9 Marketing Remedies for Event Registration Success

Over the years, our Greenfield team has "rescued" numerous programs because event registrations
were not coming in as expected. Here is our prescription for a successful event marketing campaign:

1. Get permission first: It is important to obtain and track permissions for your stakeholders -your prospects. Members are OK; they have opted in to your communications through their renewals. However, your prospective list is a different story: with CASL in play, it is important to build a list that won't get you in trouble later.
2. Maintain your database: With CASL, if there is a complaint, the burden will be on you to provide that permission was obtained. Don't risk the fine! Keep your database clean.
3. Make it about ME: Who cares if your event has a record-breaking number of exhibitors, sponsors or break-out sessions? If your communication isn't articulating WIIFM (what's-in-it-for me) for the potential attendee, they likely won't register.
4. Twitterize your message: Don't send long emails telling me ALL there is to know about your event. Since your message is most likely to be viewed on a mobile device, keep your message short and to the point. If there's more to the story, give links where the recipient can go for more.
5. Make it shareable: An increasing number of business event attendees are active on social media. Make it easy for attendees to share your event with peers by using ShareThis or other social media sharing platforms. That way they can tweet, post to Facebook or LinkedIn, or whatever social medium they prefer.
6. Tell them who else will be there: Not just speakers or sponsors/exhibitors; people want to know about their peers. So upon a registration, gain permission to publicize the fact that an attendee will be there. Those who agree will have their name posted on your event website. It's a simple way to create FOMO (fear-of-missing-out).
7. Show them: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is worth a million. Use this powerful tool to show clips of speakers, testimonials from attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors. Score double points by showcasing a video of someone with similar attributes to your prospect.
8. Vary your channels: Unless recipients have white-listed your email address, anytime you are using email deployment software, there is a 30-40% chance that your message will be caught in spam filters. Your audience may be interested but may never see your message! Pay special attention to where your prospects hang out on LinkedIn. Get the influential people in your industry to tweet about your event. Or even send something by mail - something that will pique curiosity, and will drive traffic to your website.
9. Don't be so business like: Learn from what gets shared online; people enjoy funny or touching stories. Your promotion will rise above the clutter if you show emotion humour, or an edge. Don't be so serious!

For meeting, conference and event planners, covering each tactic can be a daunting task.  But a well-rounded event marketing plan will drive attendance & engagement.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Anti-Spam Legislation Delivers Wake-Up Call to Canadian Associations

New spam prevention laws in Canada were the jumping-off point for a fast-paced conversation about marketing, engagement, and respecting your audience during the 2014 Engaging Associations Summit in late July.

Greenfield Services Chief Strategist Doreen Ashton Wagner opened the session with some startling statistics. She said some associations reported losing up to 80% of their external prospect lists after Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) took effect July 1, for the simplest of reasons: lists age very quickly, and when the organizations asked their less frequent contacts’ permission to continue soliciting them by email, the contacts declined.

Thanks to CASL, it was easy enough for the recipients to make a dent in their incoming email volume. All they had to do was not answer the flurry of requests they were receiving from multiple senders in the second half of June. As long as they did nothing, the senders were obliged to remove them from their lists.

Good News or Bad?

The question for Summit participants was whether the sudden loss of email volume was good news or bad. Panelists Rachel Stephan, Principal of sensov/ event marketing, and Mitchell Beer, President of Smarter Shift, agreed the user response to CASL was an important wake-up call.

Stephan said it’s scary for organizations to suddenly see their email lists thinned out by hundreds or thousands of recipients. But if 80% of a list of sponsors, advertisers, and exhibitors was mostly a mirage, it’s better to aim for a higher percentage return from a smaller, more engaged audience. Beer took the point of view of the audience for marketing emails, asking whether anyone in the room was receiving too few incoming messages. (Shocking spoiler alert: No one raised their hand.)

By relying more on inbound, “pull” marketing, rather than traditional outbound techniques, the panelists said associations can use proactive acquisition campaigns and online networks to develop deeper, more positive relationships with members, sponsors conference participants, and other stakeholders.

New Ways to Communicate

Discussion during the session focused on content marketing techniques that emphasize conversation, peer learning, and community, rather than pushing for a quick sale to place an expo booth, an ad, or a conference registration. The most successful online communicators:

• Develop detailed audience personas that reflect a deep understanding of the groups they’re trying to reach
• Listen closely to each audience, to understand what information they need and what they’re trying to achieve
• Deliver targeted, original content that reflect their audiences’ interests 
• Give back to the community, by fostering genuine conversations and online engagement.

