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 Acquisition, Activation, Cultivation And Conversion |
| author: David Baker |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 10/29/2007 |
This is a common sales lifecycle for most marketers from a business perspective. A closer look at today's definitions of these categories shows that some have changed from past seasons.
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Cultivation
- Conversion |
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New-Member Communication Streams |
| author: David Baker |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 8/14/2006 |
| CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE JUST ACQUIRED A new email subscriber! Now what do you do? How do you capitalize on the attention of these newly interested individuals and get them engaged with your brand and products? The answer for marketers is usually along the lines of "We just start emailing them," or "We hit them with marketing offers," or (raise your hand if this sounds familiar) "We blast them." Is there a rhyme, reason or rationale to your new- member messaging strategy? If not, there should be. Here's why. New subscribers have just told you they are interested in hearing from you, but that interest can wane rapidly. In an October 2005 study, Informz showed that open and click rates of new subscribers drop noticeably after 30 days, and even more so after 60 days. The bottom line: you have to get new subscribers into the fold quickly. How do you do that? |
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Emailer Asks Permission Again |
| author: KEN MAGILL |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 7/1/2006 |
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society just saw its email list slashed from 33,636 addresses to 4,510 and the organization's e-mail director is happy about it.
The LLS — a nonprofit group dedicated to blood cancer research, education and patient services — found last year that 30% of its subscribers weren't getting its four monthly newsletters because some were being blocked. The problem: too many spam complaints.
On a recommendation from its service provider ExactTarget, the LLS agreed to reconfirm permission from its entire email list.
"There really was no point in us having a giant list of people who weren't responding," said Chris Harris, who joined the organization as director of e-marketing about a year ago. "What I inherited was a large list that was sitting there with not a great open rate and a pretty bad clickthrough rate. I just decided one day that we really needed to clean up the list." |
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Double Your Pleasure? |
| author: Sulemaan Ahmed |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 5/11/2006 |
Remember those old Doublemint commercials where cute twins parade about hawking chewing-gum and talking about 'doubling your pleasure'? These days this could apply to email opt-in choices.
There are two ways to get a person to subscribe to your email list. (Negative opt-in does not count as it's not ethical):
Single opt-in - A customer subscribes to your list by entering their email address and/or ticking a box.
Double opt-in - A customer subscribes to your list by ticking a sign-up box, is sent a confirmation email and they have to confirm they want to receive messages from you. |
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ACCM Show Daily: Best, Worst Tactics for Growing Email Lists |
| author: Staff |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 5/10/2006 |
In a survey conducted by Atlanta-based email services provider Silverpop, e-mail marketers ranked online marketing/search; offline advertising/direct marketing; trade shows; and cross-promotions as the four most successful methods of growing their email lists. So what tactic were respondents most likely to implement during the next 12 months? Viral marketing.
Twenty-four percent of the 321 marketers who participated in Silverpop's 2006 Email List Growth Survey said they planned to implement a viral marketing campaign, even though only 10% said that viral marketing had worked for them. |
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Your Sig File Is A Marketing Tool |
| author: Kate Trgovac |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 4/23/2006 |
The email signature ("sig file") is probably the oldest online marketing tool. Sig files originated when email did, way back in 1965. Originally the domain of geeks (and I use the term with the utmost affection), they often contained only basic contact information, but also elaborate creations of ASCii art, pithy quotes and self-classification systems (e.g. The Geek Code — yes, this collections of numbers, letters and symbols actually means something to geeks, such as my feelings about Star Trek, my dislike of Windows and my level of education).
And then, the marketers invaded. |
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Implied Opt-In: A Useful Permission Marketing Tool or Spam? |
| author: Page Duffy |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 4/18/2006 |
By now most marketers know, and should be using, the commonly accepted protocols for obtaining permission from prospects and customers to send them commercial email. Many of these previously well-established and common sense rules have in fact been mandated by the federal Can-Spam Act of 2003.
The process goes something like this: |
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Merging Acquisition and Retention Email |
| author: Jeanniey Mullen |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/6/2006 |
Has the line between acquisition and retention email marketing disappeared? A continued increase in spam, wide use of rented email lists, and an epidemic of companies over-mailing consumers have changed email reader behavior to a point where recipients may not notice the difference between an acquisition and a retention email.
