MARKETING $25. Your guide to navigating the evolving landscape. THE LIST COMPANY THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

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1 $25 Estimated Value 21st Century Marketing Presents AN INSIDER S GUIDE TO MARKETING Your guide to navigating the evolving landscape. THE LIST COMPANY THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE CALL US TODAY AT OR VISIT OUR MAIN WEBSITE:

2 AN INSIDER S GUIDE TO MARKETING Marketing via is an extremely powerful tool. However, it can be as tricky as it is useful. It is easy, yet easily abused. The success of your campaign relies on effectively handling every detail. Let this guide make using marketing powerful and easy for you and your business. OPT-IN OR PERMISSION-BASED MARKETING: marketing is most successful when you have permission from the recipient to contact them electronically. There are different degrees of permission ranging from negative option requiring the individual to unsubscribe or opt out from receiving future mailings, to a verified opt-in where the individual has sent you an confirming their desire to be contacted, which is verified with a follow-up . There is a direct correlation between response levels and the degree of permission that the recipient has given. It is important that you respect the commitments you have made regarding privacy and honor your side of the agreement with your customer or prospect to keep information private and confidential unless you have specifically received permission to do otherwise: 1. Provide a clear and simple way for the consumer to optout of the receipt of future mailings. 2. Make it a practice to obtain information including addresses from prospects and customers at every possible interactive point. Let the individual express their specific needs. The use of spam or unsolicited is not only ineffective but can damage your organization s reputation. People are sensitive to what they receive in their electronic mailboxes. If you are renting outside lists, you must confirm that individuals have given their consent to receive . In most cases, you can actually go to the list owner s website and get on their list yourself. Remember - the only way for an address to get onto a list is by explicitly requesting it and having the consumer opt-in.

3 The subject and more: users are very quick with the delete key if the subject line is to long, wordy or seems irrelevant. Make it compelling and meaningful with real information. The subject line is critical to the success of the campaign. It is the first link between you and the prospect: 1. In about 40 characters or less, convince the recipient to open the Avoid using words like free and save, or urgent and important. These words along with nearly anything in all caps may make your message look like spam. Also, many online portals, like AOL, use filters to block mail that they identify as spam. 3. Steer clear of placing dollar signs ($$$) in the subject line or the body of your message. This too may make your mailing appear like spam. 4. Make use of the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field or do a mail merge. This avoids publicizing others addresses and puts the mailer and recipient on a one-to-one basis. 5. Just like the subject line, the from line will instantly communicate whether your is quality or spam to the recipient. CONTENT: Here are some tips for creating successful campaigns: 1. Create an strategy first. Answer questions such as: who is my target audience, why is the best channel to reach this audience, how often should I send s, and what is my ultimate goal for the campaign? 3. In addition to using the prospects names, consider placing personalized content in the body of the . This will help to build a relationship and increase response rates. 4. Be concise. A long can be very discouraging to the prospect and, in turn, the mailer. Many recipients still will not scroll down to read past the bottom of the screen. Keep that in mind when placing hot links in your message. 5. Use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation and try not to use abbreviations such as btw (by the way) and lol (laugh out loud.) The same goes for emotion icons like the smiley face. These are common in computer communications, but are not professional and the recipient may be unaware of their meaning. 6. If sending an HTML formatted message, make sure that the recipient can access a text format as well. Give the recipient a choice as to what they prefer. This will ensure that everyone can easily read the Reading from a screen may be more difficult than reading off of paper, so the structure, layout and formatting are crucial to conveying your message. Use short paragraphs with blank lines between each one and choose your colors carefully as different browsers may display the differently. 8. Place the most important, compelling content in the first few lines of the . Similar to a newspaper article, if these lines attract the reader s attention, they will read on. 9. Include URLs in each message so prospects can easily access your web site. Typically, three links are standard. Create a clear call to action for the recipient and place a hyperlink early in the message. Repeat the hyperlink in the middle and towards the end of the message as well. 1O. Always include a clear-cut way for the user to opt-out of future mailings. This will help you comply with anti-spam guidelines. 2. Design a clear call to action. This is crucial to the campaign. Imagine exactly what you want the recipients of your message to do, and design the message to make that path clear and easy to follow. Personalize your s by using the recipient s name. should be considered a one-to-one mass marketing tool.

