This is a guest post by Kath Pay from The Email Academy. She will publish another 3 articles over the next few weeks.

For most companies, your database is essential and list growth is one of your key aims. Ideally the subscription process needs to be as easy as possible – my mantra for building a quality list is: ‘Make it easy – and they will subscribe’ (with thanks to the movie, Field of Dreams for inspiration). So let’s have a look at some of the most common barriers which can prevent your list from growing at a healthy rate.

1. Assuming that your all signup procedures are still working and in place. When was the last time you actually went through the entire signup procedure? Not just to reassure yourself that all the links work correctly (it’s surprising how many sites I’ve visited that have this problem), but also to check on the ‘Friendliness’ of the procedure.  It’s advisable to schedule a 3 monthly check up with all of your points of subscription and make sure all function as they should.

2. Only advertising your signup on your website. Don’t forget there are many other places and mediums which lend themselves to promoting your newsletter or email sign up. Some of them include:

• Social media pages such as Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc
• Company blog
• Transactional process
• Customer Service/support
• POS (Point of Sale) customer forms
• POS registration by salespeople
• Events, Trade Shows, Networking Events, Webinars etc
• Also – Don’t forget to add FTAF (Forward to Friend) and SWYN (Share with Your Network) tools to your email communications.

3. Not having explicit permission. Ok -so legally you may be covered (depending upon the legislation of the country you’re sending from and mailing to) and your list growth may zoom, but using methods such as pre-ticked checkboxes and ‘conjunction’ acquisition (subtly adding a clause to your T&C’s or Privacy Policy) methods will generally only result in a short term list growth and possibly cause deliverability problems due to the number of spam complaints you receive.

4. Not stating the benefits. Why should they sign up to receive email communications from you? State these benefits clearly and up front. Write the copy with the subscriber in mind.  They will be looking to see ‘What’s in it for me? Think of it as a value exchange. What are you giving them in exchange for their valuable data? If you don’t have the available room to do this at the point of subscription consider linking to a page which provides you with more room to fully state the benefits.

5. Not providing enough value within the value exchange. If your subscription form tends to look like an insurance form, chances are that you’re asking for too much information. If your aim is to grow the list, you may have to consider which is more valuable to you – fewer subscribers with more data or more subscribers with less data? A nice compromise is a two-step form. On the first page you simply ask for their email address and possibly their name (or whatever data is absolutely essential) and then after they click subscribe, they are then taken to a landing page which could be their Preference Centre. Using some wonderful copy i.e. ‘ in order to enhance your experience, we’d love to find out some more about you….’ you then incentivise them to fill in the empty fields – however, make it clear that this is not compulsory and that it is for the subscribers benefit and you may be surprisingly pleased with the results.

6. Using a stereotypical, bland Call-To-Action (CTA). What’s wrong with standing out in a crowd? The below example comes from www.whichtestwon.com, with the results being that Version A increased signups by 23%. Test your CTA and find out what works best for you and your product/offering.

7. Not asking the subscriber to whitelist. Requesting that the subscriber whitelist you or add you to their contacts used to be beneficial, but now with the Gmail’s Priority Inbox and Hotmail’s inbox changes and with the other ISPs soon to follow suit, it will soon be an essential element to your subscription process. Ideally it should be requested on the Thank you page after subscribing, the Welcome email, as well as within all future emails. The trick is to make it easy for them and give them full instructions on how to do it (taking them to a landing page). It could look something like:

Please add name@companyname.com to your email address book or safe senders list. Click here for instructions how to do this.

8. Not setting expectations. What are you going to be sending them? Can you show them an example? How often will they be hearing from you? These are all questions the subscriber will be looking to find answers for. Again – if space is limited, link to a page which outlines all of these, along with an example of an email they can look forward to be receiving and/or past archives if it’s a newsletter.

