Posts Tagged E-mail marketing
eBrand Media Discovery: U.S. consumers feel loyalty reward program messaging not relevant
According to consumer survey research released by Direct Antidote, far too many mailings, emails and Facebook messages that companies send to their loyalty reward program members miss the mark. Only 32% of U.S. consumers rated reward program communications 8 or higher on a 1 to 10 scale for measuring relevancy to their personal needs, with 68% giving a score of 7 or below.
Centered on loyalty rewards communications, such as annual points balance reports, special earning offers and program information. Despite marketers devotion to customized messaging, the study results across all demographics surveyed showed average relevance scores, with Seniors reporting the lowest perceived relevance at a 5.7 mean score, and Young Adults and Hispanics tied for the highest at 6.9.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Marketing, Trend Tracker, eBrand Media on August 26th, 2009
eBrand Media Research Brief: Email is main communication channel worldwide – IM and SMS well behind
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
According to Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study, conducted by ROI Research, the survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries finds that Email remains a mainstay communication, showing that 87% of North American(and 74% of European respondents are more likely than their peers in APAC to use email as their primary online communications tool.
Instant messaging as the main channel for communication, is notably high in APAC with 28% of respondents, while text/SMS and social networking remain consistently low across all regions. While most consumers manage one primary inbox for the programs they subscribe to, mobile phones and PDAs are gaining popularity for time-sensitive alerts such as news, weather and finance/stock information.
Email is also replacing other channels of communication. Over one-third of respondents have replaced traditional (communication) channels in favor of email for communications from:
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing on June 16th, 2009
E-mail promotions: 5 Steps to lift revenue 69%
SUMMARY: Email promotions are the bread and butter of many ecommerce sites. But how can you increase the frequency of your promotions without causing a backlash from your subscribers?
Read how a wine marketer increased a weekly email promotion to a daily promotion — boosting its frequency 400% — without upsetting their list. Revenue generated through email has since increased 69%, and is now over 50% of total revenue.
CHALLENGE
Glenn Edelman, VP Marketing, Wine Enthusiast, had a good thing going. As ecommerce manager of Wine Enthusiast’s wine accessory website and its direct-to-consumer wine retailing website, WineExpress.com, he saw the latter as a small, profitable and growing business.
One of the site’s strongest revenue drivers was its Wine of the Week email campaign. Every Tuesday, subscribers would receive an offer for a bottle of wine that would ship at a discounted rate of 99 cents per bottle. The program was successful, but it had some limitations.
“Sometimes we didn’t pick [wines that sold well] and it sort of hurt demand for that week,” Edelman says. “Or, worse yet, if a wine was ultra-successful and sold out — some wines have sold out in a matter of hours — we had no special promotion to give people for the rest of the week.”
Edelman and his team wanted to expand the profitable Wine of the Week promotion and free it from the weekly schedule — without upsetting customers in the process.
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing on June 1st, 2009
20% of marketers have “no clue” about their e-mail marketing performance
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
ERoi releases their latest survey, finding, in their words, that “… nearly 20% of email marketers have no clue how their email marketing campaigns perform.” The study, highlighting trends and use of analytics in email, concludes that these marketers “are taking an extremely careless approach to email marketing.”
Marketers tracking campaign results (% of Respondents, eROI, Inc., March 2009)
* Not tracking campaigns 18.06%
* Tracking campaigns 81.94
The savvy email marketer knows that a truly targeted email campaign goes beyond simply segmenting by demographic and focuses on behavioral segmentation, enabling delivery of the most relevant, targeted messages. But intelligent email marketing requires different tactics for follow up and re-engagement based on previous actions, concludes the study.
Open rate, followed by click rate and open to click ratio, are shown to be the top three metrics when marketers were asked to rank them by importance. However, concludes the writer, Open rate is not a reliable metric. Click rate is better, but unless tied to dollars, campaign ROI can be tough to prove. However, the ‘‘brand engagement value” of a click is extremely important and often discounted.
Another major opportunity is conversion tracking. A big surprise in this survey was the fact that about one-eighth of all email marketers are not tracking conversions. Of those, the majority don’t track conversions because of time or budget considerations, and about one quarter aren’t tracking conversions simply because they do not know how.
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing on March 30th, 2009
eBrand Media uses seven proven strategies to heighten e-mail marketing efficiency
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
E-mail marketing is still one of the most powerful marketing, and relationship management, tools available. Even if you’re already inlcuding e-mail marketing as an important part of your media plan, I think, you’ll find the information contained in this blog to be of great interest.
SUMMARY: If your marketing team is forced to do more with less, consider tweaking your email strategy and expanding it into other areas. Below we’ve outlined 7 strategies that come directly from Case Studies and how-to articles.
Strategy #1: Use best practices and basic tests
In short — the basics work. Before expanding your emailing marketing to other areas, make sure that it is strong. Follow the industry’s best practices and test continually.
Applying the basics to an unrefined strategy can yield significant results. Erick Barney, VP Marketing, Motorcycle Superstore, related that sentiment after getting a reliable analytics system to measure and segment email.
Here are a few changes his team made:
o Scrubbing the list – removing names that bounced three consecutive emails increased deliverability by 30% after just five sends.
o Frequency – the team previously mailed once a month and tested more frequent sends, up to once a week. They eventually settled on a twice-a-month send, which boosted revenue over 100%.
o Day of week – the team found that the best days to send promotional emails were Mondays and Tuesdays to give them the most amount of time before hitting the Saturday brick wall.
o Subject lines – benefit-oriented subject lines worked best, and complimentary shipping outperformed the “lowest price guaranteed” phrasing.
o Segmenting the list – the team identified eight customer segments to whom they would send customized emails. Open rates doubled (38.6% from 18.5%), and clickthrough rates more than tripled (20.6% from 6.2%).
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing, eBrand Media on March 6th, 2009