Apr
24
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
While Ad:Tech was a lively show this year - it was not quite as mobbed as it had been the last few years. You can make your own assumptions about the cause, but for me it is evidence that the marketing budgets of advertising services companies are tightening.
But what is not totally clear is, why. Are recession fears driving reduced revenue expectations for these advertising services companies? Or has the ridiculous number of conferences, seminars, and events finally reached an inflection point? My guess is both. But I am not-so-secretly hoping that we have reached a point where the industry cannot support this many events. My family is openly cheering for it.
Aside from a decline in sponsorship and attendance, here are a few trends we saw last week and predictions for next year ...
Tell me moreCategories: Acquisition
Apr
16
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
MarketingExperiments just published two fascinating case studies on the use of incentives to drive email capture and free trial conversion.
Incentives have a mixed history in the annals of interactive marketing. The truth is, they work. And, as MarketingExperiments shows, when they are optimized they work really well. But they have been abused by some marketers and, if used poorly, can actually degrade performance.
That said, you gotta read this report now. It's really fascinating.
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Apr
08
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
What are you planning to send your Mom this Mother's Day? Candy? Flowers?
Excuse me for saying so, but BORING! Now think about how many other people are out there struggling with the same boring ideas. We think this makes Mother's Day an ideal holiday for a little bit of acquisition magic. People look to email to give them fresh, new ideas. Take advantage of that by putting together an email campaign aimed at acquiring new customers who are looking to be the favorite kid this Mother's Day.
Be bold: Remember, you are trying to appeal to folks who are tired of sending the same old, same old gifts. ...
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Apr
03
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Earlier this year the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a set of best practices for online lead generation. As I've written about in the past (here, here and here), online lead generation is a smart strategy when it is executed well. But when you work with shady partners who are more interested in fulfilling invoices than in creating great subscriber experiences, your ROI and even your brand reputation can suffer.
So it shouldn't surprise you that we at Return Path have been involved in the creation of these lead generation best practices. And we are proud of the contribution the IAB has made to the overall health of the lead generation industry. It reflects our view of the world ...
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Mar
12
By Anita Absey
SVP, Sales & Marketing
So you are sitting at your desk, staring at your email promotion calendar thinking "Is there a single new idea left in the world? What do my subscribers really want? What are the newest rules for getting to the inbox? What are other marketers doing to get out of the rut?"
If this describes you, then you need to come to Return Path's Email Expert Seminars . The smartest minds in email today will be on hand to give you a fresh perspective on email. You'll view the world from the perspectives of subscribers, ISPs and your fellow marketers. You'll also get a fresh perspective on email acquisition and learn some bold new ways to apply those same old best practices.
Our experts are coming to ...
Tell me moreCategories: Acquisition | Deliverability | Response
Mar
11
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Not obtaining the right level of consent can pose a serious risk to the success of your campaigns, your reputation and overall subscriber experience. Permission to send email needs to be proactive and voluntary by the subscriber and as an email marketer; you should take every precaution to ensure subscribers will in fact welcome your message into their inbox. The reward is that actively engaged subscribers that value your offers will result in positive subscriber experiences and ultimately, more revenue.
There are essentially five levels of permission you need to consider when designing your email programs. Each has their pros and cons and its usage depends on the type of program you are developing and the subscriber experience you want to provide. When trying to decide which one to implement, it might be helpful to assess the amount of risk that is associated with your opt-in program and take into account the relationship you want to build with your subscriber.
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Feb
14
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Some same opposites attract, but email and postal are a match made in heaven. Both are direct media and both want to elicit a response from the intended audience. The only place they differ is in their delivery, but so what? You don't have to choose one or the other. You can have your cake and eat it too! All you need to do is figure out which one is Venus and which one is Mars for a campaign that creates a lasting impression.
Categories: Acquisition
Feb
04
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Permission and privacy are the big issues in the email universe particularly where the FTC is concerned. The FTC's proposed Behavioral Marketing Self Regulatory Principles could have a direct impact on ad targeting for all marketers including mailers. Couple this with the proposed legislation spearheaded by Governor M. Jodi Rell to make behavioral targeting "opt-out" in the State of Connecticut; marketers have some cause for concern.
The FTC's call for "greater transparency and consumer control" along with the protection of sensitive data is of particular interest to those companies utilizing behavioral advertising to influence consumer behavior. Marketers who rely on behavioral targeting to create relevancy are concerned about their response rates, but is what the FTC proposing really so terrible? Let's examine.
