Marie Wiese presented on rethinking email marketing strategies. She discussed that the goal of email marketing is to discover, educate, and solve problems for customers rather than just persuade. Effective email marketing requires developing quality content, optimizing conversions, and maintaining consistency. Wiese also addressed common myths about email marketing and best practices for compliance with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

1. Rethink Email Marketing
Presented by
Marie Wiese
July 24, 2014

2. Session Speaker
Marie is the founder of Marketing
CoPilot Inc., a digital marketing
consulting and execution firm that has
helped more than 100 business-to-
business companies find customers and
keep customers.
Marie has developed and delivered
workshops across Ontario for early stage
companies that focus on turning their
websites into their best lead generation
and lead nurturing tool.Marie Wiese
@mariewiese
President
Marketing CoPilot Inc.

3. What is the goal of your email
marketing?

4. Goals?
• Communicate?
• Offer someone something?
• Sell something?
• Get someone to click through to your website?
• Start a relationship?
• Evolve a relationship?

5. The goal of email marketing is
not to persuade. It’s to discover,
educate and solve.
@mariewiese

6. Email marketing, when executed as part of
overall Digital Marketing Strategy
• Returns $44 for every $1 spent (ROI of over 4300%)
• Top email performers spend more time on strategy
than execution
• Companies using email marketing effectively have a
well defined email policy and protocol in their
organization

7. Myths of Email Marketing
1. Email marketing replaces cold calling.
2. Email marketing by itself can generate leads/sales
(you just need a big list).
3. Email marketing is easy. (Once you hit send your job
is finished.)
4. Email marketing is cheap.
5. Everyone loves receiving email.

8. To get real results you need 3-Cs
1. Content
2. Conversion
3. Consistency

9. What has CASL done to Canadian
email marketing?
Pros:
• Made us rethink what we send, when we send and
to whom we send.
• Made us think about email strategy and policy.
Cons:
• The people it’s really meant for will ignore it.
• Hurts the sales and marketing process and made us
paranoid.

10. Myth #1

11. Myth #2

12. Myth #3

13. Express vs Implicit

14. Implied vs. Express Consent
Implied Consent
• Existing business relationship
• Existing non-business
relationship
• Email address was published
or provided to you
Express Consent
• Provided to you orally or in
writing (need a record of this)

15. Express Consent
• Signing up for a blog or email list
• Downloading content from someone’s website that
requires providing an email address
• Buying something from someone and agreeing to
join their mailing list

16. Implied Consent
• Meeting someone face-to-face and exchanging
contact information
• Attending an event and providing contact
information
• Selling something to someone
• Meeting someone at a tradeshow

17. Where is CASL headed?
Since July 1st the Canadian government has provided
more specifics and answers to valid business concerns,
such as:
• What constitutes implied consent
• Whether or not CASL will hinder small businesses
This legislation is meant to protect consumers, NOT
harm legitimate businesses.

18. Will CASL be expensive or hinder my
small business?
• Businesses that already comply with privacy laws and
use common best practices for email marketing
should require little effort to comply with CASL.
Source: Government of Canada FightSpam website FAQs

19. #1 C - CONTENT

20. Communicating versus Marketing
• When you communicate, there is no action required
on the part of the recipient.
• To get results you need to elicit a response or follow
through on a call to action or conversion point.
• Your content must have a physical and measurable
response in order to know if it’s working and get
results.

21. How do you get personal?
Send the right message to the right
person at the right time.

22. Company versus Customer
1. Content attracts people. Customers are not targets
they are people who are interested in solving their
own problem.
2. People don’t buy from companies; they buy from
people. Content helps build relationships in a
transparent way.
3. Marketers worry about their ability to build
persuasive copy but persuasion is not authentic.
Clarity is persuasion.

23. The Content
Development
Success Loop

24. Now, later or NEVER!
• The goal of email marketing is to elicit a response
• You can’t elicit a response if you fall into the NEVER
category
You need to win the battle of priorities…

25. The Three Categories
1. Do I need to read this NOW?
2. Should I save this for LATER?
3. Can I delete this and NEVER read this?

26. Winning the Battle of Priorities
1. FROM – People look to see if email is from a trusted
source.
2. SUBJECT LINE – What is this email about and is it
relevant to me?
3. TIMING – When the email gets sent makes a big
difference between the NOW or NEVER category.

27. The 2-2-2 Principle
• In 2 seconds do I know who this is from?
• Can I understand the email in 2 words?
• Why does it matter 2-day?

28. Frequency
• To engage your audience, you need to understand
how often they want to hear from you
• What content is valuable to them
• What formats they want to hear from you in (email,
social, web content, reviews, etc.)

29. What does your buyer care about?
• Benefits
• Value
• Pricing
• Language
• Structure
• Next step

30. Content Must-haves
• Top 10 questions in the sales process
• Problems with your product/service
• Pricing
• “Best of” list (even if you aren’t on it)
• Industry issues and challenges
• Product/service updates for 2014 across your industry
• Top 10 influential brands/products in your industry
• Awards to businesses in your industry
• Compare products/services with competitors
• Leverage industry news and events

31. Use a template
• Why are you writing this content?
• What is your goal?
• Who are you writing for?
• Why should they care?
• What are the best keywords for this content?
• Identify location of links to other content
• What is the call to action?

