I’m not against merchandising emails with offers, featured products or even a personalized assortment of items, but conventional ecommerce emails often do little to create compelling demand for products vs. impulse buys. (Not to mention the effects of paradox of choice).

Back in my restaurant days, we hostesses were encouraged to “romance the features” of the daily signature dish while walking customers to their tables. Before the wait staff arrived or even the menus hit the wood, my job was to create desire and interest for that one meal.

Similarly, commercial email can be that slow, romantic walk that tells people what they should want to buy when they sit down to your site. An example of this recently landed in my inbox.

Subject line: Hemp Protein….The Next Protein King?

Hey Linda,

I have made a couple big changes with regards to my protein recently and I wanted to fill you in as it might affect you.

Have you ever thought of using hemp protein powder? Well unless you are into a plant based diet, lactose or gluten intolerant or avoid dairy altogether you probably haven’t thought about it ever.

I eat meat and up until recently have always used a steady diet of dairy based protein powders whether it was whey or casein. Frankly I might have laughed if someone had mentioned the thought of substituting or at least supplementing my protein powder regime with a plant based powder such as Hemp.

I am not sure about you, but I always thought hemp protein only for hardcore vegans/vegetarians, non-athletes and those with a high tolerance for gritty awful tasting protein?

After doing extensive research and a bunch of personal taste testing I did a complete 180! Not only does hemp protein have tons of health benefits, but they are benefits that no other protein contains (even whey!)….and on top of that there are hemp proteins that not only are tolerable but taste amazing!

Yes I am sure you are skeptical as was, but to be honest my friend hemp protein these days is health optimizing, performance boosting, and pallet satisfying as ever!

To learn 5 of the best reasons to try hemp protein click here:

https://healthmarketing.infusionsoft.com/app/linkClick/10326/71d24da225936de3/2592381/ca745800d6aecf99

You can thank me later

Yours in good health,

Mark Holowaychuk
Founder, Vitamart.ca
www.vitamart.ca

Though I cringe at the conspicuous URL, here’s what I like about it:

1. Using content to market content

Yeah, yeah, web users don’t read. But they don’t look at banners and ads either. And if you believe that nobody’s going to read a text-based email, you have to believe nobody’s going to look at your banner-spangled campaigns either. This email embraces web copywriting best practices and uses “story selling” to get and keep the reader’s interest, then direct the reader to more compelling information.

Like Marketing Experiments’ Flint McGlaughlin says, an email’s job is not to sell, it’s to generate interest — to get a click. Drs. Foster and Smith‘s educational approach resulted in 15% higher sales than its sales-promotion competitor in A/B testing. Sometimes educating does a better job at selling than coupons and images.

2. It’s personal

Not only did they get my name right, it’s signed off by the founder of the business. I’m not gonna kid myself that he wrote it himself, but it does humanize the company.

3. It sounds (a bit) like a product review

According to eMarketer, consumers trust product reviews nearly 12x more than manufacturer copy. The fact it’s written by an individual who identifies himself, and presents himself as someone like me who’s actually tried this product could be very effective.

4. It sounds a lot like a sales letter

Email may have squeezed out direct mail sales letters, but let’s not forget the Wall Street Journal‘s most famed sales letter ran for 28 years, raking in $2.5 billion in subscription revenue. These things work when done right, can be adapted to Web-reading, and stand out from the typical shotgun merchandising retail emails.

The key is good story-selling. How can you turn a product’s value propositions into an engaging, persuasive or educational story? Try it in a content based email like this. Even better, test it against your “typical” email creative.

Click to enlarge infographic

Tweetables

• 61% of UK email marketers rate their campaign performance poor or average. Only 35% good, 4% excellent Tweet this

• 62% of UK email marketers spend 2 or more hrs on campaign design and content, 18% >8 hrs Tweet this

• 12% of UK marketers report they spend NO TIME on email strategy. 27% spend no time on email optimization Tweet this

• 43% of UK marketers feel lack of email marketing strategy is a problem Tweet this

• 71% of UK email marketers have basic to non-existent email optimization for mobile Tweet this

Create an account

Offering guest checkout with option to create an account after successful conversion is a win-win, but don’t forget to romance why the customer should bother creating one. Action Envelope makes this a simple 3-field process, but the call-to-action does compete with several other page elements.

