December 3, 2011
Email Newsletters, Website Analytics
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If you send out a regular email newsletter, how many of the readers convert to business?
More specifically, what can you be doing to nurture people towards doing business with you?
One thing you can do is use website analytics to reverse engineer certain website visitor patterns back to the original email newsletter subscriber. Here’s a recent example to show how it works, in this case using A1WebStats (tracking) in combination with Campaign Monitor (used to send out and monitor the email newsletters) …
Step 1 – find something worth digging into
One of the Custwin email newsletters referred to A1WebStats, providing a link to the website. We, of course, can see where website visitors originated from. Looking at the screenshot below you can see that the person came in to the A1WebStats website, via a Custwin blog (see the ‘Referrer’ line) and they looked at the pages showing the prices and how to make A1WebStats work for them …
At this stage we think “hmmm, there may be an interest there, because they went further than the blog itself”.
Step 2 – track backwards
That person entered the A1WebStats website at 12:08. By looking at our Custwin webstats we can see that only one person was looking at the website around that time and so it has to be them. If you look at the screenshot below you can see similarities (e.g. location, browser, IP address etc.), so it’s clearly the same person. You can also see that although they appeared to spend 2 minutes 44 seconds looking at the Custwin blog entry, that was the time they went off to the A1WebStats website, which they left at about 12:09 and then continued looking at the Custwin blogs at 12:10 …
The picture we’ve built up so far is that the person who ended up on the A1WebStats website and was looking at pricing, initially landed on the Custwin website and looked at blogs. We also know that they came from our email newsletter that was sent a couple of days beforehand.
Now all we need to do is match up the date/time that the person landed on the Custwin website (2nd December, around 12pm) with our Campaign Monitor information …
Step 3 – identify the person
We looked at our Campaign Monitor data and found only one person who clicked through from our email newsletter on 2nd December around 2pm. The screenshot below shows what they were looking at on the email newsletter around that time …
Ignore the fact that the location is Camberley, vs Leatherhead in the A1WebStats information – that’s purely down to IP techie stuff. The person is actually from neither location and we know who they are.
In fact, the person is actually someone who is perfect to be white-labelling A1WebStats for their own clients.
Step 4 – nurture
So having identified the person, do we contact them and say “hey, we saw you were looking at A1WebStats and we’d love to have a chat”? We could do, but the whole ‘webstats tracking’ thing can appear a bit creepy to some people so it’s often better to be more subtle.
We actually had a message from them recently about having a catch up. We replied but nothing got organised. We’ve now been back to them again about meeting up. As part of that conversation, we’ll be talking about A1WebStats and we’ll know that they already know a certain amount about it. There will be the opportunity to show that person how it can benefit them and their clients. There are, of course, no guarantees but it’s always worth trying. If that moves forwards we may blog about it as a follow up in the future, to demonstrate how the flow of business often starts from blogs/newsletters/information and can lead onto a lot more.
Conclusion
For most companies the process of analysis is really easy and can boil down to a few steps …
- Create a regular email newsletter containing various articles, and always linking people back to your website.
- Ensure that email newsletter is sent out using a system that allows you to track when people open and click on articles. Commonly used systems are Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor.
- About a week after the email newsletter has gone out, go to your webstats package and highlight the people who have landed on a particular website page (one of your articles linked to from your email newsletter).
- If any of those website visitors went further than the article(s), e.g. to look at pages showing the services you offer or people you work with, then that could be a potential buying signal. You would typically expect to see perhaps 1 in 20 people go further than the page they landed on from an email newsletter article. They become ‘the potential’.
- For those website visitors who looked as if they may be interested in more than just the article they read, reverse analyse their path to your website. This is simply a case of matching up the date/time they landed on your website with the dates/times that people clicked through from your email newsletter (which you can see from systems such as Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor).
- Then consider how you may be able to nurture that person in a non-threatening way.
