Produced by the IDM

Email Marketing Buyer’s Guide

Now that web-based marketing has become firmly established on the marketing landscape we are seeing more organisations move into email marketing. The reasons for the popularity of email are fairly straightforward:

• It is possible to get messages to customers and prospects swiftly – in seconds rather than days anywhere in the world
• With no print, production or postage costs it is significantly cheaper than direct mail – think in terms of half a pence per message sent by email as opposed to fifty pence a pack for direct mail, or five pounds per effective telemarketing call.
• Fairly sophisticated personalisation of email messages enables marketers to deliver relevant, engaging communications.
• The ability to track campaign interaction (open rates, click-through rates, forward to friend activity) means that each campaign delivers a wealth of clickstream data at an individual level – ideal for use in future campaign planning

How are organisations using email marketing?

Originally restricted to “welcome” messages and regular “e-zines” or newsletters, email is now woven into many companies’ relationship marketing programme. For instance, some pioneering marketers are moving away from just sending out messages based on the rhythm of marketing life (newsletters every third Thursday of the month) to messaging based on actions and/or events in the customer lifecycle. 

Consider how much more engaging messages would be if they were based on the last time you flew with an airline, the destination you visited with a travel company, or the type of white-paper you downloaded from a website. Add in email programmes including reminders about important events, or alerts about new web content or exclusive new products and you have a medium that adds real value to a relationship with a customer.

As with all one-to-one media (direct mail, telemarketing) the rewards for getting email marketing right are high. You can reduce the cost of acquiring new customers, get lapsed buyers to re-purchase and increase the life-time value of customer segments. However, there are a few factors essential to long-term success…   

What are the most important considerations?

Focus on a few key areas to improve your chances of success. Here are the big areas to spend most of your time and effort on:

1.  Get your data gathering right

Gather the variables that you need to drive segmented, personalised communications, and ask people to update their details with “profile management” links on all emails and from web pages.

2. Use the right broadcast tools.

You will need to invest in campaign management and broadcast technology – there are dozens of providers out there. Pull together a simple outline of how many messages you’ll be broadcasting and what personalisation and reporting needs you have and ask a few organisations to tender – the Direct Marketing Association will be able to help, or search on-line for UK suppliers

3. Segment your database

Use any data that you have to break your customer file into discrete groups. Use recency, frequency and monetary purchase data, registration information, and even segment people based on what kind of links they click on – watch, don’t ask!

4.       Test

Email marketing is a wonderful medium for testing. Anybody who has used direct mail to test rented lists, offers or calls to action will know that it is a complex and time-consuming process. Email marketing is so swift that you can generate valuable lessons in days rather than weeks. Use “pre-tests” to mail a small segment of your data and determine which elements (list, subject line, creative, call to action etc) work best.

5. Measure

With virtually all the key campaign variables measurable you should keep track of the things that most affect Return on Investment. What is the quality and accuracy of data like from your call-centres? What is the open rate for customers who have bought in the last 3 months? And the last 12 months? What is the click-through rate for lapsed customers? What source do most of my un-susbscribes come through?

Next steps

Email marketing can be a wonderfully profitable medium because you can do things more quickly, more cheaply and in a more engaging way than many other channels. Talk to technology suppliers, attend seminars and training courses at the IDM and the IAB, read articles by industry commentators and get hold of email marketing benchmark data from people like the Direct Marketing Association. Try and do something – there is so much to learn and you need to start somewhere. It will be the start of a wonderfully profitable journey!

David Hughes

Strategic Consultant

Non-Line Marketing

www.nonlinemarketing.com