9. Hiding the subscribe form on your homepage and not having the subscribe form on every page of your website. We all know that the website’s homepage is prime real estate and you have to fight for space within it, however, having the subscribe link/form below the fold isn’t doing anyone any favours – least of all your aim to grow your list. Ideally the subscribe form/link needs to be placed above the fold on the homepage and don’t stop there – add it to every page. Remember our mantra – ‘Make it easy – and they will subscribe’.

10. Not flaunting your Privacy Policy. Reassure your potential subscribers. Spell it out in plain English. Be transparent. If you aren’t going to share their data with a third party – then flaunt it! State this right next to the email field. It could look something like this: ‘Don’t worry – we respect your data and won’t share it with anyone else. Read our Privacy Policy’. Be sure to link to your Privacy Policy again on the Thank you page as well as within every email that is sent.

11. Not optimising your Landing/Thank you Page. Your landing page is an often neglected afterthought in the subscription process. However, it can make or break a relationship with a new subscriber. Continue as you started – make it easy. Have everything your subscriber needs for a wonderful experience with your brand within reach on this landing page. Don’t let it become a dead end. Where would they like to go next? Suggest something to them. Maximise this opportunity to delight and help them.

12. Not testing. Testing is essential for your subscribe form(s)and landing page(s). Don’t just accept that the ‘norm’ works for you and your company. Your company’s subscribers are the best people to judge as to what works. Test factors such as; placement, copy, number of fields, one page form VS two page form, landing page elements etc. This can be easily achieved by using Google’s Optimizer which allows you to set up multiple forms/landing pages and will disperse the different pages to your readers. You can then check the reports to see which form/page succeeded in more conversions.

T: @kathpay
E: @ kpay @ theemailacademy.com

Melanie is a marketing manager in charge of acquiring new customers.

She explained how the company is very US-centric with a lot of personal taxation management products which are market leaders in their segment.  They have started sharing knowledge between the US and UK teams in order to create a global knowledge-base of best practice for social media marketing.  They also do customer research with a "follow me home" where they observe customers using their products in their own offices / homes.

It appears that the marketing programme is very PR oriented working on customer acquisition and strong messaging to upsell to new products and mainly being product marketing focused. 

There is some channel marketing work with resellers.  Interestingly the closest market alignment to the UK is Canada – they think the same way as us.

The database is UK and Canada sharing with the US on a different platform creating some silo issues.

Customers are differentiated by value in their current segmentation but not by needs at all.  And so I thought to give back soe value to Melanie and thank her for her time meeting me, I'd ask the community to get involved.

Any suggestion about how Melanie might create a customer differentiation model for Quickbooks customers?  I'll put down my own ideas of what the relevant issues and metrics might be to make up an algorithm?

• company size and type i.e. products vs services
• company complexity e.g. do you use multiple currencies / bank accounts
• book keeper or accountant
• attitude to learning – do you discover for yourself or want to be taught
• response to problems – do you research online or want to speak to a person
• interest in community – participant, reader, lurker or no interest

I think we need a few more…. suggestions please.

Went to another VRM Lonodn meeting last week organised by Adriana Lukas.

Richard Marr has written a good synopsis of his undestanding with some very handy 'use cases" illustrating what VRM might be used for in the future 

Insurance

Bob is looking for some home insurance. He inputs data about all the belongings in his house that he wants covered, his postcode (zip code if you’re merkin), and then sends a message through the VRM host to insurance companies giving them one-off access and asking them for a quote. The insurance companies respond. He then selects the quote he wants, and provides them with his identity and whatever other personal data is required to establish a relationship. The chosen insurance company can then be given persistent access to Bob’s private house contents data so that he can quickly re-insure when he buys something to avoid being underinsured.

The insurance company wins because they can cut out the brokers. Bob wins because he gets cheaper insurance and can reduce the hassle of re-insuring. He doesn’t want to be underinsured if something goes wrong.

Neat, does it for me, particularly as the average fee paid to brokers for their service is £50 which would be a nice cost reduction on MY home insurance. 

