|
|
September 10, 2004
Highlights from Internet & Email
Marketing Day,
sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association
of Washington, DC
I attended and facilitated a round-table discussion (more on that a bit later) at this event, held in Washington, DC last month. All the presentations were good, but here are some highlights.
Rick Christ, npadvisors, gave a great presentation about how his non-profit fundraising clients are using e-mail campaigns pre- and post- direct mail appeals to lift response by 10-to-40%..
In his experience (not scientifically significant at 7 or 8 instances, but still worth noting) the key is to tie the messages in your direct mail and e-mail together. He likened it to using telephone appeals pre- and post- direct mail; the obvious benefit of e-mail is that it's typically more cost-effective than phone.
Mark Heller of The Intermark Group was the luncheon speaker. At my table we all agreed that a few of his slides warranted hour-long presentations in themselves. His slide of 'Emerging Trends' was especially prescient, here are a few:
Delivery: Bonded Sender Programs, Sender ID
Prospecting: Email Newsletter Ride Along, New Name Generation
Privacy/Hygiene: Double Opt-in Permission as the Gold Standard (I agree!), Audit Trail
Mark did a great job when talking about 'honoring the relationship' with the people we are marketing to, be it via e-mail, USPS mail or some other channel. He feels that marketers have 'killed the golden goose' when it comes to telemarketing and that e-mail is at a tipping point.
He asked the audience to think about their marketing -- where does it fall between 'anything for a sale' and 'not wanting to aggravate' -- each organization needs to set their own parameters, but the further you go toward the former the sooner we may see stiffer regulation on e-mail marketing.
I also have to give props to all the folks who joined in the roundtable I facilitated, 'Peer Review:Email Creative.' I asked attendees to bring samples of their recent e-mail campaigns and we passed them around and had others critique them. Areas of improvement we noted on various e-mails included:
Putting the key message upfront (my rule is to include it in the top four inches, aka 'above the fold')
Keeping paragraphs short (5-1/4 lines or less is my rule)
Making sure the HTML supports your business purpose -- and doesn't distract the reader
Including a logo or some other easily recognized visual in the preview pane (the top 2 inches of your e-mail)
Steering clear of using 'Click Here' as a call to action, since it can be a sp*m filter trigger (this was a bit controversial, with one of the attendees intending to test it. When he lets me know how it goes, I'll report back).
It was a jam-packed day (they could easily do two days next time -- or hold these events two-to-four times a year with a variety of speakers). I'd highly recommend the next one if you're in the DC area.
That's it for right now. Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you have to say. Feel free to contact me with any thoughts or feedback about this publisher's note.
Best,
Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Marketing and New Product Development
Publisher, The Jennings Report
Columnist, ClickZ.com
mailto:publisher@jenningsreport.com
Phone: 202-333-3245
|
|
The
Jennings Report