Image credit: PitStop Media

Keep shopping

Are you thinking “why would someone who just finished shopping want to start again?”

Sometimes cross-selling and upselling is ignored or worse — causes abandonment — during the buying process, so post-purchase merchandising gives you a second chance to get the buyer’s attention. And, you now have concrete evidence of purchase intent (and ownership). Product recommendations may be even more relevant to this type of visitor.

Suggest, suggest, suggest

This Amazon example is overwhelming, and I don’t necessarily recommend the “shotgun” approach, but it gives you a good cross-section of the ways you can merchandize (recommended based on browse history, new items, etc). Though I’m surprised this example doesn’t include social proof “customers who bought X also bought YZA,” though it may be that there were multiple items in the order.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand via @SandraNiehaus <-- follow her!

Let’s make a deal

NFL Shop incentivizes re-purchase with a coupon code (via email).

Image credit: Listrak

Smart cross-sell

This confirmation email from Shutterfly is smart on several levels. It’s persuasive, using “gift to say thank you” rather than a simple coupon code. “We’d like to treat you” makes the buyer feel special. It’s time-limited to create urgency, and suggests taking up the offer will enhance the use of the purchased product (photos), to take the next step and create a photo book.

Image credit: PracticalEcommerce

Get ‘em curious

Bliss features products — not with thumbnails — but with creative that really pre-sells the product and generates interest. “Winner after 40,000 votes” and “20-in-1 wonder balm” play on the converted buyer’s curiosity.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Email opt-in

The above Bliss example also includes a subtle email opt-in. Don’t be afraid to combine calls-to-action, just make sure they’re priority weighted in your design.

Content, tools and apps

NFL Shop highlights its gift finder tool, but you could certainly link to native apps (including app-catalogs), blogs, content features, event calendars, and the like.

Image credit: Listrak

Survey

Survey requests can be incentived or unincentivized.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Notice the email opt-in above?

Image credit: Econsultancy via @gcharlton <-- follow him!

Gettin’ social

Share purchase

Though I doubt this is a highly-used feature, be my guest to use it.

Image credit: South Florida Web Marketing Blog

This will be more successful for certain industries than others (books, music, some apparel, etc)

Pin it!

Customers may be shy to share purchases on Facebook, but may be more likely to Pin them to Pinterest. Sephora enables individual items to be shared.

Aliexpress marketplace offers multiple sharing buttons after a buyer has left seller feedback.

Image credits: GetElastic

Recruit

Rather than socially share individual purchases, why not ask your customer to recruit for you? This makes sense for membership sites (like socially-conscious Kiva) and vente-privee like HauteLook or Gilt.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Sharing can be incentivized with referral points.

Image credit: AllThingsD

At the very least, re-stating your business’ value proposition on Thank You pages and in confirmation emails can take the edge of any buyer’s remorse and encourage the customer to buy with you again next time.

Bottom line: do something. A generic Thank You page is a wasted opportunity.

The DMA’s study found “emails containing offers, discounts or vouchers continue to remain the most popular types of email.” It’s easy for online and physical retailers with large catalogs and seasonal sales to send frequent emails that get customers excited. The “big sale” of hardware and service contracts for telcos happen once every year to 3 years, and the range of cross-sellable offerings (like bundled utilities) are limited and can carry a high long-term cost for consumers.

Given these constraints, what can telecoms do to improve email marketing effectiveness?

Tips for improving telco emails

Set expectations

Before asking for an opt-in, be up-front about what your emails contain. Regardless of what you sell, your email campaign needs a value proposition.

Sprint excellently explains what subscribers can expect, listing Exclusive Deals first.

Sprint’s call-out to join its Facebook page for company updates is a great way to keep its email program clean. Many subscribers view company-centric emails as spam, and will unsubscribe or worse, report your messages as spam, which can hurt delivery to your entire list. Those who care can follow through social channels, or opt-in to a separate email list.

Rather than spam its entire list with Nascar Sprint Cup updates, it’s a separate opt-in.

AT&T offers a text-message option for receiving its green tips. Not every nurturing campaign needs to go through email.

Use a preference center

Preference centers are best practice for all industries, but consumers are not always aware they exist, or that they can update preferences at any time.

