The From Line

Latest Marketing Trend:

According to Forbes Insights, the research division of Forbes magazine, “video is becoming a critical information source for senior executives,” with more than 80% of executives watching more video online than a year ago. This trend isn’t surprising with executives continually facing information overload they are turning to video to help cut through the clutter and aid with decision making.

After watching video content, executives are more likely to:

• Visit a vendor’s website 66%
• Conduct a search for more info 53%
• Call a vendor 22%
• Make a business-related purchase 26%
  Source: Forbes Insights, Dec. 2010

As published in DM News

A few weeks ago I had an Aflac agent in my office. After we closed a deal he pleasantly asked me if I knew of other business owners in need of Aflac’s products. As a result of the good sales experience, I gave him five referrals. Every sales person knows the value of a referral however the concept doesn’t resonate well with email marketing practitioners. Now is a great opportunity to change that. Instead of relying on an inadequate forward-to-a-friend process, a more formalized referral program is needed to ensure success. A good referral program is automated, timely and usually starts where the original opt-in process ends. Once a website user has gone through the motions of opting-in, it is a perfect opportunity to ask for a referral. Ask the referrer not only for an email address but also a full name. When soliciting the referee to opt-in, always personalize the message, and most importantly, reference the referrer. A reference to the referrer gives you instant credibility and will produce a much higher conversion rate.

The above tactic works well with new signups however tapping your existing subscribers for referrals takes a little more creativity since they are often an afterthought. Most existing subscribers have little incentive to give you a referral since opting-in is a distant memory for them. The simple solution here is to provide an incentive. Trade associations are notorious for doing this by turning their referral campaigns into contests, rewarding lavish prizes to individuals who recruit a large number of new members.

Referral campaigns and tactics are an effective and proven way to grow a list organically. The good thing is that a number of email service providers offer some sort of automated referral mechanism to help you implement such programs. However, just as anything worthwhile, growing lists by referrals takes planning, effort and tweaking to make perfect.

Last year, advertisers spent nearly $10 billion on search engine marketing, more than 60 percent more than 2005. The value of SEM to increase the visibility of your Web site and company, and as an advertising tool is clear, but it’s also an effective tool to generate database leads.

Incorporating eLoop features into your SEM campaign can maximize your marketing efforts and increase awareness of your company. The goal is to create a landing page that represents your overall brand and that conveys a clear, concise message about your company. The landing page, more importantly, captures contact information for future communication. Using eLoop and the landing page feature also allows you to automatically follow up with leads to peak the recipients’ interest and increase the chance they will opt-in to receiving future messages.

For detailed instructions on how to create a landing page, log into your account, mouse over the Help tab and use the “eLoop 4.0 Knowledge Base.”

Marketing Sherpa, a business research company that just happens to focus on the marketing profession, presented the results of its recent study, Email Marketing Lists, Design, Tests & Deliverability for 2007. The report highlights information from four areas: (1) survey of 3,687 e-mail marketers; (2) lab tests and partner research; (3) “best of” research from expert sources; and (4) approximately 600 interviews.

Highlights of the study for your reference are included below:

• 42% of business-to-business (B-to-B) respondent said the impact of email is increasing slowly.
• 40% of business-to-consumer (B-to-C) respondents said the impact of email is increasing significantly.
• B-to-B respondents saw a 22% annual growth rate in their email list.
• B-to-C respondents saw a 37% annual growth rate in their email list.
• “Landing Page Copy” had the highest return on investment (ROI) at 43.2%.  Text only messages as the lowest ROI
• In 2006, 80% of B-to-B respondents indicated that they had commercial filtering applications or appliances. Only 9% reported no filtering applications. Companies typically use filtering applications to decrease the amount of SPAM sent to their employees’ inboxes.
• “From Line Accuracy” had the highest CAN SPAM failure rate at approximately 57.4%. This means that inaccurate or false information in the from line caused the highest number of SPAM blocks.
• 83% of respondents indicated that consumers, “at least occasionally activate” images (or click through on images) when they appear in statements and order updates. 35% occasionally activate from unrecognized senders when contents are of interest.
• Nearly 52% said that they don’t see mobile marketing applying to them in the near future. An example of mobile marketing is asking consumers to send a text message in response to a message.  

The full report is available from Marketing Sherpa by visiting www.marketingsherpa.com.