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Reggie's Articles appearing in Target Marketing Magazine BY REGINA BRADY An email house list is the centerpiece of any email communications plan. At first blush, the process of building this list may seem fairly straightforward; but, when it comes to constructing a responsive list, quality counts more than quantity. By incorporating permission-based practices into your email collection process, you can build a list that generates sales. Establish strong permission practices and use opt-in In today’s email climate, good permission practices are an imperative. And, good permission equates to opt-in marketing.Like telemarketing, email is a personal medium. With the advent of the Do-Not-Call Registry, a significant portion of the American public clearly indicated it doesn’t want phone solicitations. In the same way, they also don’t want email they have not actively agreed to receive. An opt-in approach to permission will pay huge benefits. You’ll get better deliverability, build consumer trust and reap the rewards of higher open and click-through rates. Mailers are faced with numerous roadblocks that make it difficult to get email delivered and read. Email authentication, reputation systems, whitelists, blacklists and content filters are some of the factors at play. Once your mail actually makes it through the ISP or business gateway, mailers need to be concerned about image blocking, spam complaints and delivery to bulk folders. Good permission practices go a long way to overcoming many of these hurdles. Lists built on an opt-in strategy are composed of individuals who actively agreed to be on a list. As a direct result, you’re much less likely to find yourself on a blacklist; in fact, you are much more likely to earn whitelist status with strong permission practices. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes as you consider the following two situations.In the first, you enter an online contest. As part of the entry form there is a pre-checked box that says “Send me your biweekly newsletter.” This certainly is legal, but it’s not a best practice. The marketer will collect a lot of email addresses, but how qualified are these names? You may have scanned the form and not realized what you are in for. When you receive subsequent emails, you might not recognize the sender and decide to report the mailer as a spammer. You, and others who entered the contest, will be much less likely to open and read the marketer’s messages. In the second situation you visit a website, see an invitation to join an email program and sign up. If the marketer really did it right, there’s a clear value proposition and a link to a sample email, so you understand the benefits and know types of communication you will receive. Wouldn’t you be much more likely to recognize emails as you receive them and to open and read these emails? Good permission marketing is also good direct marketing. Our industry knows qualified names will respond better. Why not put the odds in your favor with your programs? Extend permission to the welcome and confirmation process It’s a best practice to send a confirmation email that welcomes new sign-ups. This is a great way to start the relationship. It also gives you the opportunity to make sure you have deliverable email addresses. Be sure to include an opt-out link in your welcome email so if, for any reason, recipients would prefer not to receive additional messages, they have an opportunity to exercise that choice. Studies show that welcome or confirmation messages have the highest open rates of any emails a marketer will send. This is the perfect time to restate benefits, encourage recipients to add you to their address books and even include an introductory offer to immediately engage them. As you analyze the performance of campaigns, examine results by date of sign up. A recent study shows a significant decline in open and click-through rates over the first three months of a recipient’s tenure; after the first ninety days results are stable. This statistics might set up the argument for a welcome series rather than a single welcome email. The series could contain your best offers, most-read articles or interactive elements that encourage participation. Anything you can do to counteract performance declines during this critical early period will result in a more productive list member.Allow subscribers to update their information and change their preferences An email preference center is a must-have adjunct to any successful email program. Recipients should be able to link to their own preference page from an email to update contact information, sign up for additional email programs (if available), change format preferences or even elect to change the frequency of how often they receive programs. Between 20 and 25 percent of email addresses change on an annual basis. An email preference center gives recipients an easy way to share this information and will help preserve your list size. Permitting customers to change their frequency preferences (for example, from biweekly to once a month) may make your program more complex; but you’ll save customers who might otherwise have opted out of your program entirely.Create subsets of your list by source Marketers employ a variety of channels to collect email addresses. These sources may include:
Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.
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