Internet Direct Mail Campaign From Development To Results Analysis

Internet Direct Mail Campaign From Development To Results Analysis A recent study reported that 40% of the Internet users change their opinion due to the information they gathered online. In this terms it is very important to pay a special attention to the brand image you create using online advertising and e-mail maerketing campaigns. TreeWorks Blvd. Coposu nr. 4 bl. 105 A sc. A ap. 1 Bucureşti, România Phone: +40.213.260.602 Fax: +40.213.267.233 www.tree.ro office@tree.ro

Content Definition 3 Benefits _ 3 Elements Of An E-mail Marketing Campaign List Of Subscribers Develop The Content And Format Of The Message Evaluation And Review Of The Campaign 4 4 _ 5 _ 8 Avoiding Spam Messages 10 Conclusion _ 10

Definition Internet direct mail is an e-mail advertising a product or service and soliciting orders, which is sent to a large number of potential customers. Direct Mail permits the marketer to design marketing pieces in many different formats like: Sales Letters: Often personalized, the sales letter pursuades the recipient to buy the product or service. Response Device: This can be an order form, opinion survey or applications used to buy the product or service. This piece involves the recipient. Lift Note: The lift note is extremely effective in boosting the response to an email. You can highlift an important to buy, incorporate a testimonial or print an endorsement by a celebrity. Benefits 1. Inexpensive The email is less expensive than other advertising options, such as the banner ads, outdoor and telemarketing. The price of sending a single B2C email marketing message is less than 1 cent, the Association of Interactive Marketing shows in their reports. 2.Measurable Results There is software designed to measure campaign success. These programs generate reports on the number of emails opened by your recipients (open-ups) and the number of times your clicks were clicked (click-through). Being able to quantify the success of campaigns in progress, marketers can quickly adjust their strategies to increase response rates. 3

3. Wide Reach Email became already a part of many people's daily routine. It is a communication medium with an exceptional large audience and allows recipients to immediately respond the message. An email can be sent in a few seconds, anywhere in the world. 4. Drives website traffic and registration You can include in your messages links that direct the consumers to your website. This will increase site traffic and the will lead to increase website registration. You may then follow up by providing your customers with personalized and targeted content. 5. Strengthnes Brand Awareness Regularly delivered emails that contain important subjects and logos reinforce company' and product awareness. Email creates an interactive connection with customers and nurtures long lasting, quality relationships. 6. Emails can be highly customized When email list works together customer database, even the large volume campaigns can be customized so that messages include specific customer data. Database integration also allows select customer groups to receive messages appropriate for only a portion database entries (for example, ZIP Code, gender etc.). 7. Time saving According to the Association of Interactive Marketing, companies that use email marketing to administrate campaigns rather than traditional direct mailings save 60% of their time. 8. Email is easy to implement and requirers limited resources. Email campaigns can be easy implemented and realized with only minimal software, hardware and personnel investments. 4

Elements Of An E-mail Marketing Campaign 1. List Of Subscribers First step in an email marketing campaign is compiling a list of email addresses from those who have agreed to receive your messages. This is known as an opt-in email marketing and is a very important part of the campaign. A recent study reported that only 6 percent of permission-based e-mail is deleted unopened, while 59 percent of opt-out e-mail is deleted unopened. Start gathering addresses with: Current Customers who may have given you their e-mail addresses and permission to send messages. Depending on how your business operates, there may be multiple opportunities to collect clients' email addresses (order forms etc.). Or, perhaps e-mail communication may already be the most common way you correspond to your clients and therefore the perfect opportunity exists to ask them if they would like to receive newletters or other offers. Prospective Customers These e-mail addressed can be obtained through sign-ups on your website or in-store locations. There are e-mail list management softwares that can interact with your site and your visitors may automatically subscribe to newsletters without having to perform this function manually. List Brokers companies specialized in compiling opt-in mailing list. To make sure you will get quality opt-in lists, ask your brokers these questions: What is the website's method for opting in the people on its lists? What type of relationship does the site have with the people in its list? How old are the names? How is the e-list maintained? What selections are available on the e- list? Does the e-list owner offer any valueadded services? These questions can help you determine which lists can produce profitable results for your product or service. 5

