Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

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.