Participants heard that CASL has forced associations to personalize their marketing and pay closer attention to their audiences’ preferences. Stephan quoted Experian Marketing Services’ recent finding that customers would no longer buy from an organization that failed to take account of their preferences and purchasing history.”

Click here for highlights of the 2014 Engaging Associations Summit and a sneak preview of the 2015 event.

5 Marketing Tips for the New Year

It might be February already, but there’s still time to think about what you’re going to do that’s new, fresh and exciting in the New Year when it comes to marketing.

The following are 5 marketing trends that you should take into serious consideration (and implementation) when it comes to your organization’s marketing this year:

1. Engage on an emotional level with your audience

It’s not about you, it’s about them. Seriously. Your customers are only in it for one thing–themselves. And this isn’t a bad thing. Whether you sell a good, a service or membership, you should want your audience thinking about themselves; this is how they will engage.

Your challenge this year? Think outside the box in terms of what you can offer your customers, members or audience when it comes to  personalized support, products and experiences. Pay attention to big data to help you figure out just what your customers want. Heck, any data is going to help you boost engagement and figure out what triggers emotional responses from your audience.

Track whatever you can and use this information on a routine basis to make informed business decisions. Get personal. Get emotional. Your customers will appreciate it.

2. Content marketing. It’s a must.

It’s no longer good enough to just be “on” social media or to have set up a blog (that might not be updated on a regular basis).  Content marketing is a must and need to be incorporated into your organization’s entire marketing strategy (check out some of my tips to get started here).

2014 will also see changes in terms of paid and earned media. Organic content is great, but think about setting aside some of your marketing dollars for digital advertising and promoted posts when it comes to your content marketing strategy. A solid mix of organic and paid content will push you to the frontline and only add to continued brand recognition for your organization.

Think beyond the likes. What makes your organization different? How can you be more creative? How will you truly appeal to your customers? This year, your content needs to be about engagement, conversions, originality and consistency.

3. Combine traditional and digital marketing. Think teamwork.

Digital marketing, traditional marketing, sales, brand marketing–whatever you want to call these pieces, they need to work together. Your entire organization needs to not only understand your overall business goals, but what the sales and marketing goals are–regardless of the channels being used.

In addition, everything you do should be tied to digital. It’s fine if you need to keep your printed brochure, but edit it in terms of online content. Is there a mention of social media? Do you make it easy for your readers to find you other places online? And when people do find you online, do you have a means to track where they came from?

Always be thinking about integration. Your team. Your brand message. Your channels.

4. Get mobile.

Mobile marketing is here to stay. All organizations need to think about how and when their customers access information online (hint: it has to do with tablets and smartphones) and produce content that supports the “always on” mentality. Mobile makes up the majority of email open rates (so even if you finally got that business e-newsletter going, you now have to make sure it’s primed for mobile viewing…is it?)

Responsive website design. Text messaging. Easy share options. Social networking widgets. Visual content. All of these pieces should work together to create engaging experiences that showcase your brand in its best light while, at the same time, making it as easy as possible for the consumer.

5. Multiple paths to purchase

There is no longer a flat sales funnel. Your organization must really think about multiple points of entry and strategize your marketing according to this. Think emotional engagement. Think outside the funnel.

The purchase funnel we all learned in Sales and Marketing 101 is no longer. The way for brands to communicate on an emotional level and provide value to customers is to choose the right (multiple) platforms and engage on the customers’ levels. What they want. What they need. How they connect.

And because of this, there is no one direct path to purchase. There is no one ultimate tool that persuades a purchase.

All of a company’s efforts–traditional and digital–solidify additional connections and emotions that lead to engagement, trust and ultimately, the sale. It truly is a multi-path-to-purchase cycle. There is nothing flat about it.

This is what your leadership must understand. This is how you will engage your C-suite and get them on board with everything you need to be doing in 2014 and beyond.

Are you ready?

BIO
This guest post was submitted by Melissa Harrison, founder and CEO of Allee Creative, LLC, a content marketing and branding firm in the Twin Cities. Melissa has more than a decade of experience in content management and strategy, branding and design, working with organizations to build strategic social media and online content strategies. Listed as one of the “Top 36 Content Marketers Who Rock” by TopRank and Content Marketing Institute, Melissa believes that organizations must adapt to what customers want, which includes using social media and creative online content to provide relevant, consistent information, in order to survive.