Email marketing has evolved. It can no longer be broken out by siloed tactics for rented and in-house lists. Retention-based mailers can no longer ignore the email media buys taking place within their organizations. The offers these buys include, the branding they portray, and the type of response they illicit are key. A comprehensive strategy for speaking to the customer using email must be designed.
There are five critical facts that led to my decision. |
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E-mail List Building Basics |
| author: Melinda Krueger |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 2/28/2006 |
Doesn't everyone want their e-mail list to be larger? It's not uncommon, however, to find companies that have not checked off the basic steps. Have you?
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How to Grow Your List to 2 Million Opt-Ins -- and Which Tactics Give You Higher Quality Names |
| author: Staff |
| source: MarketingSherpa.com |
| date : 2/23/2006 |
CHALLENGE:
"In 1998, when we started doing email, I was involved from day one. We learned permission marketing right from the beginning," says Bell Canada's Alain Tremblay.
Tremblay, Associate Director Online Application Management, was running the team in charge of email marketing for the 10 million customer company.
But, while having more than 10 million customers is a glorious thing, what's the best way to get them to voluntarily hand over their email addresses and request marketing email messages from you?
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The Case for Zero Acquisition |
| author: Staff |
| source: Adotas |
| date : 2/6/2006 |
| For every customer you acquire, you spend x amount of dollars, most of which is wasted on non-converting leads. If you apply correct data collection methods, those leads can be turned into an additional revenue stream, which can then be applied toward your initial lead generation expense. This technique is used in email list management and can bring your marketing to Zero Cost of Acquisition. |
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Are You Opting Into Trouble? |
| author: Don Peppers |
| source: Pepper & Rogers Group |
| date : 1/12/2006 |
Whether or not they know it by the name of "coregistration," many consumers, advertisers and Web publishers have participated in such programs over the last few years. Witness the number of "free iPod!" pop-ups and magazine subscriptions that are offered when people register at some Web sites.
Those who use the coregistration model -- primarily e-commerce companies and online advertisers -- are trying to avoid the spam-like mess that enveloped the email marketing community by imposing self-regulation before the practice gets out of hand. Lead generation firm Permission Data has proposed the first-ever set of rules for coregistration practitioners -- a code of ethics, if you will. |
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Top 10 Tactics for Growing Your Email List |
| author: Arthur Sweetser |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 1/11/2006 |
Email drives nearly 25% of all e-commerce business, according to industry estimates. Put another way, one out of every four dollars spent in the e-commerce model is a direct result of email marketing efforts. With returns like that, how can any marketer not make email list strategy a top priority for 2006?
Email acquisition is a challenge, however. That’s why the average company has email addresses for less than one-third of its customers.
Here are some tips for making the practice simpler: |
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Email Prospecting Can Still Hit Gold |
| author: Ken Magill |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 1/10/2006 |
Don’t tell Robert Rosenthal the email list-rental market is dead.
Conventional wisdom has had it for some time—since the dot-com crash of 2000 and passage of the Can-Spam Act of 2003—that email is good for retention, but not prospecting.
However, Rosenthal’s Maynard, MA-based direct-response ad agency, Mothers of Invention, formerly Passaic Parc, was able to generate conversion rates—defined as the percentage of recipients who downloaded a free white paper—as high as 13% in a business-to-business campaign using rented email lists. |
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List and Data Strategies: Risks and Rewards of Email Append |
| author: Mark Del Franco |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 1/1/2006 |
| Email appending — adding email addresses you've rented to the postal addresses on your house file — is a tricky proposition. Marketers walk a fine line between engaging their catalog and retail customers in a new channel and being viewed as a spammer. As Matt Blumberg, president of New York-based email services provider Return Path, says, “There are a lot of risks.” And opinions vary regarding whether the risks are worth taking. |
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How Fast Should Your E-mail List Be Growing? |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/14/2005 |
This week I read something from MarketingSherpa called Media Industry Shamed - Whose Email Lists Are Growing Fastest. (Hurry to check this out this article is only available for free for a few more days.)
