Show and Sell Give your potential customers front-row seats for your ads with rich e-mail.
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Want your e-mail marketing messages to jump out of the inbox?Then try using rich e-mail. Featuring streaming video and audio,these minimovies are inspiring customers everywhere to click andwatch.
"Our e-mails are 30-second commercials," explainsClelland Green, founder of America's Choice Health Plan, basedin Philadelphia. "They're combinations of music and Flashpresentations." Are the glitzy ads more effective? "Webegan using streaming e-mail last fall and had a 23 percent readrate; that's 6 to 8 times greater than a direct-mailcampaign," says Green, 38. "Ten to 20 percent of thosecustomers are [active customers], and our sales grew 78 percentfrom December to January."
| If you'reprimarily a B2C company with customers who have e-mail accounts atAOL, Hotmail or Yahoo!, you should know about a potentialroadblock: These free Internet providers make it difficult for yourcustomers to access rich e-mail. Many ISPs ask users to open aseparate browser or cut and paste a new URL to access these mediamessages. Though most e-mail marketing companies don't chargefor unopened messages, conversion rates will be lower if youcan't get the message out to everyone on yourlist. |
If you decide to launch a rich e-mail campaign, your best bet isto outsource the process to an e-mail marketing service (you canfind dozens online). According to a 2000 study by ForresterResearch, outsourcing produces higher conversion rates and is abetter long-term investment than keeping your e-mail marketingoperations in-house.
Including setup fees and delivery costs, outsourcing your firstrich e-mail campaign can run you $20,000 to $40,000, depending onthe volume and creative content. TMX Interactive, in Philadelphia,charged Green $25,000 to design and send two rich e-mail messagesto 2,350 addresses.
While the industry average for standard e-mail advertisingcampaigns is 200,000 messages sent twice per month, rich e-mailmessages like Green's are generally aimed at a more specificaudience-so you'll likely send fewer of them. "Wearen't spammers," says Green. "We sell B2B, and weonly target multistate corporations."
According to Hans Peter Brondmo, who wrote The Eng@ged Customer: The New Rules of InternetDirect Marketing (HarperBusiness), creating a permission-based,targeted list is more effective than buying a random list, even ifyou're selling B2C. "So if you e-mail 10,000 peoplewho've already expressed interest in your company, you'regoing to get a better response than if you e-mail 1 million[random] people."
To create a permission-based house list, first post a form onyour Web site asking users to either opt in (check a boxauthorizing you to send them e-mail) or opt out (uncheck a box tonot receive e-mail). Opt-out lists generally result in highersign-up rates, because many users simply ignore the pre-checked boxon the form. Opt-in lists are more effective, however, becausethose customers have chosen to receive e-mail from you.
Brondmo suggests putting specific demographic questions on yourform, plus a privacy statement that promises users you won'tdisclose their information. You may also want to expand your houselist by doing co-promotions with other companies that havecustomers with interest in your product or service.
If you need an outside list, Brondmo recommends usingNetcreations, Yahoo! Delivers or YesMail. These companies sell onlypermission-based lists, which often include details abouteverything from users' stock portfolios and yearly income totheir geographic location and hobbies-information necessary forcreating effective rich e-mails.
Contact Sources
- TMX Interactive, (301) 654-7977, www.tmxinteractive.com
- America's Choice Health Plan, (888) 321-9684,www.achonline.com
