White paper
Making e-mail marketing deliver
Summary
Marketing is changing
These days, marketers need to choose from an ever-increasing number of media choices, distribution channels, products, brands and customer segments. Providing customers with the right messages has never been harder than it is today.
20 years ago, organizations needed one commercial on three television networks to reach 80 percent of the U.S. population. Today, they need up to 20 messaging and media programs to reach the same audiences.
Traditional marketing focused on creating standardized, product-centric messages for many customers and target groups. Today, the approach to marketing is customer centric: customers want to control the messages they receive, when they receive them and how they receive them. Further, the demand for personalized messages has never been higher.
E-mail marketing provides the solution.
E-mail marketing has the best fit with these changing demands. This opt-in medium provides consumers with the ability to select the companies that they interact with. For marketers, e-mail marketing provides the unique possibilities to:
Target messages for specific audiences
Generate leads
Interact with customers one-on-one
E-mail is inexpensive and is the most successful application that was ever built on Internet technology. Internet World Statistics estimate that almost 70 percent of the U.S. population uses the Internet on a regular basis. That is over 200 million people. MarketingSherpa found that most e-mail marketers continue to believe that the impact of e-mail marketing is growing and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.
To make e-mail marketing deliver, organizations need to follow a number of basic guidelines. This paper provides you with insight that you can use to optimize the return on investment for your e-mail marketing campaigns.
Table of contents
1
What can e-mail do for me?
1.1 Primary advantages of e-mail marketing ... 2
1.2 Creating effective campaigns ... 4
2
Successful e-mail strategies
2.1 Commercial benefits ... 52.2 Value-added benefits ... 6
3
The e-mail marketing process
3.1 Define the marketing scope ... 73.2 Defining the target group and constructing an e-mail list ... 7
3.3 E-mail content and design ... 10
3.4 Content is key ... 11
3.5 Sender and subject ... 12
3.6 Landing pages ... 14
3.7 Sending e-mail ... 15
3.8 Handling campaign responses ... 16
3.9 Closing the loop: analyzing, learning and improving ... 17
4
Outbound E-mail
4.1 Choosing an appropriate e-mail marketing solution or partner ... 191
What can e-mail do for me?
Organizations use e-mail marketing for many purposes including customer retention, sales, advertising and branding. E-mail marketing plays a significant role in most interactive marketing campaigns. Your organization may be using e-mail marketing to achieve the following types of objectives:
Traffic building – Regular e-mail newsletters provide a great way to increase traffic to your Web site.
Acquisition and prospecting – E-mail marketing enables you to build a campaign database for events, recruiting and leads. You can send out e-mails using your own opt-in database, rented lists or through third-party e-mail newsletters.
Marketing objectives – E-mail marketing can enhance your existing marketing strategy and tactical plan by providing unique contact with your customers. You can use your e-mail marketing strategy to fulfill many marketing objectives. E-mail marketing can be used to persuade, inform, influence, and retain your customers and prospects.
Sales – E-mail sales promotions are very successful when sent to opt-in subscribers. Quris, an American e-mail marketing firm, reports that more than 57 percent of customers have made purchases as a result of e-mail. Several studies show that the average revenue per e-mail of opt-in campaigns is between .20 to .30 USD per e-mail. 1
Customer retention – Regular newsletters improve customer retention by providing customers with up-to-date information about your company, products and services.
Lead generation – E-mail enables you to track and analyze e-mail recipient behavior. This type of information can be used to identify and map the needs of prospects. Campaigns can then be updated to reflect the information gathered.
Branding – E-mails can provide clear brand messages to target audiences and play an important role in providing brand experience and expressing your organizations identity.
1
1.1
Primary advantages of e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing is inexpensive – Compared to other marketing vehicles, e-mail marketing has a low cost per contact. This low cost enables companies to invest in professional copy, design and tools to personalize messages and track campaign results.
