Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

12 FUNDAMENTALS DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007
FUNDAMENTALS
Page 12
The relevance factor, by
Ashley Johnston, CheetahMail
Page 14
Five compelling reasons to centralize
your e-mail, by Tricia
Robinson Pridemore, StrongMail
Getting to “Yes! Yes!”: Double optin
as a power practice,
by Outi Tuomaala, L-Soft
Page 16
Open up and say “Aaaah”, by Dave
Dabbah, Lyris Technologies
Page 18
So you want to reach the inbox?,
by Jared Reitzin, MobileStorm
Build your house list the right way,
by Jere Doyle, Prospectiv
Page 20
Why and how to switch e-mail
service providers, by Elie Ashery,
Gold Lasso
Getting to the guts of great e-mail,
by George Le Pera, Scuderia 02
Page 22
How to monetize e-mail marketing
programs, by Lana McGilvray,
Datran Media
Fundamentals
E-mail marketing tools have evolved from blasts to targeted
e-mails. Marketers who are new to e-mail plans need building
blocks. Fundamentals include relevance, strategy, double
opt-in, testing and monitoring, deliverability, list building, e-mail
service providers, design and monetizing e-mail programs.
The relevance factor
BY ASHLEY JOHNSTON
Today’s customers are more knowledgeable
and discerning than ever. They are highly
connected, well-informed of their options, and
willing to receive offers through a variety of
media, whether its e-mail, television, radio, print,
catalog or mobile. For marketers, that willingness
presents an opportunity to build lasting,
meaningful and valuable relationships with their
customers. The key is simple: Be relevant.
Fortunately, there are many tools available
today that allow marketers to create highly personalized
and relevant messages. In the realm of
e-mail marketing, this means going beyond the
traditional boundary of incorporating basic
demographic data in marketing campaigns, and
instead pursuing deeper customer connections
via psychographic, transactional and preference
center data.
One example of marketers putting this process
into action is Borders, a CheetahMail client and
retailer of books, music and movies. Borders
drives relevance through the use of dynamic
content capabilities, sending regular e-mails customized
by the customers themselves. Visitors to
Borders’ Web site can choose from 32 different
book preference categories that make up over 4
billion possible permutations of one e-mail message.
Customers then receive personalized e-mail
messages based on their choices.
Likewise, Bass Pro Shops works to drive relevance
though the use of a method known as
ReMarketing messages. By combining Web analytics
data with its current e-mail marketing program,
Bass Pro is able to encourage customers
to return to its site and complete online purchases
that went unfulfilled. For example, if a customer
abandons his shopping cart on
BassPro.com, he receives an e-mail a week later
reminding him of the items he left behind. Bass
Pro has seen that ReMarketing messages consistently
outperform standard promotional mailings,
with higher open rates, click-through rates
and, most important, revenue per message.
While such marketers have a wealth of data at
their fingertips, others are still working toward
obtaining this level of information. Luckily, there
are simple tactics for acquiring customer data.
For instance, it is possible to collect more information
about a customer, such as gender, location
or birthday, when
he registers on your
Web site. Online customer
preference centers
can also be
created, which let individuals
tell you exactly
what they want, such
as sale notifications or
new-to-market alerts.
Ashley Johnston
CheetahMail
In other cases, marketers
have the data
they need to be rele-
vant, such as transactional or demographic data,
but are not acting on it. An easy yet valuable
way to make this data work for your company is
to perform tests early and often. VistaPrint, an
online printing company, analyzed its transactional
records to segment its customers into
appropriate value groups, then performed A/B
tests to send its best US customers “big ticket”
product offers while others received multiple
low-end offers. The various testing scenarios
gave VistaPrint a winning strategy for maximizing
ROI from its e-mail campaigns.
One additional bit of good news is that customers
today don’t casually abandon their e-mail
addresses the way they used to. Nowadays, individuals
are often tied to these points of contact as
much as they are to their phone numbers. So
when a customer provides his e-mail address,
manage the relationship with care. Send messages
as individualized as your customers, and your
messages will drive results for years to come.
Ashley Johnston is the senior director of marketing at
CheetahMail. Reach her at ashley@cheetahmail.com.