Table of Contents PART I: UNDERSTANDING MARKETING PART II: GETTING STARTED

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2 Table of Contents PART I: UNDERSTANDING MARKETING 1. Why is Marketing Important for Your Marketing Plan? Benefits of Marketing Different types of marketing for different types of customers...4 a. Customer Acquisition and Sales Generation...4 b. Customer Loyalty and Brand...5 c. Customer Retention...5 d. Customer Win-Back A Case Study: How a Non-Profit Increased Revenue by 50% with Four s...7 PART II: GETTING STARTED 1. Capture Leads Segment and Target Leads Design Testing...16

3 WHY IS MARKETING IMPORTANT FOR YOUR MARKETING PLAN? Dear marketers, take a moment to answer these: PART I: UNDERSTANDING MARKETING 1. Do you check your s multiple times a day? 2. Do you find yourself clicking on some s simply out of curiosity? 3. Do you understand more about a brand from the s they sent? If your answers to all of the above questions are yes, you might have just proven a phenomenon marketing works. Its reach, customization, and low-cost high-returns has made it an attractive and sustainable channel for marketers to leverage on its benefits. According to Marketo, marketing is still a hugely important part of any marketing strategy. Most brands still prefer to communicate via , and in a recent survey, 77% of consumers said they like marketing through best. Especially with improved technology and automation today, marketing increasingly empowers the marketer to do more. Read on to find out exactly how. 1

4 BENEFITS OF MARKETING #1 - MARKETING IS FASTER. marketing empowers a marketer to turn a marketing communications piece out in typically in a few hours. Unlike most traditional advertisements, billboards, and other media campaigns which require larger teams and a long time, marketing uses recurring templates to achieve maximum efficiency. Often, all you'll need to do is edit the copy and images, use easy database list queries to decide whom to send to, and just send. Low cost marketing option can result in big wins. #2 - MARKETING IS CHEAPER. marketing can result in cost savings over time. Get the template and infrastructure up once, and you can market to customers over and over again for free. According to Experian, for every $1 spent on marketing investment, $44.25 is the average return. With low cost and high return, marketing is definitely a good investment every marketer should employ. #3 - MARKETING IS PERSONALIZED. The ability to segment your database of customers or users by profiling them means that you can send extremely targeted marketing campaigns that will directly result in increased sales conversions - simply because they are so specific! By doing this, you push the most relevant message to the customers who are most likely to respond to it - that's what good marketing is all about. With more means to understand consumer profile, the "one-size-fits-all" method does not hold anymore. Personalized messages help connect the consumer to your brand more strongly. marketing solutions not only personalizes your user's name or login name, but feed in personalized information such as sales or purchase history. Besides, you can segment your customer list into smaller lists and send very personalized messages. With personalization, you can easily speak to your customers in an intimate way that is not possible with other marketing channels and avenues. #4 - MARKETING GETS ATTENTION. Unlike traditional methods of reaching out, target audiences of marketing are willing prospects who have given you permission to market to them. These are the people who are keen to know more about your products and services. Using marketing, getting the attention of these customers is relatively, if not absolutely, easier. Besides, due to the reduced time and effort needed to send an , you can communicate with your subscribers more frequently. Most companies send s once a week, or even daily (e.g. daily news update), depending on the nature of the content. However, one of the best marketing practices is to keep the frequency to no more than once a week. 2

5 #5 - MARKETING ALLOWS OPTIMIZATION AND MEASUREMENT OF RESULTS. marketing offers one of the best testing opportunities. A/B testing is a common way for marketers to test changes to an against the current design and determine which one produces better results. Simply vary elements like graphics, headlines, offers and even colors and send particular versions to part of your lists. By tracking clicks and sales conversions, you can then find out which marketing messages produce the best response. Marketers are always frustrated over being unable to justify their marketing spendings. Tracking and measuring results is the solution to this. marketing offers the best way to draw precise and usable tracking information to analyze the success of your marketing campaign. These includes tracking #6 - MARKETING CAN BE AUTOMATED, SAVING EVERYBODY S TIME. And the best part about marketing? It can be automated. Automating your marketing campaign means that you can use a software to streamline, automate and measure your marketing tasks and workflow. What this does for companies is that they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue more quickly. how many people opened an , how many people clicked a link in an , which specific link within the was clicked, how many people complained that an was spam or unsubscribed whether your even made it into your recipient s in box. By identifying customer engagement and response through an entire cycle, marketers can then take the first step to implement improvements to their marketing campaign. 3

