my audience?

SEO Strategies of the Past

SEO used to be easy. Or if nothing else, at least more straight forward. There was a time when it was all about keywords and rankings. Put a keyword on your website enough times and your ranking would improve. The best part was, Google Analytics gave us complete access to the keywords searchers were using to find our websites. Meaning we could take those keywords, stuff them on more pages, and just like that, we were ranking higher and getting more traffic.

But let’s be honest. This type of SEO wasn’t helping anyone. Businesses and websites were getting more traffic and improving rankings, but these weren’t necessarily translating to higher conversions or higher revenue. And searchers were landing on pages that had nothing to do with what they were looking for.

To improve this, search engines (specifically, Google) began creating new algorithms that could better anticipate searcher intent. In turn, this lead to slowly phasing out access to keyword data. By 2011, marketers started to see that more and more of the keyword data they were used to seeing was moved to the “(not provided)” bucket. And today, keyword data is barely in existence, and nothing has really replaced it.

While all these changes have made the job of an SEO specialist more challenging, you have to admit, when you search for something now, the probability that you’ll find a useful page after just one query is significantly higher than it was, in say, 2009.

The Technical Side of SEO

Because of old school, “black hat” tactics of the past, SEO specialists often get a bad rap as the “keyword stuffers” of the digital marketing world. But today, many SEO specialists are focused on the more technical elements involved in SEO, things that the user doesn’t even necessarily see make it easier for search engines to understand your website, thus increasing the chance your page will rank. This would include things like:

• Creating an XML sitemap and submitting it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Being mindful of your page load speed and ensuring your site doesn’t take more than 2 seconds to load.
• Making sure your robots.txt isn’t blocking important pages from search engine bots.
• Properly redirecting old pages using a 301, which will transfer most of the page’s authority over to the new URL.
• Making sure your page structure can be easily crawled, meaning you are properly using header tags (h1, h2, h3) logically and correctly.
• Using title tags and meta descriptions that accurately describe the contents of each page of your website.

Other behind-the-scenes technical elements include incorporating proper schema structure, which essentially just helps search engines, such as Google, better crawl your page for a potential searcher. The better Google can read your site, and understand the content on a particular page, the more likely it is to show it to a potential searcher.

But what about the non-technical side of SEO? Are keyword optimizations still necessary? Or has SEO completely moved behind the scenes? We’ll explore these questions in Part 2 of this series.

Connections is always a crazy, but exciting week. This year, the main theme of the conference seemed to be all about the journey.

But when I say Journey, I don’t just mean the customer journey. This year, speakers like Congressman John Lewis of Georgia and Good Morning America news anchor Robin Roberts spoke about the importance of reflecting on the personal journeys we all take in life.

Even though we know Connections is all about marketing, it was nice to take a break to think about things beyond the marketing world.  Congressman Lewis shared powerful stories about his experience fighting discrimination in the South and working with Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as the impact events like the walk from Selma to Montgomery and Bloody Sunday had on his personal journey, and how these events shaped the path he took to reach his goals.

In keeping with the theme, Robin Roberts shared a powerful message about the paths we take to reach our dreams. As a girl, Roberts had dreamed of competing at Wimbledon, and despite never making it to the court, she still feels her dream came true, as she did in fact get to attend Wimbledon during her time as a sports reporter. Her advice? Don’t be disappointed in the path, because sometimes you’re able to reach what you want, but just in a way you didn’t expect it.

One thing I didn’t expect in my personal journey during Connections was to run into Fabio.

But we can’t forget the other star of the show this year—Journey Builder, a tool from Salesforce Marketing Cloud that gives marketers the capability to create personalized, relevant customer journeys.

Marketing messages are all around us—on TV, on the radio, in magazines, on social media, in your inbox, on your smartphone, and of course, online. In other words, there’s a lot of noise. The best way to cut through it all? Make marketing personal by sending your prospects and customers on a journey that is shaped around their preferences, needs, and wants.

This is exactly the topic we tackled during our breakout session—Journey Builder: Build Your Own Adventure. The main takeaway? Determine your goal and use that as the guiding light for your journey. Because technology is great, but without the right strategy, all the technology in the world won’t be much help.

If you’re getting started with Journey Builder, here are a few steps to keep in mind:

1. Consider the goal. Again, customer journeys are all about the goal. So make sure each journey you create starts with this step.

Ex: Convert a first time customer into a long-term, loyal customer who recommends and raves about your products.

2. Consider the entry event. What does a customer or prospect need to do in order to be entered into a journey?

Ex: Customer makes a first-time purchase.

