The focus for this week is:
E-Mail Marketing. How can it be
used effectively? With the growth in
the web, e-mail is a burgeoning method of marketing and accounts for much of
the marketing activity companies deploy.
One of the benefits of email is that the costs are much
lower than for DM. An April 2015 study
by the Direct Market Association, “Response
Rate Report” found that email had the highest ROI compared to other
marketing communications. Below is a chart from MarketingCharts.com that shows
the ROI of different marketing media from the DMA study.
However, while the costs are much lower than for direct mail
(DM), I caution marketers to be careful using email and to understand how to
create the most impactful communications.
Too much messaging leads to “
email fatigue” The consumer tiers of all
of the inbox messages just hits “delete, delete, delete” while in their
inbox. How does the marketer get
consumers to open the email and read the message?
So how can email be successful? First, the pure economics of how low cost it
is should be part of a marketing campaign.
Collecting email addresses of existing customers is a wise move and should
be a key objective of all communications and transactions with customers. Follow up and relevant and targeted messages
to existing customers will likely drive higher response.
For new customers and prospects, companies can also buy
email lists of customers. Once a
database of addresses is established, email can be used effectively for
promotion and customer communication.
The challenge is how to get the email open.
The key metrics for marketers is Open Rate which is the
percent of email messages that were successfully delivered were actually opened
by the recipient. The subject line is
the key driver to grab attention and interest to get enough interest and
curiousity to open the email. Creating a
relevant and strong subject line is important to encourage customers to open
the email.
Once opened, you want the recipient to take action and click
on a link to order or to get more information.
This is the Click Through Rate (CTR).
This is the percent of customers that opened the email that found enough
interest and relevancy to click on a link.
Once the customer clicks on you want to drive the customer
to a web site where they can get more information of the product or service you
are promoting and to a site that is simple to navigate and order. This will help to maximize your web visits
and sales.
You may wonder with the rise of email technology why
marketers even continue to use direct mail.
The reason is that it is still effective. E-mail is not a perfect substitute for direct
mail which is the traditional ink and paper communications that has been used
extensively. Direct mail still generates
a higher response rate than email. This
was another finding in the DMA study, “Response
Rate Report”. However amidst all of the promotional
messaging, we do find promotions and offers that are worth realizing. For companies and marketers DM is typically
very expensive. There is the print and
production costs and postage. To
minimize costs and to get the most benefit from DM marketers have sophisticated
models to target the mail, whether it is based on geography or customer profile. Since DM is expensive, it is important that
marketers target the direct mail so you are reaching the most likely customers
to take action to improve your response rate and return for the company.
DMA Response Rate Report 2015
For more information and statistics on this topic or to review the DMA 2015 “Response Rate Report” study the following links are available
Direct Media Response Rate, CPA and ROI Benchmarks, April
14, 2015 - by MarketingCharts staff, http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/direct-media-response-rate-cpa-and-roi-benchmarks-53645/#.Vsng8rrOAGo.mailto
2015 DMA study: Direct mail response rates leave
digital in the dust, http://sequelresponse.com/blog/2015-dma-study-direct-mail-response-rates-leave-digital-in-the-dust/
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