6 DIFFERENT TYPES OF MARKETING FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF CUSTOMERS If you think that marketing is simply plugging in typical content and hitting the send button to your entire customer list, you might want to read on to find out why that is NOT the case. In fact, marketing is, like other marketing channels, intricately designed based on different goals. Type #1. Customer Acquisition and Sales Generating The most common type of marketing is to directly generate revenue for the company by either converting non-existing users to users or getting existing users to make additional purchases. In this section, we'll take a look at four different marketing types and their purpose. After reading this section, you may want to take some time to think about what role should play in your marketing mix and which marketing type will serve both you and your clients best over the long term. You should send a Customer Acquisition and Sales Generating to... Potential customers who have never been exposed to your product before. You will typically rent or purchase this list from another company People who signed up for information about your product or filled out an interest form but have never purchased your product or service. Customers who previously purchased or visited your website and who may be interested in a follow-up purchase or visit. What Is the Content of a Customer Acquisition or Sales Generating ? The content will be used to inspire the user to take action by either visiting your website or make a purchase. Discounts or sales offers are typical, but there may also be instances where simply providing information about your product, service or website is enough. Although customer acquisition and sales generating s are the most essential step to drive direct revenue and return-on-investment from marketing, they are most successful when you incorporate them with the other marketing types discussed in the following pages. 4

7 Type #2. Customer Loyalty and Brand Companies sometimes send out s that do not solicit nor require any action from the recipient. An example of such s can come in the form of a birthday or a festive greeting. This is considered customer loyalty or brand building marketing. These s may not drive direct revenue for you, but cultivating a good relationship with your customers means that they will remain your customers for longer, spend more money over time, and are more likely to recommend your brand to their peers. You should send a Customer Loyalty and Brand to... your most active clients; or regular customers who have recently paused their purchase. Blasting customer loyalty or brand building s to non-existing users may not produce the best click through rates. Even worse, it may trigger spam reports. Therefore, you should only target customers and users who want to have an ongoing relationship with your brand and build on that loyalty and awareness. What Is the Content of a Customer Loyalty or Brand Building ? Useful information that entertains and will cause customers to build an affinity for your brand or business. It will also create high open and click-through rates. Newsletters are a common type of customer loyalty and brand building . Other types include holiday and birthday greetings, thank you s, company status updates and tips and advice s. Type #3. Customer Retention To ensure that customers remain loyal and keep coming back to purchase or visit your website again and again, companies send out customer retention s. As compared to customer loyalty or brand building s, customer retention s will prominently feature a product or offer. However, unlike pure sales generating s, these offers are designed to attract repeat customers and discounts are usually less generous You should send a Customer Retention to Any customer who has ever made a purchase at your website; or registered at your site and has a viewing history of your website should receive a customer retention . Also keep in mind that understanding your customer profile and segmenting them is important. The best way to retain customers is to incentivize them to remain customers by putting the most relevant information out to the most interested customers. What Is the Content of a Customer Retention ? To encourage repeat purchase, the content of a customer retention is almost always an offer, sale, discount or free gift. It is also possible to introduce new products or services that customers might be interested in. Customers who make multiple purchases will make up your pool of most profit-generating customers. This is why it is so important to have a strategically designed customer retention as part of your marketing plan. 5

8 Type #4. Customer Win-Back Last but not least, the customer win-back is one that bring back people who were once customers but have abandoned your product or service. Due to the nature of the target audience in this category, the customer win-back is typically one type of marketing that generates the lowest response rate. However, winning back an old customer is more cost effective than it is to acquire a new customer. That is why the customer win-back should be incorporated in your marketing plan. Each of the four types of marketing types provide different values. The best marketing programs integrate all four marketing types, depending on where a user or customer is in their customer life cycle. As a marketer, you may want to think about how these types of marketing can work with your business or marketing goals. Once done, have a larger perspective and see how you can incorporate all four types of marketing in your own marketing plan. You should send a Customer Win-Back to... Except for customers who have already unsubscribed from your list, any customer who have once purchased should receive a customer win-back . In this regard, the customer win-back is similar to the customer retention , except the amount of time from the last interaction should be long, and you should group them based on the time lapsed since their last interaction with you. Customers who have lapsed for more than a year typically require more aggressive offers compared to short-term lapsed customers (e.g. three months). Doing so can help create a more impactful campaign. What Is the Content of a Customer Win-Back ? To incentivize a lapsed customer to return to you, a customer win-back must include offers, sales, free gifts, free shipping or other exclusive opportunities that are exclusive only to these group and are not available to the general public. 6

