Marketers Say eMail Strongest Performing Media Buy

datranmedia.com -

Datran Media recently released the results of its second annual survey of over 2000 online marketing professionals, finding that 82 percent of the marketers surveyed indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008, and 55 percent of the respondents cite that they expect ROI from email to be higher than any other channel. The reports says that the survey results are consistent with the Direct Marketing Association’s recent report, which found that email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display.

In addition to increased use of email as a media and lead generation channel, the Datran Media survey found:

• 80 percent of respondents indicated email was the strongest performing media buy ahead of search and display.
• Search is the favored channel for complementing the email channel.
• More than 80 percent of marketers send targeted email campaigns.

Selected key findings include the following…

Company Email plans for 2008, compared to 2007:

Expectations for company’s Email marketing ROI in 2008:

Advertising media buys that perform strongly for your company: (multiple response OK)

Media channels that complement the eMail media channel: (multiple response OK)

Of those who plan to employ eMail, they also expect:

• 80% to send newsletters
• 78.8% drive sales
• 67.1% will increase upsell or cross sell opportunities
• 50.6% will sent transactional messages
• 52.9% to reactivate dormant customers
• 70.6% plan to enhance customer relationships
• 64.7% expect to increase brand awareness or lift

The respondents say eMail planning includes these elements in 2008:

• 74.1% to conduct content or creative split testing
• 36.5% will test creative across inbox devices
• 29.4% to pay for eMail marketing based on CPM model
• 58.8% will pay on a CPC or CPA model
• 36.5% will include banner ads
• 25.9% will measure effect on Brand lift
• 36.5% will measure effect on customer satisfaction
• 64.7% will measure eMail effect on sales

Response to… “use and/or plan on using an outside vendor for email marketing?”

• 69.4% say Yes
• 20% say NO
• 10.6% Not Sure

Source: Datran Media, January 2008

Your Email Marketing Recession Survival Guide

mediapost.com – By all accounts, the U.S. economy and others around the world are either in recession now or heading for one before 2008 ends. How long it will last and how rough it will get is anybody’s guess, but I’m not waiting for the official proclamation, and neither should you.My original column idea was to initiate a strategic discussion around the potential impact of a recession on our industry, but since fellow Insider Bill McCloskey stole my thunder in yesterday’s column, I’ve opted to outline survival strategies during an economic downturn.

Now is the time to strengthen your position inside your company. At the same time, reach outside to your customer base by making your email marketing as relevant and valuable as possible. By following a proactive strategic plan, you also guard against committing irreversible mistakes as you recession-proof your email-marketing program. Strategies to follow include:

• Launch or beef up your campaign to remind management how email marketing helps drive your company’s success. Many executives view email simply as an inexpensive marketing vehicle. Now is the time to reposition email as a strategic relationship-management channel.

• Implement programs that integrate with and extend the ROI of other channels such as search, direct mail, RSS, broadcast or trade shows. For example, optimizing landing pages to convert prospects into an email relationship even if they don’t take your core conversion action can greatly boost the long-term ROI of your search spend.

• Leverage your email editorial content for search-engine optimization. Particularly for publishers and B2B marketers, optimizing your article content for search engines can pay off handsomely. When planning your editorial content, write your articles and titles using high-priority keyword phrases. Improving your natural search rankings for certain keywords might enable you to reduce your paid search spend when the CFO comes wielding an axe.

• Assess the value of your customers and relationships. Use RFM or similar analyses to determine which customer segments are the highest value and most loyal and who will likely continue to spend during a downturn. Then, initiate or enhance loyalty or incentive programs to reward and encourage them.

• Learn more about your customers. Add or update your preference center, and incentivize subscribers to update their profiles. Survey subscribers for insights to help you deliver more relevant emails and greater personalization. Integrate Web analytics data, and deploy more highly targeted messages based on Web activity.

• Use more trigger-based emails, following up with subscribers based on specific open, click or Web activity.

• Implement measurement systems and management reports that demonstrate the impact email has on the company. Move beyond process metrics — opens, clicks, delivery rate — and gather output metrics tied to the company’s overall business goals, particularly strategic changes to adjust in a slowed economy.

• Identify ways that the company can switch to email to save money, such as e-billing statements or special notices.

What not to do now:

• Don’t panic, and don’t wait for your CEO or management to tell you to cut your email budget. Take the lead by proving value beforehand. Don’t expend energy on unproductive email-versus-direct-mail arguments within your company. Focus on demonstrating what email does best and how it extends the value of your company’s other marketing channels.

• Don’t revert to batch-and-blast techniques to boost or maintain revenue. I expect some marketers will be forced to just “send more emails” to their entire database. This might deliver short-term results, but it can also hurt your brand and deliverability, increase costs to replace lost subscribers and potentially anger many otherwise happy customers.

• Don’t compromise on permission and privacy. Resist the temptation to build your lists more aggressively. Focus instead on your most valuable prospects.

The reality of company politics and decision-making could make achieving all of these strategies difficult. So, don’t feel you have to adopt them all.

However, do something. If nothing else, go to management with your plan to leverage email marketing to drive both the top and bottom lines during the coming downturn. You will be way ahead of peers who wait for uninformed instructions to drift down from the high command.

Is Email Recession-Proof?

mediapost.com – One of the advantages of going before heavy hitters like David Baker and Loren McDonald in the Email Insider lineup is that I get first crack at hot topics. Like this week’s for instance: email and the recession. Loren and David were both lining up to make some comments on the topic, and hopefully my brilliance won’t intimidate them too much from chiming in on their own columns this week. And actually, even I’m not the first to talk about it: Elie Ashery was first up with a column this week on the Email Experience Council blog:

My theory is pretty straightforward. While a recession is certainly not good for anybody, it may have a beneficial effect on email marketing. Or at the very least, email should be less affected by a recession than other marketing channels. Because of email’s low cost, high ROI value and the fact that it is a proven medium, marketers might see themselves directing more marketing dollars to this channel as a sure thing, and away from less proven (mobile marketing, RSS), less direct (banner advertising) or less costly (SEO) channels. Good old email: it works, it’s cheap, and my return is high. It’s a safe harbor in troubling times.

Read rest of article at mediapost.com