20 March 2008

Email Marketing “top tactic” for 42%

42% of digital marketing executives surveyed by Marketing Sherpa at AdTech 2008 London said “regularly sending full colour html emails to their subscribers was a top marketing tactic for them during 2007”.

More and more companies are discovering that building an in-house database of opt-in email subscribers and sending them relevant, high impact email delivers excellent ROI, as well as a powerful branding mechanism.

Here at Digino we have also experienced a dramatic increase in demand for email marketing services, now our most requested service after Pay-Per-Click advertising.

So why is email so hot now?

We put it down to the maturing of the digital marketer. The first requirement from clients is usually to develop comprehensive search marketing. When search tactics, such as PPC and SEO, are firmly established, capitalising on either display advertising or email marketing is next on the hit list.

Key Benefits

Once email marketing is planned, implemented and managed correctly clients quickly learn of it key benefits, such as:

Low Cost: Once you build your database of subscribers you become the media owner! You control this powerful branding and sales medium. You can now communicate with your key audience without incurring media costs.

Relationships Building: Email can greatly assist you in building a solid relationship with your customer base. The best way to retain your customers is to build a solid relationship with them over time. What better way to do this than to provide useful information and offers right to their email inbox?

Speed & Reach: Allows you to get time sensitive information and offers to your key target audiences and quickly.

Increase Sales: “Touching” a customer with an email can increase sales conversion, generate repeat sales and provide an opportunity for up-selling and cross-selling products and services.

Powerful Branding: Email marketing gives your brand an edge in a tough market. Weekly or even monthly emails will keep your brand in your target consumer’s mind. As more and more of the population begins to use email, email marketing is fast becoming an industry standard in the marketing industry.

Getting your email communications on track

• Ideally, go to an agency, such as Digino, who can provide a fully managed email marketing service, encompassing strategy, design, copywriting, delivery of technical platform and ongoing management. Digino would guide you through these key steps.
• Firstly devise a clear strategy: What can you email that’s of value? Who are you going to email? Who is going to manage the process? What are your objectives?
• Commit to a schedule. For example you might commit to publishing an eZine at the end of each quarter and to sending two flyers per month. The correct frequency will depend on what you’re sending and to whom.
• Set goals: The two key metrics we monitor for clients are Open Rate and Click Through Rate (CTR). Industry average Open Rate for B2C (Business to Consumer) emails to house lists is somewhere around 15% and CTR of 3% (% of those who receive the mail that continue to click-through to a related webpage). B2B (Business to Business) emails typically pull higher open rates than B2C emails, with an average open rate of approximately 24% and an average CTR of 6%. The averages below are the Key Performance Indicators for all Digino email marketing campaigns combined for 2007:
  
  -97% of emails sent were received
  -28% of emails received were opened by the recipient
  -9% of those receiving clicked-through to a webpage
• Closely monitor KPI’s: If the open and click-through rates are increasing we know we are sending messages of value to recipients and they are comfortable with the frequency of mailings. If these metrics are falling we know we’ve probably an issue with either the message or the frequency.

How do you build a database of subscribers?

There’s no quick fix here, building your database takes time and effort. So great if you have a big list already! There are a myriad of activities that can help build your subscriber base, including attracting subscriptions from your website, adding existing customer databases or contacts from trade shows, running competitions to collect addresses, or capturing addresses via free website downloads. You may also wish to include other stakeholders such as suppliers, partners and the media in your database. And don’t forget to include your own staff! A strong house list is a very valuable asset; in fact some companies actually list their subscriber database as an asset on their balance sheet.

Samples of high impact email communications
Click these links to see some samples of effective email communications (first 2 examples were produced by Digino):

StayCity.com sample: a monthly eZine with latest offers
DG Hotels sample: a successful flyer with a strong special offer
Aer Lingus sample: a very active user of email communications

Fastest growing online marketing service sector in 2008?

In Ireland, as in most other countries, the power of email marketing is still very much underrated and indeed often an abused marketing medium. However companies are now beginning to realise the power of effective, high impact mailings. For us here in Digino we have predicted that email marketing will be our fastest growing service sector in 2008.

If you’d like to learn how Digino can help you harness the power of email marketing, contact Adrian.

E: enquiries@diginomarketing.com

T: 1890 927 800

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