Response Posts
Apr
23
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
There are lots of digital marketing conferences and events. Maybe too many (can I hear an "Amen!" please?!). Here are five reasons why the Online Marketing Summit is a good one to put on your list, especially in this time of tight budgets:
1. It's local. Reduced travel costs. Great networking. There are 19 cities.
2. Great content. The mother of all reasons to go to a conference. Lots of new speakers. Wide coverage of all things digital marketing, so you get ...
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Apr
22
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
So we here at Return Path will readily admit to being biased toward the power and promise of email. But we don't think it's overstating the case to say that email can go a long way towards helping your efforts to be more green. So, in celebration of Earth Day today, we thought we'd share some cool ideas on how to save money and trees by replacing paper with email.
1. Financial services organizations can save a ton of money by sending statements and other information by email. Some companies have made this switch (so check your 401K provider or brokerage and see if you have options), but there are still many that send some or all of their information on paper. Switching to digital versions goes beyond saving paper, postage and money. Many customers complain about the massive amounts of paper that clutter up their homes and offices. Switching over to digital documents delivered via email is a big customer service win, too.
2. Due to the recession, cataloguers may find that replacing one paper catalog per customer per quarter with a few targeted email messages will boost ROI as well as conserve resources. It's a win for the marketer ...
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Apr
21
By Bonnie Malone
Director, Response Consulting
When was the last time you went somewhere exotic? Or experienced a different culture? Wouldn't you just love to fly to a faraway country and immerse yourself in new foods, experiences, and languages? Well, you're not alone: your subscribers do, too.
Often, marketers get stuck in a rut sending campaigns that look and perform the same week after week. Why? Because it's the way it's always been, or it's the formula that works, or it's easy to execute. But this kind of routine gets stale quickly both for the marketer measuring performance (and looking at that same creative week after week), and for the subscriber bored with each predictable email campaign.
So, let's take a vacation! ...
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Apr
17
By Bonnie Malone
Director, Response Consulting
I received an email today from a well known bridal company. It wasn't a bad email, in fact, it was rather well designed and sent with an appropriate subject line. The problem is that this is the sixth email I've received from this bridal company in the past three weeks - and I am not getting married, nor do I plan on becoming engaged to be married anytime in the foreseeable future.
How, then, did I begin receiving wedding-related emails? Because my daughter will be the flower girl in an upcoming family wedding, and I was asked by the bride to assist in finding an appropriate dress for my 4-year-old to wear. When browsing this particular bridal website, registration was required in order to save dresses to my "favorites" list. So, I willingly registered and subscribed to receive their email - selecting flower girl dresses as a shopping reason/preference.
As a new subscriber, I fully expected to receive wedding-related email from this company. However, every one of the six emails I've received has been messaged as if I was a bride-to-be. ...
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Apr
15
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
The pressure is on! Now more than ever, the email channel is being asked to contribute higher revenue. Yet, we all must make that happen with existing (or lower) resources. In a session produced for the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing World virtual conference (you can still visit and see some of the great presentations free until July 1, 2009), I discussed this challenge with three very smart digital marketers: Wendy Croissant, Email Marketing Manager for retailer Sierra Trading Post, Sal Tripi, a Director in Marketing with direct marketing powerhouse Publishers Clearing House and Stephen Gilberg, founder and CEO of HappyHours, Inc., a wine and spirits marketing services firm.
Many among us succumbed to the pressure to produce more revenue by increasing email frequency - thus generating some short term revenue gain. But we also churned the file, measured by increased subscriber fatigue, unsubscribe requests and complaints to the ISPs (when subscribers click on the Report Spam button), as well as depressing inbox deliverability and overall response rates. This is what we called the "perils of aggression" during our session. "It's easy to be aggressive, to blast the file and think short term," said Sal Tripi of PCH. "Some may also be tempted to lighten their standards by using older lists, doing append with loose rules, or buying a list from a lower quality source. This approach can leave you with a bloody lip!
"The harder way is to take the high road," he said. "To take a longer term view and commit yourself to improving the subscriber value." ...
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Apr
14
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
A recent research study we conducted shows that markets are still struggling with how to make their emails relevant to subscribers. The majority of marketers we studied (in this case, online retailers) were not using the buyer's data they collected as part of the purchase process to inform their future promotional messaging to these buyers. Download the study and the recorded webcast now.
The importance of relevancy is consistently talked about amongst email marketers and in the industry today. Most marketers know that sending the same message to everyone on their file will lead to stagnant or decreased response rates. Targeting and segmentation are proven methods for injecting relevancy into an email program.
When it comes to sending email to subscribers who have already made a purchase from you, the good news is that marketers have a variety of data to work with to do just that. This data includes the buyer's name, location (city, state, zip code), the kind of item that they bought (category, size, style, color), and the price of the item they purchased. Using these data points to inform future messaging can significantly increase the subscriber's level of engagement and prime them to make additional purchases.
Of course many marketers know this already. Why don't they do it? The reasons are ones we all know well ... lack of time, not enough resources, data sources that aren't synchronized, etc. Given that reality, here are a few ideas for injecting some relevance even when your system isn't perfect ...
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Apr
13
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
Our partner Emailcenter, an email service provider in the UK, recently polled British consumers about their inbox habits and preferences. It's a good study (free registration required) and the report is full of wonderful ideas to improve email marketing response and deliverability.
The main findings are straightforward:
1. Consumers get a lot of email.
2. Relevancy matters.
3. Many marketers take a short term, aggressive approach to email.
It's not surprising the study finds that most email marketing is pretty terrible - it's irrelevant, untargeted and poorly timed. What the study really points out is that consumers notice. ...
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Apr
09
What: You order has arrived email
Who: Adagio Teas
Why we love it: Most e-tailers send a series of post-purchase emails that often include an order confirmation and a shipping notice. But very few send a message to tell you your order has been delivered. This quick note from Adagio Teas lets you know...
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Apr
06
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
In a meeting today, a UK-based CEO said to me, "Isn't email dead already?" I guess if you equate "alive" with "the coolest new thing to hit the airwaves this month," then yes, I suppose email remains in the opposite camp: the respectable position of being a proven, trusted and incredibly powerful direct marketing channel.
Our friend Dela Quist, founder and CEO of AlchemyWorx in Britain seems to have the same kinds of visceral reaction that I do when hearing over and over again that email is dead. He discusses it here on the DMA-UK blog and the comments from others are quite interesting as well.
For years now pundits have been predicting the death of email - first because of spam, then because of RSS, then ...
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Mar
31
By George Bilbrey
President
The death of email hypothesis goes something like this:
I love the data that the Pew Center for Internet research produces (good AND free). Recently they released their "Generations Online in 2009" study about how different age groups use the internet. So what can we glean from the study?
Major findings:
So that's not too surprising, right? When you're young you have more of a social life ...Tell me more
Categories: Response
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