E Marketing and Contact Rates

As frequency of contact increases, average unique click through rates decrease. This decrease suggests that the motivation of marketing campaigns will have less of an effect on recipients if they are contacted too frequently.

The frequency of emails sent to a database will directly correlate to the following key points.

1. How often are you currently contacting recipients who signed up to your database? Is there a pattern to how often you send? Do you send weekly or monthly newsletters, for example? Have these recipients signed up for the frequency at which you communicate?

2. The nature of the business, effect of competition and the product you are trying to sell should help determine how often you contact you’re database.

3. Content and strategy of the campaigns will drive engagement levels with recipients. Are your campaigns sales driven or do they contain more content? Statistics show recipients are less likely to respond to your campaigns if they receive them too often, specifically relative to pure sales campaigns. When additional content is driven more towards encouraging interaction and brand association with the campaign, a higher percentage of recipients will respond.

The most important strategy is the balance between internally thinking that you are under communicating, whilst not over communicating. Overall statistics show opt-out rates are also influenced. When contacted weekly, the opt-out rate is between 3.5% and 2.5%. Those who are contacted once a month show only a 1% opt-out rate.

It is also important to remember that regular consumers are more likely to respond than non customers. With that in mind, marketers need to find stability with their current relationships while not annoying them with over contact. A solution is to let the customer choose how often they want to be contacted which should also ensure high click through rates are sustained and less customers are likely to opt-out.

Email marketing gives the marketers an advantage in its ability to investigate quickly, test and to ultimately send applicable messages and so keep commitment and interest active.

Quality Campaigns – E Marketing Research

“A well conceived, designed and executed e-mail marketing campaign generates responses which far out perform the traditional mediums of TV, radio or print in return on investment for the advertiser. Done correctly it’s the most effective marketing tool in the world for targeting the high LSM. Our mission is to help our clients interact with their existing customers, gain new customers and clearly and accountably drive revenue.” – Thomas Boyd MD Digitalfire.

Email is accountable for the majority of daily communication worldwide and is the perfect medium for strategic target marketing.  Generating higher response rates than any other marketing tools, more brands stand in line to benefit from email marketing every day. Being both cost effective and easily adaptive, while delivering almost instant response rates ensures email marketing is effective over and beyond all traditional media. Also, interactivity encourages a two-way dialogue between brand and targeted customers.

Yet, some marketers are cautious and are still trying to figure email marketing out. Some struggle to see how instrumental and effective a marketing tool it is, despite its ability to support many marketing disciplines.

Many important measures are taken to ensure the best response rates for campaigns. Data is analysed and tested, profiled and updated. Regular studies and surveys indicate when and where recipients are most likely to respond to a campaign which ensures mailers are strategically sent out at the optimum times. Relevant brand led subject lines are incorporated in order to target recipients effectively. Data profiles are tracked and analysed to recognise relationships, trends and responses to brands. Databases are contacted either monthly or when they choose to be contacted so as not to over communicate. Much thought and strategy goes into one simple mailer in order to achieve the best possible response rates and deliver effective marketing campaigns.

Email marketing is the most effective advertising medium worldwide because it is direct, simple and successful.  Increase your e-mail database and you increase your ability to drive effective sales and increase revenue. E-mail addresses are individuals waiting to be turned into customers.

Why We Like the Recession.

Ad waffle. Smoke and Mirrors. Over promise and under delivery. Lack of market knowledge and dare I say it laziness. I see it quite a bit of it the South African Advertising and Marketing place. Don’t be offended if you work in the industry I also see some quality people,  great ideas and forward thinking concepts but in my opinion I think its fair to say that the recession is a good thing for marketing and advertising  in this Country.

What is this guy thinking, how can an advertising company MD like the recession?  Well the answer is I do, and my company does and here’s why:

1.It has forced marketers (those worth their salt) to look at their marketing strategy and focus on what works for them and what ROI they are generating from their efforts. ROI not simply branding is the order of the day, and as the business Digital Fire specialises in, opt in e-mail marketing, is  the most  accountable and effective form of marketing targeting the high LSM, we have been seizing market share  and spend by  delivering quality solutions, which outperform traditional media.

2.It cleans out the dead wood personel in businesses, the uncommitted and the slack. When times are tough the tough get going.  You’ll have heard that truism, because its exactly  that, true. If you are not committed, passionate and effective you will lose business and position  to those that are. The weak go under and the strong rise to the top and that’s the way it should be. The good times don’t test people and companies, the difficult ones do.

Now more than ever advertising and marketing must prove itself and so must those who work in this exciting industry

WHERE SHOULD YOU SPEND?

If you are in charge of budgets or are a Marketing Director  whose job  it is to create high LSM targeting you should be looking closely at emerging marketing mediums especially the Internet and profiled e-mail  data base marketing  if you are trying to target the high LSM. You should be looking at what is happening in the more advanced markets overseas and seeing if you can steal a march on your competition by moulding those ideas to the SA market. Throwing cash at old school simple print is just  a waste of money. Integration is the key, on and offline working together.