E-mail is popular – More than 90 percent of Internet visitors use e-mail, making it the most used Internet application. Consumers are generally positive towards opt-in e-mail marketing to which they have subscribed. In fact, British digital direct marketing company, IPT, found that consumers are more positive about e-mail marketing than television advertising.
E-mail marketing is fast – E-mail enables you to deploy campaigns and receive responses quickly. Many e-mail recipients respond to e-mails within 24 hours. The speed of this deployment and response cycle enables marketers create phased campaigns in which they can measure the responses from a previous phase, and adjust future phases accordingly.
E-mail is interactive – E-mail customers are just one click away. Marketers can easily track who is interested by campaign proposals and offer more information. Tools such as online forms and polls provide even more interactivity by which marketers can receive feedback directly from interested customers and prospects.
E-mail is easy – E-mail marketing campaigns do not require extraordinary skills. Non-technical business people can write content, create personalized e-mails, select distribution lists and track the results of e-mail campaigns.
E-mail can be personalized and segmented – E-mail marketing enables organizations to use information from corporate databases such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Using this type of information, marketers can send personalized message to
recipients to enhance the impact of campaigns. Integrating e-mail solutions with a content management system allows marketers to adapt the content of an e-mail campaign to match the individual profile of each recipient.
E-mail can be measured – One of the greatest things about e-mail is that marketers can measure e-mail campaign parameters. Marketers can analyze the number of e-mails that have been opened, who has read them, who clicked on which hyperlink and so on. Marketers can even track the behavior of e-mail recipients after e-mail is read by combining e-mail tracking, Web analytics and CRM data. This kind of information provides powerful lead generation capabilities.
E-mail is results-driven – E-mail is primarily used for direct marketing purposes. Research shows that consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases based on opt-in e-mails. Consumers see e-mail replacing direct mail, and value it for customer service purposes.
Winterberry Group found that e-mail marketing returns the highest average sales per dollar spent. Winterberry calculated that e-mail returns average sales of 15.5 USD for every dollar spent. By comparison, the average sales for telemarketing is 8.94 USD and for direct mail, 12.87 USD. Marketers can raise the level of sales per contact by taking advantages of the speed, personalization, segmentation, measurement and testing capabilities of e-mail.
E-mail marketing creates buzz – Peer-to-peer or “word-of-mouse” marketing improves the reach of campaigns. E-mail is one of the best tools to achieve buzz marketing goals, since recipients can easily forward messages to friends, relatives or colleagues. Creative marketers can influence forwarding behavior by including ideas and information that are worth forwarding, thereby leveraging online social networks.
What do consumers think about e-mail marketing?
Answer Percentage of respondents
E-mail should replace telemarketing 54%
E-mail should replace sales calls 45%
E-mail should replace direct mail 40%
E-mail should replace retail offers and coupons 33%
1.2
Creating effective campaigns
E-mail is inexpensive, fast and easy; so many companies do not prioritize e-mail marketing sufficiently. Poorly executed e-mail marketing practices can be expensive.
Poorly managed, spam e-mail campaigns can have a negative impact on branding efforts. A company’s reputation is built on all of the contact points that a company has with its customers and a poorly managed e-mail campaign does little to build a positive relationship with
customers and prospects. Quris, an American e-mail marketing company, found that almost 50 percent of customers stop doing business with companies that have poor e-mail practices.
Organizations need to approach e-mail marketing strategically and as part of their overall communication plan. They need to invest in e-mail campaigns and tools with the same professionalism as they would any other type of marketing collateral.
What prompts e-mail recipients to forward e-mails?
1 Content is relevant for their friend, relative or colleague
2 The e-mail is funny
3 The e-mail is work-related
4 The e-mail is informative
5 The e-mail is ‘cool’
6 The e-mail uses new technology
7 The e-mail provides a promotion such as a prize or coupon Source: IMT Strategies
2
Successful e-mail strategies
In many countries the legal framework for e-mail marketing is opt-in permission marketing. Marketing guru Seth Godin first introduced the term permission marketing to describe an alternative to the classical push marketing, in which one-way mass marketing messages inundate consumers. Godin’s vision was to build long-term relationships with customers by granting customers voluntarily relationships with companies and brands. This vision was prophetic.