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Nov
28
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
The strength and diversity of our publisher network makes the Postmaster Network one of the best places for marketers to reach their audience. This belief is hinged on the fact that the entire network is strengthened by the diversity of its many publisher members. It's a cliche, but the whole really is worth more than the sum of the parts.
So you can see why we are pleased to publicize the addition of a few premier publishers, which really add a lot to that whole sum. Return Path today announced that Forbes.com, Fotolog and TravelerID have joined the Postmaster Network.
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Nov
27
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.
Tell me moreCategories: Acquisition
Oct
25
By Stephanie Miller, VP of Strategic Services
and Craig Swerdloff, VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
One of the best ways to grow your email file is to invite prospects when they are in process with another registration. The idea of a "co-reg" checkbox has been around for a while, but a newer opportunity is lead generation -- also typically offered on a cost per lead basis. Publishers provide advertisers with full page ad forms that entice prospects to engage with offers of interest. A single offer on the page gives advertisers lots of room to tell their story and makes the process more clear to prospects. Lead generation programs tend to yield much higher quality leads than co-registration because the subscribers are less likely to be confused by a sea of checkboxes.
If you are considering trying lead generation and want to make sure you succeed, consider the following Do's and Don'ts to help you craft a winning strategy. ...
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Oct
17
By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services
We often write about the challenges that B2B and B2C marketers face when it comes to using the email channel for retention and acquisition. After all, battling inbox clutter to stand out and be relevant, keeping subscribers engaged and growing files are top concerns for almost all email marketers.
Which might lead you to wonder about non-profits and charitable organizations. Do they face similar challenges? Are they focused on optimizing email for their business goals? Do the same best practices apply? Our non-profit clients have shown us that the answers are a resounding yes, yes and yes!
One might assume that non-profits have an easier time of leveraging email from both a relationship-building and revenue-generating standpoint. Surely it would be hard to find a more engaged house file than one with subscribers who are committed to a charitable organization; a file filled with dedicated folks who donate their money, volunteer their time and make their voices heard by spreading the word about new research or upcoming fundraisers. ...
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Oct
08
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
As I've written before (here and here), online lead generation is a great channel for acquisition but can be fraught with problems that smart marketers need to be on the look out for. My goal here at Return Path is to create an online lead generation network that marketers (and publishers) can use with confidence.
This is why I'm very excited about one of Return Path's newest hires, Evan Adlman as Director of WebLeads, our online lead generation product.
He has a great background for this position, having come to us from the agency Trafficbuyer Digital where he managed lead generation campaigns for companies like Get Smart, Lending Tree, ING and eDiets. In addition to advising clients on every aspect of their program, including offer, creative and media, Evan was focused on tracking the performance of every data source - both on the front end and the back end. He would then make recommendations on adjustments to their buying and steer clients away from problematic data sources. So, in short, Evan "gets it."
So what does this mean for Return Path, and, more importantly, for Return Path clients? ...
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Oct
04
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Yesterday my colleague Margaret Farmakis and I presented a webinar called "List Growth NOW: Using Online Acquisition Tools to Improve Email Marketing Results." It was a fun and interesting session. If you missed out on attending, you can still listen in. Download the recording now.
Meanwhile, we got some great questions from the audience. Here's a few of them, with our answers and some additional resources to help you:
What's the difference between creative used in retention campaigns and that used in acquisition campaigns? Retention campaigns are aimed at people who already know you and your brand. They're on your house file because they're your existing (or past) customers or your prospects. Even if they are a prospect, they signed up for your email and have some understanding of what your products and services are about. Acquisition campaigns are aimed at people who don't know you very well. ...
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Sep
12
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
A recent Behavioral Insider column had a truly tantalizing quote from iPost's Steve Webster:
"There is the presumption that when someone receives an email message they then click on the email go to the Web site and either make a purchase or not and then they are done interacting with your email. This turned out to be wrong. We discovered very quickly that the power of an email impression lasts for weeks after the customer has actually received the message. The particular interaction they will have with you later really depends more on their personal preferences than on your putting a new email in front of them."
The highlighted portion is a point we've been making here at Return Path for years now. Emails are not perceived by recipients as distinct, one-off promotions. But many marketers continue to view them that way and make both strategic and tactical errors because of that. Here are a five things you need to start doing - right now - if you want to capitalize on the true power of email ...
