 |
|
|
| FTC Seeks Comment on CAN-SPAM Changes
|
|
May 13, 2005 - The Federal Trade Commission began seeking comment
yesterday on proposed changes to the rules enacted under the CAN-SPAM
anti-spam legislation, including one that would require e-mailers to
comply more quickly with opt-out requests.
Read full article
|
|
| DMA Withdraws Petition on Wireless Domain
|
May 11, 2005 - The Direct Marketing Association and
E-Mail
Service Provider Coalition withdrew a petition yesterday asking the
Federal Communications Commission to suspend its rules concerning the
sending of commercial
e-mails to wireless addresses.
Read full article
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Send targeted emails with list filters
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Last month's Quick Survey - Does your welcome message make a good
impression?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Is your opt-in process fully optimized? Jumpstart it with
SubscriberMail's Opt-in Jumpstart program. Our email marketing
experts will:
Review your current opt-in pages and processes
Design and develop custom Web pages to collect data
Design and develop a custom HTML welcome message
Opt-in Jumpstart is the easiest and fastest way to start
benefiting from optimized opt-in strategies.
Contact us
for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Your company offers a variety of products and services. The product
that one customer can't live without is one that another customer has
no use for. Or perhaps the key selling point of your service to one
prospect is a weak point for a different prospect.
Simply put, people care about what's relevant to them, and they
don't have the time or inclination to weed through what's not. So why
send them content that's not relevant? Send your customers only the
information that matters to them, and watch your response rates rise.
The trick is to first know what content is relevant to them, then
divide your email list into groups of people interested in the same
information. Don't know what that is? Ask them. Check the end of this
article for ideas on how to easily collect this information from your
subscribers.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Once you know what content your subscribers find relevant to
them, divide your list into segments that make sense to your company
or business model. You are probably already used to segmentation in
your traditional marketing efforts, but many organizations overlook
segmentation in their email initiatives. Some typical strategies for
segmentation include:Geography - This is an easy,
fairly obvious segment. For example, your customer in Florida is
likely not interested in a snowmobile. And your customer in Minnesota
probably isn't interested in a jet ski-not in the winter, anyway.
Geography can also be an indicator of buying patterns and other
influences on the purchase cycle. Take the high tech industry, for
example. In high tech pockets like Silicon Valley and Boston, early
adopters are far more common.
Demographics - This is another easy one, and can make a
lot of sense. For example, we know men and women can interpret
information quite differently. Younger vs. older audiences take in
information in different ways as well.
Job title and function - Are you emailing potential users
with no - or all the - buying power? An owner or CFO may want to know
about ROI. A middle manager may just want to make his or her job
easier. And an engineer or programmer wants to find better ways to
work. And so on.
Purchasing frequency - Less frequent purchasers may
require a time-sensitive offer to encourage them to act. Or maybe you
want to reward frequent buyers with exclusive privileges via email.
Monetary spending - Adjust resources so you're dedicating your efforts toward customers who spend the most money with your company.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CUSTOMIZE TO MAXIMIZE
When you've segmented your list according to what works for your
business model, maximize action and conversion by sending customized
messages to your different audiences. Customize the message content,
customize the offer, the subject line, the time of day you send, etc.
- all in a way that is directly relevant to the audience you're
sending to.
MEASURE AND MODIFY
This should be nothing new since you're already tracking your
email campaigns for response and conversion rates. Certainly your
overall response rate should rise when you send relevant messages to
carefully selected audiences. If a particular segment isn't
responding as well as the others, review and make adjustments to
improve response. If you don't see a significant overall increase in
response rates when you send to segmented lists, then save resources
by only sending one email.
EASILY ELICIT THE INFO YOU NEED
At signup - Collect information and ask your subscribers
what is most useful to them while they're signing up to receive
emails from you. This can be handled in a couple of
ways.1) Make the info required to sign up. This is
advisable only if the information is absolutely necessary. Otherwise,
you risk losing signups.
2) Include the additional fields but
make them optional to sign up. However, be careful not to add too
many fields or the mere length of the form may scare people
away.
3) After they've signed up, ask them to provide
additional information on a separate page to avoid losing
signups. Re-register - If you've been publishing
for a while, ask subscribers to re-register. Advise them that you
want to make sure their info is up to date. This is also a good way
to make sure your list is fresh.
Survey - Send an email and ask subscribers to complete a short survey. To increase response, offer a premium or fun prize.
|
|
|
|