Melissa is also a four-time recipient of the Hermes Creative Award and a regular speaker on the topics of branding, content strategy and social media. Melissa is also certified by Google Analytics Academy in Digital Analytics Fundamentals. Follow Melissa on Twitter.

Canada's Anti-Spam Law Comes Into Effect July 1... Now What?

You may have heard that Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) will take effect on July 1st, 2014.  Now that the government has announced the date by which sanctions begin, associations need to assess how it applies to them, and what to do about it.

The best advice that I can give to those who are not sure where to start is to think strategically, and start from the beginning, so you are not scrambling close to the deadline to ensure that you have tracked everything correctly.

What is CASL?

This legislation applies to any commercial electronic message that promotes your organization or even just informs recipients. Examples include emails or texts that:

• Promote a product or service;
• Invite recipients to sponsor, attend or exhibit at a conference or event;
• Solicit a prospect to join your organization.

Not only do you have to be careful about what you are sending, but you have to be careful about who you are sending it to.  That's because the law says you can only send an electronic message if you have the recipient's consent first:

• Express consent is the communication agreement you have with an individual member, exhibitor, or sponsor. If these contacts have bought or something from your association in the last two years, they are deemed to have explicitly agreed to receive electronic communication from you.  Any recipients whose last transaction is more than two years ago must be contacted for express consent.
• Implied consent on the other hand is a tentative agreement between you and a prospective member or other stakeholder.  They may have attended an information session, or dropped a business card off at your booth at a tradeshow.  This agreement has an expiry date, which after July 1st, 2014, is just six months from the date of the initial contact.  After six months, if you don't have express consent, you must stop communication.

Obtaining Consent:  Get express consent wherever possible, and once you have it, have the mechanisms in place to confirm, and obtain communication interests and preferences.

Managing Information in Your Database:  In the event of a complaint, you will have to provide the data to back up your claim of consent.  Ensure that your CRM is capable of keeping a field to indicate whether consent was express or implied, and the date it was obtained, along with any other information relating to the recipient's preferences.

Identification and Ongoing Communication Requirements:  Ensure that your messages contain the correct contact information required by the legislation, whether it is sent by you or your third party provider.
Unsubscribes and Revoking Consent:  If a recipient of your messages wants to revoke consent (i.e. wants to unsubscribe), the process to do so must be easy and clearly laid out.  To ensure that the process is seamless, we recommend ensuring that your email marketing software is connected to your CRM.

For more information on the Anti-Spam Legislation, please visit fightspam.gc.ca, or download our Tips and Best Practices for Associations on preparing for CASL.

Declutter Your Communications with Members in Mind

When you decide it’s time to declutter your desk, your basement, or your project archives, there’s a basic principle at work: Keep what’s useful, and trash the rest.

The same applies, with a slight shift in focus, if you’re trying to keep association members engaged: to capture readers’ interest and build a loyal following, decluttering means relentlessly purging any content that isn’t useful to them.

This useful metaphor comes to us courtesy of Naylor LLC and the Association Adviser, producers of an Association Communication Benchmarking Survey that reached 395 respondents from across the United States. A key problem, they report, is that associations are forgetting to ask what’s in it for their customers when they plan their communications campaigns.

“While most associations are pre-occupied with ‘cutting through the clutter,’ very few are clear about their strategy for how they’re going to break through,” Naylor writes. “If clutter is your biggest concern, you have to know what members and advertisers are expecting. And the only way you can really know is by asking them directly, either on the phone or face-to-face.”

The Cost of Not Listening

There was a time when associations could survive, even thrive, by treating members as a single, homogeneous audience, making broad assumptions about the information or education they needed, and setting out to deliver it.

There were few other sources of the education, certification, or business networking members needed, so a one-size-fits-all strategy was successful enough.

Those days are gone, and they aren’t likely to return. There are more generations in the workplace, each with its own needs and expectations. Knowledge and networking are a few keystrokes away for anyone with an Internet connection.

Associations can still make themselves indispensible by understanding their various audiences, then aggregating and organizing a huge volume of incoming information to meet their members’ specific needs.

