Take a Chance on Email
Oct 1, 2001
BY REGGIE BRADY
The marketing community has embraced e-mail in a big way. A recent Forrester Report showed that 92% of marketers use e-mail for retention marketing and 60% use it for prospecting.
Can you squeeze more ROI out of your efforts and make e-mail work harder for you? Yes. Here's how.
Prospecting
The good news is that the quality of e-mail lists is improving. More publishers are putting their e-files up for rental — remember, in the very early days of direct marketing it was publishing files that started to allow us to target much more effectively. Other marketers are sure to follow. And, many list owners have been busy enhancing their lists. I polled some of the major list networks and they now have up to 50% of their e-lists with postal information and other enhancement data.
For those of you who either had weak results in the past or haven't tried prospecting e-mail, now might be the time to test. To increase your odds of success make sure to negotiate hard on list costs. Don't pay rate card! Many list owners are accepting a mix of a low CPM and a “pay for performance” pricing arrangements. Ask for favorable pricing on test lists and promise if the list works you will rollout multiple times. Push your list broker to work hard for you.
And look at list exchanges, which allow you to penetrate files otherwise not on the market. Responses should be much higher because the audience has not been over-exposed to marketing messages. You must be willing to sponsor the other marketers' products and services to your file but you'll reap rewards at little or no cost.
Retention
One big way to control expenses is to mail smarter and perhaps even mail less. The emphasis is on quality…not quantity. Apply traditional direct marketing techniques to your e-mailings and segment your file. You want smaller mailings targeted to specific groups based on their previous activity with content that is tailored to their interests. Too many marketers take a “one size fits all” approach to e-mail. Everyone gets the same message and because e-mail communication cycles are continuous there's little time spent on analysis. Set aside time to analyze your results for the past two to three months. Look for your consistent clickers and what they click through on, who hasn't clicked, who your evangelists are (the folks that pass your messages along to friends and colleagues) and your bounces. - Click-throughs — The simplest approach is to look at those who clicked on links in your mailings over the time period and consider these people to be your more active customers. Keep up the good work! Continue mailing them with the same strategy you've been using.
A more sophisticated approach is to look at what content they clicked on. If you find consistent patterns such as certain people often click on “Product Category X” and other people often click on “Product Category Y” that behavior tells you something about their interests. Segment these readers into two groups. The first group should receive e-mails that lead with Product Category X and perhaps presents more than one item in the category. And the same holds true with Product Category Y. Try to identify up to five different segments and target your content to each of these groups. Even if you only change the lead paragraphs to reflect particular interests you will come closer to targeted marketing.
- Non-clickers — This is your vulnerable segment. Unless you can change their behavior they are more likely to churn or unsubscribe in the future. Perhaps you are mailing them too often or even on the wrong day of the week. Perhaps the content is not of interest. Vary your approach until you find ways to motivate them to interact with you.
- Evangelists — This valuable segment introduces your company to others. You may want to occasionally give them special offers or incentives.
- Bounces or undeliverables — Match your bounces against an E-mail Change of Address service to pick up new e-mail addresses. Consider flagging your masterfile and if they call customer service prompt your reps to ask for a new e-mail address. If you know the lifetime value of an e-mail customer, it may even be worthwhile to contact them via postal mail to get their new e-mail address.
HOT TIP!
Emphasize on quality, not quantity. Apply traditional direct marketing techniques to your e-mailings and segment your file.
Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a consultancy on direct and interactive marketing. She can be reached at 203-838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net
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