Day 1 - Effective Email Marketing - 1/26/99

From: <richard_at_tenagra.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 08:58:32 -0600 (CST)

Below is a special mailing to The Online Advertising
Discussion List about the Effective Email Marketing
conference, written by Ann Handley, editor-in-chief of
The ClickZ Network. You will receive these reports in
addition to your normal Online Ads posts/digests.

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Effective Email Marketing: Day 1

Ann Handley
Editor in Chief
The ClickZ Network


First off: Let's make it clear. IIR's first annual Effective
Email Marketing Strategies conference by necessity trots out
a few key buzzwords ("killer app" comes to mind). It also
offers a forum for the public flogging of Spam.

After all, the 100 or so attendees here are a fervent bunch.
The crowd may be small in comparison to other industry
events...and some of the speakers may be those you don't
often see behind the podium on the conference circuit. But
these people are nothing if not passionate that email is the
future of Net marketing. And they plan on delivering the
goods to the some 75 million people who communicate via
email today.

What is it about email delivery that really gets marketers
frothing?

Well, it's far less expensive that traditional snail mail.
It's more easily customized than printed mail pieces. It's
faster, too...and can be responded to more quickly and more
efficiently.

In short, it's simply...well, better, says Greg Schneider,
who heads up marketing at the recently minted Exactis.com,
the company formerly known as InfoBeat. (Greg filled in for
former InfoBeat Founder and Chairman John Funk, who as of
last week found himself...uh...defunct.)

>From a user's perspective, email offers a simple, effective,
low-bandwidth communication device, Schneider says. That's
why 95 percent of all those online have email addresses.
Thirty million people have used email in the past 24 hours.
And an estimated 2.6 trillion email messages were sent last
year in the US alone.

Isn't that a beautiful thing?

Absolutely...! But the challenges for marketers is to make
their messages targeted, relevant and compelling, to allow
them to stand out in the crowd of other stuff that hits our
email boxes every day.

It Slices! It Dices!

If targeted email were a tool, it would function as one of
those all-in-one gadgets sold on late-night TV. On the web
today, it assumes various functions, including:

* Sending ad-supported messages, as in InfoBeat's mailer or
  ClickZ's daily mail;

* Driving traffic to web pages, to promote a specific site
  or page;

* Replacing paper mail, with stock trade confirmations or
  airplane reservation confirmations; and

* Sending targeted messages, to promote a special discount,
  sale or service.

The four functions aren't mutually exclusive, says
Schneider. In fact, they are often executed in tandem. For
example, an email might serve to drive traffic to a web
site, while also supporting an advertising banner or two.

Killer Challenges

Of course, email does all that...and more. But it can't go
it alone. Schneider outlined the top seven challenges for
email marketers today. Marketers must:

1. Have a clear idea of the role email will play within an
   organization.
2. Commit to the program by dedicating necessary resources
   to it.
3. Set up a customer service function. "You will need
   humans," he says unequivocally.
4. Have the necessary database list administration and
   maintenance in place.
5. Construct a compelling message and deliver it in scale.
6. Handle exceptions...like the bounces, undeliverables, and
   duplicates.
7. Not think it's easy. Because....it simply ain't.

Crash Course

BBDO's Cindy Dale offered up a crash course in the what and
the why of email marketing.

At the core of any email marketing program, of course, is a
qualified list of names to target. So how do you get those
names? Collect them yourself, buy them from bona-fide
third-party sources, or piggyback on other folks' e-mail
newsletters, Dale said.

Critical to any email address collection effort, however, is
that the names you amass must represent individuals who have
willingly given themselves unto you. Rosalind Resnick, whose
middle name is "Opt-in," believes that any marketer worth
his or her salt should follow the rules of good Netiquette.

Spam might be legal, Resnick said, but blanketing the Net
with unqualified messages is neither responsible nor
particularly effective. It's also guaranteed to tick more
than a few people off, damaging your brand and possibly
getting your site blocked from certain ISPs.

So what's a responsible marketer to do?

* Offer users an opportunity to voluntarily add their email
  addresses -- or opt-in -- to receive information or offers
  from you.

* Send confirmation emails when they do opt-in with you.
  ("Sort of double opt-in," says Resnick.)

* Provide clear "opt-out" instructions in every
  communication, preferably in a header than precedes any
  message you send. ("It's like a good housekeeping seal of
  approval," she points out.)

* Protect the privacy of users, through a dedicated list
  manager.

"It's not that we are maniacs for political correctness,"
says Resnick. "But we are looking for something that
works...especially in response rates."

Bottom line: Aren't 10,000 well-qualified names who want to
hear from you a whole lot more valuable than 100,000
unqualified prospects who don't give a darn?

