email case study | momagenda.com | part 1

This case study will cover
1. how to ask for email addresses on your site
2. the principles of an effective email
3. how email fits in to your overall marketing strategy

I’ll be using momAgenda.com because they are one of our clients and I know how and why they do what they do.

Part 1- how and where to ask for email addresses on your site

overview of momAgenda
So you know that an email list is critically important to your web campaign. Whether you are selling stuff, campaigning, lobbying, whatever- staying connected with people and getting them to take action is always important.

momAgenda.com sells high-end day planners. They have a fair amount of brand recognition, do some PPC, get mentions on blogs as well as traditional PR such as the NYTimes, and they do emails.

The emails don’t attract many new people to the site. Mostly, they go to people who have come to the site through one of the other means, and chosen to stay connected.

role of email signup forms
So of all the people who come to the site, we want as many as possible to sign up for the newsletter so we can stay in touch. We offer discounts and inside information in return.

So how do we get as many signups as possible? We have our signup boxes in three places:

where we put our signup forms

ubiquitous navigation signup box
On the left navigation bar we have a signup box that appears on almost every page on the site.

On the plus side, no one has to do anything special to see this form, so we get signups from people who may only stay on the site for a minute or two before they dash off to do something else.

On the flip side, because it is ‘just there,’ it does not attract attention to itself.

shipping form
After people have already chosen to buy and checked out of the shopping cart, they go to a page to enter their shipping address. After someone has decided to give you $42 for a day planner, why not also sign up for the newsletter?

The box is also right above the Next Step button, so is hard to miss.

Printables page
Nina offers the Printables for free- a try-before-you-buy PDF download. A week ago we added a page between the link on the homepage and the Printables page, asking for newsletter signups.

We are about to give you something free, so why not sign up for our newsletter? This page also shows a sample newsletter so you know what you are getting in to.

saying thank you
After someone signs up, you should also thank them. Here is some prime real estate to add whitelisting instructions, which Ian describes in #1 here.

strategy and results

So when someone takes an action, whether it is buying a product or downloading a printable, they are presented with the option to sign up for the newsletter. In both cases it is very easy to not sign up if visitors so choose.

As a result, we have seen a steady and accelerating growth curve in email subscriptions over the last year.

coming up
Now that you have email addresses, what kind of emails are you sending out? What email program should you use to send emails? Stay tuned…

new day planners for moms at momagenda.com

One of the projects I have been working on for the last while is live- there are new day planners for moms available at momAgenda.com.

The new planners run from August 2007 to December 2008.

Enjoy!

edgecraft and the economist

Seth in his book Free Prize Inside introduces the word Edgecraft.

He makes the point that everything really great comes out of the edges of what is possible.

Further, because you can’t predict what marketing will work a priori, a decent strategy is to be on the edge, any edge, all the time. Run for the edge, and try not to fall off.

While understanding that you will fall off, sometimes, but because you and your organization are on the edge, you can recover better than firms that always play it safe.

Edges I see in internet marketing (they are not all from someone else): SMS used to promote things, blogs in non-bloggy industries, involving users in product decisions.

No, wait, all of those have been done.

But maybe not well, and maybe not in your industry.

Talking with my brother, he said he would definitely help out the Economist. What if they invited him to be a part of a club, where each month he was asked to rate 3 articles on a scale of 1-5 on 5 metrics, and also a paragraph or two about what he did or did not like about the article.

He would love to do that. And he would tell his friends. And he would become more involved with the brand.

So why does the Economist not do it? Why doesn’t your local organic foods store blog?

Because that’s not how it’s done, and furthermore, if they wanted to be on the edge, they could more easily put some money into pay-per-click ads, or a blog, or something (relatively) well known. Giving customers a voice to critique and influence your company is downright scary.

Nina of momAgenda (one of our clients) answers customers’ questions on her blog. What if a customer has a great idea, Nina puts it out in the open, and people love it and comment that she just has to try that feature?

Now that is living on the edge.

As Godin asks, what are the edges in your business?

how to use controversy in blogs

So Nina writes a blog. Her company sells day planners for moms, and is a client of ours.

Here is the question: what kind of controversy can Nina talk about in her blog that will demonstrate her personality and sell more product?

It is the second part of that that is tricky- selling more product may be a poor short term goal. Talking with Nina by phone, she is fun and exciting. So maybe her giving her take on things in general, not related necessarily to day planners and time organization, is the best way to grow her blogs popularity. And a pleasant consequence would be moving more product.

This is what we (the internet marketers) have not gotten a clear handle on yet- how to use blogs to sell. Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in Naked Conversations say that your blog should not be focused on selling, but on proving your passion and authority on a subject.

So how to prove passion and authority about day planners for moms?

how to make something go viral

Nina at MomAgenda has made one page PDFs of her day planners available for free.

Now what?

I am talking with the people at BlogHer and trying to get ahold of Kristen at Cool Mom Picks. And that is a good start.

But how do you make something go really viral, so everyone tells their friends and downloads this free product?

I need to go back and read Unleashing the Ideavirus again.

And, we need to add a Tell a Friend link on the page that offers the free day planner PDFs.