Drip Marketing: Slow and Steady Wins the Customer

Inside CRM - San Francisco,CA,USA
Email marketing is a particularly tricky business because of spam's current choke hold on email campaigns. In fact, most people who get a message from a read on...

See all stories on this topic from google

Email database a click away

NEWS.com.au - Australia
And If you're not using a custom-built email database to communicate with your customers, you are running behind, an e-marketing expert says. read on...

Email marketing can play role in 'drip' promotional campaigns

Business Strata - Business News - Farnborough,Hampshire,UK
Direct marketing formats such as mail and email can play a role in carefully planning "drip" campaigns, according to an expert. Writing on InsideCRM.com, read on...

SUBSCRIBERS RULE!

ExactTarget, a leading provider of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions, announces the launch of its SUBSCRIBERS RULE! initiative aimed at educating marketers on the importance of respecting subscriber preferences when sending marketing messages. Key aspects of the initiative include a newly-launched blog, www.subscribersrule.com, that covers subscriber-centric marketing practices, and a whitepaper series that helps marketers leverage email and other one-to-one communication channels to optimize relationships with their most loyal customers.
The 'SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy consists of three simple tenets:
-- Serve the individual
-- Honor their unique preferences with regard to communication, content, frequency and channel
-- Deliver them timely, relevant content that improves their lives
read on...

The Right Way to Trim Inactives

ClickZ Expert - Stefan Pollard
The Right Way to Trim Inactives
More E-MAIL DELIVERY E-MAIL DELIVERY

By Stefan Pollard, The ClickZ Network, Sep 24, 2008
Columns | Contact Stefan | Biography

Whenever marketers deal with e-mail delivery challenges, delivery experts often suggest first isolating active subscribers from inactive ones and then mailing only to their active files.

Seems like sound advice, but I've yet to meet a marketer who embraces the idea of removing even a single valid e-mail address, even if the holder of that address hasn't clicked on an e-mail in the last five years.

Some say they have long sales cycles. Others say they use e-mail as brand builders rather than sales or Web-traffic drivers. So, why chuck an address that one had to spend good money to get?

Many marketers will also try to find a strategy to minimize the loss, which I agree with completely.

We usually recommend pruning the deadwood because your most active subscribers generate all your traffic and revenue. You're not hurting your program by removing valid addresses that don't have any activity associated with them.

Also, activity is one metric that ISPs are starting to use when determining your sender reputation. A large volume of inactive e-mail recipients is considered junk by ISPs. Engaged and active recipients should generate the positive metrics ISPs look for, and will improve your overall reputation scores.

Who is an "Active Subscriber?"

This can be hard. Do you define a subscriber as active or inactive only on the basis of e-mail behavior? Remember: process metrics, most notably the open rate, are notoriously inaccurate. Someone who opens your messages without downloading images won't have that open recorded. The click rate is a better barometer, but it also doesn't measure the e-mail's effect on brand building or awareness.

When possible, mix in purchase activity and Web interactions, such as posting reviews, blog comments, and frequent browsing of categories. The data points you have at your disposal, and the ability to integrate them with subscriber metrics, can influence how you define an active subscriber.

Ultimately, it depends on what you consider a successful outcome of your e-mail. It could be the full path from open to click to conversion, just the click itself, or some other measure. But that is the one you should use to separate actives from inactives.

Having a well-defined system of identifying inactives is important so you can remove true inactives, not the people who are reading you in stealth mode and appear to have "emotionally unsubscribed."

How to Identify and Wake Up Inactives

The first and most important step in any reactivation campaign is identifying your audience. I recommend segmenting your audiences using the metric or factor you use to define inactivity, but don't change anything right away.

Send the same creative to your inactive segment that your active subscribers receive. Make sure your inactives truly don't respond. This provides the opportunity to refine your segmentation should you not properly identify the inactives on your first attempt.

Before you trim the deadwood, try to awaken inactives from their slumber with a well-planned reactivation campaign. Reactivation doesn't mean you can approach long-ignored addresses or unsubscribes. This approach can backfire and drive spam-complaint volumes up to the point where ISPs will block the e-mails you send to the truly active subscribers on your list.

