Arthur Hughes is an American marketing guru who has been around for a long time. He’s been to Australia, and some readers of The Scoop may have been lucky enough to hear him.
Hughes wrote the book on database marketing many years ago, but since the rise of the internet and the new media, he has reinvented himself.
Today, Arthur Hughes is senior strategist for the email marketing services provider e-Dialog, which is based in the small town of Burlington, near Boston, in the state of Massachusetts.
At a recent presentation, Hughes put forward some thoughtful ideas on acquiring email subscribers, including the following.
1. The first step is to find out what your email subscribers are worth. Without knowing their value, you don’t know whether the effort to acquire more is worthwhile.
2. For putting a value on subscribers, there are four important metrics that you need to be specific about:
•The value of online and offline orders generated from email;
•The costs of your email program;
•Gross profit generated from email subscribers; and
•Individual subscriber lifetime value.
These numbers are fundamental before you proceed.
3. Once you’ve decided that getting new email subscribers benefits the business, then Arthur Hughes suggests you consider the following:
> Promote email registration prominently throughout your site, including the checkout page.
> Explain why consumers should subscribe. Is it for free shipping on their next order, for the chance to receive ‘thought-leader’ white papers, express checkout, or what?
> Send triggered, personalised welcome messages as soon as consumers sign up for your email program.
> Reward your employees for email addresses collected.
> Reward your subscribers. Offer subscribers incentives such as special prices for them only, discount coupons, premiums, white papers and continuing benefits such as free shipping.
> If appropriate, upgrade your point-of-sale system to capture email addresses.
> Use surveys to solicit email addresses. The surveys can be about any subject — e.g. politics, economics, products, etc. — and are a good way to get email addresses in return for survey results.
Showing posts with label Email Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Email Marketing. Show all posts
01 December 2009
Putting a value on email subscribers
04 May 2009
Email marketers not measuring up
On 15 April 2009, Target Marketing magazine in the US uncovered some amazing findings about email marketers.
Despite the vast array of statistics available, numerous email marketers in the US are not measuring the effectiveness of their promotions. Let’s hope this is not the case in Aus.
According to the Target Marketing report, some 500 email marketers were surveyed and the results showed that more than 18% of email marketers don't track their campaigns at all. Of those who do, marketers chose, in order of importance, open, click through and open-to-click rates as the most important metrics.
But it gets worse. The email marketers surveyed did not recognise the importance of sector statistics. Respondents rated sector specific metrics as the least important metric of all!
Reality check: If you don’t measure your results by sector you are forfeiting the chance to gain precious insights about your target market.
In my own experience, there have been campaigns where I have received a 5% response overall, but a 25% response from one or more segments. If you don’t know that’s happening, you move to your next campaign with very incomplete knowledge.
Let’s say you are selling a new health plan. Overall response is 5%, but response from people over 55 years is 25%. Clearly, you have a plan that is attractive to an older market – but you can only discover that with sector specific metrics. That’s essential information for your next campaign. And it is critical for your product development team as well.
Despite the vast array of statistics available, numerous email marketers in the US are not measuring the effectiveness of their promotions. Let’s hope this is not the case in Aus.
According to the Target Marketing report, some 500 email marketers were surveyed and the results showed that more than 18% of email marketers don't track their campaigns at all. Of those who do, marketers chose, in order of importance, open, click through and open-to-click rates as the most important metrics.
But it gets worse. The email marketers surveyed did not recognise the importance of sector statistics. Respondents rated sector specific metrics as the least important metric of all!
Reality check: If you don’t measure your results by sector you are forfeiting the chance to gain precious insights about your target market.
In my own experience, there have been campaigns where I have received a 5% response overall, but a 25% response from one or more segments. If you don’t know that’s happening, you move to your next campaign with very incomplete knowledge.
Let’s say you are selling a new health plan. Overall response is 5%, but response from people over 55 years is 25%. Clearly, you have a plan that is attractive to an older market – but you can only discover that with sector specific metrics. That’s essential information for your next campaign. And it is critical for your product development team as well.
10 May 2008
Two tips for making email campaigns more effective
Relevance is key. We all know that. Letting recipients see that what you are offering is relevant, can be challenging but it is of the utmost importance.
1. Refine your segmentation. And how do you do that?
1. Refine your segmentation. And how do you do that?
- Base your segmentation on your client behaviour, not just demographic
information. - Identify an increased number of sub segments and personalise more relevant
offers to each. - Create different versions of your messages.
- Continually test.
2. Improve transactional messaging. Transactional emails are highly relevant and very likely to be opened and read. Therefore, they should offer the customer something, furthering his or her relationship with you. Recommend additional products or services the customer might want or need; offer a subscription to your newsletter; and send transactional messages in HTML format to reinforce your brand.
10 April 2008
Better Subject Lines
Here are a five practical tips for better subject lines in email marketing:
- Leverage your company brand. A subject line that says ‘70% off from Acme Bananas’ is going to have a far better response than one that simply says ‘70% off.’
- Think segmentation. It’s important to test different subject lines for different customer segments.
- Question almost everything. Subject lines that pose a question, such as ‘Is it time for you to find a better copywriter?’ tend to work very well.
