Winning eBlasts
The Internet continues to change the way businesses market to their customers. At the same time, even savvy communicators slip back into old paradigms, and what works in traditional media doesn't necessarily work in new media.
A client of ours recently produced a full-page color ad for placement in several leading industry trade publications. As experienced Internet marketers, they were also interested in getting extra mileage by running the ad as an eBlast. Relying on us, their long-time provider/manager of all things Internet, they asked us to prepare and send the Ad as an eblast using our email marketing tool (EMS) to their database of 145,000 prospects and customers.
With all our enthusiasm, we jumped to the task. However we had to suggest that, as successful as the ad would likely be in the print arena, it was more than likely to fail as an eBlast. The two channels are in fact different and each deserves a unique design and production technique.
Our reasons and subsequent suggestions offer a glimpse into Internet Best Practices and crafting a winning interactive media strategy.
First, we suggested changes that would make the ad successful as an email and on the Web. They included: including links and clickable copy that would drive readers to their website as well as increase SEO rankings, reduce the size of the header to improve readability and provide space for a valuable Call-to-Action, use content panels to break up the copy and offer more opportunities to link to their website and do not use white or light type on a dark or colored background.
Second, working with our client's advertising team, we redesigned the print ad to follow our strategic recommendations.
Third, we recognized a terrific opportunity for our client to measure the impact of a traditional vs. new media tactical approach, and suggested split-testing the eBlast.
Split Testing* is available through our Content Management System (CMS). It's a powerful testing feature that allows results to be viewed in real time as a campaign is being rolled out.
Our client loved the idea of gathering empirical marketing data easily and inexpensively: sending an electronic version of the original print ad to 2.5% of the database, we also sent the redesigned, "web-friendly" version to a different 2.5% of the list (the split test). The results were eye-opening -- 0 of the approximately 500 print ad eBlasts were opened; an astounding 54 of the approximately 500 "web-friendly" eBlasts were opened in the first two hours of the launch (a mailing of this size can take up to 12 hours to complete).
The lessons of this quick story are easy enough to understand. Email marketing is second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.** Businesses that understand this are realizing results with this incredible sales tool. They're tracking their audience through autoresponders, web bugs, bounce messages, unsubscribe requests, read receipts, click-throughs and other tracking methods. They're using critical data to measure open rates, positive and negative responses, and marketing and sales correlations. Split testing is another of these innovative and very useful tools.
Learn the business of email marketing. Follow basic best practices. Partner with an experienced team. Create winning campaigns that turn prospects into customers.
*Split ( multivariate) testing is an interactive research methodology to ascertain which content or creative components best contribute to the defined goals of a website and or emarketing campaign. Dramatic improvements in Internet marketing can be realized through testing different copy text, form layouts, offers and even landing page images and background colors. As you might expect, not all elements produce the same increase in conversions. However, by looking at results from different tests (split, or multivariate), it's possible to identify the elements that consistently tend to produce the greatest increase in conversions.
** MarketingSherpa January 21, 2009