But that takes us back to the small matter of cutting through the clutter. If an organization doesn’t get this right, no one benefits:

• Members get tired of settling for content that is unoriginal, uninspiring, or too generic to reflect their needs and experience.
• Decision-makers in members’ own organizations are less likely to pay for the next activity—whether it’s a luncheon, a conference, or a membership renewal—if they don’t see the benefit.
• Sponsors get impatient if they see fewer participants at events, slower response to their advertising, or less overall enthusiasm across the membership.
• The association loses dollars, momentum, and credibility at every step, so that a failure to declutter eventually becomes a serious threat to the organization as a whole.

Just Ask the Audience

The good news is that this is an easy problem to solve. The great thing about asking members what they want is that they’re often eager to tell you.

Many of our clients conduct annual or biennial member surveys to gather feedback, test new ideas, make sure their programming is on the right track, and adjust as needed. Timing is all-important: nobody likes the feeling of being surveyed to death, and your survey will fail if you ask too many questions, or if it looks like some of the questions have no purpose.

But with the right survey design, you can gather valuable intelligence, segmented by target audience, and translate members’ responses into creative, effective programs.

It’s important to keep faith with the people who took the time to complete your survey by reporting the findings—in a research report or white paper, probably with a series of supporting blog posts, and almost certainly in one or more infographics. If you’re having trouble with the survey itself, you shouldn’t hesitate to call in the professionals to advise on design or boost your members’ response rate.

And speaking of surveys…if you haven’t yet completed Greenfield’s 2013 Pulse Report questionnaire, you still have a few days to respond. Click here to get started!

Six Tips for Combining Your Conference and #Association #Marketing

Every time your organization holds an event of any kind, it’s a pivotal moment to deliver a message, increase brand awareness, and build lasting relationships with members, prospects, and the key decision-makers in your sector.

So it’s surprising when organizations fail to integrate their event marketing with their broader communications and outreach strategies. Surprising—but by no means unheard of. If you work for an association that has a great communications program that does little or nothing to promote upcoming events, here are some steps you can take:

1. Start early: If you’re planning a six-month campaign for an annual event, start nine or 10 months out if it’s the first time you’ve tried to coordinate with your in-house communications group.
2. Line up your arguments: If the communications team has never thought of the conference as a prime source of information and messaging, it’s up to you to make the case. You can do that by highlighting the strong content you’re bringing onsite and the connections between the conference and the broader communications effort.
3. Find your spots on the calendar: If your organization has a strong communications presence, it probably has an editorial calendar to track key milestones and deadlines. To integrate your event marketing with the rest of the communications effort, you’ll have to carve out your spots on the calendar. Try to maximize exposure in the weeks leading up to key registration deadlines, and watch for moments when conference content can reinforce your organization’s wider messaging.
4. Treat content as a fulcrum: Some content marketers recommend using a blog as the fulcrum of a wider social media strategy. Every time you publish a new post, you create news that you can legitimately redistribute via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social channels—and when readers are particularly interested in a topic, they “raise their hands” by clicking the links in the blog. By linking those readers back to your conference website, you encourage them to find out more about the program and, ultimately, to sign up for the event.
5. Adhere to the schedule…: Once you’ve committed to the editorial calendar, it’s important to meet your deadlines. You picked your spots for a reason, and your event needs the timely, effective marketing you’ve mapped out. Your in-house communications team is counting on you, too, and you’ll earn their undying gratitude by delivering clean, readable text when you said you would.
6. …but be prepared to improvise: Any editorial calendar can be overtaken by events. In fact, author David Meerman Scott has elevated newsjacking to a fine art. If breaking news helps you make a compelling case for people to attend or sponsor your conference, that means postponing the post you thought you had lined up and publishing it next week instead.

You’ll know you’ve connected with your communications team when they start to see your conference as a smart, useful resource, not just another product they have to sell. The first step is to recognize content as the most important part of the event, and think about how to market it accordingly.

Are you looking for other ways to market your events to your community?  Visit the Greenfield Services Inc. booth at iBE 2013 in Toronto.

The New Sheriff in Town – An Update

Originally raised as a topic for discussion on the Membership Engagement Blog (under the blog headings The New Sheriff in Town: Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), we have kept a close eye on any updated information.

Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG) released early January a downloadable resource with updates on the key changes to commercial electronic messages (or, CEMs) released relating to CASL.  The following is the updated changes, according to the resource available:

1. Family & Personal Relationships are exempt.  CEMs sent between people with either personal or family relationships are now considered exempt from CASL.  
2. NEW Exemptions:
• CEMs that have been sent within an organization (sent by employees, representatives and contractors) OR to an organization with a business relationship (as long as the content of the message is related to the recipient’s role, job function or duties).
• CEMs that are sent in response to a specific request or complaint, or that have otherwise been requested or “solicited”.
• CEMs that relate to foreign business activities that are received when the message’s recipient is visiting Canada at the time.
• CEMs required by law (such as bank statement, or product recalls).
3. Referral Marketing:  You no longer have to obtain consent for the first message sent to someone who has been referred to you by a third party, providing the third party has a pre-existing relationship.  The criteria that must be followed to ensure that exemption applies is to ascertain that this first CEM advises somewhere is the text of the message the full name of the person who made the referral.
4. Computer Programs:  Consent is assumed for programs installed by service providers to prevent security risks, or to advise of network updates, etc.

What did not change are the regulations dealing with third party consent.  CEMs sent by someone on behalf of a third party whose identity is “unknown” in the message are not acceptable.  The party (or, the sender) who obtained consent on behalf of the third party is responsible for ensuring the message’s recipient can unsubscribe from messages and quickly and that the recipient is able to contact the sender easily to ensure that it happens; should the feel it necessary.

For the full article, please click here.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Email Marketing and Member Engagement

In the world of online marketing, two statistics tell you a lot about the effectiveness of an email: the percentage of recipients who open it, and the percentage of those who click through to explore at least one of the links.

Last year, I got a great response for a blog post on the types of emails associations send and the average number of members who open them. So when Informz published its 2012 Benchmarking Report on Association Email Marketing, I eagerly downloaded the update. The year-over-year comparison tells an interesting story:

	Survey		Event		Appeal		Newsletter
	% Opened	% Clicked Through	% Opened	% Clicked Through	% Opened	% Clicked Through	% Opened	% Clicked Through
2011	35.22%	34.36%	40.73%	15.46%	26.66%	16.56%	28.84%	22.75%
2012	36.60%	33.39%	39.37%	17.25%	31.44%	14.63%	27.64%	22.11%

The differences are relatively small, and it would take a third year of data to point to a lasting trend. But these metrics show important differences in the way members and stakeholders are reacting to your messages.

• In both 2011 and 2012, the research showed more members opening survey emails, but fewer of them actually completing the surveys. For example, if you invited 500 members to complete a survey in 2012, 183 people read the email, but only 61 answered the questions. Knowing that you developed the survey to make your organization better, stronger, and more effective, what can you do to boost participation rate?
• The statistics for event and delegate attendance emails showed fewer members opening them, but considerably more opening them. For both years, the percentages demonstrate the need to reach out widely and often. But between 2011 and 2012, the effectiveness of this email option actually increased by more than 30%: An email to 500 members would average more than 27 click-throughs this year, compared to just over 20.6 a year ago. Any number of factors could affect these results, but it may be time to review the subject lines on your conference promotions and start A/B testing your messages to ensure maximum engagement.
• With email appeals, 2012 saw 5% more members opening their mail, but a decline in click-through rates offset most of the increase in active readers. These results underscore the need to cleanse your data and segment your email lists, to make sure your message goes to the right people, and to help members understand how they benefit from responding to an appeal and helping to build their community.
• Small declines in both the open and click-through rates for e-newsletters reinforce the idea that short, snappy content is becoming more popular with members with too much to read and too little time. Over the last year, more and more association members have told us they struggle to control their incoming email, and the Informz statistics suggest e-newsletters may be a casualty.

Whatever mix of email formats you choose, the big-picture strategy is the same: with so much competing content, you have to make every message count by understanding what your members want you to send them, how they want to receive it, and what every part of your campaign will do to increase member engagement.

Member Engagement: Keeping the Love Alive

With the economy just beginning to bounce back and everybody’s time at a premium, association members will only stay engaged and continue paying their dues if there’s something they love about their membership.

So finding that critical connection point and keeping the love alive has to be a top priority for your organization.

In the last edition of The Membership Engagement Blog, we listed the three questions you can ask to identify vulnerable members. The answers you receive will help you measure your success at two of the most important pursuits for any association:

• Keeping members engaged from the moment they join
• Pulling members back into the fold if their attention has begun to stray

Members might join the organization for any number of reasons—for professional development (whether it’s mandatory or self-directed), business networking, or career advancement. Their needs may also change as their relationship with the association evolves, or as they progress through your industry. That’s why it’s so important to segment your audience, to understand what information and resources each member needs and wants from the moment they join.

