A Direct Marketing Agency - Helping Brands Acquire and Retain Customers

Appending your customer file with an outside e-mail list (this service is provided by a qualified list service vendor) is a proven solution to achieving list growth, giving marketers the ability to add e-mail addresses to their customers' mailing/postal records. This acquisition technique typically has an average net match rate of 7%-14% with existing accounts.

Sending an introductory e-mail message to these new e-mail contacts will help re-establish a relationship with customers that may not be active on your list. At the very least, it provides a means of reaching these customers through an additional channel. Reaching them via two channels (e.g. e-mail and postal mail) has been proven to increase their value by up to 20% (the more channels you engage your customer, the more valuable they become).

Information present in the introductory e-mail should leverage the existing relationship, highlight the benefits of doing business with your company, set expectations on future content and e-mail frequency, and provide an option to unsubscribe from future e-mails. The goal of an introductory e-mail message is to simply request the customers' permission to continue to receive (opt-in) e-mails from your company; and, it will also help filter out customers that do not wish to receive e-mails.

MediaPost’s Aaron Smith provided some great suggestions to improve routine transactional e-mail messages—including membership confirmations, password requests, shipping notices, and so on:

1. Include your company logo and colors to be consistent with your other marketing materials.
2. Improve legibility and usability with text treatments, color, and graphics.
3. Include navigation that’s relevant to the transaction so customers have what they need at their fingertips.
4. Show product images and names that link back to your Web site.
5. Include customer service contact information. Not just a URL, but a phone number with hours of availability. Show customers you care about their experience beyond the initial purchase.
6. Keep relevant information together and visible in the preview pane. No one wants to search for the crucial order and account details.
7. Pay attention to tone and format (a letter may feel more genuine and personal). Whatever tone and format you use be sure to say, "thank you."
8. Cross-sell and up-sell relevant products to engaged buyers. Choose products that support or add value to the initial purchase.
9. For major purchases, offer follow-up content to educate customers on features or offer helpful tips on how to get the most from their purchase.
10. Protect the primary purpose of the transactional message by keeping the focus and emphasis on transactional content and limiting promotional content and offers.

Source: “Email As Experience: Punch Up Your Transactional Messages” by Aaron Smith, Media Post’s Email Insider, August 13, 2008.

It's typical to judge the performance of an e-mail list by looking at the open, click-through, click-to-open, and other rates. These important measurements give you a look at how effective your e-marketing efforts are and form the basis to compare campaigns. They do not, however, measure how effective your list building efforts are or if your mailing frequency is optimal for maximum reach.

We have adopted a measurement technique we call the Ovation Razor. When applied to your list frequency and building efforts, this performance measurement tool will give insights into your list's potential for engagement and its ability to keep the long-time users as active as their initial engagement. Your list's loyalty factor is found by dividing the CTR by the CTR of the 1^st e-mail.

You can use your loyalty factor to determine if your frequency is appropriate and your content is consistently engaging. A loyalty factor between 50% and 65% indicates a balanced program as represented by client 3 and client 4. Client 2's frequency could be increased as their user's engagement is very high. Client 1's factor is 27%, which indicates the e-mail is not engaging or the frequency is too high.

One key to keeping your list active and growing is to understand and match your subscriber's frequency preferences with their desired delivery rate. And using the loyalty factor as another measurement tool will help you deliver your one-to-one message for the best chance of long-term engagement.

We are currently in the process of planning out our August - December 2007 email strategies for our clients. In trying to determine campaign frequency, there were two very interesting statistics we discovered when we looked at one client's email campaign over the course of the first six months of 07.

The email schedule is represented in the following graph (each email went out to the exact same database of names):

This chart shows us that it takes up to five emails to achieve a 50% duplication of clicks, indicating that you need to look at email as a frequency game – only about one in five emails from your company are opened by an actively engaged recipient at a given time.