AT&T is the first company I’ve seen incentivize updating preferences. Not only does it improve its own program and metric by sending only messages that people want, it can stimulate new sales.

Make it mobile-friendly

How ironic for a telco not to be mobile-friendly! In the same research, the DMA found 10% of consumers use mobile as their primary device for reading email. Sprint gets it right.

Emphasize the exclusive

Your telecom customer may be married to your services for the near-term, but that can all change once contract is up, or a competitor introduces a device or service option you don’t have. The word “exclusive” is powerful to communicate the perks of being (and staying) your customer, even if the customer does not jump on every offer.

If the subscriber expects exclusive deals, she’ll open your emails until she finds her holy grail offer.

Surprise and delight

Telecom customers are used to surprise fee hikes and unexpected changes to plan terms. Delight customers by improving their services or activating free trials of related services. When you do, shout it out loud (and make the message social media shareable).

AT&T offers a kick-back for choosing paperless billing.

Comcast broadcasts its new increase in Internet speed.

Get personal

The above example could be warmed up by using the account holder’s name rather than “Valued Customer.” But real personalization tailors messaging, content and offers based on what you know about the person.

Sky uses TV viewing habits to populate its email content.

Even if you can’t achieve that level of sophisticated personalization, segmenting by device or service type will improve relevance, open rates and conversion rates.

Would response rates have been higher if existing Blackberry Pearl owners were sent a different version of this email? Do existing Blackberry Pearl owners understand what they would be upgrading to – a new service plan or a newer device?

Merchandise

If you offer your own downloads or use affiliate links to platform app stores, merchandise the occasional email with top rated, most popular or newly added digital content.

Listen to the voice of the customer

A final step is to use VOC (voice of the customer) tools to understand what your customer wants from your email program, and what is not working for them in your existing one.

It’s easy for retail sites to generate excitement about products and stimulate frequent interest in purchase. It’s tougher for telco. Replicating a grocery or retail email strategy is not necessarily the way to close the experience gap for any industry. Best practices like setting expectations, allowing subscribers to manage their subscription options and offering mobile friendly content are table stakes. Sending relevant and attractive offers and updates that customers want is the holy grail.

Some sites, like Amazon, make the email input the entire first step of checkout.

Capturing email as early as possible is a generally accepted best practice (and one of the few sacred cows in conversion optimization). But there are situations when you just don’t have an email address to work with (think of shopping cart review page abandonment or when email field is not the first step).

To follow up from last post Saving Abandoned Carts: The Experts Weigh In, Charles Nicholls from SeeWhy has shared a couple tips on how to recover abandoned shopping carts when you’re going email address commando.

Please note, from this point on it’s Charles speaking, I’ll take a backseat from here. – LB

Detecting abandonment

There are two basic techniques: (1) detect when the browser is closed (i.e. clicking the red ‘X’) and (2) based on a session timeout. Obviously there are abandons where the session has ended (as set by the webserver) but the visitor has not yet closed the browser. So you need to use either a timeout on its own, or a timeout and a browser-close together. Where the browser is closed, then this can be used to send an email (to the subset) without the 20 minute delay.

Recovery abandoned carts without an email address

In the event that a visitor abandons without an email address being captured, then you have two options:

(1) Retarget via advertising
(2) Serve an exit lightbox

Let’s look at both from the point of view of campaign timing.

(1) Retargeted advertising

Conversion rates for retargeted ads drop off just as steeply as with email. So the advice is to serve ads as soon as you can find the visitor on another site, and be prepared to pay extra if it means reaching them more quickly after an abandon. Leads go cold, no surprise there. With retargeted advertising, you can target visitors while they still have their browser open on your site, but are comparison shopping using multiple browser tabs.

(2) Exit Lightbox

An exit light box is a very effective technique which prompts the user as they go to exit a site to enter an email address. In this case you have to use a browser-close action because a time out won’t work. In terms of timing, the email campaign should be triggered immediately because the user has requested their remarketing campaign and won’t expect to wait for 20 minutes before requesting their information.

Because blog comments typically don’t see much light of day once the article is more than a day old (and most of our loyal readers subscribing by RSS or email), I wanted to dedicate a post to the topics of optimal cart recovery email timing and cannibalization of natural conversions (that would have happened without the recovery email).