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Sep
11
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Late last week Diedre Cook wrote a timely "hot vs. not" column in Email Insider. We agreed with about 99% of her list - especially her points about reputation and relevance, but disagreed with her assertion that CPM list rental is "out" and CPA list rental is "in." Specifically her assertion that with CPA you have "nothing to lose."
While this sounds sensible - pay for performance seems low-risk - it actually isn't. The problem is that you get what you pay for; and many of the lists that are available for CPA advertising are often the worst ones. Quality, permission lists are expensive to build and maintain. Quality publishers do not spend a lot of time and money doing so, only to hock their lists to the first buyer. So the lists you often get lack real permission, are over mailed with irrelevant offers, have high complaint rates, and therefore can destroy an advertisers reputation. So while your media buyers are happy, the marketing team is left to contend with angry customers, and poor ISP deliverability on their most precious internal mailings. It may be that your marketing budget is only paying for the emails that generate a response, but your brand reputation is paying for the rest.
Of course, CPA can work. ...
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Sep
06
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Email marketing for acquisition has often been treated like Rodney Dangerfield - it just gets no respect. Well, for those of us who know how great email is at establishing and building relationships with customers and prospects, it is time to celebrate: new data from the DMA shows that email acquisition is about to explode. And for those of you coming late to the party, welcome!
We are talking, of course, about the DMA 2007 Postal and Email List Report which found that marketers are increasingly turning to email, both in addition to and instead of, postal lists, for prospecting. (See the full story in DMNews).
The DMA found that ...
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Aug
30
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
eMarketer recently ran a report that found that multiple impressions across online media work best in driving sales and acquiring new customers. In fact, the quoted study found that ads seen on multiple websites were twice as likely to convert as those seen on a single website. Moreover, 86.1% of ads which led to a responsive action had multiple placements.
While the article didn't specifically mention email, our experience is that clients who use email acquisition consistently, and as part of an integrated online marketing strategy - creating multiple impressions with the same audience - have a much higher ROI than those who use email haphazardly.
In fact, it is sometimes possible to ...
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Aug
15
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
Let's face it: third-party email doesn't get a lot of respect in the email marketing world. And many people assume two things: 1. third-party marketers must have bad deliverability, 2. all third-party email is the same.
At Return Path we've never believed either of those two things to be true. In fact, we were so sure that you could do third-party email and have a good sending reputation, that in 2004 we acquired Postmaster Direct, the original email list rental company going back to the mid-90s. Well, we now have some great data that proves that email list rental can have good deliverability and that all email advertising is not equal ...
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Aug
02
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
For many marketers the true beginning of the high-traffic, high-revenue season is back to school. In fact, consumers are on track to spend $18.4 billion this year on apparel, electronics, books, supplies and more. Like Christmas, this makes the back-to-school season a great time to implement email and online lead generation as part of your acquisition marketing mix. These tactics offer reach, frequency and branding. They are also great ways to uncover latent needs (I didn't know I needed that!) and drive higher website traffic (Let me check out this cool stuff!). Here are some ideas for how you can use both email list rental and online lead generation to get those cash registers ringing ...
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Jul
24
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
About six months ago I wrote that customers acquired through email have a higher value for most marketers than customers acquired through other methods, particularly search.
Well, there are some new stats floating around that back this theory up.
First, in March Forrester found that consumers who buy products advertised in emails spend 138% more online than peers who don't buy through email...
Tell me moreCategories: Acquisition
May
30
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Practical Ecommerce has a great article on how to improve your email marketing results with co-registration. They cover many of the basics, including payment, finding partners and tracking performance. But they missed one big component that we find is crucial to success for our co-registration clients: The offer.
In our experience with hundreds of clients, throwing up a checkbox and praying for rain rarely gives you the results you are hoping for. Consumers and businesspeople alike are inundated at every turn with offers for email newsletters, so standing out from the crowd is crucial to success.
What makes a great co-reg offer? Generally it's all about the content. What does your email offer subscribers that other emails don't? Some ways to think about it ...
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May
30
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
We found ourselves intrigued by Bill McCloskey's Email Insider column last week about his experience at the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants. In summary, he found scores of people who weren't doing much of anything with email and weren't really concerned about it. "Direct mail works just fine, thanks." You buy a stamp, you get delivered. No problem...