This covers a topic that many people have asked me about: What are typical growth rates for email lists?
According to the MarketingSherpa article, email lists are growing at an average of 40% per year. But, it seems some industries are doing better than others. |
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Opt-in Appends Anyone? Please!? |
| author: Chip House |
| source: Chip's Deliverability Tips |
| date : 12/6/2005 |
As a deliverability executive I’ve made the decision to prohibit any appended lists from the ExactTarget system, unless they have used an “opt-in” method for the permission pass (meaning after the addresses have been matched to the client’s database). We do this because no true “permission” can exist with a typical opt-out append, leaving the sender open for hitting spamtraps, and eventually bulk folders or blocking.
I’ve been pushing for this for awhile... |
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Best bets for online acquisition and retention |
| author: Polly Bickel Wong |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 11/1/2005 |
| In the world of online marketing, it's easy to lose focus on the core objective when you're haggling with search engines, chasing down affiliates, and fixing your Web analytics. To make it a little easier and to sharpen your focus on your primary goals, here is a breakdown of some of the best practices in online marketing for customer acquisition and retention. |
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Business Card in Hand Doesn’t Mean “Opt-in” |
| author: Chip |
| source: Chip's Deliverability Tips |
| date : 11/1/2005 |
The business card has long been an important instrument to a salesperson attempting to build their network, and in turn, their success. This was true long before email marketing came to be, though the collision of the two hasn’t always been pretty. Big surprises are ahead for the unwary salesperson (and their company) who don’t carefully manage their contacts derived from business cards.
What’s the problem? |
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Three Subscriber Acquisition Tips |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 10/26/2005 |
Looking for ways to attract e-zine subscribers and build a large and responsive list? Here are three that always work.
1. Get Friends to Subscribe
2. Use Cross-Promotion Opportunities
3. Ask for Subscriptions in Non-marketing Emails |
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Recommended: How NOT to Turn a Hot Prospect Into a Customer |
| author: Bill Sweetman |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 8/17/2005 |
Every once in a while I am lucky enough to receive a marketing email of such pure ineptitude that I am awestruck. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, an email lands in my inbox that proves to me that there are still corners of the world where the work we do as Internet marketers hasn’t penetrated.
About a month ago, I signed up for a free trial account of a Website server monitoring service from Alertra. I wanted to perform an independent test of the uptime percentage of a Website I owned because a number of customers had mentioned that the Website sometimes appeared to be unavailable. |
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Beat Spammers At Their Own Game |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 7/21/2005 |
A recent Associated Press story on Yahoo! uncovers a new solution for recipients of spam to fight back…and beat spammers at their own game.
Blue Security has a solution called Blue Frog that works by using a “do-not-spam” list they call “Do Not Intrude”.
Here’s a quick overview of how it works:
1. Users add e-mail addresses to a “do-not-spam” list and Blue Security creates new addresses (“honeypots”) designed to attract and catch spam
2. When a honeypot address gets spam Blue Security tries to contact the spammer and then triggers the Blue Frog software on the user’s computer to send a complaint.
3. If enough people complain it will knock out the spammer’s website and hopefully encourage them to stop sending emails to the “do-not-spam” list.
Simple enough! But fundamentally flawed, I think. |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions - Day 5 |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/24/2005 |
Promotion is key to building your subscription list. The most obvious way to gain subscribers is to have a subscribe box or link on every page of your site. But do you also need a special offer? For the last day of our series, we take a look at subscription promotion.
Day 5: Subscription Promotion
Do you need to offer a contest to get people to sign up for your newsletter? If you’re a major consumer marketer you seem to from these examples: |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions - Day 4 |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/23/2005 |
Have you checked your subscription confirmation page and welcome email messages lately? These are your ‘first impression’ opportunities to new subscribers and worth the attention you pay your newsletter, as well as updating on a regular basis. In Day 4 of Five Days to Increasing your Newsletter Subscriptions we look at subscription confirmations, an important contribution to the health of your subscriber list.