While writing, Adriana has uploaded a slideshow of her vision of the user experience for VRM here 

I particularly like her summary of recent online applications that have created a movement behind the initial software.  Blogging is the killer app for conversations; Social networks are the killer app for relationships.  Could VRM be the platform for killer apps for transactions [slide 7].

She gives a travel example in slides 10 – 15 showing all the different places online she puts her travel information – from flights to photos and suggests these should come together into a single central place, personal to her. 

The working title for the online place where you put all your data is "Mine!" – double entendre intended. 

At the end is the link to the London VRM Hub wiki – come and join a meeting if you are curious.  They happen monthly. 

But that time is now moving into the past.  The future is about 'flipping' the control of customer data out of the hands of the corporation and into the hands of the individual.  

You and I both know that many organisations have our personal data – whether it is just logins to websites or fully comprehensive bank account and credit card details from vendors we use online and offline.   Do you have a complete list of these companies and websites?  Betcha don't.  I certainly don't.

 And so when something changes – you move house, for example or you decide that you no longer want your data to be held by a particular organisation or group of companies. you have to write individually to each to 'unsubscribe' or change or amend your customer data profile.  Which is frankly a right royal pain in the bum.

Early days yet – but a possible change is for you to hold all the data about yourself and for companies and organisations that want to have a relationsihp with you to come to a private place online that you control and manage and to"collect" your data there for their purposes – with your permission.  And so if you change something, you update in ONE place.  And if you change your mind about a company and you no longer want their newsletter, you go to one place and change their permissions – maybe letting them know automatically in the process why you did or what they did to make you alter your view of them and their brand.

Sounds good?

It is called Vendor Relationship Management.  VRM.  

And the principles are still being worked out by some of the leading minds of the online age – Doc Searls and Adriana Lukas.  I am working with Adriana on the London end of the project.  

If you want to learn more, read this slide deck from Doc updating his "Cluetrain Manifesto" view of the world 10 years on… and explaining some of the VRM principles as he sees them

And Adriana's One pager about VRM post which states her future-gazing view of the future.

If you are a business here's a possible future for you

Imagine having your customers share with you what they like, want and
think of you. At the moment, you are dependent on market research,
which is like looking through a keyhole at the rich ‘user-generated’
world. Imagine being able to relate to your customers, consistently and
persistently, where they contribute directly to your supply chain where
it makes sense – whether it is R&D, product design, distribution
and marketing. Interaction with them is modular, intuitive and
user-driven freeing much of your resources spent on marketing and
transaction cost.

And if you are a customer here's a possible future for you

The ability to manage and analyze your data will give you better
knowledge about yourself, the kind of knowledge that is the holy grail
of most companies’ customer data management. The awareness of your
preferences, understanding of your needs will help you to articulate
them easier and strengthen your position with vendors.

If you want to learn more about what you can do for VRM and what VRM can do for you – come to this workshop that I'm helping to run 

Tuesday April 15th, the theme is VRM and how it addresses (and
hopefully redresses) the imbalance between individuals and their
relationships with vendors, companies or institutions.

Just got emailed by TFM&A to get me to sign up to their 2008 event. I’ll probably go.

But first a gripe.

If they are the pre-eminent exhibition and conference for technology for marketing and advertising (as the name implies) why oh why can’t they use best practice for email communications?

My email WAS individually addressed to me “Dear Rebecca Caroe”. Good start.

It WAS sent just to my email address and although it made it past my Outlook spam filter, Mailwasher picked it up as ‘not to me” and I had to manually accept the communication.

But when I clicked on the link

It took me to a registration page where NONE of my information was pre-populated.

As I laboured my way down the registration opting in and out for various items, it dawned on me that this was just a ‘plain vanilla’ registration page for all the outbound email marketing. Why wasn’t there a unique response code embedded in my link? Why don’t they ‘know’ which email I replied to and from what source [they asked me both in the registration questionnaire and these questions were mandatory not optional].