4 11. Send your message in the middle of the week in the afternoon. This will avoid a lot of the clutter. It s a good idea to test different days and delivery times to see how they impact your response. 12. Test and retest your message. 13. De-dupe your file to avoid sending multiple s to one recipient. After the mail is sent: 1. Tracking and measuring the results of the campaign can be useful in targeting consumers in future mailings. Unlike conventional mail, responses can come within minutes of the blast. Most click-thrus will occur within a day or two of the blast. 2. If some addresses come back undeliverable, most service bureaus will send out the message until the quantity ordered is met with replacement addresses. 3. Have a follow-up message prepared ahead of time and reply in a timely fashion. Don t forget to send a follow up to those who did not respond as well. 4. Automate your system. The less manual intervention, the better. As the list grows, the updates become very time consuming and a good system will pay for itself. CHOOSING THE BEST LISTS: direct mail/ combination. Many marketers have learned that a multi-channel marketing approach yields the greatest results cost effectively. Make sure you are able to pull the appropriate selects and that the list covers your target audience. Consider the source of the list. Lists may be compiled from web sites such as freebies, sweepstakes, publications and newsletters. One source may be better than another depending on the target audience. If the list comes from a web site, find out how long the site has been around. You want a list with longevity of respondents. Check out the web site. Does it look reputable, complete, maintained? Make sure the names on the list are on there because the prospect opted-in. Determine if at sign up, people used optin, double opt-in, forced opt-in or if there was no method used and it is spam. Request competitive usage on potential rental files to see what other mailers have used the list for in the past. Be sure there are enough names in the file for continued use. Smaller files should have enough names for rollout. A list should be well maintained. The list owner should clean the list often to assure accurate addresses and demographic information. Also, be very conscious of your budget. Lists are rented on a cost per thousand basis and this cost varies depending on the list. Look out for minimum requirements and find out if tracking is supplied and if not at what cost it is available. In general, lists are characterized as being large (many have hundreds of thousands of names and several have millions,) with recency available but hard to target. There are a limited number of actual proven online buyer lists or addreses to proven postal lists. Knowing what end results you are looking for will help you determine what type of list to rent. For example, looking to increase web traffic, a less expensive sweeps file may be good whereas a file of qualified buyers may generate more leads if your goal is actual sales. If a specific postal list is working well for your campaign, repeat your message via . You may want to consider a

5 GROWING YOUR IN-HOUSE DATABASE: Nearly 70% of U.S. households have Internet access and many in-house databases still do not contain addresses. Gaining these addresses from customers will not only accelerate business transactions but will foster a stronger one-toone relationship. Whether asking for it outright, making an offer, or persuading the customer, numerous methods exist to obtaining addresses and growing your database. Call prospects and customers and ask for addresses as a means to update your database. Find out their preference for receiving information. Ask for it at the end of all inbound customer service calls. Also, try matching postal lists against lists of known addresses. Ask for addresses all over your website! Offer prospects free information, coupons or gifts for their address. Put a line on all order forms, comments cards and registration pages requesting addresses. Keep your future customers up to date with an newsletter. Make use of customer surveys, service evaluations and comment cards. Ask how are we doing and while you are at it, give us your . When holding seminars request that attendants fill out information requesting addresses. Offer copies of the presentation or speech in return for the address. Make it worth their while. In addition, gather addresses at workshops, trade shows, job fairs, etc. Remember, once you gather the addresses, you still need the customer/prospect to opt-in to future mailings and promotions. Simply remind them of how they will benefit from receiving your and always provide a way to opt-out. THE DETAILS: When sending out an campaign, normal turnaround times range from 2-5 business days as long as all the necessary specs are ready. Leave ample time between your order data and blast date. Some lists run on schedules where they only allow a certain number of s daily. Spots are given out on a first come, first serve basis. The text/html that is sent over must be the final copy and the links need to be live at test time. Changes may be made after the test is sent out, however the list owners usually charge a fee for each modification. HTML is available on a number of lists, with the count growing daily. The charges vary for HTML and range from $50/M - $150/M depending on the file. There is no real standard pricing of lists. Therefore, the transmission charges vary. Some base prices are a little higher, but include the transmission, while others charge on a per thousand basis. Billings are based on the number of s that are actually sent out. Most lists require a 10,000 name minimum order. Some lists, because of their small universe will only require 5,000 name orders or will charge a flat fee.

