Tag Archives: email marketing
Webify Your Next Trade Show
Integrating web sites, landing pages and emails into your trade show plans is a very cost-effective way to build excitement, identify hot prospects, and schedule your staff’s time in the booth. A few ideas we’ve used successfully include:
- Email and web promotions related to a new product that requires redemption at the trade show booth.
- Scheduling in-person demos online and capturing mobile messaging information to send reminders.
- Multi-part teaser campaigns – sometimes prohibitively expensive in print – that create buzz for new products.
- Product specific landing pages that prospects can visit after the show. Downloadable information and video demos keep your brand top of mind, and out of the trash.
- Rapid and customized email follow-ups to everyone who visits the booth.
- Search and/or banner advertising scheduled around show assets.
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Boost E-mail Response with Cheap Research
Word on the street is that interest in emarketing is soaring as the recession drives marketers to trim costs. Here are a few simple and cheap ways to improve your program’s performance.
E-marketers are meticulous about testing with good reason. Even an incremental increase in response, say 2 to 9 percent, can have a huge impact on the profitability of a program.
A couple easy ways to boost response are to: 1) ensure the message is making it to the prospects In Box by lowering its Spam score; and 2) using a simple testing technique to optimize the number of people who open your message.
Clean it Up: High Spam Scores Hurt
An errant phrase or word or improper coding can drop the deliverability of your email to nearly zilch. Check WilsonWeb.com for the top words and phrases that will get your email bounced.
Free web applications like SpamCheck or ezinecheck.com make it possible to assess your message’s degree
of Spaminess.
Open Sesame: Testing Subject Lines
The next step is to make sure your message gets opened. The single most important and easiest to test factor is your subject line.
Direct marketers in print media test headlines and offers in classified ads in national magazines. The headlines that pulled the best were used on the final printed piece. The A-B subject line test works the same way.
Sometimes tiny changes can make a huge difference, e.g. Steak Special for Two vs. Date Night Dinner Special. We can discuss this around the conference table all day, but why not get the real answer by conducting an A-B Test.
It’s easy:
- Randomly select 20% of the names from your list.
- Divide the smaller list into equal A and B groups.
- Send emails that are exactly the same with the exception of the subject lines being tested. Make sure they are sent at the same time of day.
- Determine the winner based on the highest open rate.
- Mail the winner to the remaining 80% of the list.
You can use the A-B Test to evaluate other aspects of your message, such as wording of offer, click-thrus, layout, and completed transaction.
It’s cheap, it’s fast, and it will help your overall program achieve a higher ROI.
Pump-Up Email Response Rates By Re-mailing
You can increase click-thrus on your emails simply by resending them.
The open rate (the number of people who open your messages) is affected by many variables that are more or less out of your control. Your message gets buried in a large volume of mail, bounced by corporate or personal SPAM filters, or you hit the wrong time of day. At Ideopia, re-mailing is boosting open rates 25- to 40 percent. As long as you’re re-mailing, change your subject line. Hit your winner hard the first time, and choose a line that selects a niche audience the second blast. Good luck opening up!
Why You Are A Spammer
SPAM is pervasive and nasty. What you might not know is that you’re part of the problem.
If you use the Internet you will get spam. And it will deal with some
bodily function, refinancing hoax, or non-existent company you’d rather
not think about.
But maybe, we should think about SPAM and learn something from it.
After all, it has the same knack for survival as roaches. It’s
irritating as hell, but every now and then you open one. Don’t you?
The main reasons people open email is:
1) It comes from a trusted sender
2) It’s expected
3) There’s a provocative reason to open it.
| Subject Line | Product/Service |
| Kiwi hemisphere | Art4Love |
| Hi | Viagra/Cialis |
| Be an expert next Friday! | Business Newspaper |
| bloodshed Villanueva | China Mobility Solutions |
| washer rear end | Trimax Corporation |
| It’s time to refill Kevin | Erectile dysfunction |
SPAM has none of these qualities except the “good stuff” has a way of picking at us. For example, the subject lines I collected during the past week grabbed me for one reason or another. “Kiwi hemisphere” is oddly poetic. “Be an expert next Friday,” well that’s pure vanity. “Bloodshed in Villanueva” sounds like a CNN alert; and “washer rear end” is just funny; and Kevin is the name of my stepson.
What we have is accidental targeting, which works for the Spammers due to sheer volume. It’s crude, but it works; it also alienates just about everyone who receives it.
I think we should extend the definition of SPAM to include poorly targeted media placements, messages that are out of synch with the medium or programming, and claims made about a product or service that aren’t fulfilled to the consumer’s expectations.
A great example is a snooty ad I saw in a recent copy of ESPN News for an upscale luxury automobile. While ESPN targets enough upscale readers to justify the buy, the ad is turnoff in fast-paced, locker room, crunch and punch attitude of the magazine. The result? Waste, and maybe even contempt toward the brand for being so out of step.
SPAM isn’t just in your mailbox. It’s something we all have to fight by narrowing our focus and increasing the relevance of our messages. Do otherwise, and your booty will be right in the trash.