9 Case Study: How End of Year Revenue for a Non Profit Boosted by 50% With Four s The following marketing case study was originally published in the July 26, 2011 edition of Marketing Sherpa. Challenge: For any nonprofit organization, December is an important month to generate donations. People are in a holiday spirit and, in the United States, the realization that a nonprofit donation can be a last-minute tax write-off. For HealthConnect One, which promotes the health of mothers, infants and families. December is a critical month for donations that will fund the nonprofit organization for the next year. While many nonprofits send postal mailings in December, HealthConnect One was worried that their postal mailing would get lost in the shuffle of holiday mail. So, in order to reinforce the message of the postal mailing, HealthConnect One began its first full-scale marketing The Campaign: In this case, HealthConnect One planned a four-part series. The s would get sent throughout the month of December. The first part of the series would be designed to supplement the postal mailer, which included information, a call to make a donation and was personalized by using the recipient s name and home address in the upper left corner. The corresponding campaign, however, had the flexibility to be more emotive, and the marketing team settled on the theme Have You Ever Been a Baby? to show that everybody had a way to related to the important work that HealthConnect One was doing. It was also a theme that the marketing team believed would stand out both from the nonprofit s industry group (often focusing on heart-wrenching personal stories) and the flood of consumer that is delivered to inboxes during December, the heaviest marketing month of the year. The team focused on the following keys in developing the campaign: Keeping It Simple: Each template was simple. A large header graphic with a logo, a single picture of a baby, a headline, three to four sentences of copy and a link to donate (the only link in the ). There was also a P.S. statement to keep the feeling personal. The Four s: The four s that the team sent in this case used the following subject lines: Have you ever been a baby?, Over 143,000 babies were born in the U.S. since our last !, We were all babies once! and Happy New Year from HC One!. Though each had completely unique copy within the body of the , the copy all highlighted the same four points: many thousands of babies are born in the US each year, not all babies have the support that they need, HealthConnect One helps provide support to families, and that donating to the organization would help those families and babies get the support that they need. The PS statement enforced that all donations would be matched. 7

10 What Next? The HealthConnect One team then scrubbed their list and determined which portion of their database was best to select to send the to. They then developed an landing page exclusive to the campaign that reinforced the message of the campaign and included easy ways to donate money to the organization. Finally, they discussed and planned the proper timing of the sending of the s, working both to space the s out over time as well as to avoid holiday slow periods when people are not necessarily checking their . The Results Not only did the results show success rates, open rate and click-through rate (CTR), they also showed in the overall revenue gained. All of the s except for the sent on December 23 received an open rate of greater than 20 percent and a click through rate of greater than four percent. More importantly, HealthConnect One exceeded its goal of $15,000 in donations and generated fifty percent more revenue in their December campaign than they had the year before. The ability to communicate multiple times with unique, personalized content that told a story and made donating simple resulted in a comfortable and successful December donations campaign for HealthConnect One. No matter what marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful campaign is to choose a reliable bulk software solution. 8

11 PART II GETTING STARTED: 4 STEPS TO EXECUTE YOUR MARKETING CAPTURE LEADS SEGMENT & TARGET LEADS DESIGN TESTING 9

12 1 CAPTURE LEADS Most common (and successful) techniques for capturing leads: Online Methods 1. Via online whitepaper/ebook/ webinar online registration. The first step for a good marketing plan is to capture ways to contact your audience. These contact details are essential for your future marketing campaigns. Yet, one of the biggest mistakes made by businesses is that they do not, or do not have the means to capture leads. One of the most challenging, if not the most challenging, portions of the customer life cycle is the process of acquiring leads. These people who have yet to develop a relationship with your brand need to be convinced - not only of having to purchase or register for your offering, but also that they can trust you with their money, personal information and expectations. How can you use marketing to help with converting leads and prospective customers into active and paying customers? 10

13 2. In the middle of an e-commerce checkout experience. 4. Through Twitter s new Lead Gen Cards. 3. Via your Facebook page. 5. Through an online pop-up or pop-under. 11

14 6. During tradeshows. Have a tablet on hand to easily opt-in new contacts Other methods include 1. When an existing subscriber shares your in any social media and one of their friends opts-in to your list. 2. Via QR code 3. Through a prompt at the end of a survey 4. With a suggested opt-in prompt on a paper receipt or invoice. 5. On billboards. Yes, those things you see from the freeway. 6. Through aerial advertising: airlines, hot air balloons, blimps. 7. During an actual in-store checkout experience. 8. Using old-school paper advertising techniques These are but a few examples - the list goes on. As a marketer, you need to be opportunistic enough to identify any chance to capture leads from various channels. Lead generation is a huge topic by itself.. Contact us for a chat on how you can plan your lead generation process. 12

