4 Reasons to Make the Move to Acquisition Email

By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development

Many smart marketers are still skittish about acquisition email, instead relying on other methods - especially direct mail - to get new customers. In the spirit of giving this holiday season - and in the spirit of increasing your holiday revenue! - I'd like to give you four really good reasons to consider testing email to meet your customer acquisition goals.

Money is moving to email. The DMA 2007 Postal and Email List Report found that marketers are increasingly turning to email for prospecting. More than half of the respondents to the DMA survey report increasing their postal circulation, a greater percentage report growing their email volume. Marketers are also more likely to report growth in their email spending than in their postal spending. This change has already happened in the United Kingdom where more direct marketing activity was conducted via email than postal mail during the fourth quarter of 2006 according to the Financial Times. This means that marketers who are using email will quickly eclipse their competitors who aren't.

Email allows for a quick response to current events and market changes. Smart marketers can deploy a professional email marketing offer in a matter of days. This allows them to take advantage of news and market trends. This isn't an either/or scenario. You might have a great plan for a direct mail campaign aimed at Christmas shoppers, for example. You can augment that campaign with quick-to-execute email campaigns that take advantage of the response you see to the direct mail pieces.

Email enhances segmentation. Sending many different versions of an offer based on demographic data is possible with both email and direct mail, but with email it is much less costly. Again, you can use these two tactics in tandem to create the winning combination. So, you might create a direct mail campaign for three primary demographics. You can then execute a series of email campaigns that slices those three demos into finer segments.

We live in a multi-channel world. As we head into 2008, integration is the order of the day. Over reliance on any one marketing tactic (including email, actually) means missed opportunities. The synergy created by using multiple tactics increases your ROI far beyond what you could expect if you spent the same amount of dollars in just one area. Consumers want to browse a catalog while they watch TV, then go online to see additional colors and styles. They want to receive email to tell them when the merchandise they are interested in goes on sales or when new products are available. They want coupons that work online and in-store. They want merchants who help make their lives easier by integrating into where they live - which is online, on-the-go and in the world.