For the last year, some very smart marketers have wrestled with a particularly difficult question.

Why does Social Media matter?

Face it.  Dot com crash refugees (like myself) tend to get cynical about must-have technologies. Remember Pointcast anyone?

We tend to worry that social media will rocket to the forefront only to be reeled back in and gobbled up by the forces of evolution rather than revolution.   Or is our concern unfounded?  Could Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and scores of others here to stay?

The answer still eludes many but recently while tweeting about my favorite bass fishing swim bait I noticed something.

Remember the good ole’ “purchase funnel”?  For decades this ubiquitous marketing metaphor has helped advertisers describe how a person is transformed from oblivious spectator to committed loyalist.  The phases of the funnel include Awareness, Opinion, Consideration, Purchase, and then Retention.

Those of us who have faithfully used the funnel -  have also been hiding it’s dark secret.

You see, the funnel works well for awareness (display ads, pay-per-click), consideration (search engine optimization, email marketing),  purchase (website, landing pages, shopping carts), and loyalty (tell-a-friend, referral programs).  But, the Web has fallen flat on its face when it comes to reliable influencing “opinion”.

And then Social Media came along.  Social Media works because it creates a space for everyday people to generate goodwill, recommendations, and unbiased observations. Or put another way – Social media rocks at creating “opinion”.  In fact, nothing else comes close.

So as you are casting a critical eye at your social media investment, keep in mind, that those 140 characters on Twitter may be the best tool you have for seamlessly moving your prospect to the point of purchase.  Not a bad deal – especially since (for now) this is the only part of the purchase funnel that you can affect for free.

Seems like Social Media does matter afterall…

What do you think?

What do your database contacts really want? Within your email marketing program, all of the A/B testing, tracking and optimization boils down to this one, simple question.

But what’s the best way to ask your database what they want?  If you’ve missed the boat on asking follow-up questions during the opt-in process (when they’re most inclined to volunteer some optional data), you’re going to need some sort of survey or polling mechanism. A survey form embedded within your email is not viable – most email clients will automatically strip out the code.

Including a link to an online survey may not get enough participation (even if you offer an incentive – always recommended, by the way).  Furthermore, individuals with enough time to take a lengthy survey may not be representative of your ideal customer (most C-level execs that I’ve met don’t have time for surveys).

Enter the one-click email survey. We recommend taking the most important profiling question that you want to know and place it into your email layout as a simple, multiple-choice set of links. Because you’re using simple hyperlinks, there is no form code to be stripped out.  Styling the links to look like radio button choices makes it appear more ‘poll-like’.   When your contacts click the links, personalized tracking data associates their click ‘answers’ with their profiles, and they are redirected to a ‘thank you’ page with additional calls-to-action available.

Sample screen capture:

Testing this approach revealed some key insights:

• Survey participation was significant – 21% for one client (incidentally, it was sent to a list of C-level executives)
• Inclusion of the survey did not reduce response rate for the email’s primary (non-survey) call-to-action, even when the survey was placed in the upper-right corner of the layout.
• Unsubscribe rate actually dropped when the survey was included.  This indicates that recipients are more engaged when they know that you care about their preferences.
• Some users clicked different choices at different times. Since this is really a real-time profile update, simply use the last clicked answer as the current answer (it may change over time, depending on your question).

Over time, you can use this tactic as a soft approach to build more profiling into your database.  Ask the same question in sequential mailings until you get enough data, and then switch it up. Ask all of the key questions that you forgot to ask the first time around.

Email marketing success often comes down to small, incremental changes that really add up. Optimizing the small levers in your program can act like force multipliers, with each improvement snowballing into the next. With time and testing, the combination of improvements will ultimately yield dividends much larger than your time or money investment.

We always recommend addressing these factors first:

1. Email Opt-In Form: Is your site’s email opt-in form converting to its potential? When looking at your form, consider the placement on the site, form fields, and by all means offer an incentive for opt-in (however small) when possible. A recent Fluency Media redesign of one client’s email opt-in form has increased email subscriptions by nearly 1,200% (more than the previous 11 months combined).

2. Welcome (“New Best Friend”) Email Series: Many companies still do not engage their new subscribers within the first 24 hours. This is a key window of opportunity, when subscribers are fresh and excited about your brand. The recent introduction of a 2-part welcome email series for one client has increased visits from the entire email channel by over 80% and conversions by over 70%.