6 Legislation (CAN-SPAM ACT:) The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 seeks to control the dissemination of unsolicited , which makes up over 80% of all traffic annually. Even if you already send permission based s, you may need to change some of your methods to ensure compliance. Your messages will most likely fall into one of two categories (Transactional or Commercial); most marketing related will fall into the later. TRANSACTIONAL 1. Messages sent to complete a sale or deliver goods/services 2. Warranty, upgrades, updates or recall information 3. Account balance information If sending Transactional , you must comply with the following rules: 1. You can t create an account or domain with false information 2. Recipient must be able to reply to message or there should be a link to an unsubscribe page 3. Requests must be removed within 10 days 4. Must provide a valid, physical postal address for the sender on all commercial messages 5. Must provide clear notice that it is an advertisement 6. Must provide an active, functioning return address for at least 30 days after message is sent 7. Must have valid header information 8. You can t disguise the origin of the message 9. The FROM: and Subject lines cannot be deceptive 10. You can t promote a business or allow your business to be promoted through false information in the headers of s 11. Must make sure that only valid, authorized people can send mail through your server (no open relay mail servers) 12. Do not use lists that were built from harvesting addresses ( addresses grabbed from chat rooms, weblogs and other sources without permission) 13. Must use a warning label if contents of is sexual in nature 2. The FROM: or the Subject line can t be deceptive or misleading 3. You can t promote a business or allow your business to be promoted through false information in the headers of s. COMMERCIAL Purpose is to promote a product or service or advertise a website run for commercial purposes If sending Commercial , you must comply with the following rules: 1. Must have an opt-out/unsubscribe mechanism

7 Best in Class Practices to ensure CAN-SPAM Compliance: 1. Educate employees on the rules and regulations and enforce CAN-SPAM companywide. All it takes is one bad - organizations and their agents (employees, contractors, consultants) must honor the recipients request to stop further mailings, and legal ramifications can result from just one employee deciding to send an Create and enforce a standard opt-out process. Make sure you have the procedures in place to manage multiple suppression lists, determine if a subscriber has opted out of all of just some future communications, and implement these changes in 10 business days or less as required by CAN-SPAM. IN CONCLUSION: marketing is an incredibly powerful medium, ripe with potential. The market is constantly changing, growing and improving, providing great opportunity to those who seek it. With the proper guidance and expertise your campaign will prove to be a huge source of revenue. To have the team at 21st Century Marketing be your guide and assist you in making an integral part of your marketing mix, contact Janine Vosseler at jvosseler@21stcm.com or today. 3. Capture an affirmative opt-in, rather than a negative opt-out. While CAN-SPAM is setup as an opt-out law, many long term benefits can be derived from an affirmative opt-in or permission based marketing. 4. Do not use misleading subject lines. Adopt the concept of whether or not a reasonable person would misinterpret the subject line and avoid using teaser copy. 5. Avoid mailing to harvested lists Use opt-in lists from reputable sources. A good list broker can help you distinguish the legitimate lists from the web harvested names.