In Canada, the federal government has enacted a new set of privacy provisions that lay out a reasonably good roadmap for understanding your audience. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) establishes different levels of consent for sending information to members, prospects, or other contacts. The rules may look heavy-handed at first, but there’s a payoff:

• You can learn more about your members and why they joined by inviting them to choose the topics, formats, and frequency of communication they want to receive from you.
• You’ll have better touch points with more satisfied members if you periodically remind them that they get to choose the information they receive from you, and decide how often they want to hear from you.

How effectively do you segment your audience, to make sure each member receives the specific communication that s/he finds most useful and compelling? Drop us a line to tell us about it, and let us know if you’d like us to tell your story (anonymously) in a future blog post.

A New Sheriff In Town: Part 3

We’ve been talking about Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), Bill C-28, and its impact on email marketing. We’ve seen that the difference between expressed and implied consent is going to be crucial for associations, and that it will take some time database management systems to catch up with the new legislation.

But while we’re looking at best practices for email marketing, here are a couple of other points to keep in mind:

·         Every bulk email you distribute should include an unsubscribe link. It should be conspicuous, in a clearly contrasting font colour, so anyone who’s looking for the link can find it right away.

·         Your unsubscribe system should get the job done in a single keystroke. You don’t have to confirm that they really, really meant to unsubscribe, and there’s probably no need to ask them why they’re leaving unless the information will support your future work. (There’s a difference here between unsubscribing from a distribution list and letting an association membership lapse.)

·         You can prevent a share of your future unsubscribes by clarifying peoples’ content preferences as soon as they join your organization or subscribe to a list. If you send each of your audiences the tailored information they need, at the frequency they prefer, and nothing more, you’ll be more likely to retain their confidence and their participation.

Consumer preference isn’t a new concept, and neither is privacy protection. Both re-emerged as business communications issues when email surged into the market. But if you want to comply with CASL and do the right thing for your members and subscribers, “do unto others…” is a surprisingly simple place to start.

Go back to earlier installments of this series: Part 1 and Part 2.

A New Sheriff In Town: Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, Part 2

When Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), Bill C-28, was implemented in December 2010, it took most associations by surprise. Now, the challenge is to make sure your database complies with the legislation.

The first post in our New Sheriff series explained the important issue of consent in email marketing, but understanding the rules is just the first step. Here are some questions to help you align your database with the new law:

·         How do you capture the information that goes into your database?

·         Does every member file distinguish between expressed and implied consent?

·         After a member consents, do you keep supporting proof on file, including the statement to which they consented?

·         Do you have a double opt-in process to make sure your members are really signing up?

If your database management system was designed before CASL was introduced, it may not be set up to easily accommodate the changes it requires. If you introduce a new management system in the near or more distant future, you’ll want to build CASL requirements into your plans. Until then, you can use user-defined fields or text boxes to keep the best records you can.

Once your records are organized, the next step is a plan for encouraging your contacts to convert from implied to expressed consent. If that sounds like a chore, we can help.

Still wondering why this is worth doing? Apart from staying within the law and preventing future complaints, a permission-based strategy really does make you a more effective marketer and deliver better results. You might start out complying with CASL because you have to. But some day, you may look back and decide the legislation was one of the best things that ever happened to your marketing strategy.

Ready to read more?  See Part 3 of this series.

A New Sheriff In Town: Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, Part 1

There’s a new sheriff in town for anyone involved in email marketing in Canada.

Its name is Bill C-28. It’s been setting up shop over the last year. Its main purpose is to enforce the email behaviour that Miss Manners would always expect of you.

Except that, since the government adopted Bill C-28, the new privacy provisions known as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), this is one area where good behaviour is now the law of the land.

We’re not lawyers, but we’ve already begun helping our clients navigate Bill C-28. Most of them have never heard of it—when the legislation passed in December 2010, they were too busy running their associations or businesses to notice. The government and the Canadian Marketing Association are still working out details of how the bill will be implemented. But it’s time to get ready, and the difference between implied and expressed consent is a good place to start.

·         If someone has joined your organization, they’ve given you expressed consent to receive your communications. You’ll have a more satisfied member if you invite them to choose the topics, formats, and frequency of communication they want to receive from you, and periodically remind them that the choice is theirs to make. But under CASL, you’re covered.

·         If you meet a prospective member at a dinner or collect their business card at a trade show, you have implied consent to communicate with them—but only for two years. That means your booth representatives have to note the date of contact and your database has to track it.