Viktor from Grass Roots Store asked:

Wonder if less than 20 minutes would increase conversion further? Or is that too soon? Is 20 minutes the low end of sending out this email?

I had recalled that SeeWhy‘s research into cart recovery found immediate remarketing achieved highest conversion rate, so I reached out by email to Charles Nicholls to provide his insight on timing:

There is no doubt that sending a first email immediately once the abandon is detected is the most effective technique. We have run many tests on this, and have always found that the immediate send always outperforms one sent later (there’s a Lucky Brand Jeans case study up on SeeWhy.com which is based on an A/B test where the real time one generates three times more revenue than one sent in batch at +24 hours).

The reason for this is that an immediate email ‘connects’ with the emotion of the originally intended purchase. This emotion dissipates rapidly. We often also see higher average order values with an immediate email for this reason (this was a factor at Lucky Brand, for example).

What about natural return rate cannibalization?

Serial abandonment is a common behavior. In fact, the more frequently a single customer abandons a cart, the more likely they are to buy. 2.8 times more likely, according to SeeWhy. Does abandoned cart remarketing eat into organic conversion rates?

James Daniel asked:

…by emailing after 20 minutes there has to be the issue of traffic cannibalisation? Would be good if somebody could clarify.

John Jones commented:

20 mins is far too soon – that would eat into my natural return rate.

Chris Sheen of SaleCycle, the company that developed the infographic chimed in:

We have done some work with our brands looking at even quicker response times, but generally advise against it. Primarily as there is a risk of cannibalising ‘natural recoveries’ where people will still complete their purchase without prompting, and we want to ensure a natural customer journey as much as possible.

As James points out, we do a lot of work with our clients to look at the impact an email might have on the customer experience – and this plays closely to the types of emails we advise our clients to send which are relevant (personalised, product details, etc) and focus on enforcing the strength of the brand (to which the customer has already bought into).

Charles Nicholls reminds us that “you can test that”:

In terms of cannibalizing organic sales (i.e. those that would come back and purchase under their own steam) the ONLY way to understand this reliably is by using a control group, where 50% of the traffic gets the remarketing campaign, and 50% gets nothing. Both groups need to be run at the same time because of the effects of promotions. We have measured the organic return rate at on average 8% – so if you do nothing, 8% of visitors where an email address has been collected will come back and buy.

Charles also offered a rationale for why after 20 minutes, recovery rate drops off:

Many web servers use 20 minutes as a standard setting for a session timeout after which the user needs to start over. We’ve analyzed patterns of customer behavior and concluded that for most brands, 21 minutes can reliably be used as a cut off point after which it is statistically very unlikely that the visitor will try and reinvigorate their session and make a purchase. This works for most sites but of course there are always exceptions.

Does “it depend?”

Daniel Kohn from AbandonAid shared:

I’ve also read about the 20 minute sweet spot, but as a consultant on multiple large ecommerce websites, the honest truth is that every site is different and finding that ultimate time depends on multiple factors. I find that if the products being sold are highly price sensitive like electronics, then 20 minutes is too early because they are shopping around and closer to 1 hour works better. If it’s a very high ticket item like jewellery, again 20 minutes is not ideal because a shopper needs more time to think if they are on the fence. Some sites I’ve worked on like ticketing for holidays or concerts etc, 20 minutes might be too long…

To Daniel’s comment, Charles Nicholls replied:

@Daniel has some experience which suggests different results in some markets – we’ve not found that but I’d love to hear more about those. It could well be that certain creative approaches work better with a longer delay in some circumstances (i.e. a more marketing / promotional email might work better with a longer delay).

My thoughts:

I can’t argue with the quicker-is-better theory. The data backs it up. Both SeeWhy and SaleCycle’s research has found diminishing returns as time passes.

I also understand why marketers would be hesitant to pull the trigger too soon. Brands don’t want to come across as pushy or spammy. We know serial abandoners spend more money, thus first-abandon triggered emails may cut average order value if they successfully incite an immediate conversion, especially if the email is incentivized. (A holdout test that factors in the AOV of “organic” recoveries will show you whether your remarketing is rushing your customer out of a bigger basket.)

If your site’s average days to purchase and visits to purchase is high, combined with a higher-than-average baseline “organic” recovery rate (>8%), you’ll likely expect less of an uptick from immediate remarketing than the average business. Those who are just not done shopping and will convert at a later date will simply ignore your triggers. But that doesn’t change the concept that sending a retargeting message sooner than later means a higher success rate.

