You are in the right place to take advantage of one of the greatest advances in the marketing industry:  Opt-in email marketing for B2C email marketing and B2B email marketing.  Email has so many positive aspects such as ease of use, lower cost, flexibility, quantifiable, and targeted.  Email is good.  Email IS NOT some four-letter word to be avoided.

Opt-in Email marketing has a definitive industry direction: 
Personalized, targeted, permission-based, interactive rich media

More simply, emails that the customer authorizes delivery, are informative and relevant, and have a proper level of interactivity that enriches the experience.  The closer your emailing efforts approach this direction, the better your return-on-investment.  Stop spending all your ad dollars on less efficient, non-quantifiable methods and add email marketing to your mix.  

The use of email is to ultimately create, build and / or maintain the customer value experience and relationship throughout the customer lifecycle.  Some of the uses of email marketing are:

1. Bulk email marketing, B2C email marketing, B2B email marketing
2. Product, service, web site introductions, loyalty programs
3. Newsletters, periodic or official communications, press releases
4. Account status, order confirmation, customer service, up sell opportunities
5. Upgrade offers, new store location, holiday hours, jokes
6. Coupons, sales, overstock, discontinued products, product announcements
7. Employee notifications, promotions, benefits notices
8. Prospect for new customers, build an opt-in email marketing list
9. Report, survey, map, invoice, menu, catalog, brochure, annual report distribution

Opt-in email marketing contains most of the same components of other marketing programs.  Let’s introduce you to some industry terms and an overview of opt-in email marketing.

No discussion of email would be complete without mentioning spam.  Yes, it is a canned meat product, but that’s not important now.  Spam is the curse of all legitimate email marketing providers.  It’s too a broad subject to begin to explain here, however here is a quick definition:

Spam is Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE), such that the recipient has not provided specific permission to receive your email AND the content of the email is relevant (non-specific, excluding personal information) to many potential recipients.

For a more complete explanation, see www.spamhaus.org/definition.html.   Per Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam), 80 – 85% of all emails are spam and the amount of spam is increasing each year despite the efforts of organizations such as Spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.org/) and the Federal Trade Commission (http://www.ftc.gov/spam).  The FTC’s Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/rules.htm) is really an play on words.  This document is to limit spam yet carries the acronym CAN-SPAM which is sort of an oxymoron.

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Opt-in email marketing has evolved into a complex science.  Your message has about 2 seconds to survive the “Do I want this email” test before its deleted.  Primarily because of spam, there are many landmines to avoid in getting the message to its intended recipient.  Excluding the consideration of whether the recipient will be interested in reading the email, here are hurdles even successful emails must overcome:

  Content

1. Design Constraints – message size “limit”, no Flash (.swf), no video (.mov) files
2. Content testing before sending – will your email be flagged as spam

  Deliverability

1. Opt-in email marketing list – recipients have opted-in (gave their permission for you to send commercial marketing emails to them)
2. Deliverable email addresses – minimal bad addresses, full mailbox, unsubscribes
3. Emails received from a recognized and reputable sender (do I need to say AdsValue !)
4. Internet Service Provider (ISP) - filter out obvious spam
5. White-listed – your sending ISP isn’t blocked from sending emails

  Viewing

1. Day of week – better open rates (OR) earlier in the week, click-thru-rates (CTR) better near / on weekends
2. Monitor resolution – 800x600 (see less on the screen) or 1024x768 (see more)
3. Viewer software – capabilities, default email (rejection) settings
4. Viewing pane configuration – people view mostly the upper left portion of an email
5. Viewer settings – email size, accept graphics or text only, spam filtering level
6. Spam filter software – add-on spam-filtering software for extreme email haters

  Other success components of your overall email marketing campaign should include:

1. Having a reliable Opt-in / Opt Out process – a Confirmed Opt-in process is the best - the recipient needs to Opt-in, then verify they opted in by confirming their choice
2. Emails are CAN-SPAM compliant – see http://www.ftc.gov/spam for more information
3. Providing interesting and relevant content – something that the recipient requests or indicated an interest
4. Avoiding offensive content and spyware, deceptive ads, imbedding spyware code, or ads for ventures such as get-rich-quick schemes, pornography, prescription drugs, credit repair, stock tips, phishing schemes, chain emails, etc.

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1. Identify Objectives & Budget – brand awareness, increase sales, customer retention
2. Identify Target Audience – all customers, geographic , gender, age, interests
3. Make Contact with Your Audience – email (of course), refine and grow your list
4. Test Segmented Audiences & Offers – email similar but different offers, compare results
5. Analyze Progress Against Objectives – Open Rates (OR), Click Thru Rates (CTR),  Purchase Rates (PR), other measurements, financial Return On Investment (ROI)
6. Repetition – provide periodic emails - customers may not act on the first email and multiple deliveries help solidify the customer / company bond

AdsValue realizes you probably don’t have the time to create and administer an opt-in email marketing campaign beyond a simple less effective text-only email.  Ask AdsValue to help grow your business.

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