Talking the Talk

With those names in hand, how do you speak to them? Cindy
Dale tells all:

* Speak to both HTML and text audiences.
* Keep your message short and to the point.
* NO SHOUTING...and no excessive punctuation like this!!!!
* Prominently feature your URL in multiple places.
* Induce a "call to action" in your header.
* Offer an incentive...a discount, free gift, chance to win.
* Personalize your message by signing it from a real person,
  with phone, fax and email return.
* And always...spell check!


Text or HTML?

The majority of users -- up to 60 percent, by some estimates
-- prefer to receive their mail in text. Most users eschew
full HTML, replete with its bandwidth-hogging color graphics
and font variations.

But Jay Fehnel of Tribune Media Services pointed out that
while HTML users may be fewer in number, they nevertheless
are a committed and loyal bunch.

"They really like it...I mean, really like it," says Fehnel.
And that means marketers "are likely to get more value out
of an HTML message than a text message."

Dim Sum for Marketers

As email marketing evolves, its targeting capabilities are
becoming more and more sophisticated and useful. No longer
is someone receiving a "broadcast" of your content or
message. Instead, they are receiving highly customized
content or messages.

Fehnel compared the broadcast method to taking an individual
to lunch, "to a place where they can have anything they
want, as long as it's the roast beef." Further customization
"might allow them to order the chicken, beef or fish,"
Fehnel said, just like publications such as the Industry
Standard offer readers a chance to subscribe to three or
four broadly defined business newsletters.

But the "ultimate" in customization, Fehnel believes, is
akin to dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. Effectively, a
diner picks what he or she wants, and it arrives on the same
plate.

"It's the ultimate in content or message delivery," he says.
"And no one else's is the same."

Robert's Rules

After all, email marketing is really all about building and
exploiting relationships.

Robert Seidman, editor and publisher of the newsletter
Seidman's Online Insider, laid out the can't-miss steps to
building relationships with your customers through email
marketing. And believe me...with 43,000 subscribers on his
emailed newsletter list, the guy should know a thing or two
about online marketing.

* Offer value for your target audience. Make your content or
  message useful or fun, and preferably both.

* Make subscribing to your email list easy.

* Establish regular frequency of publication or
  communication...and stick to it.

* Don't sell your list...no matter how tempting the cash.
  "The fallout is so high," says Seidman.

* Answer any resulting email within a reasonable time frame.

* Confirm new subscriptions (or changes to old subs) within
  a day.


Useful URLs

To keep abreast of email/privacy regulations:
http://www.junkbuster.com
http://www.cauce.com
http://www.the-dma.org


Quotes of the Day

"New name, new company, new leadership...it's the
Internet!" -- Greg Schneider, VP Marketing, Exactis.com, in
explaining last week's reinvention of InfoBeat

"I'm a big believer in email. I firmly believe that for any
client, it's got to be part of the marketing mix." -- Cindy
Dale, VP, BBDO

"HTML mail will not take off until AOL allows its members to
receive HTML mail." -- Robert Seidman, Editor and Publisher,
Seidman's Online Insider

"With traditional mail, you don't know if your magazine went
into the trash or onto a coffee table. With email, you do
know." -- Greg Schneider

"If there is anyone who can get behind a product that people
have to trip over when they go out their front door, it's a
newspaper company. You can't underestimate the value of
putting something in someone's face every day." -- Jay
Fehnel, Director of Business Development, Tribune Media
Services

"If someone allows you into their email, you'll have a lot
better opportunity than if you bet on the web alone." --
Robert Seidman

"There's one bit of ugliness with email...and that is
Spam."-- Greg Schneider

"Prior to any campaign, ask yourself if email is the most
cost-effective method. It's very hard to imagine that email
would not be the most cost-effective method...but you still
need to do a reality check." -- Jay Fehnel

"Ignore it at your own risk." -- Greg Schneider, in
reference to The Killer App

"[Email] is a high-attention environment...if we can make
this work, we're developing some critical relationships." --
Jay Fehnel

Tchotchke of the Day

Is this really an industry conference?

Where are the baseball caps? The T-shirts? The keychains?
The rubber balls? The Frisbees? What are we going to bring
back to the office? What are we going to bring home to the
kids?

>From the "free stuff perspective," this conference looks
like the meat shelf in a Russian grocery store. Not a single
thing in sight...and it looks like a long wait before
anything decent shows up, too.

In desperation, we could name the hard candy set out on the
tables in the conference room itself. But ultimately, that's
about as satisfying a tchotchke as that lone packet of
week-old pork chops would be, were they left sitting on the
shelf in Leningrad.

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Copyright (C) 1998 ClickZ Corporation. All rights reserved.
 May be reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes
as long as attribution is given.

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Received on Wed Jan 27 1999 - 10:50:44 CST