Day 4: Subscription Confirmations
The geek side of me comes out some days when I try to figure out who is using what type of email or subscription service, especially when they present a standard form that doesn’t - quite - graphically fit with the rest of the website. Don’t let... |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions - Day 3 |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/22/2005 |
Now we’ve covered the subscribe box and privacy, just how much information should you be asking subscribers to provide? Some organizations get a little carried away here. Let’s take a look at how to pare down that list so that you aren’t turning people off.
Day 3: Required Subscription Fields
The amount of information you can ask for is directly proportional to the value of the subscription, factored by the depth of their relationship and trust in your organization. In other words, if you provide vital industry stories or case studies, you can probably ask for a lot of information. But if you are a retailer looking for more names to promote store sales, you might want to keep it to just an email address. |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions - Day 2 |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/20/2005 |
Today we continue to increase our newsletter subscriptions by looking at the subscribe box. Are you even using a box?
Day 2: The Subscribe Box
Here are the 5 things your subscribe box should contain:
- Call to sign up — Free Newsletter, Free Tips, Latest Updates, Email Offers, etc… Try testing to see what works best.
More... |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/20/2005 |
There have been a few studies on how many newsletters people will sign up for. They indicate that users will subscribe to between seven and eleven newsletters. This week we’ll review five areas of best practice for increasing your newsletter subscriptions.
Day 1: The Privacy Promise
One of the biggest reasons people do not provide their email address is fear of spam. You can immediately remove that hesitation from your potential subscribers by including a small link in your subscribe box to your Privacy Policy... |
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Five Days to Increase Your Newsletter Subscriptions |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/20/2005 |
There have been a few studies on how many newsletters people will sign up for. They indicate that users will subscribe to between seven and eleven newsletters. This week we’ll review five areas of best practice for increasing your newsletter subscriptions.
Day 1: The Privacy Promise
One of the biggest reasons people do not provide their email address is fear of spam. You can immediately remove that hesitation from your potential subscribers by including a small link in your subscribe box to your Privacy Policy. |
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How to Build Your E-Zine List |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 4/26/2005 |
Permission to send email newsletters to a consumer needs to be proactive and voluntary. The only correct way to get permission is by having people sign up with the understanding that they want to receive email from you.
The five levels of permission, from worst to best for consumers, are: |
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Contests, Sweepstakes, Coupons and Other Online Acquisition Tools |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 4/6/2005 |
As marketing strategies evolve and more budget is spent online, a greater number of marketers are beginning to embrace the idea of relationship marketing. Basically, these leaders are looking to create dialogues with customers and key prospects to deliver against marketing objectives. But as the targets each marketer is trying to reach become more savvy we have to be more aware they are increasingly inundated with marketing “clutter”. And with more and more CFOs pushing brand management in the direction of marketing disciplines that are highly measurable, it is imperative that these executions drive short-term results.
There are a number of online tactics that can deliver on the promise of measurable results while also building the foundation for a successful relationship marketing strategy that can deliver on the marketing group’s objectives. The main tactics include contests, sweepstakes and coupons. |
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Double Your Email Registrations in Seven Steps |
| author: Heidi Cohen |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 6/24/2004 |
You probably know the number of new email registrations your site gets per month. The number is a key indicator of how well you're doing in building your site's traffic and customer relationships. It helps track the effect of ad campaigns and other events that drive people to your site.
By itself, the number of new registrations only tells part of the story. That's because it doesn't help you understand this metric in the context of total site usage. According to Return Path, an email performance company, a second indicator is just as important. It's the ratio of new email registrations to new unique site visitors, and it should be close to one-to-one.
If the new email registration to new unique visitor ratio is substantially less than one, use the following tips to help double your email list. Though some suggestions may sound obvious, they yield real results. |
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Lists and Prospecting: Help with Email List Hygiene |
| author: Paul Miller |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 3/1/2004 |
Even if you avoid renting email names and send messages only to customers who have requested them, you need to practice spotless email list hygiene. Mailing to a poorly maintained email list can be costly, especially with the recent enactment of the Can-Spam law. Not only can inadvertently mailing to a wrong address cost you a potential sale, but you could also end up having to pay a hefty fine for sending unsolicited email to an unwilling recipient.
