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Email Marketing Expert Advice


3rd party list rental – does size really matter?

When deciding to use 3rd party email activity, as most people know it is important to always use reputable companies who comply with UK law and follow best practice. It is also important to challenge what at first impressions can seem like a good deal. Some claims and offers are not always as good as they might seem.

“The largest data company in the UK” or “Access to over x million people opted in to receive third party mailings”

Any claim about size is not necessarily going to be relevant to your campaign. All you are interested in is the number of people who fit the profile you are targeting and would be genuinely interested in hearing about what you have to say. Sending emails to people not interested, no matter how cheap it is, can have a negative impact on your brand not a positive one.

“Guaranteed open and click through rates”

What you need to remember is that it is the end action you need to be monitoring - sales or people positively interacting with your brand. Someone opening the email to unsubscribe or click to a page to complain is not going to benefit your marketing campaign. Also in order to achieve the guarantees the company may send the same person multiple emails.

Payment of cost per acquisition

This at first glance seems like an ideal way to minimize risk. However it means you have no or little input into who sees your marketing message. The aim of the supplier is to get as many people as possible to interact and this often relates to sending it to as many people with no consideration to the negative impact.

Why is Negative impact such a big deal?

It is easy to dismiss the negative and just concentrate on the people who do receive the message and positively interact with it. However, this can be a mistake as now not only do people talk to each other in the real world the mass use of social media means that negative comments can spread wide and far. The chances of someone searching for reviews or comments on your company, product or service are high and because of this you need to factor this as a serious consideration when planning and implementing marketing activity.

How to make sure 3rd party list rental is a positive experience

  • Make sure you know how everyone who is going to receive your message gave their permission to be communicated with
  • Target Target Target
  • Beware and monitor any negative impact during any test

Source: DMA Email Marketing Council

Increase exposure of your email message with Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Whether you are a member of a social network or not, the fact is that most of your readers probably are. They are members of virtual social groups such as Twitter and Facebook that allow them to connect with “friends”, to exchange ideas, product reviews, personal notes etc.

Send your next email campaign with us and we will add social widgets*, at no extra charge, to your footer so when recipients receive your email, they can forward it to their colleagues and friends via their social network of choice.

They will have the option to choose from one or many of the following social networks: Twitter, Facebook, DiggIt, MySpace, Delicious and Google Bookmarks. So they will receive the newsletter, click on the social network link in the footer which takes them to their social network site. They are then prompted to sign in to their social network account, and the newsletter link (URL) will be pasted into their status line or news headline automatically – that’s it!

It’s a simple function that will have a major word-of-mouth effect for your business and products. What better advertising than having your own clients recommend you to their colleagues and friends, virtual or not!


Find out who has forwarded your email message

Once your message has been broadcast, we will include in your report your Social Widgets activity.


So what’s in the social widget report?

The decision by your recipients to share your message within their profile on any of the social networks means that all of their friends and followers can view it too. This means of course that your message and your brand are gaining exposure within an entirely new contacts network.

The report tells you the number of recipients who have clicked the widgets to share your message, who they shared with and which network it was – providing you with an easy way to track the level of exposure that your campaigns are getting through social media. With this media getting more and more in the spotlight, it is definitely one ‘bandwagon’ to climb aboard.

For information on Email Data Lists click here or for Email Broadcasting click here.

* Social widgets are links to the following social networks of your choice: Twitter, Facebook, DiggIt, MySpace, Delicious and Google Bookmarks

THE ONGOING CHALLENGES OF EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING

Latest research from the Direct Marketing Association* shows that whilst email marketing’s never been stronger, there are more challenges to overcome than ever before.

With inboxes becoming ever more crowded, catching and retaining a recipient’s interest is becoming increasingly challenging. Add to this the growth of other online communication channels such as social networks, social media, blogs, etc. and the demands on people’s time are growing.

New and existing email campaigns need to therefore be more valuable, more relevant, more timely and more targeted than before. Taking the time to test effective subject lines with clear and persuasive calls to action can have a huge impact on the success of a campaign.