Time-consuming? Yes – perhaps. A job that anyone in your company could do, if they’re taught what to look out for? Absolutely. All YOU want to know is the useful information and if you’ve got someone else who can be looking out for it then it makes sense to work in that way (says me, who has gone through the process here myself!!).
October 29, 2011
Branding, Email Newsletters
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At Custwin I’m happy to say that much business comes from long-term business development activity. This is mainly done through a combination of 3 things:
- Monthly email newsletter which gives free information and insights related to website success strategy.
- Giving away free information in person.
- Being seen to turn away business if we feel the potential client isn’t yet fully ready to benefit.
We’re not talking about a few weeks or a few months but what can often be years before someone we’ve ‘touched’ in some way (and usually on a regular basis) either becomes a client or refers us onto someone they know (because that trust has been built up). Some wouldn’t say that’s business development because it’s non-pushy but in my view it is – a drip feeding of trust being built up.
Today I’d like to give an example of a company who is within the web business sector and who immediately come to mind if anyone says to me “who do you know that is really good at email newsletters design?”.
That company is Top Left Design and there’s been something very consistent about them over the years – a fantastic email newsletter. First of all, a couple of screenshots from the current edition …
Those screenshots don’t really do them justice because there’s more than just the lovely design of the newsletter – it’s the feel of community within that company and the fact that they’re not stuffy.
I’ve known Keren Lerner (head honcho) for about 10 years now and although in recent years there’s been very little communication between us (I no longer do my networking in London), I still get the email newsletters, look at the design work they do and I always look forward to seeing what they’ve produced.
My point is that, through the consistency of that drip fed message to me each month, I’m always aware that I’d particularly recommend Top Left Design for email newsletters design. Whether they would look at their own email newsletters as being ‘long-term business development’, I don’t know but for me, it works.
There are other people and companies who I keep track of, offering a wide range of services and there’s just a few who, if someone said to me “who do you know who ….” that I could make recommend based on long-term trust built up. To be honest, there are not a lot of those types of people who would come to mind and there are many business sectors that I consider to be ‘gaps in my ability to recommend’. For example, if someone said to me “who do you know who are a good legal firm to go to?” I really wouldn’t have an answer.
Whatever business sector you’re in, creating a strong presence online can help build up your name, especially if drip-fed in a non-pushy way through devices such as email newsletters. No business has the excuse that they can’t do it – anyone can, regardless of business sector.
It’s a fact that there have been very few months in which the Custwin email newsletter hasn’t led to at least one signed-up new client, either through people who have received the newsletter for a long time or through people they refer us onto, who trust their judgement that we know what we’re talking about.
So where’s your opportunity for long-term business development via your online presence?
April 16, 2011
Branding, Email Newsletters
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Kent 2020 was on 7th April and the local polls are on 5th May. One was a business exhibition and the other decides who gets voted in to the local councils. You might think there are no similarities between the two events but there are.
Local Elections
Out of the woodwork come a string of canvassers and people who want to secure our vote. All smiles, promises, and leaflets. Invisible for ages to the majority of households where they go door knocking, they appear to rise from the ground like political zombies when the time comes to secure a vote. They may as well be saying “you may vaguely recognise my name and although I’ve made no effort to nurture you in the past, can I count on your vote?”
Kent 2020
A day in which companies put themselves on display. Again, all smiles, promises, and leaflets (with a sprinkling of freebies). They want one thing: business, or the opportunity for future business. Many of the people the exhibitors meet will have been previously unknown to them. Within a few months those exhibitors will have a feeling about whether exhibiting at Kent 2020 was good for them. Many exhibitors were effectively saying “we’re here, come and talk and then buy from us”.
The similarities
The local politicians and many of the exhibitors at Kent 2020 have one particular thing in common: they believe that their sudden visibility is going to make us buy from them. They have little concept that a relationship needs to be built.
Before Kent 2020, we at Custwin decided to make assessments of those exhibitors we met. We were particularly interested in how many of them would offer us the opportunity to go on something like an email newsletter list, which would allow us to get a better feel for their company, over a period of time. We spoke to numerous new people during the day and the end result was:
Zero offers of email newsletters.
