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Published Article
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| Creating
Effective Opt-in E-Mail Campaigns |
| It's been said before,
but important to re-emphasize, e-mail is the "killer application"
of the information age. According to the latest Forrester Research
numbers, the permission based e-mail industry is projected to
grow from $164M (USD) in 1999 to $7.3B by 2005. E-mail is also
rapidly moving from a textual communications process to one
that is rich in multimedia content via server-based streaming
audio or video. Virtually anyone, even those with extremely
low bandwidth, can now view compelling content. Here
is a condensed primer for developing an effective opt-in e-mail
campaign:
| 1. |
First and
foremost, what is permission based or opt-in e-mail and
how is it distinguished from Spam? Opt-in or permission
based e-mail (the terms are interchangeable) means recipients
have confirmed their interest in receiving e-mail and
have signed up (hence the term opt-in) to receive e-mail
about a subject of their interest. The recipient may also
unsubscribe from the list at any time and all e-mail messages
are clearly identified as coming from a specific and approved
vendor or source.
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| 2. |
We do not
recommend Spam (unsolicited bulk e-mail messages) to our
clients, nor have we ever developed a campaign that is
not opt-in based. We think there is a growing backlash
to Spam and many of us (author included) are inundated
with it and delete it as soon as we recognize it.
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| 3. |
The actual
opt-in e-mail content is very important, like any interactive
marketing process. The subject itself needs to be succinct
and informative (as this is how most people filter e-mail),
the text in the message should be concise, with paragraphs
no more than 2-3 short sentences, customer references
should be referred to in the lead paragraph to drive the
rest of the message, have no more than two hyperlinks
embedded in the content, and utilize a close and signature
that thanks people for their time with a link (phone and
e-mail) to a "real" person.
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| 4. |
Many marketing
types don't know whether to use HTML (rich media) or textual
content. A standard rule of thumb is, if your target audience
is consumers, then many prefer the HTML format, due to
the snazzier graphical content; but, if you are targeting
corporate or technical types, the majority of them want
a message that is text only and one that leaves out any/all
marketing hype - just the concise facts.
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| 5. |
Costs
can vary dramatically depending on your target demographics
or market segment. A good rule of thumb is to expect rates
of $.05 (USD) to $.25 per message, depending on the size
of the media buy and frequency (the number of times you
are using a list), type of list demographics, vendor selection
(small publisher versus comprehensive services provider
such as YesMail), and market conditions in the interactive
advertising market.
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| 6. |
What
should a good campaign generate in terms of response rates;
i.e., those that clicked through from your message to
a web site or called a toll-free number? These numbers
will fluctuate based again upon your market segment, product
or service you are selling, type of response rate you
are seeking (download, e-commerce sale, review of materials
via a web site, etc.). But, industry averages are from
4% up to 20%. Unfortunately these numbers are going south
as more and more companies integrate opt-in e-mail with
interactive and offline marketing processes.
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| 7. |
Message testing
is also a very important component of this process. Meaning,
you need to develop 1-3 messages ("creative"
in marketing speak) that have different content and call
to action components. Then test by utilizing 10-15% of
your total media buy by sending out these test messages
and assessing the response rates and go to market with
the message that generated the highest return. Be forewarned,
this process can slow the campaign down, but testing can
help you increase your response rates or back end ROI
exponentially.
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| 8. |
Your interactive
ad agency or list partner should help you setup "landing
page(s)" - the actual page where people are taken
via a hyperlink in your opt-in e-mail message. This page
should have content that is integrated with your opt-in
message and act as a response mechanism by capturing sufficient
information to enable you to build your own in-house newsletter,
which in turn helps to leverage downstream media costs.
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| 9. |
Finally,
the last and most important part of the process is setting
up tracking reports that will enable you to carefully
analyze the results from your opt-in e-mail campaign.
This is typically done by inserting 1-2 lines of HTML
code on 3-5 pages of your web site (product overview,
registration, or home/index pages for instance). A report
can then be generated that shows the number of respondents
for each page as a subset of the overall response rates
from the campaign. This critical analysis process will
help you understand the effectiveness of your overall
campaign and will also provide valuable insight about
your web site content, UI (User Interface) and navigation.
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Lee Traupel has
20 plus years of marketing experience. He is the co-founder
of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately
held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services
to small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic
and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at
Lee@intelective.com.
Please click here to Contact us or call toll free 530.432.8764
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