Response Posts
Feb
12
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
I have a challenge for the email marketing community in 2009. Let's make this the Year of "Less is More."
Marketers are turning to email more and more in this down economy. There's no question about that. My great fear is that just means they're sending more and more and more emails out without being smart about their programs. That will have positive short term effects and drive revenues, but long term it will have a negative long term impact on inboxes everywhere. And these same marketers will find their short term positive results turning into poor deliverability faster than you can say "complaint rate spike."
I heard a wonderful case study this week from Chip House at ExactTarget at the EEC Conference. One of his clients, a non-profit, took the bold and yet painful step of permissioning an opt-out list. Yikes. That word sends shivers down the spine of marketers everywhere. What are you saying? You want me to reduce the size of my prime asset?
The results of a campaign done before and after the permission pass are very telling and should be a lesson to all of us. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Feb
09
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
I just returned from San Diego, where, depending on the cold and snow in your town, you may be glad to know that it rained - so no need to envy me the good weather typically associated with this beautiful city. Of course, I only knew it was raining from the puddles outside, as the energy and engaging conversations at the Online Marketing Summit kept us all happily indoors.
Key takeaway: Retention is king and email is at the center of the digital marketer's toolkit.
How refreshing to see email come to the fore of many conversations, panel sessions and keynotes. We all know that now more than ever, executives are finally paying attention to email. The high return, reach and efficiency of this channel are unmatched.
In our recession, the "R" in ROI is now focused around retention and loyalty. Email is perfectly suited to build the kinds of relationships and launch the kinds of conversations that help you mine your existing customer base. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
What: A Viral Valentine
Who: Nike
Why we love it: It's sort of cheating to call something Nike does cool, but this email is worth noting. First, you often hear email experts talk about simplicity in email - "one email, one message." But marketers find it exceedingly difficult to follow that advice and end up piling on message after message until it's impossible for recipients to know what to do. Not this email - three images, one call to action. The email is laser-focused on getting readers to come to the site and watch three short films on sports. No product tie-ins are seen anywhere. Once you click through, the site is similarly simple adding only two additional calls to action: "Help kids get active" and "Share with a friend." The share with a friend link produces a simple form that ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Jan
15
What: Responsive and Response-Driving Welcome Message
Who: Omaha Steaks
Why we love it: Omaha Steaks has long been the master chef of the "ride along" up selling offer. They elegantly take this concept to their welcome message which provides not just a hearty welcome in a letter signed by the Owner, but also a great filet mignon offer. The invitation at email subscription was clear - sign up to get great deals and special savings. This promise comes through from the very first email. The key goal of every Welcome Message should be to quickly establish the tenor and brand of the email program. This Welcome wastes no time: Omaha Steaks is committed to emailing you great savings offers.
What would make it better: Although true to the program promise ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Jan
06
What: A truly welcoming Welcome message
Who: Sherman's Travel
Why we love it: Welcome messages are routinely underutilized and even ignored by many email marketers and publishers. Sherman's Travel has one that employs nearly every best practice for this type of message. First, they include whitelisting instructions to take advantage of the new relationship to ensure deliverability. Second, it prompts you to start taking advantage of the offers immediately and also highlights the depth and breadth of content available on the site. For such a succinct message, it really packs in a lot of important and useful information. Finally ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Dec
15
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Strategic Services
With the global economy in a tailspin, marketers are increasingly being asked to do more with less. As a result, email has never looked better when it comes to delivering a high ROI for your marketing investment. Why? Minimal sending costs, instantly available performance metrics and the potential for huge revenue, relationship building and branding gains.
There may be one industry in particular where email could and should, play an increasingly important part of the marketing mix: charitable organizations. After all, nonprofits have always relied on the generosity of others and are now doing so in an environment where people have less and less to give.
In fact, a recent article in the NonProfit Times cited a study by the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation (DMANF) showing that more than two-thirds of non-profit executives plan to change their marketing strategy because of the economy. Why? The study showed that ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Dec
10
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
It's a bit tricky to optimize email in this current environment. On one hand, with all of our marketing budgets under incredible scrutiny, email has taken center stage as an economical and high ROI channel. All that attention means temptation to just send more and more - but of course that has penalties in spiked complaint rates, lower deliverability and exasperated subscribers.
On the other hand, consumers and business professionals are holding tight to their dollars and cents - and retailers, travel companies and even B2B marketers are responding with all kinds of great deals and discounts. "Can we just please send an email for every new deal?" you may be hearing from your brand and product managers. Yikes - that just increases the frequency and lowers the relevance for everyone.
Combined, the effect is that the inbox is even more crowded with great deals. I sorted my personal account by subject line this morning and the first 300 messages started with "50% off." Wow. We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto.
All the more reason to offer three cheers for Sears Holdings, J.C Penney, Target and Gap (and Sears agency Ogilvy) for sharing their email targeting success stories with the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
The Journal reports that ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Dec
09
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
It's gorgeous weather (well, except for that nasty, cold snow squall that hit us yesterday afternoon) here in Park City, Utah and the Email Insider Summit is in full swing. Energy is high, especially after the first day of fabulous content that got us all talking and challenging each other. As a programming committee member, I can give huge insider props along with my heartfelt thanks to David Baker of Avenue A Razorfish who put this program together.
Here's some of what we are all talking about.... and you can read my and others' blog posts from the event at Mediapost Live. If you are on Twitter, there are a number of us tweeting throughout the event - just search for #eis (my Twitter profile is SAMRPath).
Stephen Geer of Obama for America reminded us all that we have to balance risk and reward when we make deliverability (and revenue opportunity) decisions every day. No question the Obama team reinvented campaigning in the US. Email was a critical component of both communicating the message as well as driving action. For Geer, frequency and complaints went hand in hand. Frequency seemed to win. His answer, "We knew that we could survive a certain amount of churn (fatigue combined with deliverability failures) because of our list growth."
Same for all of us. How much frequency is too much? ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Dec
05
What: Fun transactional messaging
Who: CD Baby
Why we love it: Who says transactional messages have to be boring? CD baby's order confirmation email does a superb job of celebrating the purchase. By using their unique voice and incorporating a bit of humor, they are effectively building ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Dec
01
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
My esteemed colleague J.D. Falk highlighted the results of a test done by our friends at MailChimp that shows that emailing to an old file caused complaints and unsubscribe to spike dramatically, and for opens and click rates to drop dramatically. No surprise, right?
Yet, if I was a marketer only focused on results, I'd look at this data another way. I'd say, "Hey - I got 7,688 clicks on the 'bad' list and only 6,925 clicks on the 'good' list. I doubled my bounty! So mailing the bad list was totally worth it! Let's do that again. Party on!"
How many of us have found ourselves struggling with this sort of situation? We know the best practice is to not email old files. We know the best practice is to refrain from emailing that extra campaign this week. However, at the same time we are under pressure to drive short term revenue. "The numbers are down, just send another email campaign." And it works - the extra email campaign drives revenue.
In this case, not following best practices generated a lot of traffic. The MailChimp study doesn't say if the old file clicks converted at the same rate, but let's assume that they were at least comparable. There was some gold in that there old file. Of course there was a lot of shiny rocks, too. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | Response
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