It's a bit amusing to hear anyone praise the Post Office, especially in light of the fights going on right now over rate hikes. But the bigger point is that we interactive marketing folks have to work harder to convert these latecomers to the email bandwagon. Yes, it can be challenging. But few rewards come without a little sweat and hard work. Return Path works with lots of catalogers and there is no question that they see huge success from the email channel. Have they thrown out their paper catalogs? No way! They still print those suckers - but now they do it smarter and augment the customer experience with relevant, well-timed email. ...
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Apr
18
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Joe Marchese wrote a great piece in Online SPIN yesterday about Web 2.0 business models. Many of the companies he met with at the Web 2.0 Expo have business models that are dependent on advertising revenue. Yet, the prevalent thought amongst these companies is to not introduce advertising until their audience development is complete. The thinking is that advertising is so unwelcome by consumers that it will turn potential traffic away. So rather than risk losing a finicky audience member, Web 2.0 companies prefer to bring in the audience, get them hooked on their offerings, then introduce advertising later. ...
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Apr
05
By George Bilbrey
VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions
There is a persistent myth in the industry that third party email is inherently bad, that third party email drives high complaints and that using email for acquisition will ruin your deliverability.
These are all completely false notions. (And, by the way, equally false is the notion that a well-permissioned house file is inherently free of any problems. It isn't.)
At Return Path we work with many third party mailers. We also sell third party email through our Postmaster Network division. Safe to say we know the true story behind deliverability and email acquisition. ...
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Mar
26
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Catalogers have a long, successful history using direct mail for new customer acquisition. Specifically by buying postal lists from a variety of sources and sending their catalogs with the hope of sparking a sale. It's an extremely effective strategy, but also an expensive one. And, it's about to get more expensive if the postal rate hike takes effect, as many experts believe it will.
Smart catalogers certainly aren't going to stop using direct mail for acquisition. But, the smartest will certainly be adding email to the mix. Rates for email list rental have held steady over the last few years, making them a bargain by comparison. ...
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Mar
06
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
A few months back I wrote about lead quality and offered a few best practices. This is an issue that is very important to me - so I was honored to be asked to participate in a panel, "Maximizing your Lead Generation: Best Practices" at the IAB Leadership Forum: Performance Marketing on March 14th in Chicago. I will be joined by some of the key thought leaders in lead generation marketing.
None of the issues we are grappling with today are new -- the online lead generation marketplace has been plagued by data quality issues for years. A key driver of poor quality has been the persistent focus on maximizing publisher revenue at any expense. This has led to problematic practices like pre-checked boxes, multiple offers per page, lead reselling and spinning. These practices, in turn, create consumer confusion - they sign up for stuff they don't really want. ...
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Jan
16
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Search engine marketing gets a large share of marketing spends because it often results in an immediate transaction and is easily measurable. But is a new customer driven from SEM as valuable as customers driven through other channels? I believe not. When advertisers begin to segment their customers by originating channel, they will find that search engine marketing, like coupons, promotions, and incentives, results in less loyal customers relative to other channels.
Search is a tool to find stuff, and when that stuff happens to be products, search is often used as a tool to find the best deal. Deal seekers are the same no matter the channel, and they tend to be less loyal customers.
Marketers are dependent on customer engagement to increase lifetime value (LTV). In fact, many marketers are willing to lose money on the initial sale knowing they will earn profit on subsequent purchases. But the path to reengaging customers driven from paid search is far from clear. ...
Categories: Acquisition
Dec
18
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Why do people in our industry persist in bashing email acquisition? It seems to us that no one's interests are served when email acquisition is equated with spamming.
The most recent example of this was last week's Email Insider column where Melinda Krueger equated an email list rental campaign to build awareness for a new business with spam. First, we want to make a point of clarification: email list rental is almost always done with the recipient's permission. Return Path's lists, for example, are all double opt-in. Why would smart, top-tier marketers pay high CPMs to send unsolicited email?
Second, the article advances a line of thought that many industry experts believe: retention email to a house file is good, and acquisition email is recognized by all recipients as bad. This simply is not true. ...
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Nov
29
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
Baseball has Ryan Howard, online marketing has email list rental. We were excited to see the release of a study by Marketing Experiments that proves the power of email list rental. They ran a test with a financial publisher that compared the conversion rates of campaigns with Yahoo! search, Google AdWords and email list rental. You can read the full study here.