3. Consider the event timing. When the entry event (or any subsequent events occur) what duration of time will you wait to move them to the next step in the journey?

Ex: Customer makes a first-time purchase and a week later receives a promotion code for their next purchase. And the journey continues…

Think about all the steps someone could take with that initial event, and decide what messages, as well as what channels, will be used if and until they complete their journey. Finally, the content of your message needs to have a clear, single focus—one that is concerned only with moving your customers through the journey at hand.

Technology is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to building a customer journey. Like most digital marketing efforts, there’s a lot of strategy work you need to do in advance to get the most out of it.

Want to learn more about how to strategize your customer journey? Download the presentation slides here. And don’t hesitate to contact us if you need help building your own customer journeys.

If you attended Connections this year, I hope you found it as informative and inspiring as I did. And we hope to see everyone next June at Connections 2017 in Chicago!

Blondes vs. Brunettes. This battle has been raging for centuries. But on June 25th, 2016 at 11:00 A.M. at the University of Denver, Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium, blondes and brunettes will turn their longstanding rivalry into a battle for good and raise money to support the Alzheimer’s Association.

Alzheimer’s Disease affects more than 5 million people in the U.S. As the 6th leading cause of death, it kills more people in the U.S. each year than breast and prostate cancer combined. And anyone who has watched a loved one progress through this disease knows what a long, heartbreaking battle it can be.

That’s why a group of professional women founded Blondes vs. Brunettes® (BvB), an event designed to raise awareness, and funds for combatting Alzheimer’s. BvB takes place in more than 35 cities across the country each year, and has raised more than $3 million since its inaugural game in 2005.

Understanding the impact this disease has on so many families, I decided it was time for me to suit up and participate in my first-ever touch football game. As a former rower, I’m no stranger to hard training. But I have to tell you, this touch football game is no joke! For the past month we’ve been practicing up to two times a week to prepare. (We really want to take those brunettes down!)

We also host weekly fundraising events as a team as another way to bring awareness to the disease, while also raising funds that benefit the care, support and research efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Last year, the Alzheimer’s Association Colorado Chapter BvB game brought in more than $127,000. This year, they’re looking to exceed that number, and that’s where I need your help. Right now, my team (Blondes) is hoping to raise over $72,000. I have a personal goal to raise $600, and would love to not only hit this number, but exceed it.

The money raised at this event will help the Alzheimer’s Association provide resources and education to those living with Alzheimer’s, including patients and caregivers, as well as research for new treatments, and ultimately one day, a cure.

Interested in helping out? Please view my donation page here to contribute.

I want to thank Pierry Software for their corporate sponsorship of the BvB Denver game this year. This contribution will touch many families both in Colorado and across the U.S.

Finally, if you’re in the Denver area on June 25th, be sure to stop by and see who takes home bragging rights—blondes or brunettes!

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Your open rates are on a consistent decline. Your click-through rates are embarrassing. And your deliverability is not what it used to be. These are the signs of an email program that is greatly in need of some help.

But that’s not the only time you should be evaluating your email program.

In fact, like most things, you don’t want to wait until you have a clear, cut and dried issue with your email program. Maybe your open rates and click-throughs are consistent. Maybe you’ve even hit some above average metrics over the last two months. Whatever your metrics say, it’s important to evaluate your email program at least once a quarter. Here’s how to get started:

Email Sending/Deliverability Best Practices

You created an email message and hit send. It’s on its way to your subscribers. Right? Not necessarily. There are a number of factors that can affect your deliverability rates. Here are some questions to ask yourself when evaluating your sending practices:

• Is your email program in compliance with standards for the countries subscribers are from such as CASL or CAN-SPAM?
• Was your list build from opt-ins (as opposed to being bought or rented)?
• Is there an obvious unsubscribe link?
• Do you send on a regular, consistent schedule?
• Are you using a suitable email platform to manage and maintain subscriber data?

Other sending practices to take note of include:

• Using an email sending address on a sub-domain of the main brand domain
• Sending a welcome email/series to new subscribers in a timely manner
• Using Return Path or a similar service to maximize deliverability and gain insight into sender reputation
• Having a documented testing and QA process in place that is executed for every send
• Ensuring high deliverability by adhering to ISP standards (i.e. sending a limited amount per hour for ISPs such as AOL and Comcast).
• Utilizing seed lists or including company employees on subscriber lists to ensure there are no issues with the actual email send
• Subscribers are segmented and sent emails relevant to them instead of mass sending

Finally, make sure there is a clear email strategy in place with goals to measure by, as well as A/B testing opportunities to purse when developing future email sends.

