Marketing to Inactive List Members

Some marketers feel that if a member of their email list has been inactive for a great length of time, that the list might be better served by deleting the name -- even if the list member themself has not requested to be unsubscribed. This has to do with the ego and expectations of the list owner more than the preference of the list member.

They say:

• Inactive list members create lower percentages of open rates
• Inactive list members lower the ratio of clicks
• Inactive members lower the percentage of return on investment

You know what else inactive list members can do?
Account for 10% of your total annual sales, or even generate over $115,000 in a single campaign!

The DMA Email Marketing Blog has an interesting post up redefining "inactives" as "emotionally unsubscribed." They cite several instances where a significant number inactive list members have been triggered to take action based on their personal 'itch cycle.'

In one case, over $115,000 dollars was generated by making a special offer (a really great offer) to those list members who'd not click on the previous 25-40 past offers. Another statistic showed that over 10% of the revenue generated in 2008 had been contributed to the bottom line by list members who had not opened or clicked a single message in the previous year.

The lesson is to not over-obsess about inactive members on your list. Just because not everyone feels compelled to read every single missive you send, doesn't mean they won't remember you when their needs match your offers.

How Does Your Marketing Measure Up?

Read a great article in the latest MarketingProfs "Get To The Point" newsletter on Marketing Analytics. They recap a post from the Email Experience Blog on measuring the success of email marketing campaigns. This specifically addresses email, but the principle applies to ALL marketing efforts and the importance of pre-establishing metrics for success.

The blog post says data gathered on email marketing campaigns might not be as useful as you think. "Real danger lurks in not measuring the right factors or not measuring accurately. You could suffer lost revenue. You might not know which messages are working. And your sales team won't know what to focus on."

There are just SO many different things you can measure in marketing (especially online marketing), that it's extremely difficult to agree upon industry benchmarks in order to make effective comparisons. People are focusing on impressions or clicks or only those clicks that lead to a single sale.

The purpose of any marketing is to trigger an ACTION. Actions could include:

• Forward to a friend
• Signing up for a mailing list or additional informaiton
• Visit to a physical store location
• Attend an event
• Buy a product

It's vital to have a clear view of your client's specific goal for the campaign's marketing message and for the results on which the campaign will be judged. In order to meet those goals, tools must be in effect to capture the correct data by which effectiveness can be judged. As they say in the article... "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."

Who's Yer GoDaddy?

Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com is doing a great job of providing entertaining, yet informative, video content for his customers. What sort of content, advice, and expertise are you providing to YOUR clients?

Got Opt-Ins? ..Now What??

So, your client ran a promotion with you that contained some sort of sign-up form which offered an "opt-in" -- a mechanism used to allow our audience to signal their interest in receiving additional information from the Advertiser. The individuals who choose to opt-in can then be used to develop permission-based marketing programs by our clients.

The very WORST thing an Advertiser can do is to let these most-qualified and most-interested leads (they responded to the Advertiser's message AND gave them permission to be contacted!) is to let them fade away unused. You wouldn't hang up the phone on someone who called your office and said they wanted to buy something, would you? The more time that passes between a person opting-in to a list and actually being contacted increases the likelyhood they will have forgotten theay actually signed up for the list in the first place and will either immediately opt-out of the first message they receive -- or worse yet -- report the message as SPAM, which can get the Advertiser immediately blacklisted by many email services (like gmail, yahoo, and aol.)

Here is some excellent advice from Kevin Sinclair at How-To B2B Articles on what your client can do to effectively build relationships with their new opt-in audience.

Tip of the Week
Want to cut word count and boost readership in one step? Showcase a Tip of the Week. You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters (you need to come up with 24 tips, which you will present weekly.)

Checklists
A good checklist is like a step-by-step how-to. Turn a lengthy advice column into one. Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one.

Before-and-After
Who doesn't like makeovers? This is a great way to interact with clients. Invite them to send in details of whatever needs a makeover: an article, a website page, their wardrobe, then present brief solutions -- or ask for examples of their own in-house makeovers.

Source: How-To B2Barticles. Read the full article here.

Email Campaigns Need Better Landing Pages

Landing pages linked from e-mail marketing campaigns generally fail to grab attention quickly, according to a review of 150 Web sites by Silverpop, a Web marketing solutions provider. Furthermore, some pages are confusing and cluttered, prompting the visitor to quickly leave.

Silverpop set out to evaluate marketers’ approaches, and registered to receive e-mails from 150 top online companies. Landing pages reached from messages’ clicking links were evaluated for 14 different elements, such as matching the e-mail leading to the page and/or the company's Web site, ease of navigation, amount of copy, and design formats.

Among the key findings of the report, "Eight Seconds to Capture Attention: Silverpop's Landing Page Report":

45% of landing pages didn't repeat the strong promotional copy found in the e-mail, thus failing to reinforce the call-to-action that prompted the e-mail recipient to click a link in the first place.

35% of the landing pages analyzed didn't match the e-mails’ look.

35% of the landing pages didn't include an opt-in request. It’s essential to ask visitors to register because they may have arrived at your landing page without being in your database. For example, someone else might have forwarded the landing page’s link to the visitor.

29% of BtoC companies posted landing pages that didn't match the e-mail, compared to 41 percent of BtoB companies.

17% of e-mail marketing campaigns failed to deliver on the promise inherent in the message's call-to-action, and merely dumped recipients to a company’s Web site home page.

"E-mail marketers spend a lot of time and energy creating targeted, relevant campaigns, but then fail to carry the ball across the goal line due to lackluster landing pages," said Elaine O'Gorman, vice president of strategy for Silverpop, in a statement. "Landing page optimization can have a tremendous impact on e-mail marketing success rate."

"Using a home page as a landing page can be confusing,” O'Gorman said. “It's much better to create a landing page unique to the e-mail campaign whenever possible."

New Media Budgets

87.4% of Executives to Invest in New Media Marketing
Confidence in new media is on the rise, according to the American Advertising Federation's AAF Media Investment Survey 2007. Results show a growing inclination among executives to augment traditional media with new media properties and experimentation, and responses indicate that traditional media categories are in serious need of innovation if they are to remain competitive.

A full 87.4% of respondents believe that the pace and scope of innovation in the media landscape inspire creativity, and they are willing to invest their budgets to harness that creativity.

Other findings:

• 73% of respondents reserve 1%-20% of their budget for experimentation and new media properties.
  
• 12.37% of respondents reserve 21%-40% of their budget for experimentation and new media properties.
  
• Concerning media planning in 2007, respondents ranked "I am always open to new ways to use traditional media" at 78%, "the right media mix almost always includes a balance of traditional and nontraditional media" at 75.5%, and "the search for new media properties to grow my brand never stops" at 57.7%.

On Similar Topic...
Email is a key point of influence for consumer purchase decisions, according to the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions research released in January by Word Of Mouth Marketing Association member company Microsoft. The findings suggest that many of consumers' major decisions are influenced by email conversations with friends and family and point to the medium as a place where marketers can insert messages that might impact consumers during the decision-making process.

Other findings:

• 45% of frequent online users say email is their primary form of communication.
  
• 66% of male and 81% of female respondents discuss social arrangements (what films, concerts, or events to see or where to eat) via email.
  
• 41% of men discuss financial services purchases via email.
  
• 77% of women discuss travel plans via email.

Combining the stats regarding company intention to invest in new media with the information regarding how people use email ought to provide some interesting VBRs for contacting prospects to sponsor our emails newsletters.