Determine and Promote Subscriber Value

A clear message telling readers what benefits they can get as subscribers should be the centerpiece of your reactivation campaign. Sending out a pouty or poignant e-mail saying you miss them doesn't do this. Have they missed out on subscriber-only discounts, promotions, freebies, breaking-news events or other benefits of your program?

Every e-mail you send must provide value to the subscriber. E-mails that lack value also lack relevance. Irrelevant e-mail is often the reason subscribers unsubscribe, go inactive, or report a message as spam.

More than One Way to Reactivate

You might be tempted to cut to the chase and send out a threatening e-mail telling your inactives, "Click now or I won't send you any more e-mail!" A quick-and-dirty approach is sure to shrink your list. Moving the address out of your database is your last resort.

Instead, remember your normal message strategy isn't working, and you'll need to try several different and new approaches to reach your inactive subscribers:

  • Send non-responders a short questionnaire asking why they don't click.

  • Offer a welcome-back incentive, one that doesn't go out in your regular e-mails.

  • Encourage subscribers to update their preferences, change lists, change frequency, or communication channel (RSS feeds instead of e-mail).

  • Send less often, such as a monthly compilation e-mail instead of weekly, or weekly instead of daily.

  • Send a final goodbye e-mail which notes you will remove the address from your active database and no longer send e-mail; include links and an offer to reactivate just in case.

Avoid This Pitfall

I can't stress enough how important it is that your reactivation campaign doesn't remove active and valuable subscribers. Take the time to make sure you've really tried to save those addresses before letting go.

Efforts to remove non-responders can lift performance metrics, or solve delivery problems. However, avoid opt-out reactivation schemes that merely continue to drive large, unresponsive programs, which is the exact opposite of your goal.

Until next time, keep on deliverin'!

Join us for a new Webcast, High-Touch Personalization, The Successful Marketer's Secret Ingredient, September 29 at 2 p.m. EDT.

» Print this article » E-mail a colleague » Send feedback » Read feedback

Biography

As senior strategic consultant, Stefan Pollard is responsible for guiding Responsys clients in developing e-mail marketing and lifecycle messaging strategies to increase clients' ROI. Most recently, Stefan led the e-mail consulting program for Lyris clients, frequently speaking at industry events on best practices. Prior to that, he managed the audit process and consulted with clients to improve their e-mail delivery challenges for Habeas. As an e-mail marketer, he spent several years building and executing acquisition and retention campaigns at E-Loan and Cybergold.com.

» Contact Stefan Pollard

Article Archives by Stefan Pollard:
» The Right Way to Trim Inactives - September 24, 2008
» The Best E-mail Frequency? It Doesn't Exist - September 10, 2008
» Five Tips for Building Better Segments - August 27, 2008
» ISPs Continue to Reach Out - August 13, 2008
» Four E-mail-Blocking Causes and How to Fix Them - July 30, 2008
» Peeking at Someone Else's Paper? Watch Out! - July 16, 2008
» More Articles by Stefan Pollard

email marketing still on top

Tuesday 21st October 2008

New research has suggested that email marketing could be set to play a major part in many businesses' marketing strategies over the next year.

The study by eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit found 83.6 per cent of companies are planning to either increase or maintain the amount of money they spend on email in 2009.

In addition, the US findings, which may reflect UK trends, also highlighted that the channel was the least likely to experience a fall in the budget spent on it.

Jim Sterne, one of the authors of the report, said there may be two reasons behind the popularity of format.

"This may be due to the fact that email is relatively inexpensive compared to other channels or that many companies have found it demonstrably effective," he explained.

A recent poll by the Online Marketing Blog found that email marketing is among the top five promotional channels expected to be used by businesses in the next six months.

Companies 'misunderstand email marketing'

Businesses are missing sales opportunities because they do not understand how their email marketing strategies affect customers, it has been claimed ... read on
© Adfero Ltd - source: © 2007 ihotdesk Ltd 23 September 2008