We’d expected to get perhaps 5% but 0% didn’t seem possible. Walking round the exhibition meeting people we’d never met before, our (kept to ourselves) attitude was:
“We may not need your services right now but maybe in the future we may do, or more likely, may be able to refer your services onto people we know who have such a need”.
If we had been offered email newsletters then over a longer period of time there would have been the opportunity to build trust. It would cost the exhibitors nothing to put us on a list and maybe just a bit of effort to analyse how well we interact with the email newsletters being sent out.
As we went round the exhibition we bumped into people we knew (well, it’s hard not to!) and had several complimentary (thank you) comments about our own email newsletter. People we’d not seen for ages, but who receive our newsletters, knew what we were all about – there had been an element of trust built. I’ve said before that without fail we gain at least one new client a month because the trust has been built up via the email newsletters.
Back to the local elections, how different would it be if those who want our votes had some form of interaction with us on a more regular basis? It could be via electronic means (e.g. an email newsletter from time to time) or it could be in other forms. It would help us to get a better feel for the people and how they would represent us and ultimately, their lives leading up to polling day would be made a lot easier because they’d have a better feeling for who’s ‘onside’.
If a local politician and a typical business exhibitor were in stands next to each other at Kent 2020, they would currently have equal opportunity to succeed or fail. But if one of them found a way to more regularly interact with their potential ‘clients’ and considered the long-term game, they would ultimately be more successful.
Before there’s a huge fury that every Kent 2020 exhibitor is being tarred with the same brush, it has to be said that some exhibitors may have had a more long-term approach. It was just that we didn’t see any evidence of it. Yes, some may have taken business cards and put us on various lists without us being aware, but there was no proactive discussion such as “can we put you on our email newsletter list so that you can be kept aware of what we’re doing in the future?”.
For all those who, in the coming months, will be doing a post-mortem of their Kent 2020 ‘results’, I say “if they weren’t great, come back again next year with something that will build trust over a longer period of time”.
To those local politicians who don’t do so well in the local elections I say “find ways to build up trust over a longer period of time instead of assuming that people will instantly support someone who has been practically invisible for so long”.
April 7, 2011
Customer Service, Email Newsletters
1 Comment
This blog goes out on the day of Kent 2020 in 2011. This year, Custwin are spending time going around the biggest business exhibition in Kent, just meeting new people and catching up with the seemingly huge numbers of people that we know.
But we’ll also be seeing if some exhibitors are as customer focused as they need to be. As you’d expect, we’re giving this a ‘web’ angle.
We’re specifically focusing on which exhibitors take the time to offer us the chance to go onto their email newsletter mailing list.
Many will want to get our business cards and to put us on some sort of list, but we’re not interested in a quick burst of sales pitch activity after the event and instead are more interested in the opportunity that the exhibitors have to build up some trust over a longer period of time.
Many of the exhibitors we’ll meet will be completely new to us and the chances of us giving them business from so ‘new’ is pretty remote. However, we’re not adverse to trust being built, and a great way to build trust in a company is to make use of an email newsletter (ideally, once a month).
The Custwin email newsletter goes out once a month to people we know well but also many we don’t know, or barely know. Its purpose is to provide a selection of articles that may be of interest to readers, and to get across our views on how business should be won via websites and online marketing. It’s never a sales pitch and yes, it does work – at least one new client is gained from the newsletter each month.
So we’ll see what the figures look like after the event. Pre-event we’re estimating that of all those exhibitors we speak to, they’ll boil down to something like:
- 70% will want to get our card/details.
- Having got our details, a third of those will try to contact us in the days and weeks afterwards.
- Only 5% will specifically mention that they have an email newsletter that we could be subscribed to.
- About 10% may mention that they’re on Twitter and try to find out whether we are.
While we hope that all exhibitors do well out of the exhibition, it’s still only one day and it’ll be interesting to see how many miss out on the opportunity to build a longer-term trust-building relationship via methods such as getting people onto their email newsletters subscribers list.