My friends at the Search Insiders Summit take note: The results weren't even close. ...
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Nov
15
By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions
In any advertising model there are three groups with intersecting but somewhat competitive interests:
But today's lead generation model is largely unbalanced, where the market currently favors monetization of publisher inventory over consumer experience and advertiser performance. ...
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Oct
12
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
After flying below the radar screen for awhile now, append is back in the news of late. First, there was a slam in the pages of the venerable direct marketing bible, Direct Magazine. Then, a slightly more nuanced, but still unflattering, write up was found in MediaPost's Email Insider column.
Once upon a time though, email append seemed like a great idea. ...
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Oct
12
By Craig Swerdloff
This week, BtoB Magazine had an item from Worldata that supposedly "proves" that CPMs for email list rental are falling.
We've found it interesting the past couple of years since we entered the email list business by acquiring Postmaster Direct that Worldata is the only company in the space that publishes data about industry pricing. Kudos to them for that. We plan to publish comparable data from our own business later this year, and at least anecdotally, I can tell you that our experience with market pricing runs counter to Worldata's - prices are stable, and in many sectors, they are on the rise.
So we have to wonder why the disconnect ...
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Sep
25
By Craig Swerdloff
VP & GM, Customer Acquisition Solutions
The popularity of search in the last few years comes down to effectiveness. And that effectiveness is driven by intention. When someone types "Sony HDTV" into the Google search bar, they are probably in the market for a new television. Frankly, it doesn't really take a marketing genius to take advantage of these types of opportunities.
We have found that similar low-hanging fruit can be found on the email side. ...
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Aug
29
By Stephanie Miller
VP Strategic Services
Since they have a relationship with your company, your existing customers should be the easiest group to entice onto your email list. Yet, many B2B marketers have email addresses for a very small portion of their offline customer base. Why do customers -- even satisfied customers -hesitate to give you permission to email them?
The answer is, we marketers have let them down. A recent survey by Marketing Sherpa shows the very low tolerance business and technology professionals have for irrelevant or uninteresting email. ...
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Aug
24
By Dennis Malaspina
VP, Sales and Client Development
Across the land marketers in every industry are gearing up for their third and fourth quarter efforts. For business-to-business companies the fourth quarter is a time to grab the last of the '06 budget and get themselves into mix for '07. For business-to-consumer companies it's all about hitting the spending trifecta: back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas...
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Mar
06
By Chad Malchow
VP New Business Development
Every marketer wants a large, robust email house file -- and despite all the hype and myth in the marketplace, there are basically four ways to get there: reactivation (ECOA and list hygiene), append, paid acquisition and organic growth. Take a holistic view of your email program by considering all of these -- and aim not just for high counts, but high quality.
For example, reconnecting with lost customers on your file through ECOA and list hygiene will reactivate subscribers you've already paid to acquire through other means. These subscribers may ....
Categories: Acquisition
Mar
03
By: Tami Forman
Director of Strategic Services
Although it's most assuredly winter in our New York offices, our thoughts are turning to new spring growth. List growth, of course!
Building a bigger list is generally on the top of most email marketers to-do lists. But, before you start to consider new tactics to meet that goal, you first need to assess...
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Jan
08
By: Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services
OBITUARY: MASS email advertising is dead. Marketers mourn the early, heady days of email marketing when generic emails drove high response rates and consumers thought any email was good, as long as it was addressed to them. But alas, we must bid adieu to the old era--if not for the sake of our own careers, then on behalf of consumers everywhere who are tired of irrelevant and uninteresting email messages. As we say good-bye to 2005, we can also say good-bye to this ineffective marketing method.
Rest in Peace, indeed. Batch and blast is so 1999...
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Dec
12
By: Tami Forman
Director of Strategic Services
With the holidays upon us, just a few simple strategies will let you leverage the extra traffic that the holidays bring to grow your email list for the long term...
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Nov
09
By: George Bilbrey
GM of Delivery Assurance
There are a lot of good case studies about people using email for acquisition and not getting into trouble because of it. Unfortunately, in our deliverability business, we see a lot of folks getting into trouble because of list rental and/or co-registration vendors with less than stellar practices.
The problems that you are most likely to run into are mostly in the deliverability variety rather than...
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Oct
12
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