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How
to utilize online direct marketing and e-mail newsletters Online direct marketingCurrently $8 billion is spent on online direct marketing. It is estimated that 25 percent of this will be spent on e-mail marketing in 1999. On the other hand, the number of permitted commercial e-mail messages is expected to grow from 3 billion now, to 250 billion by the year 2002 (Forrester Research). Add to this the fact that e-mail marketing is much more effective in that it generates 3 to 10 times the number of click-throughs than banner ads. E-mail is fast becoming the consummate "push" technology for marketing and communications – FloNetwork The advantages of using e-mail: ·
Cost
effective: –
An e-mail
costs 5-10 cents to deliver, vs. mailing a catalogue costs 50cents - $1 ·
Effective
way to market to existing customers: –
Cost is
$2 per sale with a 2.5% rate of conversion to purchase –
Vs. $18
through direct mail (response rate is higher at 3.9%) ·
Users
have a positive view of e-mail marketing –
55% of
Web users with 2 years experience online have positive view of opt-in e-mail –
48% of
Web users with less experience online have positive view of opt-in e-mail ·
E-mail
can be used to garner registration: –
Intel
generated almost 9,000 site registrations in one week by advertising in PC
hobbyist e-mail newsletter – 7% of newsletter subscribers E-mail newsletters As a part of the site, there will be an option for visitors to enter their e-mail address and other information (as decided by the team) to receive daily/weekly e-mails about a certain topic. An example of a good use of e-mail newsletters is EURWeb’s gossip newsletter that is sent to people who sign up to receive the e-mail. The e-mail newsletter is an effective tool for driving traffic to the site – the stories could be set up where the recipient must click onto a link and go to your company in order to read the full story. In addition to providing content and being a marketing channel itself, marketing messages should be embedded into the newsletters. Since visitors will be signing up for newsletters specific to their interests (fashion, graffiti, etc.) this is an ideal way for your company to reach visitors with targeted messages. Procedure
Online
direct marketing
Who should e-mails be sent to?·
When
visitors sign up for your company membership, or to participate in a chat room
or message board, there should be an option for receiving e-mails that have
updates and promotions about the site. ·
Gather
e-mail lists of members that have interests relating to your company –
Phat Farm
list –
Def Jam
list –
Outsourced
e-mail providers §
Examples:
Lifeminders.com, Yesmail.com, Digital Impact Create
message: ·
The most
successful, offer the visitors compelling information and offers.
Recipients are more receptive to email if it is used to give them advance
notice or an “inside track” on late-breaking news and product developments.
–
Invitations
to members-only events –
News
about the company –
Early
notification of events Track response and success rate of each campaign - different metrics for different campaigns·
Content –
Cost per
pageview: your
company wants to hold people onto site and to view as many pageviews for
as long as possible – ad sales are sold based on pageviews –
Data of
how many and what pages were generated by the e-mails is valuable information
for marketing and site development ·
Membership –
Conversion
rate: the number of e-mail
recipients that end up signing up for your company memberships ·
E-commerce –
Conversion
rate: Number of e-mail recipients
that purchase the product advertised in the e-mail –
Advertising
to Sales ratio: With the Internet,
you can track how people entered the site such as e-mail links.
Tracking the amount purchased by people entering by e-mail can give you a
direct way of calculating the “profitability” of an e-mail campaign ·
For each
type of campaign, tracking includes: –
Number of
e-mails sent –
Number of
e-mails that reached recipient –
Number of
e-mails opened (or deleted before read) ·
After
each campaign has been analyzed, the message can be optimized See below: “Critical steps to designing the e-mail campaign” for more detail E-mail newsletter·
Marketing
messages can piggy-back the content newsletters –
E-mail
should contain marketing messages specific to the type of newsletter sent and
general site marketing messages Recommendation
and Maintenance
Online direct marketing campaigns can be done in-house or can be outsourced. One of the pieces of value that outsource companies provide is their large networks of people who have opted-in to receiving e-mails about certain topic. However, with the network of contacts your company has with parties such as DefJam and Phat Farm, the accumulation of a rich list of e-mail targets should be left to your company The outsource companies main value to a company like your company would be to effectively track the campaign and also evaluate the data that results from the e-mail campaign. These companies also have the expertise to tweak and test different messages and change the message almost instantaneously. The key to making an outsourced campaign work is to ensure that the data that has been collected is easily integrated or transferable to the internal your company database. Executing and managing an e-mail campaign in-house is a viable option. This will require a larger commitment of resources to manage the campaign and also some technical resources to track performance. We recommend that if your company (in particular, the Database manager and the technical group) has the bandwidth to create an online direct mail capability, it should. However, we also find that outsourced companies do provide a large amount of value for your company, so should be an option that is investigated further. The outsourced vs. in-house options are not mutually exclusive and in-house capabilities could be built at a later time. ·
your
company will
need a dedicated person to manage and measure performance of an e-mail campaign
–
Development
of marketing message, management of content creation –
Analyze
data and change messages to raise current and future campaign performance ·
Concern:
E-mail message being regarded as SPAM –
your company
could hurt its own brand and relationship with current and potential visitors if
e-mail recipients receive too many messages from a company or receive messages
that do not have pertinent information to them ·
Content:
Utilize “viral marketing” where possible –
E.g.