To help you avoid making any expensive mistakes, email experts offer several suggestions: |
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Phone-Based Email Capture: The Next Wave? |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/12/2003 |
Thinking about the relationship between the telephone and email, the old Girl Scout song comes to mind: "Make new friends, but keep the old./One is silver and the other gold."
Here's why. Yes, email is increasingly the preferred mode of business communication. Heck, our phones at work barely ring any more.
Yet when it comes to actually getting email addresses (and permission to use them), many email marketers return to the old, tried-and-true way of communicating with their clients and prospects. You got it -- they call on the phone. |
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Building A Quality Email List |
| author: Lynda Partner |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 2/6/2003 |
| What do 84% of marketers think is the most important element in the success of an email campaign? You guessed it - the list. Studies show that an in-house, permission-based email list brings better results than a rented or purchased list, and yet, amazingly, few marketers have one. Sure, building a quality email list from scratch takes patience, persistence and diligence, but it is very doable. |
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Negotiating E-mail Acquisition |
| author: Clint Symons |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 2/1/2003 |
Since my introduction into the permission-based e-mail marketing industry in 1997 the need for acquiring opt-in email has been in demand. Back then I remember you could pay $4-5.00 for a single opt-in email address. Of course that was when you could get a legitimate 15-20% click through rate on a campaign.
Nowadays marketers can form deals to acquire opt-in email addresses for only four or five cents and a one or two percent click through rate is considered a good run for many campaigns. |
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Rev Up Your Sales Engine With Leads, Leads, Leads |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/18/2002 |
For most business-to-business (B2B) marketers, generating leads for the sales force is top priority. The best way to do this is to set up sales engines -- lead-generating systems that consistently churn out high quality leads at the lowest possible cost in time and effort.
We asked two marketers how they generate repeatable sales lead sources. |
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Eye on b-to-B: Prospecting, Not Spamming |
| author: Karen M. Kroll |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 12/1/2002 |
Say "email prospecting," and many marketers squirm. The term often brings to mind the unsolicited emails that crowd electronic mailboxes, touting everything from herbal remedies for baldness to instant mortgage approval. So while they're interested in email's ability to inexpensively reach prospects, most b-to-b catalogers are taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to prospecting electronically.
Then again, the relatively low cost of contacting prospects by email rather than by print mail or outbound telemarketing has encouraged some catalogers to test email prospecting programs. |
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WHY AFFILIATE PROGRAMS CAN GIVE CO-REGISTRATION A BAD NAME |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 10/7/2002 |
| A few months ago I wanted to measure the accuracy and effectiveness of some of the affiliate programs used by publishers for gathering opt-in email addresses. My plan was quite simple. I registered with a popular affiliate service and was cautious to ensure that I only registered to receive three specific offers. The three offers I chose shared the theme of coupon savings. After I received a few special emails from these sources within a couple days I decided to opt-out of everything including the affiliate network. This is when the problem started. |
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Six Ways to Build an Opt-In List (From Zero) |
| author: Barry Stamos |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/16/2002 |
What's stopping you from sending personalized, direct email communications to your entire universe of constituents today: prospects, customers, resellers, distributors, suppliers, investors, and employees?
Worried about hitting bumps in the road? That road may not be as bumpy as you think. |
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THE RISK OF OPT-IN ACQUISITION |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 8/5/2002 |
| Is it worth it to acquire one million names in a month if more than 70% of the registered users you’ve paid for are crap? If so, than you don’t need to read this article. I am defining crap as bounced email addresses, untargeted recipients, non-existent email addresses, and incentive-based registrants. |
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Customers Really Matter |
| author: Ginger Conlon |
| source: DestinationCRM |
| date : 8/1/2002 |
Peter Weedfald is fanatical about customers. Weedfald, vice president, strategic marketing and new media, North America operations for Samsung Electronics America Inc., wants to grip each customer in an unrelenting bear hug of unparalleled service.