·         Expressed consent is only valid if you clearly explain what your contact is agreeing to receive, and provide a link to your privacy policy. After they agree, you have to send them a confirmation email, and we strongly recommend using a double opt-in format to make sure they’re sure about signing up.

The same distinction applies to funders, exhibitors, and all your other partners. If they sponsor an event, buy an ad, sign up for a booth, they’ve given you their expressed consent to communicate. If they haven’t signed up to a formal business relationship, the consent is implied, and the two-year clock is running.

On the surface, CASL sounds like a relief for anyone who’s been buried in a deluge of email spam. But implementation is complicated, and we’ve already begun advising our clients on the database issues that result. We’ll deal with those issues in Parts 2 and Part 3 of this blog series.

Email Marketing and Making a Good First Impression

Subject lines are key in email marketing.  They determine whether a contact reads your message or not.

In October 2011, I posted a blog about understanding Email Marketing & Designing the Right Message for your Members.  This blog post focused on understanding which browser or device (desktop computer, tablet, smart phone, etc.) the recipient uses to view your message.

Along the same lines, your subject title deserves planning.  Consider the following:

LENGTH: Some research suggests keeping subject line to no more than 50 characters for desktop users, and less than 30 characters for people using mobile devices.

Because it can be difficult to determine how your messages are read (unless you survey those receiving your content), we would recommend aiming for the middle (between 35-45 characters maximum).  Within that short space, you need to deliver a subject line with impact, so that people see potential value in the content and want to open your email to view the rest of the information/offer.

PROMINENCE:  Because your subject line could get cut off, put your most important information first.  Instead of “XYZ Association’s National Conference Registration Now Open” try “Register Now - XYZ Association National Conference”.         

PRECISION:  Vague messages are less likely to be opened than those with a specific topic (e.g. Your Information Request).   Be careful about static email subject lines, as they may get overlooked over time.  For instance, our newsletter is titled “Greenfield Insights”, and it appears on our website as such, however when sending it out via email our subject line focuses on the topic of the email first. Examples are:

• Connecting the Dots – Greenfield Insights
• Where are all the suppliers? – Greenfield Insights

BUILD TRUST: Maintaining trust with your members/subscribers will ensure that they continue to be engaged with your messages, and act on what you have to say.  One way to ensure that you build and maintain trust is to ensure that your subject line coincides with the message your email contains.

TEST-TEST-TEST:  Test your message with different subject lines to see which subject line is more effective.  Always test at least two different approaches.

• Example 1:  Subject Line A:  XYZ Tradeshow – Registration Now Open
• Example 2:  Subject Line B:  Five Reasons to Attend XYZ Tradeshow

 If you can, deploy the test first, and then use the most popular subject to deploy the rest of your messages.
Give it a try, your audience may surprise you with more engaged activity!

Email Marketing and Designing the Right Message for your Members

You have carefully written and edited your message, but have you considered what it looks like before you press “send”?

Knowing what your association’s members are using to view your electronic messages is an important part of ensuring your message is delivered and read by your audience.

I subscribe to many electronic newsletters.  Often I have unsubscribed because the message was hard to read, or not laid out properly.  It may have been great content, but I was not willing to struggle through reading it because it was visually very unappealing.  Likely this is because the content provider did not consider my software requirements prior to developing and sending the message.

Make a practice of inquiring about what e-mail software your members may be using to view your message.  Are they using desktop software like Outlook, a web-based tool like Gmail, or a mobile device like the iPhone?  If it is Outlook (or another desktop software) – what version are they using?  Are they using the iPhone or the iPad?

A recent Benchmarking Report released by Informz (who collected their data in order to release their report based on over 400-million emails sent by over 500 associations) found that the number of members using desktop software decreased from 67% in December 2009 to 61% in December 2010.  It also showed that in December 2009, 6% used mobile devices to open email, but a year later this statistic more than doubled (up to 13% in December 2010).  The use of mobile devices is expected to grow dramatically over the next few years, while desktop usage is expected to drop.  While the Informz report focuses on Association’s e-mail marketing, these metrics are supported throughout other industries as well.  A blog post from Jordie van Rijn, says “Mobile email will account for 10 to 30% of email opens, depending on your target audience, product and email type.”

As your members continue to get busier and as mobile devices continue to grow in popularity, it may be time to check in with your members to determine how they are viewing your information.

It can be difficult to have your message render properly in all the various e-mail software and browsers out there.  But at the very least, designing your message layout for the most popular tools used by your membership will increase your open and click-through rates, and your overall membership engagement.