Email Content Strategy

Every marketing channel should have its own corresponding content strategy—and email is no exception. Each channel also has its own tone and style. For example, the language you use in a press release is very different from a social post, which is also very different from an email.

When writing for email, make sure each send:

• Has a clear content focus
• Tells a story that helps to shape the brand’s personality
• Contains relevant content with important information and main call to action (CTA) at the top
• Contains content that supplements any images
• Has a subject line and body content that complement each other
• Has a subject line that entices the subscriber to open the message
• Contains a pre-header that adds to or expands upon the subject line
• Avoids spam words in subject line and body content
• Includes CTAs that are descriptive and encourage interaction
• Avoids off-brand messages or ads

Most importantly, you want to constantly monitor and test your content, whether that means trying new CTA language or creating new themes around each send.

Email Design Best Practices

How your email looks is equally as important as what it says. Here are some quick things to consider when evaluating the overall look of your sends:

• The design uses colors and images that are consistent with the brand, while also using strong contrast for readability
• Uses websafe fonts and high quality images
• The email is designed for 580px to 700px width
• The email is not excessively long requiring endless scrolling
• Has a consistent header and footer
• A view online or view in browser link is included
• Provides a balance of images and text
• Includes ALT tags for the images
• Email is rendered or tested in variety of email clients and devices
• Uses buttons over text-based links to make the CTA stand out

While the above may seem like a hefty list, they’re important items to consider as you grow and expand your email marketing campaign. Again, we recommend performing this evaluation every quarter. This is the best way to ensure you catch small issues before they grow into something much more difficult to bounce back from.

Not sure where to start when it comes to evaluating your email program? We can help with that. Contact Pierry Software today to learn more about our email scorecard audit, as well as our strategy services.

SMS, short for “short message service” or text messaging, became wildly popular in the mid-2000s and grew from there as the usage of cell phones with pop-out keyboards increased, followed by the initial boom of the smartphone in the early 2010s. Now text messaging is something that most of us use everyday, except for that one guy you know who always insists on calling, and then leaves a voicemail of all things when you don’t answer. Yeah, you know that guy…

As text messaging has grown to be a popular (some what say ultimate) form of communication, it’s also proved itself to be a great opportunity for marketers who recognize that today’s consumers are never far from their phones.

When used correctly, SMS Marketing can be very effective for communicating exclusive updates, announcements, and incentives to your audience. But there are a few best practices you need to keep in mind in order to get the most out of your program.

Get explicit permission.

Before you start contacting any customers via SMS marketing, make sure you have their explicit consent to do so. Permission is generally obtained one of two ways. The first is to have the subscriber elect to opt-in by texting a keyword to a mobile short code. For example, “Text ‘ENROLL ME’ to 56565 to sign up for mobile alerts.”

The second way is to have subscribers give written consent that you may contact them via SMS. Written consent could include a user who selects to opt-in to SMS messaging via a profile center, during the opt-in process for an email, or during checkout. This method can be tricky and it’s recommended you require users to actively select the option to opt-in, as opposed to pre-selecting the opt-in box for them.

It’s important to note that text messages fall under the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protect Act (TCPA), which restricts solicitations over the phone, including SMS text messages, as well as the CTIA, and therefore failure to gain explicit consent to contact any customer via SMS can result in hefty fines. Read more from the TCPA and the CTIA.

Give clear expectations.

Once a subscriber has opted-in, reply with a quick welcome message that outlines who you are and what the user has just signed up for. This could include details like what types of messages they could expect to get in the future (i.e. coupon codes or product alerts) and how many messages they can expect to receive from you each month.

You also want to included a disclaimer that when receiving these messages, standard data and message rates may apply, as well as a clear option for opting-out.

Of course, the trick is to do this in only 160 characters, so keep your message short and concise.

Always make it simple to opt-out.

Similar to email, you always want to include a clear opt-out for SMS marketing. This could be as simple as including a note such as “Txt ‘STOP’” to unsubscribe”. This is particularly important if you will be sending a series of on-going messages and not just a one-off message triggered by the user. If your program is a regular cadence of messages, make sure you promote opt-out instructions at least once a month.

Don’t be a pest.

SMS marketing can be very effective in keeping your audience engaged with your brand. But you don’t want to be too intrusive to their phone’s inbox. Watch how frequently you send SMS communications and limit it to no more than 2-4 per month.

Watch the time of day you send your messages as well. In general, most SMS marketing messages are best sent during normal business hours, but as a rule, just make sure you avoid early morning or late evening hours.

Also, if you are regularly sending messages, make sure every one provides a clear value, otherwise you’ll likely see engagement drop and opt-out’s increase.