This fanaticism toward the customer has led Weedfald to redefine CRM. "CRM does not stand for customer relationship management--yet. Not yet. Because first you have to put the process and business desire in front of it," he says. "CRM first stands for customers really matter. And that philosophy must be present throughout an organization, from the receptionist all the way up through the [CEO]." |
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Need Leads? Put Your Site to Work |
| author: Barry Stamos |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 7/8/2002 |
| Your wakeup call: Most companies already have professional Web sites. Your own may have rich content, a clean user interface, and compelling calls to action. Despite all that care, 80 percent of all unique visitors will abandon your company's Web site, never to return! |
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EMAIL APPENDING RISK VERSUS REWARD |
| author: Clint Symons |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 7/3/2002 |
Appending is on the rise as more advertisers feel the practice can grow their in-house lists faster while fulfilling sales objectives online. The practice of email appending has raised many permission flags around the industry because the service is not opt-in, yet companies such as Yesmail and e-Direct continue to provide marketers with these services.
To better understand the feeling of the email appending practice, Opt-in News went looking for some industry insight into whether or not professionals feel it is good practice for advertisers to gain email addresses through these services. |
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3 OF 4 RECIPIENTS FEEL APPENDING IS UNETHICAL |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 6/24/2002 |
| In an industry that surrounds itself with terms such as “opt-in” and “permission-based” there is no room for intrusiveness, yet the acceptance of appending continues to grow. Originally I felt that this was a simple fad that some inexperienced marketers would experiment with but soon realize the repercussions. It appears I was wrong. |
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'A' Is for Append |
| author: Staff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 6/20/2002 |
| I've seen too many companies view appending as the be-all and end-all for developing a house list. They, and others, experience negative side effects of appending. Following is a definition of appending (from the CRE report) along with some issues to keep in mind if you're considering appending email addresses. At the end are some best practices based on my own experiences. |
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AIMING LOW ON PRIVACY: The DMA Email Appending Guidelines Too Soft |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 5/16/2002 |
| This week will see the release of the newest Star Wars film “Episode II” that I’m planning to take my nephews to see. I’m sure I’ll be as disappointed when leaving the theatre after “Episode I”. I remember the feeling of excitement and disappointment all in a matter of hours. Last week this feeling was shared again with the release of the DMA/AIM Email Appending Guidelines. |
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A GREAT EXAMPLE OF FOLLOW THROUGH |
| author: David Herscott |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 4/9/2002 |
In my last installment of Get Relevant (customers shop in an analog world) I uncovered a startling reality, most people still shop in stores. So what does this have to do with email marketing you ask? Well, any company who interacts with their customers directly (ie point-of-purchase, trade shows, call-centers, etc.) and doesn't have a data collection plan in place is missing a huge opportunity.
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CUSTOMERS SHOP IN AN ANALOG WORLD |
| author: David Herscott |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 3/4/2002 |
| In the coming months I am going to explore data relevancy, as I call it, and its impact on generating successful online retention marketing programs. I will cover how to gather valuable customer information and how to leverage that information in ongoing communications. |
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Ouch!: Why B2B Acquisition Email Campaigns Can Be Tough |
| author: Debbie Weil |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/20/2002 |
This is an email marketing story that doesn't have a happy ending -- yet.
It's a true account with names changed to conceal the client's identity. And it's a cautionary tale about how tricky business-to-business (B2B) email acquisition campaigns can be these days. Flooded inboxes and an increasing intolerance for unsolicited mail make it more difficult than ever to get the response you want.
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Have No Fear... We Have Some Acquisition Pointers Here |
| author: Jackie Gallogly and Lynne Rolls |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/5/2002 |
| The last article I wrote focused on the top 10 fears of email marketers. I had tons of replies about your fears. And guess what your number one fear was, based on your feedback? Yep, you guessed it! The fear of planning and negotiating email list-rental buys (or acquisition campaigns). |
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New Year's Resolution: Grow Your House List |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/3/2002 |
Email lists are a hot topic. I keep hearing the same questions from ClickZ readers, my clients, and prospective clients: Where can they find new email lists to test? How can they tell if they are really opt-in? What can they do to maximize return from an outside list?
