Posts Tagged e-mail
The real culprit behind unsubscribes
- Inbox Clutter Isn’t the Problem
Posted by Tom Polanski in Advertising on March 18th, 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
eBrand Interactive creates great permission based direct marketing e-mail campaigns!
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
eBrand Interactive currently manages Can-Spam compliant, permission based, e-mail marketing campaigns, to third party lists, for a number of name brand advertisers. An increasing number of companies are moving management of their e-mail campaigns to us because of the length and breadth of, not only our experience, but our relationships across the internet. eBrand Interactive can deliver to a wide variety of preferences, aspirations, habits and purchase histories. We have successfully created, launched, and managed, hundreds of e-mail campaigns, from mass broadcasts of tens of millions, to small mail outs for niche products.
There are thousands of databases but only a handful has any real value. Six years of experience has taught us the following:
E-mail Lists
We know which databases keep their e-mail lists fresh, and offer truly high quality e-mail recipients, and which don’t. In addition we can target, with statistical confidence, databases that have the highest probability of meeting or beating a targeted CPA for the advertiser while backing into an eCPM for the e-mail database. This knowledge gives our advertisers an opportunity to roll their initial CPM campaigns into ongoing, scalable CPA programs.
Audiences
We have historical and current information regarding the audience demographics, and sometimes, the psychographics, of the highest quality e-mail databases. This in-house intelligence includes, but is not limited to, the percentages of women and men in that audience, their average household income, their level of education and their lifestyle preferences. For example one database we work with is comprised of 87% women, with an average household income of $77,000. 70% of that database is college educated, and 80% of the database shops online. This type of database is perfect for some products/offers but not others.
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing, Marketing, eBrand Interactive on January 13th, 2009
An effective e-mail creative is like a good movie trailer
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
I’ve been a movie trailer buff for a long time. Without really being aware of it, I’ve always directed my team to use the elements of a good, effective movie trailer to build an e-mail creative around a clients offer. The e-mail is the “teaser”. It should be visually engaging and impart just enough information to motivate the recipient to take the call to action.
In reading the article below I think you’ll see what I mean. A movie trailer is a metaphor for an e-mail. Which movie trailer from those used as examples below best describes the type of e-mail creative your team is building?
The article below was contributed by MSNBC.
When “Burn After Reading” opens on Sept. 12, it will benefit from the reputation of the Coen brothers, who have followers who love everything from “Raising Arizona” and “The Big Lebowski” to “Blood Simple” and “No Country For Old Men.” It will benefit from a lineup of actors including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich.
But it will also benefit from one of the best-made trailers in recent years.
The “Burn After Reading” trailer is funny and full of energy, and while the early reviews of the movie are decidedly mixed, it’s hard to argue with the two minutes they’re using to promote it. So why does it work so well?
First, it follows one of the most important and most difficult rules that many know but few can navigate: explain the premise; don’t give everything away. For an example of an unsuccessful trailer that hands over entirely too much plot, consider the trailer for the recent Luke Wilson film, “Henry Poole Is Here.”
Posted by Tom Polanski in Advertising, Marketing on September 16th, 2008
Mistakes to avoid when remarketing to your in-house lists
By Tom Polanski, Mojo Marketing Maestro, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
Remarketing to in-house lists 4 times a month is a bad idea. I have said it over and over again and I’ll probably have to say it until I’m blue in the face but I’m seldom really heard because once an advertiser analyzes the returns on that first drop, the numbers are so compelling, it’s hard to resist dropping again as soon as possible. That’s short term thinking that is inappropriate for a business that plans to be around for the long-haul. That type of frequency will eventually burn out a list. I strongly encourage companies to resist the seduction and to treat those names and e-mail addresses as if they are representative of people.
In addition, in the interest to clarity and transparency, it should be made clear to the buyer that they are opt-ing in for future e-mail specials. It’s all about the relationship….unless your selling downloads loaded with evil java script and your intention is to burn and churn until you’ve made a ton of money. But if you are running a legitimate business then you’ll want to keep and monetize that customer as carefully and for as long as you can.
In the tax business there is a saying that applies here; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. What the difference between a hog and a pig? About 1lb. A pig is a pig until it hits 180 lbs. Any thing above 180 Ibs. and it’s then classified as a hog. And we know what happens to hogs. In other words, don’t get greedy.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Advertising, Marketing on September 2nd, 2008