The second statistic we found was that 68% of people click on an email within the first 24 hours of the email being deployed (the email was always deployed at 6pm). There are two noticeable peaks: within the first 4 hours, and then again 14 hours later (approximately 8 a.m.) as people are either starting their day by logging on, or logging on and viewing as they get to work.

The meaning here is simple: your emails have a very short "shelf life" so they need to be extremely compelling, relevant and timely to engage your audience.

Both of these analyses helped us to better understand that a higher level of frequency is needed to reach the intended recipient at the right time and with the right – as well as timely – message.

According to a recent economic impact study by The Direct Marketing Association, the ROI for e-mail marketing was an amazing $57.25 for every dollar spent while the ROI for non-e-mail related online marketing was $22.52. Our experience has also proven more targeted e-mail campaigns generate a higher ROI than general campaigns. Media Post makes a good point in that marketers spent approximately $300 million on e-mail marketing efforts, compared to $12 billion for non-e-mail related marketing which generates half the return.

In our own consumer insight studies, we have found that 37% of respondents wanted to receive more e-mail communications. It only makes sense for marketers to take a hard look at their budgets for 2007, and make sure there are more funds allocated to one-to-one marketing programs that generate a higher ROI.

MailChimp analyzed over 40 million emails sent from its customers and found those with the highest open rates (ranging from 60-87%) had the most straight forward subject lines. Those with the lowest open rates (1-14%) tried to be more creative.

Here is a few of the most effective and ineffective subject lines

Creativity does not always correlate to low open rates. Subject lines should also be developed with the target audience in mind. Those expecting a newsletter will not respond well to an email detailing a special promotion. Newsletters are more about building relationships and warming the customer up to your company. However, individuals who signed up for sales and promotional emails would respond to subject lines with an offer. They will be expecting more of hard sell.

Marketers are under fire to increase effectiveness of their marketing programs. There's also a lot of buzz on measuring ROI. Here are 3 key tactics to increase effectiveness of E-Marketing campaigns.

1. Eye tracking results show people spend a few seconds gliding over the most prominent information on the page. Make sure you have a clear information hierarchy. Monitor results to learn which information delivers not more clicks but more sales.
2. Design e-mails with the Preview Pane in mind. A recent study by Loren McDonald states 69 percent of people "always" or "frequently" view e-mail in a preview pane. Make sure the your most compelling message is at the top of the e-mail.

Integrate your web and e-mail data. This allows you to send targeted messages to consumers based on products they are considering now, rather than those they have purchased in the past. Don't ignore abandoned shopping cart data. Consider sending consumers an e-mail with a special offer on the item(s) they abandoned. Or, send a targeted offer to a consumer who has viewed a product category online.

Targeted e-mail campaigns can have a significant impact on growing a business. Take for example, Texas-based Studio Movie Grill. E-mail marketing is the ticket to filling seats. According to founder, Brian Schultz, the chain has achieved nearly a 70% open rate for its weekly e-mail blasts, leading to a 20% leap in online ticket sales and an overall increase in attendance.

The company has been able to develop a customer base of over 40,000 through opt-ins for an e-newsletter.

Why has the company's e-campaigns been successful?

1) The key is to start with a compelling, measurable offer. Studio Movie Grill offers movie goers discounted food and beverages. Utilizing these offers on slow midweek nights has helped the company fill seats, sell dinners and cultivate long-term customer relationships.

2) Providing relevant information. Examples include up-to-date show times, special programming that's movie related, or information about what's happening at the theater.

3) Linking e-mails to a company's home page for immediate access to information and the ability to buy online.

4) Cultivating relationships. Studio Movie Grill newsletter recipients can watch film trailers, answer trivia questions, view box office results or link to official movie websites. Recipients are also informed of special events at the theater and have the option of purchasing items from the gift store.

Other benefits Studio Movie Grill has experienced from e-marketing linked to on-line ticket sales include:

• Predicting attendance for certain shows in advance to plan meals in advance
• E-mails have cut down on the staggering number of calls to the movie information line.

Studio Movie Grill is a great case study of the success a company can achieve with a clear objective and plan for communicating one to one with customers.