Today, consumers want to control the advertising message. The explosion of media channels and products forces marketers to create interactive, personalized and relevant relationships with specific customer segments.
Opt-in is a practical translation of permission marketing used specifically for e-mail marketing. Customers opt to receive marketing messages by subscribing to newsletters or e-mail lists. By focusing on specific customer segments, analyzing the needs of these segments, and
translating the needs into leads, marketers can raise their chances of success.
Customers enter permission relationships with companies and brands because they benefit from the relationship. Marketers need to be clear about these benefits to their customers.
2.1
Commercial benefits
All consumers like a good deal. So it not surprising that e-mail marketing promotions,
vouchers, coupons and discounts are effective. Interactive Prospect Targeting Ltd (IPT) found that discounts frequently trigger positive consumer reactions to e-mails. The following table shows some the top reason why recipients open commercial e-mails. Organizations can use these trigger factors to optimize the open-rate of e-mail campaigns.
2.2
Value-added benefits
A direct personal benefit provides customer and businesses with incentives to subscribe to e-mail marketing database. These e-e-mail recipients look for content and services that save time or money, or that can make them smarter, happier, richer, more beautiful or more successful.
Value-added benefits come from a wide variety of content and services. These benefits need to align with an organization’s core business, the subject and purpose of the mailing, and the interests of recipients. Some examples of these benefits can include exclusive content such as white papers, fun content such as games, practical content such as tips and tricks, product FAQs and news alerts.
By providing these kinds of incentives, recipients are more likely to subscribe and open and act on e-mail campaigns.
Why do recipients open commercial e-mail?
1 Bargains, promotions and discounts
2 General interest in the product or service
3 Sweepstakes, competitions, prizes and games
4 Known and trusted senders
5 Relevance and added value of the content and information
6 Design and images
7 Fun factors
Source: a comparison of various studies conducted by companies such as TNF NFO, Jupiter, Emarketeer and E-mailLabs
3
The e-mail marketing process
This chapter summarizes the steps organizations should plan and execute for e-mail marketing campaigns and provides tips and advice about how to make e-mail marketing truly deliver.
3.1
Define the marketing scope
When planning your e-mail campaign, you need to identify the purpose of your campaign. Before pushing the ‘send’ button, consider the following questions:
What marketing or sales goals do you want to achieve? What customer segments do you want to reach?
What type of content or services should you send the customer?
Who will you work with for the different aspects of your e-mail campaign: database, dispatch, creative, copy, follow-up, etc?
What impact will the e-mail campaign have on your internal organization?
Is your staff prepared for campaign follow-up activities? (For example, enquiries from customers, the leads generated and so on.)
Where does the e-mail campaign fit in your overall marketing strategy? What budget do you have for each one of these aspects?
The next few pages discuss some answers to these questions.
3.2
Defining the target group and constructing an e-mail list
To define marketing or sales objectives, organizations need to identify the target audience. The best e-mail marketing campaigns customize sales offers or information based on specific customer segments. Customization requires professional e-mail marketing tools, content management tools and a properly segmented database.
You should also be able to incorporate input from the e-mail campaign into your database. This type of information can be used to personalize e-mail marketing. The following section provides some advice you can use to start or enhance your list.
Building an e-mail list from scratch
In the absence of a detailed, up-to-date customer database, how can you start to build an e-mail marketing database? This database should identify consumers and companies that are
truly interested in your e-mail marketing messages. You need to find consumers who are willing to part with personal information in exchange for information from your organization. This section provides some techniques you can use to build an e-mail marketing list from scratch.