Top level stats show:

  • Volume of acquisition emails up by 8%
  • Volume of retention emails down by 8%
  • Acquisition delivery rates fell to its lowest level since 2007 to 83%
  • Unique opens drop to 12%
  • Unique clickthroughs drop to 5%

Almost a third of sent emails were acquisition messages, significantly higher than in the previous two quarters.

The success of acquisition emails is less of a given than with retention, so it will be interesting to see whether acquisition campaigns remain popular in Q3.

“Forward to a friend” (FTF) links were 78% more popular than social network links. A recent survey** showed that “share with your network” (SWYN) links to sites such as Twitter or Facebook are far more effective than FTF in improving an email’s reach and response. We can therefore expect the FTF/SWYN ratio to change rapidly as a result.

One cause for concern, though, is delivery of acquisition email, where delivery rates fell for the third consecutive quarter to its lowest level (83%) since 2007. Inconsistent sending patterns, with email marketers seemingly jumping in and out of acquisition mailings, may be contributing to delivery troubles.

Open and clickthrough rates for acquisition email dropped sharply in Q2 2009 when compared to Q1. Unique opens fell by almost half to 12%, while unique clickthrough rates fell by 60% to 5%, the lowest rate for two years. Some of this drop is certainly due to inbox delivery problems, since click to open rates didn't fall nearly as precipitously.

Another explanation is the jump in acquisition campaigns. Initial acquisition emails reach the low-hanging fruit: highly-targeted, high-response lists. As investment in acquisition increases, marketers must expand to less targeted and lower-response list sources.

If we look back at Q3 2008, we see similarly poor response metrics and this was also the last quarter where the proportion of acquisition versus retention campaigns was so high.

The challenge with acquisition emails is always to find the level at which investment should stop. Burnt fingers syndrome might be contributing to the cyclical nature of investment in these campaigns. Success with a few acquisition efforts in successive quarters leads to interest in expansion to more email lists, causing response to drop and marketers to reign in acquisition investment strongly.

Campaign metrics for retention were steadier, with open rates largely unchanged from Q1 2009 and drops in clickthrough metrics. Paradoxically, click to open rates for retention emails actually rose in Q2 2009. Logically that's impossible given consistent open rates and falling clicks.

The explanation lies in reporting. Fewer UK Email Service Providers (ESPs) reported click to open rates and those that did tended to have better than average results. There is, perhaps, a lesson here. More data leads to safer interpretations and better insights. All thingsbeing equal, clients of those ESPs providing data-rich campaign reports are going to perform better in the long-term than those with less data at their disposal.

The click to open metric is especially important because it allows marketers to exclude the role of delivery problems when assessing the impact of subject lines, copy and offers on response, in turn leading to better decisions on future emails.

* Direct Marketing Association Q2 2009 National Email Marketing Benchmarking Report contains data collected during June, July and August 2009, specifically related to April, May and June 2009 data

** Silverpop (2009) Emails Gone Viral: Measuring 'Share-to-Social' Performance

How to boost your campaign statistics with A/B split testing

Have you noticed how the statistics you receive after every send sometimes vary? Have you tried improving on them? You may have speculated endlessly on what you can put in your subject line that will compel recipients to read it, or perhaps you’ve read countless articles on how to write the perfect content or create the perfect design.

A/B split testing takes the guesswork out of your campaigns.

Marketscan enables you to test variations of the same newsletter against each other with A/B split testing. You have the option of choosing to test either different subject lines or different newsletters against each other, to see which is most popular with your recipients. Should you choose to test your subject lines, you can compare up to 5 different subject lines, or, alternatively, you can test up to 5 different newsletters.

After deciding whether you want to test the subject lines or newsletters, you can select a percentage of your contacts you want to test the different variations on. We will then randomly select the specified number of recipients from your list and distribute the test newsletters to them.

Then sit back and wait for the statistics to come in. You’ll receive a table depicting the response to each newsletter, so you can then send the newsletter that performed best in the test to the remaining recipients on your list.

A/B split testing helps you with more targeted sends.

By regularly conducting A/B split testing you’ll be able to get more insight into what appeals to your recipients, and stay on top of trends as they evolve. More importantly, by only sending out your winning newsletter for every send, you’ll get maximum results for each campaign.

For further information call 01243 786711.