Like a Zen master, I answer their questions with one of my own: What about your house list?
Answers vary. |
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Appending Email, Part 2: Appending to Appends |
| author: Jackie Gallogly and Lynne Rolls |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 11/27/2001 |
As you might imagine, feedback on my last article about appending email to snail mail addresses was voluminous and spirited. In the end, we must agree to disagree.
I'd like to follow up with some additional notes that I think will be valuable to you as you proceed into this arena. |
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Appending Email to Snail Mail Addresses |
| author: Jackie Gallogly and Lynne Rolls |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 11/13/2001 |
| One of the biggest challenges facing us email marketers is finding responsive opt-in email addresses. As we all know, acquisition through email is becoming increasingly harder. Getting your current customers to give you an email address can cost as much as acquiring new customers if you have to use direct mail to drive them to a form or to the telephone to supply the information. Even if they do provide it over the telephone, data entry errors happen all the time. |
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SCARE THEM TO OPT-IN: Has Anthrax given marketers the right to spam? |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 11/13/2001 |
| Despite the absence of coffee in the morning, the single most sickening feeling that burns in my tummy as of late is any sentence containing the word "Anthrax". Have terrorists crippled the entire direct mail industry with a few postal letters to high-profile recipients? Or, are online advertising providers such as "opt-in" email marketers trying to make financial gain from your fears? |
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Get More Out of Your House List |
| author: Jackie Gallogly and Lynne Rolls |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 10/16/2001 |
As we know, it's taboo to email people who have unsubscribed from your list. But you might be able to recapture them if they still visit your site. Make a campaign of your email sign-ups on your Web site (more on this later). If you have snail-mail addresses (that is, addresses for physical locations) and your email list is lucrative enough, consider sending a targeted direct-mail message inviting them back. The best place to start is by making sure you know what each of those email addresses is worth to your top and bottom lines.
1. Round up the strays.
2. Don't lose those visitors when they are trying to sign up for your email list.
3. Test your own sign-up processes regularly.
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CASE STUDY - HEINMANNS: Milwaukee restaurant offers new spin on coupons |
| author: Staff |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 10/14/2001 |
Whereas most people think of e-mail marketing as a method for driving people to a web site to make a purchase, Heinemann's, a Wisconsin-based sit down restaurant chain, is using it successfully to increase business at their seven brick and mortar restaurants. The increases are coming from their current customers making additional visits in response to a series of personalized, "segmented" e-mail offers. And, Heinemann's is doing all of this without the use of a web site to collect e-mail addresses or a customer base rich with young, Internet-savvy people - fact is, nearly 60% of Heinemann's customers are over the age of 55. Heinemann's CEO Peggy Burns commented, "it's scary to think about what our results would be like if our customer base was made up of people who've grown up using e-mail"
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CONSTRUCTING IN-HOUSE LISTS |
| author: Clint Symons |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 10/9/2001 |
| It doesn't take a rocket scientist to comprehend that in-house lists execute greater than those rented. Many announce between 15-20% response rates on internal campaigns run through in-house lists. The challenge is how to develop a fresh in-house list that is effective and can generate maximum results for an advertisers needs. |
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CASE STUDY: SPRINT NICKEL NIGHTS |
| author: Staff |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 7/28/2001 |
With clients like New Line Cinema, Sony and Disney, it was no surprise that Sprint would select Dynamics Direct for their rich media email efforts. Although the results of this campaign are not completely tallied, it is a great partial case study that we at Opt-in News felt should be shared. This campaign covered a great range of nessaccities when planning email marketing including rich media, personalization and effective destination to complete the call to action.
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Growing a List With Greetings and Sweeps |
| author: Kim MacPherson |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 6/12/2001 |
By now you all know the drill: Develop and grow a house email list, and the world will be your oyster. And we all know that to do this in a speedy and efficient manner, you need an offer that the target audience will be interested in and/or will value. Meaning: "Sign up here to get this," or, "Register here and download that." Once folks sign up and hit "submit" (and opt in to receive future promotional messages, of course), they're yours to be marketed to. 'Nuff said.
