While the unpredictability of the current economy may cause some companies to examine their marketing budgets across the board, email marketing remains an attractive option given its extremely high ROI (According to the Direct Marketing Association, email will generate $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008). In fact, now is the perfect time to optimize your email marketing programs to generate better results while lowering your ongoing costs.

The first step is evaluate how you're allocating your email marketing spend to ensure that every dollar is working to drive the maximum benefit. The best way to do that is categorize and analyze the expenses associated with your email programs, including the money being invested in database development, customer profiling and segmentation, strategy, email creative, email deliverability, email production and email deployment. Because highly targeted, tested and well-crafted emails almost always generate better results, you’ll want to make sure that you’re investing properly in these areas.

If you find that a lot of your budget goes to email deployment, you should ensure that you’re leveraging the right solution to meet your needs. While many companies have historically outsourced email marketing to email service providers for lack of a viable alternative, the latest generation of in-house email marketing solutions can enable companies to lower their costs by eliminating CPM fees, which increase alongside email volumes.

The bottom line is that reducing your email deployment costs will allow you to allocate more of your budget to strategic areas that will lead to increased conversion rates, such as A/B testing, dynamic content creation, database enhancement, transactional email optimization and web analytics integration. Spending your money on the areas that can make the most difference is always a smart decision, regardless of economic conditions.

Click here for more information on how to lower costs and improve results.

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Email Marketing Expert Clinic: Campaign Optimization
Location: New York Hilton
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008
Time: 9:30am - 10:30am

Learn the true impact of your email campaigns, including whether you have optimized your creative and code for maximum deliverability, proper rendering and CAN-SPAM compliance.

Take advantage of a unique opportunity to have your latest email campaign reviewed by a panel of email experts from major brands at ad:tech New York. Campaigns must be live with working landing pages. All submissions will receive a written analysis of the campaign, regardless of whether or not it is selected for review during the live session. >> Live Session Details

Moderator:
Ryan Deutsch, StrongMail
Senior Director of Market Strategy

Panelists:
Jay Defoore, The Knot
Marketing Manager

Justin Plumridge, Workopolis
Business Manager of Direct Marketing and Customer Insight

Kara Trivunovic, The Email Advisor, LLC
Founder and Principal

>> Submit Your Campaign for Review

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The average retailer can generate $2.9 million in additional revenue by adding cross and up-sell promotions to transactional email, according to this brand new JupiterResearch study. Download the report and leverage brand new cross-industry research and detailed analysis to create and implement a marketing program for transactional email that drives both revenue and customer satisfaction.

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Leverage Web Analytics Data to Maximize Email Marketing Results

Every experienced email marketer knows that increasing the relevancy of email promotions improves results; however, many overlook one of the most powerful sources of information for developing personalized communications – web analytics data. With fear of a recession looming, it will be even harder to get consumers to respond this holiday season, and that's why it's more important than ever to leverage all the tools at your disposal to send highly targeted messages.

Relevancy based on stated preferences or past purchase behavior is only one part of the equation. In order to be truly relevant, your email creative must address the current interests of your customers, and web analytic data offers an excellent opportunity to do just that.

The following are just some of the core types of web analytic data that should be considered and incorporated into your email strategy:

• Shopping cart abandonment - remind customers of items left in cart, offer specials, suggest alternatives
• Purchases – initiate cross-sell promotions based on purchases
• Website visits - gauge consumer interest based on website visits and tailor messages accordingly

If we look at the ways web analytics can be applied in an incredibly competitive environment, such as financial services, it is easy to see a significant uptick in driving customer response. For example, if a customer has signed up for online billing, but has not initiated any transactions, or has started a few applications, but hasn’t completed the final steps, an email can coach the customer back to the site and provide incentives to move the process forward. This puts the institution in a position to build customer loyalty.

The “travel and leisure” industry presents another good example of how web analytics can be leveraged effectively. Often, when planning travel, consumers chart out an itinerary, but don’t follow-through with a purchase. They may also shop around for deals or review properties online, but don’t actually book anything. In this scenario, web analytic data provides an opportunity to prompt potential buyers with an email message when a similar itinerary or a property with a similar set of attributes is being promoted.

Integrating data derived from email and web analytics enables marketers to respond more strategically to customer needs, measure email campaign ROI, improve overall campaign relevance and ultimately deliver superior customer experiences.

If you’re undecided about whether integrating web analytics information into your email marketing programs will benefit your bottom line, here are two key points to consider:

• Get the full story on every campaign - Integration provides the final details of an email campaign’s success or failure. By integrating web analytics with your email campaigns, you’ll be able to glean insights on the important details, including the number of people who paid a visit to your site, where they visited and how long they stayed, and the number of conversions as a result of a campaign. Going beyond opens and clicks to find out what happens after a consumer clicks on an email promotion is the ultimate indicator of consumer interest.

• Challenge the status quo – With the lack of targeting previously described, industry email delivery averages based on the results of a broadcast email marketing strategy are incredibly low. In fact, for every 10,000 emails you send, it is normal for 60-70% of recipients to ignore you. However, targeted emails that leverage website click-stream data on average generate nine-times more revenue and as much as 32 times more in net profit over undifferentiated broadcast campaigns.

Forrester Research email analyst Julie Katz just released a new industry report entitled "Benchmark Your Email Organization" that surveys 260 email marketers on their current challenges. One of the many interesting findings concerns how email marketers manage and monitor email delivery. Of those surveyed, only a quarter have staff who are dedicated to monitor and address delivery issues, while nearly a third have allocated zero resources to deliverability management.

Given the importance that deliverability plays, it's surprising that so few companies are properly investing in resources to improve their deliverability rates, including staff, deliverability tools and services. The Forrester TEI case study showcased in last month's Advisor highlights how important deliverability can be, with The Parent Company generating an extra $450K in revenue due to improved delivery rates over the 2007 holiday season.

With the relatively low cost and high ROI of email marketing, you might be tempted to overlook email deliverability, especially if you're currently meeting your marketing objectives. However, doing so means that you're leaving money on the table. Equally important, you're putting your campaigns at risk. If you're not actively monitoring your email delivery, you can run into problems with ISP blocks and other problems due to changing filtering parameters. If you don't promptly address those issues, they can ultimately damage your email reputation.

Fortunately, with the right email solution and available deliverability tools, managing email delivery rates doesn't have to be difficult or time-intensive. Take the time now to invest in managing your deliverability, and you'll soon be paid back in higher conversion rates.


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