2. Developing the Content and Format of the Message Messages should be created according to the results you wish to achieve. Establish your campaign goals and then create a strong message that reinforces your brand, describes your products and clearly establishes how the consumers can contact you. The subject line is possibly the most important part of an e-mail message. Write a powerful line, by combining an action phrase with a response-boosting incentive. Message format: text, HTML (text and graphics) or multi-part format. HTML mail has the ability to strengthen the message, by combining fully graphic images (like your company's logo) with text. Studies show that less experienced internet users tend to desire HTML e-mail, while the experienced ones prefer text-only. It is advisable to allow subscribers to choose their desired format. Recipient format preferences can be stored in the data base, just like other preferences and demographic information. A multi-part specification allows you to send email in both text and HTML format, while the email program of the recipient will expose only the desired format. Message Content Ensure your message reaches the target audience needs. Make sure the offer of your products and services reaches the needs of the recipient of the mailing. Get to the point quickly. Do not start the e-mail with general information, get to the point from the beginning. It is important to make your point in the first five lines. Keep most direct e-mails short. The message should be short, clear and to the point. On the Internet people want information and the want it right away. Mention sell benefits. If you want to sell don't forget to tell potential buyers about the benefit of using your product or service. Before starting to write, make a list with all the benefits this maight bring. When you write the copy, be sure to start with the first three major benefits. Use an impersonal style. It is recommended to personalize each letter you send in the direct e-mail campaign. Write like you are talking to the recipient of the letter. Be conversational, informal, but be sure not to use a too familiar language. 6

Use letters to generate leads, not sales A one-page letter is an excellent tool to generate interest, but is much to short to effectively sell. Your goal is to generate a response, either it is a return mail card, an email, a phone or a fax. You just want an opportunity, you cannot get the sail from the first direct mail. Use a P.S. A response rate survey showed that often recipent's eye moves down the page to the P.S before they read the entire letter. If possible, restate your selling proposition in the P.S. Use white space. It is difficult for a user to read a block of text. Use short paragraphs, bulleted or numbered lists. These will help the recipient read your message. Include a call to action. Do not let the recipients wonder what to do. It is not enough to tell them to check your home page. Include in your message a special URL that people can click on to go to your site and fill out a form to request additional information. Create a deadline. Even if it is a real or an imaginative one, be sure to include it in the email. Usually, the imposition of deadline increases the rate of answers because the recipients understand they only have a limited time to act. Include a guarantee. If you can offer a quarantee, do it. Some products or services do not easily lend themselves to the offer of a guarantee. In this case you can guarantee the delivery, the service or the best price. By offering a guarantee, you offer credibility to your products and services. Include testimonials. Testimonials from satisfied clients are the strongest way to bring credibility to your copy. Also, recommandations from a celebrity can lend a note of credibility. Include all your contact information. Include in the message your name, phone number, fax and e-mail. People respond differently, so offer them the possibility to choose. Make a no risk offer. Offer the recipient something and make it no risk. A free trial and a money back guarantee are will work when your buyer is uncertain about accepting your offer. Make sure it is clear there is no risk or obligation on their part. 7

3. Evaluation And Review Of The Campaign Create a pilot campaign that tests the efficiency of the message on a selected portion of your database. Measure the results from the trial, make adjustments and test it on another group. Refine your message until you think it is good enough to launch a full campaign. Once you have sent your final message to the recipients you may start measuring the results of the campaign. Monitoring responses enables you to determine the quality of your recipient lists and the effectiveness of the message. E-mail marketing programs are capable of recording if the recipients open or not your message, if they click or not on the URL that links to your website. Being able to quantify these activities you can measure the succes of the campaigns and make adjustments to achieve a higher conversion rate. This is the key of an e-mail marketing campaign. Response Analysis There are three main measurement ways currently used: Click-through rate. This tells you how many people who received the message clicked on a link in the e-mail to a specific site, page or form on the web. Replies of the people who clicked though to a response form, how many completed the form and submited it to you. Sales or inquires. How many people who completed the form actually ordered a product or requested more information. Measuring Results Campaign success is measured through ROI (return of investment). Other standard measurements, such as cost per piece or cost per lead are useful, but they will not provide the big picture view given by the ROI analysis. The most accurate ROI calculation takes into account the amount of sales generated by the consumers over the time. The first step is to run small tests mailings to get a feel for your baseline response rates. Subsequent mailings can try different things, such as: a different design of the mail, a different text or a new mailing lists. When you are confident of your results you can extend the campaign at a larger group, assuring that the return of investment will be positive. While the standard profile of a subscriber does not assume a minimum rate of response, each effort must be made to achieve the biggest answer rate possible, using the following procedures. Resonse Rate can be calculated as it follows: substract the non-deliverables from the amount of sent messages to determine the net mail-out; substract the incomplete or non-usable returns from total returns to determine net-returns; divide net returns by net mail-out to determine the response rate. Your e-list manager should provide log reports that summarize the results. Such a report should include the data of transmission, the number of promotional email transmitted, click-through response rate, undeliverable messages and opt-outs. 8