- Make it about them, not you. ‘We’re having a sale’ won’t cut it as a subject line but ‘You can save money’ interests the reader more.
- Inform before you sell. If you describe what’s in the email in the subject line, a recipient will be much more likely to open it rather than if you try to sell too early.
Making email marketing work better
Probably all marketers are now aware that there are very effective web analytics tools to optimise web site sales.
However, Jupiter Research suggests that few marketers are integrating their web analytics into their email marketing programs. As email newsletters are mostly geared towards driving customers to web sites, there is obviously an opportunity that marketers may be missing.
By integrating your site analytics data into your email platform you can make your email marketing program more profitable. Analytics data is especially useful to create segments based on how your customers are behaving on your web site.
And remember, it is not just a matter of monitoring what has been purchased. You can gather valuable insights by knowing what was not purchased. For example, analytics can help marketers understand which products and categories are frequently abandoned. These non-completed purchases can be followed up with email.
Of course, it is imperative to keep privacy issues in mind. Customers are uncomfortable if they feel they are being followed.
One simple but effective technique is to note what product a customer has abandoned, then include that product as one of several “featured products” in a future email. With this sort of tactic, customers are likely to find such an email relevant without feeling like they have been followed.
Apart from making better use of analytics, there is still the troubling issue of how often to send emails.
Taking a one-size-fits-all approach, might seem like the easy way out of this one, but it is unlikely to be the best answer.
One proven approach to getting frequency right is to ask customers when they sign up how frequently they would like to receive your newsletters. Be sure to include a sample version so they understand the full value of the publication and have an idea of what to expect.
But there is a more sophisticated way. You can analyse your email response data and segment it using customer behaviour methods such as RFM, or other profitability metrics, to determine the optimal number of contacts for each segment.
Of course, there is nothing better than testing. Ideally, you should segment your list and run tests around frequency. There have been many cases where marketers have found that they can increase their frequency provided the communications are relevant and offer appropriate value with each interaction.
You can get a FREE copy of a 12-page PDF on “Direct Marketing Foundations”, written by Frank Chamberlin.
However, Jupiter Research suggests that few marketers are integrating their web analytics into their email marketing programs. As email newsletters are mostly geared towards driving customers to web sites, there is obviously an opportunity that marketers may be missing.
By integrating your site analytics data into your email platform you can make your email marketing program more profitable. Analytics data is especially useful to create segments based on how your customers are behaving on your web site.
And remember, it is not just a matter of monitoring what has been purchased. You can gather valuable insights by knowing what was not purchased. For example, analytics can help marketers understand which products and categories are frequently abandoned. These non-completed purchases can be followed up with email.
Of course, it is imperative to keep privacy issues in mind. Customers are uncomfortable if they feel they are being followed.
One simple but effective technique is to note what product a customer has abandoned, then include that product as one of several “featured products” in a future email. With this sort of tactic, customers are likely to find such an email relevant without feeling like they have been followed.
Apart from making better use of analytics, there is still the troubling issue of how often to send emails.
Taking a one-size-fits-all approach, might seem like the easy way out of this one, but it is unlikely to be the best answer.
One proven approach to getting frequency right is to ask customers when they sign up how frequently they would like to receive your newsletters. Be sure to include a sample version so they understand the full value of the publication and have an idea of what to expect.
But there is a more sophisticated way. You can analyse your email response data and segment it using customer behaviour methods such as RFM, or other profitability metrics, to determine the optimal number of contacts for each segment.
Of course, there is nothing better than testing. Ideally, you should segment your list and run tests around frequency. There have been many cases where marketers have found that they can increase their frequency provided the communications are relevant and offer appropriate value with each interaction.
You can get a FREE copy of a 12-page PDF on “Direct Marketing Foundations”, written by Frank Chamberlin.
10 February 2008
Email marketing advances
Predictions coming out of the US indicate that during 2008 email marketers will make a strong move into highly individualised marketing.
As marketers pursue high relevance and high ROI, email campaigns will evolve beyond basic targeting and even demographic-based dynamic content. Top marketers will begin using behavioural data both from previous email campaigns as well as other sources such as web sites and ecommerce.
A trend in email is likely to be increased integration across marketing products such as web analytics, content management and email.
The increasing linkage and seamless integration between these tools comes about because marketers are more convinced than ever that understanding customer and prospect multi channel behaviour, enhances relevance. And after all, relevance is the key to strong relationships and ROI.
In 2008, B-to-B email marketing is likely to emerge from the shadows. Finally, marketers are beginning to recognise the high ROI potential of a well-executed B-to-B email marketing program.
As marketers pursue high relevance and high ROI, email campaigns will evolve beyond basic targeting and even demographic-based dynamic content. Top marketers will begin using behavioural data both from previous email campaigns as well as other sources such as web sites and ecommerce.
A trend in email is likely to be increased integration across marketing products such as web analytics, content management and email.
The increasing linkage and seamless integration between these tools comes about because marketers are more convinced than ever that understanding customer and prospect multi channel behaviour, enhances relevance. And after all, relevance is the key to strong relationships and ROI.
In 2008, B-to-B email marketing is likely to emerge from the shadows. Finally, marketers are beginning to recognise the high ROI potential of a well-executed B-to-B email marketing program.
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