And lastly, why isn’t Business Development, a skill area listed under specialisms?

I feel alone in the marketing world.

Read this if you want convincing about what the ‘average’ consumer in the UK does with it.

And if you want to see the future do some research into VRM. Vendor Relationship Management or the ability of the consumer to pre-select the brands they will allow to communicate with them.

Definition: VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.

CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don’t require the former to “lock in” the latter.

The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.

For VRM to work, vendors must have reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.

Be scared, be very scared if you company is a heavy DM user and has not started to work towards an adapted / altered database marketing strategy – your world is dying a slow, lingering death and your brand’s marketing budget will go with it.

Learn more by subscribing to the Harvard ProjectVRM updates; James Burke does a good summary here and Read Adriana’s blog (link is to all her VRM articles). And if you want to move towards database marketing using a cost-effective, laptop based database package, have a look at Honeycomb.

Take a look at this email I just got from Lovefilm.  I’m a customer – have been for two years.  it is a great service.

For a while they’ve been offering member get member schemes with 3 months free use and a voucher.  But today, I think they have begun to learn more about the possibilities of connecting up customers with others.

I got the email below…. and in case anyone out there fancies joining their programme, here’s my reward link!

Five more things that Lovefilm could do to improve the loyalty and community aspects of their marketing programme:

1. Enable ‘friends’ groups on lovefilm so you can see what your friends are renting and how they are rating rental movies
2. Set up a facebook application to improve movie rating data sharing
3. When launching any new programme within the overall marketing campaign, find the early adopters and offer them additional incentives to participate.
4. Make sure the database has categorisation for members by value and by needs.
5. Improve personalisation in weekly email newsletter – what is the ‘next’ thing you want me as a customer to do in order to improve my participation (they currently offer polls, ‘user collections’ i.e. lists, and quizzes) add in a few more features with the opportunity to connect to friends who are also lovefilm customers and compare notes.

Enough about Lovefilm.  What about your customers?

Run a quick check on which of your clients repeat purchase.  What do you do for them to make it easier to buy and re-buy?  What additional features can you offer to enhance the experience of buying from your business (recognition, gifts, rewards, community features, plugins to favourite sites, recommendations).

Start planning the long term “conversation” your marketing will drive with your customer base.  Here’s how:

1. Set the vision
2. Outline the ideal customer profile
3. Categorise current customers according to value and needs
4. Plan marketing communications as a sequence of exchanges – each interaction promts the next question and answer.  All designed to discover the customer category and hence their likely needs and what you can try to sell to them.

Dear Rebecca   KEEP EARNING LOVEFILM REWARDS The LOVEFiLM reward scheme has been a huge success so far with 1000s of you telling your family, friends and pets about LOVEFiLM and earning iPods and other rewards. Below is a guide to getting started and a guide to how to best use the scheme. Refer 1 friend FREE LOVEFiLM membership   Refer 3 friends The latest must-have from Apple   Refer 4 friends A great way to view your digital photos   Refer 8 friends There’s now no excuse for getting lost   How it works Its an easy way of converting your friends to the best way to rent DVDs while earning a reward for yourself. Your friends will get a month’s FREE trial while you get your choice of rewards.   You choose your reward on our website www.lovefilm.com/reward   We will send your unique link   Forward this to all your friends, or stick the unique link in a blog   You’ll be credited for anyone that becomes a full member and meets our terms and conditions   Keep checking your account to see how your referrals are progressing Tips on earning your reward We have noticed some of you are using whatever you can find to tell your friends about LOVEFiLM. To make it even easier we have built a page just for you to get ideas and materials from to promote the trial to your friends. Go to the page www.lovefilm.com/account/share_love.html to see what you could use. We have our logo, our interviews with film stars, our funny Alan Bond video, our top 10s and more to use. Tell your friends they can rent these top titles from LOVEFiLM over the coming months Happy Viewing THE LOVEFiLM TEAM