3. Delivery: How good are your in-house servers or current ESP at getting emails through to the Inbox? There are several potential points of failure, including:

· IP or domain level: many server IP addresses or domains are already blocked by major ISPs. How would you even know if you’re being blocked? Fluency maintains and monitors the excellent standing of its sending IP addresses with the major ISPs (including Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL), and we consistently have delivery rates of 98% or more. For one client, moving to Fluency’s sending servers alone resulted in a 20% delivery boost as compared to their in-house server.

· ISP queues: Some ISPs will ‘grey-list,’ or defer your messages from getting through. Unless your system attempts to re-send those messages, they’ll eventually be lost in a delivery black hole. Fluency’s email system will attempt to re-send queued messages for up to 48 hours before ending in a soft bounce. We estimate that this saves up to 5% of messages from being lost.

· Content issues: a single word in your subject line or copy can send an otherwise fine email message into the Spam / Junk folder. We test and re-test messages to ensure delivery to the Inbox for all major ISPs and Outlook.

4. Subject Lines: A targeted subject line is your best opportunity to get an email message opened. Testing on personalization, length and content can boost open rates by 5% or more.

5. Layout: Once the email is opened, how will it be viewed? Is it readable if the recipient hasn’t “turned on images?” What if it’s viewed on a mobile device? Fluency has tested hundreds of iterations of email layouts to ensure that what is most important in your messaging is viewed first, and that it looks great in all of the leading email clients.

6. Offer: Are you testing your offers? How aggressive do you need to be in order to move the conversion needle? Try sending A/B (and C, D, E if necessary) tests of your offer out to a small percentage of your database. This will allow you to find the offer sweet spot before rolling out to the larger database.

7. Call-to-Action Placement: What will make them click? It’s important to find the right wording, design and placement for your call-to-action to maximize click rate. A/B tests make finding the right combination quick and inexpensive.

8. Landing Page: Where will they arrive when they click? Does the messaging and branding of the landing page match the email creative and continue the promise delivered in the email message? Is it easy for the visitor to do what you want them to do? A recent Fluency redesign of a client landing page resulted in a 33% conversion rate boost.

9. On-Site Sales Flow (Conversion) Optimization: What about the subsequent steps needed to purchase or perform whatever desired tasks on your site? It’s critical to identify and remove the bottlenecks to conversion. On-site A/B tests can help identify the winner of several variations of a checkout page, sales meeting request form, etc.

10. Send Frequency: Most companies are scared to contact their database more than once a month (or even less). But your contacts may wish to hear from you much more often – perhaps even twice a week. That is just money left on the table. One client’s frequency testing program yielded a 20% revenue growth from the email channel in a relatively short period just by testing their assumption that once a month was the “right” frequency.

Optimizing any one of these factors can dramatically improve your program. Added up, your email marketing results can be spectacular – challenging even the sexy, offline advertising channels for conversion numbers.

Email is unique in that it’s a low cost, high performance channel that can be used to really learn about your database.  By developing an ongoing testing plan, you can collect some valuable behavioral data on your consumers that will inform all of your programs.  (Check out this ClickZ article on using the applying the scientific method to behavioral marketing across all digital channels: http://www.clickz.com/3633553)

Testing means more than a haphazard A/B split every month or two.  It means developing a long term plan and sticking to it.  The good news is that the method has already been developed – it’s the Scientific Method, used by scientists of all kinds the world over. 

Here are the 6 steps to the method, and how to apply them to your email marketing plan: 

1. Make An Observation – Identify the metrics that you want to improve.  Pick one at a time, and start with the one that is the easiest, and will make the most impact.
2. Ask A Question – Determine what elements of your email affect the selected metrics. (i.e. if you’re looking to boost open rates, you might want to take a look at your subject line)
3. Form A Hypothesis – This is where you decide what you’re going to test against your standard.  Don’t enter into this step blindly – do your homework and make an informed guess on what the B version is going to be, and why it should outperform the A version.  Write down your hypothesis. 
4. Conduct an experiment – Run your test, and do it right.  If you’re testing subject lines, then make that the ONLY difference.  Don’t tweak the copy or change the offers or move the CTA.  One thing at a time – that way you’ll have fully attributable results.
5. Evaluate the results – When the numbers start pouring in, pull out that hypothesis you wrote down, and use it to evaluate the data.  Did your B version outperform the standard A version on the metric you were testing?
6. Do it all again – So you found your winner, the better of the two, and have improved your program.  But, there’s something out there that’s even better, that’s going to boost performance even more.  How do you find it?  By continuously repeating the process.