But how can you stand out in the crowd of free reports and e-newsletters and update services? Start by reviewing statistics on the most popular things to do online. |
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LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACQUISITION? Using dynamics to directly market permission email campaigns. |
| author: Andy Carlson |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 5/30/2001 |
| It's getting difficult to ignore the presence of rich media in online marketing today. Companies like Dynamics Direct are truly changing the way email marketers impact audiences with creative and interactive campaign presentations. Led by Russ Gillam, the company CEO, Dynamics Direct has mapped out a long-term mission to change the insipid barrage of advertisements we've all grown immune to and change our apathy to intrigue. Powered by patent-pending personalization technology Dynamics Direct deploys e-mail campaigns that couple the visual energy of rich media with personalization for email marketing solutions. |
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INCENTIVE FOR MEDIA BUYERS TO OPT-OUT: Has incentive generating co-registration services lowered opt-in emails net worth? |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 4/16/2001 |
| I wake up, I log on and they appear taunting me to click the little checkbox. Before I'm even able to get a half-cup of coffee (black no cream) choked down, I'm blinded by co-reg offerings. Virtually every content-based site I visit offers some form of co-registration. Many of these sites are claiming to acquire 50-100,000 subscribers for their partners each month. If this were the case, then why would anyone of us pay 250 CPM for a direct email campaign? Call me old school, but does anyone remember the business equation "Supply and Demand"? Should we not see lower rates because of increased inventory, the slumping ad economy, or poor response rates? |
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CO-REGISTRATION: “What constitutes an acquisition?” |
| author: Rodney Much |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 3/13/2001 |
| One online aggravation I could truly do without is the inconvenience of a multi step registration process. Like anyone in this business I’m required to spend 1/3 of my life online in the virtual world for research purposes. Many times I’m asked to register within certain sites to gain a better perspective of what is offered. This is where the headaches begin and my blood pressure starts to rise. Multi step registrations are needed in many circumstances because information might be vital the service or program offered. However, when the site doesn’t advise multiple steps to a user the process can be quite upsetting and deceiving. |
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It's CPA Time... or Is It? |
| author: Kim MacPherson |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/1/2001 |
No, I'm not talking about the upcoming tax season or your accountant. I'm talking about cost per acquisition (CPA). And, for purposes of this article, I'm talking about email.
Email marketers as of late have requested more and more CPA deals. And why not? They're seemingly great deals if marketers can get them. After all, the standard acquisitions email campaign, paid for on a CPM basis, reaches more nonresponders than responders. Why pay for all those extra eyeballs? |
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CONTEST JUNCTION: Opting-in or NOT to opt-in...that's the Question? |
| author: Andy Carlson |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 12/1/2000 |
| Initially I had chosen contestjunction.com for this month's "heavenly spotlight", after being praised as Media Metrix' "Top Newcomer-Web Site". After all, they we're weighing in with over Two million unique hits for September 2000. "The Junction" swings with an incentive based site, where subscribers duke it out for cash and "HOT" item prizes. So, I figured I'd step in the ring myself. |
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BRAINBUZZ: BRAINBUZZ |
| author: Andy Carlson |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 11/1/2000 |
TAG!!!...You're "IT"... Ultimate resource guide?... Positive resume builder?... Massive job search?...
It's Brainbuzz.com, possibly the first stop to make, for the beginning of your tech career journey. Hosting everything from the top jobs in the IT industry, to the hottest tips and news from both employer and employee points of view.
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PURCHASING PERMISSION: Is Co-Registration the solution to email marketing inventory? |
| author: Clint Symons |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 10/12/2000 |
| More inventory to a publisher means more revenue in their pockets. Publishers generally fight an uphill battle trying to build their subscriber base to a point of profitability. Newer models have emerged over the last few months to give publishers a boost in this area if they have the budget. The CPE (cost-per-email) or what Zmedia calls a co-registration service is a model that can perform this type of inventory building for a price. Services provided by World Wide Lists, Free Ride, and Ezine Central have been around for many months while others like Custom Lead and now Z Media share the scene. Is this a viable service for publishers or marketers looking to build a list to use? |
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