The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

I've written elsewhere about NextStage's research into email newsletters and email marketing. Recently I was interviewed by AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund on the subject and that interview has become two podcasts (see links below).

I'll also be posting the individual Q&A from that interview here for those who want a written record. Not everything covered in the interview is documented in print, so the best bet is to listen and take notes along the way.

First up, What are the key elements to think about in your design so that you get maximum ROI?

That said, the single most important factor was knowing what type of device your audience would most likely be viewing the newsletter on first. Let me explain that so your listeners understand.

We learned that it's not uncommon for certain demographics to get their emails on mobile devices. Duh, right? But what we learned was that many people who get their emails on mobile devices either technically or mentally mark certain emails for "follow up". Not in the sense of "I have to respond to this" but in the sense of "this is important so I want to devote some time to it when I have time to devote to it".

One of the hallmarks of the mobile, pda, smartphone demographic is a metric we call "organization". This means they value the concept of "organization", of "being organized". It doesn't mean "they are organized" and this is crucial. We did a different and ancillary study that determined if this segment was more organized or less organized than other people and we discovered a micro-segment that actually used their device as a means of active organization. The rest of this segment pretty much all claimed their device's organizational value and when you looked at their time-activity usage you saw that it was just another distraction and lowered their life-efficiency by measurable percentage points.

And this doesn't begin to touch on the people who want to show you something on their iPhone, Smartphone or whatever. Sometimes these people (not all!) remind me of that Stuart character on MadTV that continually says "Look what I can do!"

So, whether these people are actually more or less organized than the rest of us, one of the things the majority seem to do is see something on their smart device and flag it as something they want to explore in a different setting.

This isn't just true with mobile, pda style folks. Is your newsletter about family health issues and you know your demographic is 30-somethings with small children, for example? That email probably isn't being read on a PDA. Also (and here's a trick we learned), if you can time delivery to when you know someone in this (or similar) demographic is sitting at their family computer -- note "family health" and "family computer" -- and can deliver that email newsletter into their inbox when they're sitting at their computer, you've just increased the relevancy of your newsletter to them.

This is a psychological factor that lots of people miss out on and it's not specific to health. We saw it in finance, pet care, lots of places.

Once you get past knowing what device subscribers will be using when they first see your newsletter, you get into things like content, relevancy,

Relevancy is a demographic issue and it's closely tied to distribution frequency and actionability. Distribution frequency is "how often will subscribers get a copy?" and actionability is "when can subscribers do something that benefits them based on the information provided within?"

Send out a daily newsletter without no immediately valuable action items and you can watch your subscription base go down to nothing. Send out a monthly newsletter that requires subscribers to act immediately to recognize value and watch your subscription base go away.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 1
• How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 2
• Email Newsletters, Anyone?
• Make sure your email newsletter is working
• SEND Glands Blog arc

• Know How Someone's Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at Toronto Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 3 April 08
• Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08

• Toronto Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 31 March - 2 April 08
• New Communications Forum 2008, 22-25 April 08 at The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa, Sonoma County CA
• San Francisco Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 4-7 May 08
• SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08

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