Remarketing emails have to be opened, and targeting customers when the shopping experience is still fresh in their minds is better than hours or days later, when your customer’s inbox is cluttered with messages from other businesses.

Testing cart recovery emails

When conducting testing, I also recommend conducting a holdout test (50% of abandoners get a recovery email, 50% don’t). But keep in mind, with holdout tests, the success of your challenger depends on design, content and execution. The recovery differential of your first test may be 9%, but a follow up test with a completely different timing, design and offer may have a 26% spread. More than one round of testing, testing different variables against a holdout control, or A/B/C/D testing can provide you insight into what variables provide the most payoff.

Always measure revenue per visitor and profit alongside conversion lift.

And embrace segmentation. Here are some customer segment ideas:

Serial abandoners (revisit=1, revisit=2, revisit=3, etc)
Serial abandoners who come back and add more to cart
Serial abandoners who come back to edit cart contents
Visitors who are logged in customers
Visitors who are also signed up to email program
Visitors who have visited more than X times in the last 90 days
Visitors who have made a purchase in the last 180 days
Visitors who have purchased more than $X in the last 180 days
Cart abandoners vs checkout abandoners (the latter show stronger intent to purchase)
What step of checkout did the abandonment occur?
What device was used (desktop vs tablet vs smartphone)

What say you?

With that, I’ll turn it over to you, our readers. There are undoubtedly some exceptions to every rule when it comes to marketing optimization. Have you tested and found your industry responds better to a longer delay time? Or have you tested cart page abandonment vs. checkout abandonment and found different timing sweet spots? Shoot me an email at linda.bustos@elasticpath.com, your story could be the next feature on Get Elastic.

Off-the-blog, Charles shared with me some tips for remarketing to visitors that haven’t provided their email address by account or in the first step of checkout. Tune in next post to learn how…

Click to blow up this infographic

Takeaways and comments:

Timing matters. Conversion rate drops as time passes from abandonment – 50% within 24 hours. Within 60 minutes is recommended based on this data

Test subject lines. Including your company name has the highest impact on open rates, just edging out product details. Remember, cart recovery emails are not the same as your regular campaigns, don’t rely on what works for your core program.

Content (and design) is king. The averages presented in the infographic are interesting, but the sample layout is just that – a sample. Where you put each link and design element influences click through rate as well. Test your templates and call-to-action labels, and make sure each of these elements are indeed clickable.

Over 500 consumers were surveyed for Consumer Online Behavior Report: Developing Informed Digital Marketing Strategies for Holiday Success about general shopping habits and holiday-specific ones. Ecommerce brands studied include traditional retail like Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Dell, JC Penney, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Sears and Walmart, and telecoms Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

The following are Tweetable findings from the report:

• 7 of 10 surveyed report they will spend the same or more this holiday season versus 2011 Click to Tweet

• More than 41% of mobile device owners have purchased in response to a email promotion viewed on mobile Click to Tweet

• 1/3 of top ecommerce brand emails linked to a non-mobile optimized landing page Click to Tweet

• Only 8% of Facebook and 4% of Twitter campaigns included discounts and offers, though consumer survey found social media promos drove 34% of shoppers to make a purchase Click to Tweet

• Almost 40% of online shoppers prefer to buy online between 6 and 10pm, only 5% of email campaigns delivered in peak hours Click to Tweet

• Almost 60% of consumers prefer to interact with brands on social media between 6pm and 2am but >60% of social marketing posted 10am-6pm CST Click to Tweet

• 80% of online shoppers and 71% of in-store shoppers say email offers influence them to buy Click to Tweet

• 62% of consumers have used a mobile device to compare web prices while in store Click to Tweet

• Nearly 80% of in-store shoppers prefer to purchase on the weekend vs 31% of online shoppers Click to Tweet

• Almost 1/2 consumers prefer to make purchases online Mon-Wed Click to Tweet

• 1/5 consumers plan to begin holiday shopping at least 3mos before Black Friday Click to Tweet

So what?