The following example illustrates how the response rate must be calculated: Total mail-out... 1,000 Non-deliverables... 99 Net mail-out... 901 Total returned... 541 Net returns with completed Demographic questions*... 500 Response Rate...55% *A questionnaire is considered complete only when two thirds of the mandatory demographic questions have been answered. One way of maximizing ROI is to drive out hidden costs throughout the process of sending mail. For example, there are direct mail services that allows you to achieve greater operational efficiencies by having all the processes under one roof and minimizing administration costs. A good rule in strategy is to test between 1000-5000 pieces before strating. In this way you will get a sufficient number of answers back from your mailing to determine what your response rate will be. The response rate will vary depending on your product, industry, target market and other factors, no general rules apply. For instance, a sub 0.2 percent response rate is common in the credit card industry, while a response note higher than 50 percent is common for the nonprofit companies. This should not discourage you; on the contrary, it highlights the necessity of tracking your response rate for your prospecting customers list. If you do not do this, you will only get a vague idea of the real chances of your campaign and you risk wasting money. To increase the response to your next mailings, watch out the next factors: Campaign Goal Establish the campaign goal: rise awareness, generate leads or generate website traffic. Once you have decided, establish a baseline and track responses again. For instance, determine the average number of phones received during a month and compare it to the number of phones you get the following month after your mailing. Alternatively, if you take order through a website, your mail piece can ask customers to enter a discount code when placing the order by which you can track the sales associated with your mailings. Target Audience Identify consumers and their social, pshychological and demographic characteristics. This will help you build a targeted prospect list to gain more customers. The Offer Concentrate your campaign on selling the benefits of receiving and responding the offer. Do not forget the goal is to convince your target purchase your product and increase your ROI. If you succeed in making them interested enough to respond to the offer, then you could get them to buy. The Mailing List Without testing your mailing list, offer or design you will never know if the success of the campaign was due to an attractive offer, eye catching graphics and enticing text or a great list. Consequently, without testing you will not know which aspect of your campaign needs improvement. 9

Avoiding Spam Messages " A Spam" is an unsollicited message, usually promotional, sent out to multiple recipients. To generate spam special programs that can scan the text and recognize your email address are being used. They add the email address in a database and it is possible to buy such a list. The spam is considered unethical and its risks are considerable: using it you can loss the internet services and also affect your company's reputation. The voice of internet users is a strong one and your company could be labeled as a spam advertiser ). The golden rule for preventing spam is the opt-out possibility. If you are developing a promotional email campaign, ask costumers for consent. Remind them in every message that they can opt out from receiving future messages and give them the chance to make this simple, just by clicking Remove or Unsubscribe. The Direct Marketing Association launched an email preferences service which allows consumers to register for free at www.emps.org for an opt-out list indicating they don't want to receive promotional emails. Marketers can download the list online and eliminate these names from their own mailing list. Also, you should not try to deceive customers into thinking your e-mail marketing message is not a promotional one. Conclusion Email marketing is an effective communication method with customers, prospective customers and business partners. The main objective is increasing products and services sales, but also the improval of company's image and clients' reports. Being an easy-to-use tool that creates a powerful bond between the clients and the brand, it allows the testing and retesting campaigns and offers an accurate image of the results. The email marketing is used by a fifth of the European marketers. The actual tendency is rising, in America the use rate is a lot higher. 10

Resources Robert W. Bly, Michelle Feit, Steve Roberts, Internet Direct Mail - The Complete Guide to Successful E-mail Marketing Campaigns ; NTC Business Books - NTC Contemporary Publishing Group INC; 2001. http://www.zairmail.com/direct_mail_articles.asp http://www.lsoft.com/ http://www.kochgroup.com/directmail.html http://www.accessabc.com/ TreeWorks Blvd. Coposu nr. 4 bl. 105 A sc. A ap. 1 Bucureşti, România Phone: +40.213.260.602 Fax: +40.213.267.233 www.tree.ro office@tree.ro