HOW SHOULD YOU SPEND?

Any company that simply slashes its advertising budget has made a grievous error. Quality advertising and marketing is an investment not a cost and drives sales and revenue – the lifeblood of a business. The recession has (or certainly  should have) caused companies to look at their advertising budgets  very closely and to see what works for them.

WHAT SHOULD YOU BE LOOKING AT- MEASURABILITY.

Where are you spending your money, what are your objectives on that medium and what are the results you are getting are the questions that should be at the forefront of a junior planner buyer to a  large corporate marketing director’s mind.

WHY  E-MAIL?

Your data base is one of the most valuable things you have. These people, and they are people, don’t  make the mistake just of seeing an e- mail as a jumble of letters, are customers whom you have already convinced to buy your product. You need to be talking to them to find out more about what they want and then working out how to give it to them. E mail is a great customer retention tool and a great customer acquisition tool.

We offer specialist advice on  how to grow, manage and drive maximum value from your data and from target data lists.

That we feel that Digital fire is placed strongly in the market.

E-mail is a totally accountable medium and also the most effective form of direct marketing targeting the high LSM. While simple display marketing has plummeted recently e mail marketing has risen 8% in the UK. Why? Because it delivers more ROI than print and display, it’s that simple.

GET PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT YOU DO!

So if you are looking after the marketing and adverting budgets in house or as an Agency. Be proud of what you do. Be proactive; know what the market is doing. Imagine it’s your cash you are spending, put that level of passion in to your work. Someone picks up the tab along the line.
To those of you out there who do this and are committed, all power to you, spread the word and lead from the front. To those of you who feel a little uneasy reading this. Good. As the great Vince Lombardi said. “People on a team should be fired with enthusiasm or they should be fired with enthusiasm.”

For me enthusiasm in business  is  excitement about doing a job to the very best of your ability  and seeing results from your endeavours. “Nuff said.

Thomas Boyd is Managing Director of Digital Fire.

Email or You Fail!

E mail marketing. If you are involved in advertising and marketing especially to the high LSM locally in South Africa or internationally then you should know about the e-mail marketing medium. Why? Because done properly it knocks the socks off traditional mediums such as print radio and TV and online banners and buttons in terms of return on investment.   It’s cost effective, it’s interactive, it’s targeted, its high response.

In the UK display advertising dropped by a massive 23% in the last year, whilst spending on e-mail marketing rose by 8% (source e-consultancy). Why? Because it works, and more than ever companies want to see a return on investment from their advertising spend.

E mail should not be viewed as just a simple direct marketing medium (although it’s the most effective direct marketing medium there is). It also has the added bonus of driving time spent with the brand, interactivity, profiling ability and the powerful marketing tool of pass on to a  friend viral functionality. It has so much to offer the marketer that done properly it’s the dream marketing medium; allowing personalised, profiled, accountable interactive communication with current and future customers.

E mail marketing should be considered in two core areas: Your existing customer data base and target customer data.

If you have existing customer data, and you are not managing it and marketing to it properly then you are simply missing out on one of the best revenue drivers you have at your disposal. These people have already bought from you. You have done the hard work in making them into customers already, now is the time to reinforce your brand with them, listen to what the like and help them buy more of your product. Simple.

Target Data. What is your desired customer target market? Again e-mail offers superb targeting ability. Let’s say you are a high end travel company and you want to marker your services to 9-10 LSM affluent married couples who travel abroad twice a year. E mail allows you to target this exact customers demographic, no wastage, just focused niche advertising and the ability to report on exactly the response rates and clearly show you where your spend has gone and how effective it has been. The key is to ensure that you rent quality opt in profiled e-mail data and market to it in the correct fashion.

The average response to a direct marketing campaign is 0.1%. The average response to our Digital Fire Promo E-Mailer campaigns in the last year has been 10% and higher. So on average we are 100% more effective than traditional marketing mediums.

The average response rate to a click on a banner and button is 0.6%, again way lower than e-mail.

Rob Stokes of Quirk in their excellent Quirk Newsletter talks of how social media is viewed as sexy and cutting edge but e mail should drive your highest ROI. He is absolutely right. It’s easy to get caught up in new marketing trends, but one of  the most important factors in  marketing is to look at and assess what is working for your company, what is bringing you the results and  what is driving revenue and return on investment and to focus your time on that.

Rob Stokes of Quirk in their excellent Quirk Newsletter talks of how social media is viewed as sexy and cutting edge but e mail should drive your highest ROI. He is absolutely right. It’s easy to get caught up in new marketing trends, but one of  the most important factors in  marketing is to look at and assess what is working for your company, what is bringing you the results and  what is driving revenue and return on investment and to focus your time on that.

Email marketing is the most effective tool there is for driving ROI so understand it, embrace it and do it right!