Web site subscription – Web site subscription forms enable site visitors to subscribe to your list. Here are some guidelines for online subscriptions:
Keep the form simple and do not ask for too many details.
Ensure that you state your privacy policy and unsubscribe policy clearly.
Explain exactly what visitors can expect from their subscription by linking to examples. Send an automatic e-mail to confirm the registration.
Give the subscription form a clearly defined space on your Web site.
The honey pot – Many organizations offer password protected information, services and value-added content that visitors can access if they subscribe or provide some personal data. You can add extra fields to subscription forms that offer e-mail subscriptions. Apply the same rules as listed under “Web site subscription”. Do not trick visitors by hiding this option or by pre-selecting an opt-in as a default value. You can create trust by giving visitors clear choices.
Offline interaction – You can use any customer or prospect interaction to invite customers and prospects to subscribe to your e-mail list. This can include face-to-face contact, print collateral, letterhead, invoices and business cards.
Third-party databases – You can build your list using existing e-mail newsletters and permission-based marketing programs. These programs include e-newsletters from neutral publishers and opt-in e-mail programs managed by e-mail marketing companies. These types of databases may identify customer segments that fit your target groups. To ensure trust, you should not buy e-mail addresses from list brokers that do not use permission-based
subscriptions.
Buzz marketing recruitment campaigns – One of the tools that many Internet marketing firms use are word-of-mouth, social network techniques. These types of campaigns may include games or contests in which entrants can invite friends and colleagues to participate. Interactive marketing agencies can provide specialized information about this kind of technique.
E-mail signatures – E-mail signatures often contain contact details. Marketers can include corporate messages in their e-mail signatures to invite recipients to subscribe to your
newsletter. For organizations that have a corporate e-mail signature policy, this technique can provide subscription information to a huge range of recipients. Imagine your company has 50 employees all of whom send out 40 e-mails a day: the e-mail signature can provide 2000 contacts the option of subscribing to your e-mail campaign.
Preparing corporate databases for e-mail marketing
This section describes the ways in which organizations can use their corporate database for e-mail campaigns.
You should not simply send e-mails from your existing contact or prospect database. Even if conditions permit you to send e-mail to these contacts, you should always get permission before initiating e-mail campaigns. In addition to legal and ethical considerations, it is much more relevant and economical to focus on those who want e-mail contact. You are much more likely to ensure effective communication and create real customers if they have agreed to this type of contact.
Although only a small percentage of these contacts may grant permission, you ensure effective contact with those who are genuinely interested in your company. In addition, contacts will often only agree to e-mail communication if they see a clear benefit. Define your content based on target audience interests and your marketing objectives.
Obtaining e-mail addresses
If your database does not contain e-mail addresses for all of your customers, there are many methods you can use to get this information. Choose your strategy based on cost, existing relationships with customers and any other factors that can optimize your success. To obtain e-mail addresses you can use an internal or external call centre, run a recruitment campaign, cross-reference data in your database with external databases, and so on.
Sending a one-time-only invitation e-mail
In some countries, organizations can send a single e-mail without customer permission to invite them to subscribe. Only use this technique if your e-mail strategy is well defined. Ensure that you use the right message and that your offering is appealing.
Optimizing your database
In addition to using your customer database to provide e-mail contacts, you need to assess if your contact profile information is complete and the types of information that would enhance your e-mail campaign strategy. To be effective, e-mail marketing requires a well-qualified, detailed database.
For example, imagine you are a marketer for a financial company and you want to promote your life insurance policy. You probably need to tailor your messages to the characteristics of different groups such as senior citizens, young parents and students: senior citizens receive information that focuses on financial security; the young parents receive the same
advertisement but with more focus on the financial future of their children; and students receive a message that concentrates on a secure financial start to their adult life.
While this kind of detailed information about your customers is invaluable, you need to ensure that potential subscribes are not scared off by asking overly intrusive questions. Do not ask them everything you can possibly think of. Their shoe size may not be relevant if you are selling software.