Getting Started with Your SMS Marketing Program

Like other marketing efforts, the first step in building an SMS program is to decide what the end goal for that program is. Perhaps the goal is to increase interest in a new product, while also providing incentives for subscribers to pre-order. Or maybe the goal is long-term and you simply want to establish a regular cadence of providing promotional deals to your subscribers. Your goal could even be to use SMS as another outlet to collect customer data. (Of course, you wouldn’t want to lead with this…)

Goals will obviously vary from brand to brand, but it’s an important factor to keep in mind as you build your subscriber list and map out your strategy.

Once you have a concrete goal in mind for your program, it’s time to start building your list. Some of you may have been asking subscribers to opt-in for SMS long before you ever intended to send a message. Others are likely starting from scratch. Either is fine as long as every subscriber has explicitly opted-in.

Building your SMS list.

Increasing your number of SMS subscribers doesn’t have to be complicated. And because mobile short codes can be placed anywhere, it’s easy to incorporate them in your other marketing efforts.

For example, including a mobile SMS campaign on a direct mail piece can not only give you another metric for gauging overall engagement with that piece, but allow consumers to interact with that piece in a way that feels more exclusive.

You can post a special short code for those who follow you on Facebook or Twitter. You can also use Sponsored Posts on Twitter, or Boosted Posts on Facebook to reach those who may be interested in your brand. Your website, as well as landing pages, are another great place to advertise a mobile short code and build your subscriber list, as are email promotions and monthly newsletters.

Brick & mortar stores can benefit from in-store SMS marketing as well. Target in particular does an amazing job of including special mobile short codes across their stores that allow customers access to exclusive, one-off promotions.

How ever you promote your SMS program, make sure that promotion contains a clear CTA and a clear benefit for subscribing.

Keeping Subscribers Engaged

Consumers love deals as well as the feeling of exclusivity. SMS marketing has the ability to provide both those things in a way that other marketing outlets can’t. The user feels active in the subscription process as they type in the code, and because the message comes straight to their phone, that makes it somehow feel more personal. This is what can make SMS marketing so effective.

However, this is all the more reason to make sure your SMS program provides a clear incentive to the subscriber. Most consumers who sign up for an SMS program are promised exclusive content, updates, alerts, deals and promotions. Make sure you deliver on those expectations, otherwise you won’t see the benefits that this type of program has to offer.

Finally, be sure to constantly check back in on the goals of your program and any appropriate metrics that can help you determine whether or not you’re achieving what you set out to do. This may include open rates, response rates (in the event a user must reply to an SMS message before receiving an offer) and/or offer redemption rates.

The buyer journey continues to evolve and consumers are coming to expect a more personalized experience. Buyers no longer want to be marketed to in bulk and with today’s technology, there’s no reason they should be. For years digital marketers have been challenging themselves to get more personalized in their messaging. This often involved collecting and sorting through thousands of data points, creating special segments, manual actions and special queries.

But even this will only get a digital marketer so far.

With Journey Builder, a tool available as part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, marketers can put each member of their audience on a path that’s based upon each individual user’s interaction on whichever channels you meet them on.

Getting Started with Journey Builder

To get started with Journey Builder, you first need to establish a goal. What do you want this journey to result in? For example, your goal could be to get 60% of those downloading your retail app to make a purchase within the first 45 days.

Once you have a goal established, you can begin building out the various pathways that can be taken based on how the customer interacts with your communications or products. For instance, let’s say that once a user downloads the app, you send them a triggered email thanking them for downloading and inviting them to make their first purchase by providing them a code for 20% of their in-app purchase.

Going Beyond the First Triggered Email

Five days later you are ready to send your second communication. Did the customer make a purchase? If so, you do not want to send them another email reminding them to make a purchase, so perhaps you choose to send them a “Refer-A-Friend” email or a survey on their experience.

Or maybe the customer didn’t even open the initial email you sent. In this case, the next step could be to have them receive a new message with a more urgent subject line, something like “Don’t miss out! 20% off your first in-app purchase.”

For those who did open the email, but didn’t click, perhaps you send an email with more enticing copy or different product images.

Marketing Automation Across Channels

Journey Builder also allows for seamless integration with other Marketing Cloud products so users who opened, clicked, but didn’t purchase could receive a MobilePush notification with an incentive code. The possibilities are endless!

The purpose of Journey Builder is to provide the most relevant offer based on each individual stage in the buyer’s journey. Through the tools user friendly, easy to use interface, you can actually visualize how many people are at each stage of the journey in real time and optimize campaigns as you go.