Adjusting digital marketing strategies to current consumer trends (rather than historical data) is important. This study highlights the need for mobile optimized campaigns, and the importance of campaign delivery timing. While interesting, remember that averages are just that – depending on your business (and customer demographics and psychographics), your optimal times for email and social posting may vary. Why not test timing in the run up to the holiday rush?

Imagine taking the functionality of a mobile app and baking it into your email campaign. At least 2 companies have done it.

Sky

UK telecom Sky’s emails are populated with personalized content based on the subscriber’s viewing and recording habits. But that’s not what makes it amazing. The personalized email is integrated with the customer’s DVR. Clicking “Record” from the email adds the program to the user’s personal playlist, just like a mobile app.

The benefit of providing this functionality through email is it’s device agnostic – you don’t even need a smartphone to use it. Plus, not all customers with smartphones can be persuaded to download and keep an app on their phone. The email approach has the potential to be used by more customers.

StyleCampaign

StyleCampaign embedded a Xmas Slots game into an email message. Players could “spin” by refreshing the email and accrue points for chocolate or swag.

How it works: StyleCampaign used its own dynamic image server (DIS) with a sessions database to keep track of where each subscriber/player is in the game (and across devices).

Engagement was through the roof. Players opened the email an average of 14.5 times, with one player opening 980 times in hopes of winning the top prize. Compared to StyleCampaign’s average open frequency of 2.5 opens.

Left: Winners were asked to reply with their email address to receive details about their prize. Right: StyleCampaign’s vision for next time — promo codes.

Think about how this could be used for ecommerce. Replace the Christmas characters with actual products, such as newly added items, brands or offerings. Players could spin for discounts or free product. If they don’t meet the threshold, they’ll have been exposed to your products in a much deeper way than through a traditional email.

Then, segment email recipients by their degree of engagement with these emails. Look for correlations to consumption patterns to learn more about your customers and further refine marketing campaigns. Run follow up campaigns with social sharing features to learn if the engaged segment is also more evangelical. The possibilities are endless.

If you’re looking to break out of an email marketing rut, consider app-ifying them.

These examples are taken from Responsys’ 2012 Email Design Look Book. Responsys has also release its Retail Email Holiday Guide 2012 worth checking out. Subscribe to the Retail Email Blog to keep up with what’s remarkable in ecommerce email marketing.

Open Rates

1. Unique open rate

Average: 20.1%
Top 25%: 43.7%

2. Number of opens per opener

Average: 1.79
Top 25%: 2.97

Tips from Silverpop’s Loren McDonald:

• Because open rate can be influenced by image blocking, this metric can be underreported. Track this metric over time for trending up or down.

• Allow more time to elapse to improve the number of opens per subscriber.

• Include educational information or contact info in addition to your offers that motivate subscribers to save your emails.

Click-Through Rates

3. Unique click-through rate

Average: 5.2%
Top 25%: 16.6%

4. Click-to-open rate

Average: 19.3%
Top 25%: 40.0%

Content

5. Message size

Average: 15 kilobytes
Smallest 25%: 4.5 kilobytes
Largest 25%: 30.5 kilobytes

Loren’s tip:

• Message size matters on mobile phones, find the balance of having enough content to convert with small message size for fast loading

List Churn

6. Hard bounce rate

Average: 2.1%
Top 25%: 0.1%

7. Unsubscribe rate

Average: 0.31%
Top 25%: 0.02%

8. Complaint rate

Average: 0.08%
Top 25%: 0.00%

Which industries enjoy the top open rates? Consumer software (24.7%) and media and publishing (8.0% click through and 31.7% click-to-open rate) impress. Perhaps because digital goods can be upgraded or consumed immediately, and subscribers to these emails are more invested in these products and services than other retail where there are a number of similar buying options.

What to do with benchmarks?

Loren recommends using them to underscore 2 improvement strategies:

1. Identify the trouble spots. If your open rate is significantly beneath even the average, you’re probably dealing with a largely inactive list. That could drive a decision to launch a re-engagement initiative or rethink your acquisition process.

2. Use the numbers to lobby for the additional budget resources you need to improve your program. Be sure to focus on the areas that have the greatest potential to help you achieve departmental or corporate goals, such as higher revenue, reduced expenses, more conversions or better customer retention.

Remember, benchmarks tell you what’s average, not necessarily what’s target for your industry or your program. But they can offer some insight into what’s typical and motivate you to keep improving your own program.