Instead, define the data that you need first. You can use subsequent e-mail campaigns and programs to obtain more details.
3.3
E-mail content and design
People subscribe to newsletters if the newsletter provides tangible benefits.
Pharmaceutical companies can send newsletters with practical diet information. Or perhaps banks can send out regular bulletins with investment tips. Or maybe a travel agency can send out special last-minute promotions (after all, who does not want to a cheap trip to the Spanish Coast?) Or a newsletter can be just plain fun…
E-mails that reflect subscriber profiles, needs and wishes can be used to drive subscriptions, build traffic, create sales and retain customers.
A recent study by ROI Research showed that content relevance and sender recognition has a dramatic impact on whether recipients open an e-mail or not and on conversion rates.
3.4
Content is key
Generating concepts and ideas, e-mail marketing tools and databases, creating effective design, and writing effective e-mail copy all have associated costs.
You need to decide how to source content depending on the kind of e-mail you want to send (news, promotions, added-value services, product campaigns, etc.). You can use internal sources, such as your marketing department, or external sources, such as external marketing agencies. You may even want a bit of both.
Budgeting and planning e-mail content, tools and services can strategically improve the effect of your campaigns.
About content
The following section provides some ideas about the content and services that you can provide in your e-mails. When making decisions about content, always remember your customer and perceived value.
Promotions, discounts and last-minute offers – Attractive promotions and last-minute offers can deliver real cash value to price-sensitive consumers and companies.
Sweepstakes and prize games – Customers like to save money and they also like to win. Sweepstakes, prize games and online events are effective and can prompt buzz marketing.
News – The most common type of content in e-mail newsletters is news. Newsletters are often electronic versions of printed newsletter.
As with print company newsletters, e-newsletters often contain company news, product information and industry information. Newsletter goals and subscriber information can be used to determine the mix of neutral information and company news. For example, shareholder newsletters focus on company news, newsletters for manufacturers focus on product
announcements, and newsletters for bank clients focus on investment tips and financial news.
Opinions, articles and interviews – News is one thing, analysis is another. Analysis and advice provided opinion leaders can add value to a newsletter. Be careful when deciding how much information you provide in your newsletter, since one of the purposes of a newsletter is traffic-building. E-mail is not the best format for lengthy articles and very few people want to
read a novel in an e-mail. However, a “teaser” to a full-length article can lead recipients to your Web site.
Statistics and graphics – Statistics and graphics can provide recipients with useful insight. In addition to added value, this kind of content complies with e-mail formats, providing easily accessible information.
Q&As and FAQs – Customer knowledge, best-practice advice and answers to frequently asked questions can reduce the strain on your customer support departments and provide your recipients with practical information.
Tips and tricks – You can provide practical tips that enable your customers to be more productive. This kind of information promotes customer retention and provides targeted content for customers with specific areas of interest.
Case studies and testimonials – Another source of valuable information to your readers are case studies that describe how your customers have used your products and services
successfully. Customers can learn and benefit from this information and you can reinforce your brand and image.
Polls and surveys – You can use e-mail marketing to find out what your customers think about your company, products and strategy. Many marketing automation and e-mail marketing tools enable you to set up surveys within HTML e-mails or you can simply create a link to an online survey webpage.
And much more… This overview is not exhaustive. There are innumerable services and content that you can offer e-mail recipients including fun content, such as games, quizzes or trivia, quotes, a message from the CEO and so on and so forth.
3.5
Sender and subject
An e-mail has three parts: the message (body), the sender (from) and the subject line. The message is crucial, expressing you main messages but you should not neglect the sender and the subject.
The sender and the subject are the first things a recipient sees. Not every receiver will open your e-mail. The open rate for an e-mail depends on many variables such as the tasks the recipients are performing, the frequency with which they access their e-mail and the appeal of your subject line.
