Email Personalization/Testing

Nice article today from Jeanne Jennings at ClickZ regarding email best practices and testing. She comments on the use of click-stream data and other analytics to personalize and customize email messages.

She talks about the fine line between the importance and effectiveness of personalization and message relevance and 'hyper-personalization', or a 'big brother-ish' feeling one gets from knowing a company may have too much information about the recipient, where they surfed on a website and how that can be a turn-off. Couldn't agree more.

I will say however that striking the right balance between personalization and intrusiveness is a very important element to test and get right. How much likely are you to respond to an email with your name in the subject line, or with an offer or content from someone or something that you know you recently looked at? Can have a huge affect on conversions.

On the topic -- I've recently received an email from a company (that I've opted in to) that nevertheless went directly into my spam folder in Yahoo. Couple things jumped out at me -- it's important to make certain you have some copy at the top of your emails to ask the recipient to either include your address in their address book/list of accepted email senders or to provide them the option to opt out of future messages (in fact a clear and prompt opt-out procedure is a CAN SPAM requirement).

A quick review of the email also pointed out some potential spam folder issues - it had 'FREE' in the subject line and had quite a few images in the email body. These elements might not automatically doom you, but they don't help.

Many ESP's (definition) have built in spam filters that allow you to test and score your emails to see how likely they are to make it through spam filters and become deliverable into in-boxes. If yours doesn't there are many free spam filters available (SpamAssassin and SpamCheck to name but two) for you to use, I heartily recommend.

Focusing on the Right Affiliates

I recently concluded a client engagement that included a number of demand generation initiatives, both through direct and in-direct channels. Affiliate partners played an important role in helping to drive demand for the client's consumer software suite.

In a post-mortem of the activities, two things jumped out at me -- it was clear that of the scores of affiliates that were signed up as partners, the majority of lead flow (and revenue) came from a small percentage (~10%) of those partners in the program.

Second, many partners had preferences (and differing results) for certain products.

This illustrates some key points with respect to affiliate marketing and how to best manage your marketing investments around where the success comes from. It will be true that for many partners, the investment provided to them in the way of resources (time, programs, messaging, tools, support, training, etc.) will be inordinate compared to the results you derive from that relationship. Good reporting and analytics should help you to identify and isolate those partners that can and do perform. Once known, that data should help guide where your organization should place greater emphasis in helping affiliates to maximize their (and your) marketing outcomes.

As well, your analytics and reporting should also help determine those partners who drive demand for certain solutions only, those partners who are fully engaged but for some reasons are unable to meet/surpass certain quotas or requirements and those partners who do not provide a corresponding return for the investment you're making in them.

The capability to isolate and understand your partners is therefore crucial to maximizing affiliate performance. Some will require (and have earned) more incremental time and resource allocation based upon performance (or potential). Some will not. The trick is to have the data and analysis available to you to make those types of calls. It's also important to note that it's natural to expect churn within your partner portfolio as a result of systematic review and appraisal of your partners. Which also supports the importance of an ongoing and aggressive affiliate acquisition program.