We’ll do a later follow up to this blog to share the results, having given exhibitors a few weeks to make contact with us.
February 5, 2010
Blogs, Email Communications, Email Newsletters, Twitter, Website Strategy
3 Comments
We’re coming up for the Kent 2020 exhibition in April 2010 and it’s started …. the stream of emails and phone calls from companies trying to sell exhibitors their services. This could be printing, exhibition stand stuff, gimmicks, whatever.
Like local political party reps at election time, they come out of the woodwork expecting to gain business. To be frank, it’s insulting, opportunistic, and in today’s climate, just plain stupid.
The winners in business in the future will be those that create an ongoing, but non-invasive awareness of themselves. Does Custwin want to buy new exhibition popups etc. for Kent 2020 this year? No. Would we need to next year? Possibly. Would we be adverse to getting a blog feed, Tweets, or an occasional email newsletter from companies who supply such products, over the months? No, we wouldn’t be adverse. In fact, it would help to build up trust, it may even lead to us meeting the suppliers at some point, and it’s got a much stronger potential to turn into business for the suppliers at some stage.
Taking another subject, a company was pitching chocolate fountain hire for the Kent 2020 exhibition. As a cold introduction to 100 people it’s possible that very few may respond. But as a warm drip feed over a longer period of time, the percentage of buyers will increase. HOW that drip feed is implemented is a subject all of its own but it’s not rocket science.
The focus here happens to be on an upcoming business exhibition but the principle applies for any type of business that wants to gain new clients, particularly at times of the year when those potential buyers are more likely to need such services.
Those businesses that don’t embrace the concept of drip feeding their message into potential clients will soon find themselves losing out to their competitors who understand what makes potential clients tick.
February 22, 2009
Email Newsletters
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Most of us receive various email newsletters on a regular basis. Many of us also create email newsletters to be sent out to clients and others who are interested.
Today I saw something that created a negative impression due to the quality of what I saw.
The email newsletter I opened was something called ‘ActionSTEPS’ which is sent out by someone I don’t recall meeting but still, I don’t mind receiving it. The newsletter looks fine design-wise, had three core articles, and some other links. It soon became apparent that the articles were created by business coaches who are part of this big ‘ActionCOACH’ business coaching franchise worldwide. It sort of makes sense – buy a franchise and then use articles created by other franchisees to promote various subjects. And indeed, the subjects were of interest:
- 5 areas you should focus on during this recession
- All hands on sales deck
- 3 steps to keeping your clients longer
So I clicked on the first link to view the ‘5 areas you should focus on during this recession’ article. That took me off to the page http://www.actioncoach.com/business-coach.php/5+Areas+You+Should+Focus+On+During+This+Recession.
Feel free to read through that article before reading further ……..
Finished?
Then you’d have picked up on what I did – glaring typos and grammatical errors.
Let’s see if we can spot the missing word in the sentence ‘I believe that are five basic areas to focus on first.’.
Yes, it would look so much more complete with the word ‘there’ after ‘that’.
And the sentence ‘This no time for Chicken Little thinking, invest wisely, but first on yourself and our mindset.’ would perhaps read better with an ‘is’ before ‘no time’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘our’.
The object of this is not to point out every error in that article and indeed, the content of the article will be useful to some people, but my point here is about attention to detail.
The person who sent the email newsletter would have selected the article (or at least someone would have approved it’s inclusion). How hard would it have been to identify the errors, politely bring them to the attention of the article writer, and move forwards?
What’s happened in reality is that I, and other people, would have a negative impression of both the original article writer and also the person who allowed it to be included in the email newsletter. Without wishing to be too pedantic, attention to detail is important and although some mistakes do slip through, the more mistakes that appear in a single publication, the higher potential of a negative impression being created.
So, the simple message here is: if you’re using other people’s content, linked to from your own email newsletter, then it’s worth investing those few minutes to double check to ensure that there’s nothing that will create a negative impression of you, or the article writer.