Research shows that 64 percent of e-mail users open an e-mail based on the sender. Even if your e-mail is expected, you need to attract the attention of the recipient through an interesting subject line.
In addition to legitimate mails, recipients receive a barrage of spam on a daily basis. Your e-mail can get lost in flood of unwanted e-mail. According to several studies, the average open rate for opt-in e-mails is between 35 to 40 percent.
A word about spam
More than two-third of all e-mail messages are spam. Most spam is sent from the U.S., American authorities have started to combat spam by introducing opt-out e-mail legislation, and by taking a number of spammers to court.
Nevertheless, the problem remains. An estimated 80 percent of American e-mail traffic is spam. Many Internet service providers and companies combat spam using spam filters. These automatic filters often block out legitimate e-mail as well.
Jupiter Research estimates erroneously blocked e-mail cost 230 million USD in 2003 and that this figure will double by 2008. Marketers need to learn how to by-pass these filters by
adapting sender, subject and body content.
An e-mail subject and sender e-mail are like the envelope used for a direct mail campaign. The envelope alone can determine if customers read the content or if they throw it away.
Here are some tips to help you optimize your sender and subject lines:
Ensure that the recipients know who is sending the e-mail. Do not repeat words in the sender line and the subject line. Include your brand in the subject line or sender line.
Keep your subject line short. A study from E-mailLabs shows a 12.5 percent higher open rate for subject lines under 49 characters versus subject lines with more than 50
characters.
Avoid overtly commercial terminology such as ‘free’ since spam-filters do not like them. Speak the language of your recipient.
Present active, personal, appealing subject lines rather than neutral subject lines. Be honest. Provide what you promised in the subject line.
The design
A few years ago, there was a lot of discussion surrounding whether e-mail should be sent in HTML or text format. These days, this discussion is less of an issue because most consumers can read HTML newsletters and often prefer them.
HTML enables organizations to personalize and track e-mail results. In addition, HTML e-mails provide greater creative, interactive and branding possibilities. You can ask your subscribers what they prefer. Outbound E-mail automatically sends a text or HTML version of e-mails based on subscriber profiles or e-mail reader capabilities.
You should take a number of elements into account when defining the structure and layout of your e-mail. These elements include the technical limitations of e-mail programs, usability, your corporate identity, branding, messages and your target audience. Some design principles to adhere to include:
Avoid technology showcases – Newsletter design should relate to message. Align the newsletter design and complexity with the type of message you want to convey.
Computer screens– E-mail is often displayed in small preview windows. Ensure that the recipient sees the most interesting content first. Choose a clear, well-structured design with paragraphs, easily read fonts, white space and subheadings.
Short attention span – People read e-mail quickly, scanning the content for items of interest. This requires straightforward design and clear text.
KISS content – Keep it simple stupid. Short sentences and clear language improve readability. Readers should not have to re-read content to understand it.
It is all about the reader – Do not just talk about your organization and products. Talk about and to the target audience you want to reach.
3.6
Landing pages
Hyperlinks can direct subscribers directly to your showroom leading them to purchase or register. Surprisingly, many companies do not take advantage of this option and neglect to provide a professional landing page.
Landing pages should direct customers to where you want them and ensure a good conversion rate by fulfilling the promises of the e-mail.
Hyperlinks that fall on the company homepage may not be successful. For example, if the e-mail promotes an event, the landing page should be a registration page for that event, taking your recipient from interest to action.
3.7
Sending e-mail
This section examines some aspects of how e-mails are sent. The use of Outbound E-mail can greatly improve the sending process; however, there are more issues to consider before you press the send button.
Timing
According to ReturnPath, e-mail delivery rates can by 10 percent depending on the time and day messages are sent.