15 2 SEGMENT AND TARGET LEADS According to a research by Marketing Sherpa, the most popular solution to the challenge of achieving both quality and quantity of subscribers is to ask for registration during purchase. Having a huge database of subscribers can be beneficial, but it will only be an asset if these subscribers have an interest in what you are sending. If you want your audience to hear your content, you need to be getting the right people, and saying the right things. Segmenting your lists based on demographics and psychographics help to understand the interests of your audience better. The smaller, more similar groups, the more focused their interests, hence the more targetted marketing messages can be crafted. When gathering information from your audience, you don t just want to capture their address. Find out about their interests, occupation, or any information that can help you identify the topics they might be interested in. Of course, keep in mind to only ask for what you need - you don t want to chase away your customers by being too inquisitive. One way to do this is to first capture their s, and then send a separate to ask them to tell you more about themselves. 13

16 3 DESIGN When it comes designing the template, marketers may find it challenging, and the following questions may seem familiar: What font colour, type and size should I use? How big should the headlines be? Image or no image? How much text should I use? What should I say? template design goes further than aesthetic concerns. It is also largely correlated with spam and deliverability issues. This is why it is important to plan your template design carefully. There is no one fixed way of designing your template, but we ve got you some tips that guide you with the designing process. 9 Quick Tips About Design You Should Know 1. Place images at the critical top two inches of your template. If you ever heard of the 3 second scan, you should note that the attention span in any marketing message is barely longer than a flash. Your images need to capture attention at the first instance, or you ll lose it all. 2. Keep your image size small. Needless to say, small images take a shorter time to load. Not only that, you might be surprised to find that small, compressed and well formatted image files have significantly less issues with spam and deliverability. 3. Avoid overusing red fonts. Funny as it sounds, too many red fonts in an text have been shown to trigger increased spam scores. If you have to use red, make sure to keep it minimal, or consider using off-shade red. 4. Keep your headline at the critical top to inches of your template. Similar to images, use a compelling headline to capture the attention of your audience at the top of your template. However, keep in mind not to make it so big such that it breaks the design of the template. 14

17 5. Keep it readable. No matter what font colour, type or size you are using for your template, the key is for your copy to be readable. Capture attention by mixing up the visual presentation of your using bold, colours or caps for trigger words. 6. Include obvious call-to-actions. Call-to-actions should come in the form of text or image links, and stand out from the surrounding text with a paragraph break. When using image links, make sure they look clickable, and these links must inform users clearly of their action (e.g. Register now, Join today ). Also, keep to one (at most two) call-to-action in one Optimize the width and height of your template. 600 px is safe for the width, whereas any dimension can be used for the height. Note, however, that the preview pane spans from 300 px to 500 px, so keep your most important elements there (e.g. images and headlines). 8. Include an unsubscribe option. It is not that we want to encourage users to unsubscribe from your mailing list, but you want to give them the freedom to choose their preference. You would rather they unsubscribe, than to mark your as spam. 9. Avoid spam words. Words like free, credit, subscribe can trigger spam filters. That doesn t mean you cannot use them at all in your s, but just take note of the frequency and amount of such words used. 15

18 4 TESTING If you think you are ready to launch your marketing campaign... halt! Not so soon... Walk through the entire process of marketing in your customers shoes and find potential glitches or ways to improve your marketing process. The following should be tested to ensure that your marketing platform works smoothly. 1. Test subscription. Set up test accounts with various address, for example, gmail, hotmail, yahoo, and AOL. Use these accounts to subscribe to your mailing list from the site of lead capture and make sure that you have received your confirmation and that it went to the inbox instead of the spam folder. Also check that your sending platform s back end administration interface should record all of the new addresses in the database. 3. Test the tracking. From your test accounts, check that the click through rates tally with the reports on the back end of your service provider. As you do that, check whether your sending platform tracks clicks by a unique or by total clicks basis so you can have a sense of what the numbers should look like. 4. Test unsubscription. You want to make sure that customers have a smooth-running unsubscription experience. Unsubscribe one of your test s from the mailing list and check if this continues to receive new s. Also log in with your marketing platform to confirm that the has been removed from the mailing list. 2. Test your template. This is to make sure that your successfully goes into the inbox (and not the spam folder) and is displayed exactly how you designed it to. Also check that the from name and address is correct. 16

19 Of course, like any other marketing campaigns, finding the best fit for an marketing strategy requires testing. You will not know what your audience respond to until you test. Here are 15 elements we suggest you consider testing: 1. Subject line 2. From name 3. Day of the week 4. Time of day 5. Frequency 6. Mostly-images vs. mostly-text 7. Short copy vs. long copy 8. Links vs. buttons 9. Number of links 10. First name personalization 11. Animated gifs 12: Fonts 13. Social sharing icons 14. Tone human vs. corporate 15. Copy length While there seem to be an overwhelming number of elements that you can test with marketing, commit to testing one variable at a time. Keep a record of all these tests and its results so you can learn from them, and more importantly, take action to improve your marketing strategy. 17