Emailing to Professional Associations' Members - When is the Best Time?

Recently email marketing provider Informz issued its 2011 E-mail Marketing Benchmarking Report containing some very interesting statistics regarding the better times of the day to send an e-mail.

Two key statistics jumped out at me. First, email messages sent in the morning reportedly have the highest open rate.

Morning	Mid-Day	Afternoon	Night
41.49%	34.19%	32.62%	30.58%

In comparison, the report claims that emails sent in the afternoon have the highest click-through rates:

Morning	Mid-Day	Afternoon	Night
15.32%	19.15%	20.41%	18.89%

These statistics made me think about the time of day we are sending emails on behalf of our clients.  It may be that information-based emails (newsletters, etc) are best sent in the morning, when the contact is getting ready for the day (before all the meetings, calls, etc).  Emails that contain calls-to-actions (registration for events, etc) may have better results if sent in the afternoon.

But there are no “silver bullets” here.  The only way to know for sure is to test and monitor the results closely.  You could, for instance, split your test into two and send to list #1 in the morning, and the same e-mail to list #2 in the afternoon.  Randomize your lists and do this with at least 3-4 emails of a similar nature (e.g. your regular monthly E-newsletter).  Make sure you keep all other factors consistent.  This is the only way you will know with as much certainty as possible what works for your members!

Other things to test may also include:

• Subject lines:  should you use a directive subject line? (“Register by…”) or a provocative one (“Don’t be left out in the cold!”)?
• Day of the week: some reports say never send on a Monday or Friday.  But what is true for your audience?
• Length of message: are you better off giving snippets of the information with a link for members to “read more”, or are you better off having the entire text in the e-mail?

The goal of testing is learn about how members react to different elements of your messages so you can more effectively reach them.

Professional Associations - How many members are opening your emails?

Informz recently published a report on Benchmarking Association Email Marketing.

It was based on users located in Canada, US, and abroad that use Informz as their solution to send email communication to their respective members. One of the first metrics that I found interesting was the results on the Types of Emails sent. It displays the following information:

	Survey	Event	Appeal	Newsletter
% of contacts opened	35.22%	40.73%	26.66%	28.84%
% of contacts clicked through	34.36%	15.46%	16.56%	22.75%

I found these metrics very interesting.  As these metrics were generated based on 500 associations sending 400 million emails, it does not get into detail regarding the surrounding action plan by each association (it just focuses on the email component).  With all the e-mail campaigns we have handled in the past, I have seen the results with the following:

• Surveys:  Reach out to your membership base in various ways to advise them that a survey is coming before it is deployed.  The simplest way to do so is to advertise it in an upcoming newsletter, explaining why it is important as a member to participate, and what you will be doing with the results.  Another option is to gain permission first to send them the survey.  Reaching out to them by phone will show that as an association, you care about your membership, and you will also be gaining explicit permission to participate.
• Events:  This metric seemed pretty straight-forward.  Many members are interested in upcoming events, and will actively open emails to see what educational and networking opportunities are coming up.  Based on Greenfield’s experience with event promotion, the numbers pertaining to click through and registrations seem to be in line.  It can take several emails spaced appropriately to encourage someone to register.  Also, it does not factor in any other promotional activity you are doing for your event – mailings, advertising in your newsletter, follow-up calls, etc.  Ensure that you have a well thought out marketing plan to boost attendee registration.
• Appeal:  This is really an area that your database will come in handy, if set up properly.  While appeals can and should be made to all members – targeted messaging should apply depending on the job-level of your member.  Do not plead for sponsorship/monetary funds that are out of reach to coordinators, when that type of message should reach Directors/Presidents.  Planning your appeals based on job-levels, or member-levels, will start to increase the open & click rates on your emails – as the message will be relevant to whom it is being delivered to.
• Newsletter:  While this metric surprised me, further thought about it made sense – associations that are sending the newsletter at the same day/time every month will have their members more actively ignoring what it is inside the message.  Same goes if the subject line is static.  Change it up a bit – it will raise interest with your membership database.

The final thing is to ensure that you are not sending too much to your member base at any time – I have heard members of associations indicate that they receive up to 5 emails a week from their association, and are just deleting the message without opening them now, because it is way too much communication in their busy lives.

The 2011 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report contains many more interesting statistics and best practices – and as I delve into it more I will post more thoughts – but you can see for yourself by downloading a copy now.