The answer to the question “When should I send my e-mail” is not “Tuesday morning at 5:00 am.” The answer lies in identifying your purpose, target group and message. Find out when the largest part of your target group is online and has time to read your e-mail. For example, if you want to reach office workers in their place of work, do not send an e-mail on Saturday morning. By the time these recipients come to work on Monday morning, their inbox will be full of spam. Many B2B organizations send e-mail in the morning on weekdays to reach their recipients at work.
To figure out when to send your e-mail, track the results of your campaign and compare these results with the times that you sent the e-mail. You may discover some useful patterns.
Note that if you do not use a professional e-mail marketing tool, your e-mail may take hours or days to reach all recipients depending on the size of your database.
Best days on the World Wide Web
According to a survey by OneStat, a Dutch Web analytics company, Monday is the busiest day for Internet traffic. You can reach many target groups on Monday. Tuesdays are the second busiest days for Internet traffic. Internet traffic then tails off towards the end of the week and hits a weekly low on weekends.
Frequency
Recipients do not like to receive e-mail too frequently. The following table summarizes some of the biggest frustrations for e-mail users.
Recipients unsubscribe if you send too many e-mails. Unsubscribe rates and declining conversation rates may indicate that your frequency is too high.
You can allow recipients to select frequency. By providing options such as daily newsletters, weekly summarizes, and monthly digests you give recipients this choice.
You also need to decide whether to send e-mails at specific intervals, or when there is specific news. Newsletters and direct e-mail marketing may have different requirements. You can create a weekly habit or provide an unexpected surprise depending on your objectives for the campaign.
3.8
Handling campaign responses
Many companies are not prepared for responses to e-mail campaigns. Your organization needs to be prepared for this response and any inquiries your campaign prompts. This includes e-mail inquires and other forms of direct queries.
Studies show that many companies are not ready. American Benchmark Portal found that 41 percent of the North American companies they analyzed simply do not respond to e-mail responses. Only 39 percent of the companies surveyed answered e-mails inquiries within 24 hours.
Biggest e-mail frustrations
1 Suspicion that the company has sold their e-mail address.
2 Unsubscribe requests are not respected.
3 They have received too many e-mail messages from a sender.
4 The e-mails have no added value.
5 They receive too much e-mail in general.
6 The content of the e-mail does not match their interests. Source: Quris
Consumers expect and demand quick responses to e-mails. Delays can lose deals, money, and customers. Quick responses reinforce brand, company image and reputation. Slow responses weaken reputation of your organization.
The fifth annual e-mail marketing study conducted by DoubleClick indicates that 45 percent of consumers expect to receive an answer to e-mail inquiries within 24 hours.
3.9
Closing the loop: analyzing, learning and improving
E-mail marketing does not end after an e-mail is sent. In addition to organizing and planning an e-mail campaign, follow up is essential. You need to analyze the impact of your past e-mail campaigns to ensure the success of future campaigns.
Outbound E-mail enables you to quantitatively measure the parameters of success:
Open-rate – the percentage of e-mails that are opened compared to the number of e-mails sent
Click-through rate– the percentage of recipients that clicked on a hyperlink in your newsletter.
How quickly do you expect to get a response when you interact via e-mail?
Answer % of respondents Immediately 7 Within 1 hour 15 Within 6 hours 13 Within 12 hours 9 Within 24 hours 45 Within 2 days 9 Within a week 1 Within a month 1
View-through rate – the number of recipients that responded to an interactive campaign or that visited the Web site within a specified time frame after the campaign.
Forward rate or viral rate – the number of times that an e-mail is forwarded.
Conversion rate– the percentage of recipients who performed an action as a result of the e-mail.
You can learn a lot about your customer’s behavior and preferences by linking the results of e-mail campaigns with CRM applications. You can use this to focus on specific target groups and to improve future campaigns.
Measuring is understanding. Understanding is optimizing. Optimizing is selling. And that is what e-mail marketing is all about.
4
Outbound E-mail
For today’s organizations, the marketing challenge is more intense than ever before.