Recommend/ pass this e-mail to a friend and receive 100 your company points, the
more people you pass this onto, the more points you earn –
Adds
complexity to e-mail campaign Marketing
should be piggy-backing e-mail newsletters sent out to members that have
requested e-mails to be sent to them. ·
Messages
should be tailored to the specific type of newsletter to be sent – e-commerce
messages to people requesting fashion updates · Inclusion of marketing should be on the same schedule as the marketing schedule ·
Newsletters
should be used as an additional marketing channel ·
Design:
–
Will you
promote using a catalog or publication format? –
Will the
message be best sent in plain-text or HTML? –
Will you
address customers by name? [Level
of personalization?] –
How often
will you send out messages and how many will you send out at a time? –
Do you
want/need the ability to segment your lists and, if so, what kind of
segmentation will add value to your marketing? ·
Build –
Logistics
need to be pulled together to build the e-mail with the goals set forth in the
“design” phase ·
Test –
Evaluate
various segments of the list to help determine type of offers to go out ·
Deploy –
Messages
sent, inbound responses collected, complaints and “unsubscribes” are managed
·
Track –
Decide
which behaviors to track §
Examples:
how many recipients opened the message, which links were clicked, how
many e-mails were forwarded, how many recipients made a purchase ·
Report –
Having
complete access to the reporting system is ideal –
System
should be set up to provide real-time reports to give flexibility when making
last-minute decisions and changes ·
Analyze –
After
each analysis, the quality of the list and campaigns can be optimized Tips
for writing effective e-mail – ClickZ Network These tips were written for e-commerce companies, however, these tips can be applied to your company’s promotional e-mail for content and community. ·
“Be
Yourself” –
Introduce
yourself and the company, right away –
This will
provide credibility to the company ·
Be clear
and concise –
State the
offer up front and without too much hype ·
Be
available –
Make it
clear how and where to get information –
Examples:
what is the return policy, what is the policy for people to join into
chats, etc. ·
“Be a
clock watcher” –
Include
information about whether this is an “Act Now” situation or an offer that is
good indefinitely –
If there
is an immediate call to action, be certain not to make the same offer twice ·
Be show
AND substance –
Keep
customer interested with “a little chic” and “lively writing” but a good
deal and flawless customer service will make customers come back ·
“Pass
Go. Collect $200” –
Once
customers try to execute on an offer, it is important to make it easy for the
customer to find the details –
List
purchase price and payment terms, plus delivery method and time, in an obvious
location and in easy-to-understand terms ·
Proofread –
Catchy
phrases do not make up for sloppy punctuation and typos – hire a copywriter ·
Keep it
clean –
Language
– unless it’s targeting specific adult audience –
Avoid
very sophisticated design §
Many
systems will not support fancy formatting §
Have lots
of line breaks and white space ·
Get to
the point –
Jupiter
Communications says only 15% of web users read all email messages in their
entirety –
More than
½ read the first few sentences and then decide whether or not to continue ·
Target
the message to the right audience ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail marketing- Jones has been watching the evolution of email marketing closely, and his conclusions are worth listening to. "When something is new a lot more people will opt in than really want to," he explained. "When you start getting overloaded, people drop out. So getting people's permission is just step one. "Step two is giving something of value. Step three is finding out more about them to create stickiness. Step four is creating a dialogue. You need to do that." A database is essential for creating dialogue, he said. It tells you what to say and where the dialogue is going. "We build a relational database for every client." The job is then to fill that database. So while most email list managers were worrying about giving value, Jones bought a survey company called Decisive Technologies Inc. last year to get data and provide stickiness.
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