32. #2 C - CONVERSION

33. The truth about conversion rate…
>1%

34. Do the math…
• If you mail to a list of 5,000 people, standard open
rate is 15-25% or 1,000
• Of this I,000, 15% will do what is instructed, i.e.: click
through to your website
• Now 150 may be on your website and less than 1%
will convert based in next step
• That’s 1.5 persons

35. Find
Convert
Keep
Find
Convert
Keep
Too much $$
goes here
Small %
say yes to
fill funnel
Spend time and $$
with people you know
and your funnel is
always full at less $
and time
Old Way New Way
A new model for Lead Generation if you
want to achieve more than 1%

36. 1 2 3 4 5
Raving
Fans
Customers
Members
Prospects Suspects Disinterested
Always be aware of people moving from
one bucket to the next
List segmentation

37. The Perfect Customer Lifecycle
 Attract people
 Capture leads
 Nurture prospects
 Convert sales
 Collect cash
 Deliver and satisfy
 Upsell customer
 Get referrals

38. Build a segmentation map…
Segment
• Raving Fans
Content
• Industry updates
• Event invites
• Surveys
• Personnel changes
• Wedding announcements

39. Build a segmentation map…
Segment
• Customers or Members or
Donors
Content
• Product/service news
• “How to’s”
• Pricing updates

40. Build a segmentation map…
Segment
• Prospects
Content
• Value-added content
• Comparison charts
• Case studies

41. Build a segmentation map…
Segment
• Suspects
Content
• Benefits analysis of one
solution over another
• Blog posts
• Pricing
• Guides about how to do
something

42. #3 C - CONSISTENCY

43. Business Process
• Identify all of the places that email touches within
your organization and the customer journey
• Map out the process for the end user with respect to
their journey:
– Leave a comment
– Click on a link
– Click through to your website
– Download content or a coupon
– Want to communicate with your company

44. Tie your business process to a consistent
program…
• Email marketing is not a campaign; it’s a journey
• You need to always be testing
• You need to plan out your campaigns
• You need to keep it at
• It may take 12 months to improve your results; are
you ready to get started?

45. IT’S ALL ABOUT TESTING…

46. 46
Test 1: Who cares more about a topic in your master
list
Experiment ID: Grantek.com
Location: Burlington, Ontario
Test Protocol: Testing content by audience and topic.
Background: North American B2B systems integration company.
Objective: Start to create list segmentation.
Primary Research Question: Who cares more about safety automation: Senior
managers or safety engineers?
Research Notes:

47. Email Campaign

48. Conversion Point

49. Results

50. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Project:
• Client sells online continuing education courses to the
financial services industry across Canada
• Had 2 main lists representing two distinct brands
• Contacts on the list had not previously had regular
communication from client via email
• Created a branded email template for division and
planned a 3-email test opt-in program
• Process was designed to work around limitations
including no access to the website or original CRM
database

51. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Strategy:
• We theorized that increasing the incentive to opt-in
over the series of emails would garner the most
overall opt-ins throughout the course of the
campaign
• This strategy was based on applying previous direct
mail expertise

52. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Execution:
• 1st email messaging was a simple ask for opt-in
• 2nd email messaging offered an incentive to opt-in
• 3rd email messaging offered a double incentive to
opt-in

56. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Process:
• After each email campaign, opt-ins were pulled and
removed from the subsequent email list
• Follow up emails with coupon codes were deployed
to the contacts who opted-in to the incentive-based
email campaigns
• Opt-ins contacts were updated to reflect method of
opt-in and time/date for CASL record keeping

57. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Results:
• At the end of the campaigns 25% of the email lists
had opted-in

58. Question?
• Would you rather mail to 5,000 you don’t know and
aren’t sure if they want to hear from you?
• Or mail to 1,250 who have expressly asked to stay on
your list?

59. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Findings:
• Planning is crucial to optimal user experience
• Clean and correctly segmented lists are the right
starting point for any email campaign
• Clearly defined goal from the outset of the program
is imperative

60. CASL Opt-In Process Case Study
Post Campaign:
• Maintain clean opt-in lists and document how/when
opt-in took place.
• Opt-in contacts are gold. Make it worthwhile to stay
on the list.
• Track and measure the success of your content by
audience type and create ongoing specific content.

62. CASL Best Practices
1. Create a policy of how your company is going to
interpret and comply with CASL.
2. Designate an individual or team to be responsible
for being up-to-date with CASL regulations. As time
goes on, they have/will change.
3. Put a process in place to document consent –
express or implied – that will be stored for the next
36 months as CASL unfolds.

63. Email Best Practices
1. Decide how you want to sign people up and the
protocol for contacting and asking for consent.
2. Use a real name and clearly identify your company
3. Segment your email lists so that you can personalize
and adapt emails by audience type.
4. Write a compelling subject line. Keep it simple.

64. Now for the big test!
@mariewiese

65. Question
You will get real results from email marketing when you
do what?

66. Answer
Make it personal. Send the right message to the right
person at the right time.

67. Question
What is the most important thing you can do with your
email campaigns?

68. Answer
Make sure it elicits a physical and measurable
response. To do this you need the three C’s:
• Content
• Conversion
• Consistency

69. Conclusion
1. Email marketing has tremendous value to a business
but having a clear strategy and email policy in your
organization is paramount
2. Use yourself as the litmus test for what you like to
receive via email and regulate your email program
accordingly – now, later, never.
3. Using a proper email marketing tool tied to your
business process will make your program successful.
4. Content is hugely important to results.
5. Good email marketing doesn’t just happen. It’s planned
and tested.

70. Get this presentation at…
http://marketingcopilot.com/2014-rethink-
email-marketing-workshop/
• Connect with us on LinkedIn…
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/marketingcopilot
• Email…
marie@marketingcopilot.com
• Follow on Twitter
@mariewiese

71. Marketing CoPilot Process Wheel
Marketingcopilot.com/COMMUNITY