Globalization, multi-channel options, customer touch points and changing customer demands leave you with little room for error. Small windows of opportunity and tight budgets put marketing professionals under extreme pressure to deliver more in a short period of time. Marketing professionals need to control marketing messages and collateral to convey the right message faster and consistently across multiple channels, to multiple locations.
4.1
Choosing an appropriate e-mail marketing solution or partner
So far, this paper described how to define an e-mail marketing strategy and how to establish an e-mail marketing database. This section describes how you implement an e-mail marketing campaign.
Any Internet user can sent an e-mail, but what happens if you send an e-mail to hundreds, maybe thousands, of people at the same time? You could send an e-mail and then just sit back see what happens or you can find out who has seen your e-mail and what they did with it. You need a strategy for dealing with invalid e-mail addresses to ensure that you are not inundated with hundreds of return e-mails. Moreover, you need a way to draft, personalize and design e-mails that are appealing and consistent.
Professional tools can help you with these sorts of tasks. To create measurable, manageable and appealing e-mail campaigns that reinforce your marketing strategy, you can create e-mail campaigns using a content management system. Content management tools can enable you to assemble, brand and personalize e-mail campaigns.
Professional tools enable you to segment your database, compose messages, personalize content, test, send, measure and analyze e-mail campaigns. By linking your e-mail marketing tool with your content management system, you can automate and personalize your e-mail campaigns. By integrating with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can coordinate all marketing efforts, enhancing marketing and sales processes.
4.2
Outbound E-mail
Outbound E-mail™ puts you back in control of your marketing content. Outbound E-mail is for marketing departments that need to implement and manage e-mail communication campaigns.
Outbound E-mail provides e-mail content management and distribution capabilities enabling marketing departments to deliver personalized e-mails to specific audiences. Unlike third party e-mail solutions, Outbound E-mail allows organizations to optimize the reuse of content and track the effectiveness of their communication.
Outbound E-mail is fully integrated with Content Manager™, enabling you to coordinate your marketing communication using a centralized tool in which all content is managed from a single repository. In addition to the benefits of basic content management functionality, Outbound E-mail can also use advanced features such as BluePrinting, Workflow, and Versioning.
Outbound E-mail enables you to add value to your marketing operations and campaigns, creating a competitive advantage for your organization.
Marketing benefits
You can increase your brand value by localizing marketing resources across online and offline channels and ensure that your marketing processes are aligned and consistent.
Outbound E-mail enables you to communicate quickly and effectively through personalized, permission-based e-mail campaigns.
5
About SDL Tridion
SDL Tridion is a global leader in Web Content Management (WCM) solutions. In addition to content creation, management, translation, delivery and archiving solutions, SDL Tridion provides brand management, targeted communication, multi-channel delivery and visitor interaction capabilities.
SDL Tridion enables organizations to provide a persuasive customer experience through all of their front-office activities. Corporate communication, marketing and customer service can ensure that their communication connects with their key target audiences.
Unlike other WCM products, SDL Tridion’s enterprise class WCM solution and unique BluePrinting technology enables organizations to deliver a consistent, interactive, and highly targeted customer experience in multiple languages and across multiple Web sites and channels.
More than 430 organizations rely on SDL Tridion solutions, including well-known global brands such as ABN AMRO, BBVA, breastcancer.org, Canon, Emirates, KLM, Lexus, Renault, Ricoh, Sanofi-Aventis, Scania, Toyota, Unilever and Yamaha. SDL Tridion has offices and partners throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information about SDL Tridion, please visit www.sdltridion.com
SDL Tridion is a division of SDL, the leader in global information management (GIM) solutions. For more information about SDL, please visit www.sdl.com
Contact information
E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.sdltridion.com
Copyright © 2007 by SDL Tridion.
SDL Tridion®, SDL Tridion R5™, BluePrinting™, SiteEdit™ and WebForms™ are trademarks of SDL Tridion or its affiliates. All other company or product names used herein may be trademarks of its respective owners.
