Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

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Michael Stebbin MarketMotive Randomize, send and analyze Now it’s time to send out the e-mail. If your e-mail service provider offers you the option to randomly select half of your list, use it. If not, simply cut your list in half alphabetically or by order of the opt-in date, bearing in mind that the results will be slightly skewed because of these variables. After you’ve sent the mail, look at your metrics. First, check your e-mail stats to determine if your click-through rates are better for either campaign. Then, use your Web analytics application to see how visitors from campaign A behaved differently from visitors from campaign B. And although you’ll want to concentrate on conversion rates, you can glean knowledge from other metrics, as well. How did the visitors’ average time on site differ? Did visitors from one campaign view a vastly different number of pages than visitors from the other? Contrasting and comparing how each campaign’s visitors behaved lets you draw conclusions about what worked and what didn’t. Drawing conclusions In our imaginary scenario, let’s assume that you found that campaign B (featuring the picture of the presi- Instantly add video to your email. The Zeop Media Engine works with all email marketing software and services. Learn more today at www.Zeop.com DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007 E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS 43 dent) yielded 1.5 times better purchase conversion than campaign A, which featured product shots. Your customers showed you that seeing your company president made them feel more compelled to purchase. A/B testing may be a bit more work on the front end of an e-mail campaign, but the information and insights you gain from it can make a huge difference in your click-through rates, as well as your conversion rates. So the next time your team can’t decide between two good ideas, split the difference and let your customers show you. Michael Stebbin is CEO of MarketMotive. He can be reached at mstebbins@marketmotive.com Success with your e-mail marketing campaigns is about more than sending e-mail using reliable technology. It’s also about reaching your recipients with genuine, personalized messages that speak to their interests and inspire measurable action. Campaign Enterprise is the e-mail marketing solution chosen by the most successful online marketers in the world to build relationships, and now marketers can send streaming video e-mails using the Zeop Media Engine. Learn more today at www.Zeop.com Campaign Enterprise customers include: E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE Viral marketing — optimize your marketing mix BY JOSH PERLSTEIN Viral marketing, if used properly, can be a highly effective and cost-efficient tool in your marketing mix. A viral idea or content has greater impact and more credibility when it comes from a friend, and by transferring the work of distribution to consumers themselves, costs are minimized, significantly improving your marketing ROI. Reliable technology for building e-mail relationships. Download a Free Evaluation Today! Call 1-800-453-9387 or visit www.ArialSoftware.com
44 E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007 According to a Jupiter Communications survey, 80 percent of online companies say they do some form of viral promoting. A study from Sharpe Partners revealed that nearly 9 of 10 adult Internet users in the US share content with others via e-mail. Eighty-one percent pass viral messages on to at least one other person; almost half are likely to pass Josh Perlstein that message along to two or Response Media three other people. A 2007 MarketingSherpa study points to the “experience chasm” that gives a significant edge to experienced viral marketers. Response Media has tested numerous viral programs for consumer packaged goods firms, so here are some tips for delivering value beyond simple “buzz”: ■ Use viral as a stepping stone to build relationships and grow brand affinity Whether building prospect databases or driving online sales, understanding which sites and which people have the greatest probability of spreading a message is the key to getting something to spread. ■ Viral works best when integrated into your overall marketing mix Viral is not a standalone technique. It needs to be used strategically as a means to an end. ■ Get real Marketers model the viral market opportunity to set goals, performance metrics and realistic budgets. Developing behavioral and motivational profiles is far better than banking on a single creative approach applied across different strategies. Analysis of behavioral models and multiple cycles of multivariate testing will allow you to turn your viral marketing into a predictable, measureable marketing channel. ■ Allow recipients to download the content in a useable form These include JPG pictures, MPG videos, etc. Viral marketing succeeds when you have a topic that motivates customers to talk and you help them share that conversation. Provide an interactive Web site dedicated to creating a strong online community. Experienced companies also reach out to customers and prospects by putting a special offer in an e-mail, which becomes an easy-to-forward means of building buzz. ■ Measure and analyze pass-along, click-through and conversion rates. Separate the click-through and conversion rates by original customers from referrals and evaluate their respective performances in addition to tracking which people actually purchased something from your business. ■ Follow hygiene, suppression and other data management best practices. From ensuring that the code blocks multiple submissions of the form by same session/IP address in a short time span, to checks for obscene content, the form and function of viral campaigns need to be thought through from the outset. Creatively integrating the viral program into your overall marketing mix, setting realistic goals, and testing and optimizing will help drive rapid, positive exposure through trusted word-of-mouth networks for minimal cost. Josh Perlstein is president of Response Media. He can be reached at joshp@responsemedia.com. ESSENTIAL GUIDE Design for your eight e-mail audiences BY STEFAN POLLARD As a marketer, you might send one identical message per campaign to a highly targeted list of active recipients, but it will still be seen by eight different e-mail audiences, each of whom reads and responds to your message in a different way. So it’s vital to find a design that appeals to as many of those audiences as possible. Just to complicate matters, the audiences can shift each time. The same recipients might read your message differently from edition to edition, depending on their mood or time constraints. Understanding the major e-mail audiences will help you choose the right design tactics to maximize the likelihood that everyone will read and comprehend your message. The eight different audiences are: ■ Identifiers Identifiers have one goal: They use the “from” address and the subject line to whittle down their inboxes as fast as possible, deleting everything they don’t want. Clear branding and great subject lines have the greatest impact. ■ HTML vs. text Some e-mail clients give users a choice between HTML or text, which is why multipart MIME format has two parts: HTML for those who prefer e-mails with images and text for those who don’t. Every e-mail you send should include both versions even if your preference center doesn’t capture this choice. ■ Skimmers vs. readers Skimmers open your message, but they want to read as fast as possible, using headlines, subheads and CTAs as cues. When you craft your message, have all these copy points working in unison to deliver the idea and lead to the clickthrough. Readers want to read the two-to-three sentences of body copy between the headline and CTA to “learn more” about the specific topic the e-mail is discussing and help them over the click-through hurdle. ■ Mobile vs. desk Some PDAs display HTML just fine. Others show a text version including lines of ugly HTML code. These e-mail addicts will most likely Stefan Pollard save your message to read later EmailLabs on a desktop or laptop. Few mobile readers will click through, and many will delete if something doesn’t grab their eye fast enough. Desk readers are the ones most marketers design their e-mails for. Rendering tools like EmailAdvisor (http://www.lyris.com/products/emailadvisor/) check e-mail messages with this audience in mind. They are the majority and the most likely audience to act on your message. Anything you do to optimize your design strategy for your other audiences will also help you reach this audience more effectively. ■ Searchers Searchers start out as members of one of the other audiences. They saw something they liked in your message but couldn’t deal with it right away and saved your message for later. The challenge: finding it again. If it doesn’t stand out, it will be overlooked or forgotten and eventually deleted. Proper branding in the sender address and the subject line — including brand name and offer — have the greatest impact.
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