ETD: 956 What works?; E-Mail Marketing; Office Live goes live
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu Feb 16 11:37:19 GMT 2006
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0956 February 16, 2006
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] What works?
[3] E-Mail Marketing
[4] Office Live goes live
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
The Commerce Department said yesterday that retail sales surged a
seasonally adjusted 2.3% in January from December, largely because of
gift-card redemptions and abnormally mild winter weather. The January
jump followed a tepid 0.4% rise in December. January sales were up
8.8% from a year earlier. I personally believe the Holiday season
should be extended until the end of January, since gift cards were
obviously given for Xmas.
In response to our last ETD, list member John Schulte offers some
interesting thoughts on what works for marketing. Are we becoming
bombarded with too much electronic mail? Personally, I get approx
1,000 e-mails a day, and I am lucky if I can use 50 of them. Is it
time to think offline?
List member Tim Slavin gives us some practical advise on e-mail
marketing that he has used with his small business clients. Check it
out below.
Office Live from Microsoft has gone live in beta testing. Office
Live is provides some online functionality for the smaller
business. Microsoft is targeting the small businesses (less than 10
employees) in the U.S. only at this time. Expect to see full
functionality of Office Suite-type offerings in Office Live.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, LLC
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] What works?
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It seems that over the last few years, with the Internet and e-mail
being so new and sexy, everyone seems to have gotten a one track
mind, that the web it is now the only option for advertising. And if
we're not making millions from it, we must be doing something wrong.
We are drunk with electronic marketing. The fact remains that most
companies still get a much better response from standard direct mail
than e-mailings. From reports I get, about 3-1 better.
Spam still clutters most peoples e-mail boxes to distract from the
good e-mail marketer. Hokey stuff that gives consumers a bad taste
and spills over to all e-mail. It's no wonder e-mail is getting such
a low response.
I remember how marketers used to complain about all the direct mail
people got at their home mail box, they were worried that their
direct mail piece would have to compete with maybe 7 other letters
that day. They worried about getting that envelope opened. Now
compare that to your e-mail message competing with dozens and dozens
of other e-mails or Spam.
Even when you have a opt-in list, your message can easily get blocked
by filters. It happens to us all the time. We estimate that almost
1/3 or more of our e-mails to our people get filtered each week,
depending on what news we put in our e-mail. We may use words in news
that trigger filters at different times and for different people.
It's not an exact art you can do anything about. There are too many
variables between people and their e-mail systems.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet and all the future
possibilities of using e-mail for marketing. It's a direct marketers
dream! But if you want to build your business, in a measurable and
controlled way, make sales and/or drive people to your web site,
don't forget about using the old tried and true methods; direct mail
and space ads.
If you have customers, send them a letter. If you want new customers,
rent a list of them and send them a letter. In the USA we have the
most refined list rental system in the world. No matter what type of
customer you need, you can get a list of potentials. We have the
smartest and most experienced list brokers to help. And the
competition in the home mail box is low.
Another advertising opportunity people are missing is the low cost of
space advertising in specialty magazines. With all the Internet hype,
and focus, plenty of publishers are giving deals. Check out and use
www.MediaBids.com and buy your ads. Here is one good way to use the
web, discount print buying; and its free to use. I would advise
everyone to register here as a direct marketer, since now-a-days
everyone really is, and get additional remnant deals and DM only offers.
Just remember, the advertising and marketing methods that built
America still are viable options. Don't quit e-mailing, but don't put
all your eggs into it. If you have questions on using direct
marketing, ask them at www.DMchat.com
Best regards,
John Schulte
President and Chairman
National Mail Order Association (NMOA)
http://www.nmoa.org
Email: schulte at nmoa.org
Tel: 612-788-1673
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[3] E-Mail Marketing
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Great email today about email marketing. I'd like to add a few things
of note, based on working with small business clients to help them do
email marketing.
One, for local businesses whose prospects and customers walk into
their store or office (or a long-time sales person visits their
business) email marketing is a huge win/win. Studies have shown for
years that people open emails at a higher rate for businesses they
know. Even better, the local business has the perfect opportunity to
ask for email addresses in person: for example, by offering the
person a postcard to provide their email address when they can't find
something (making sure to note what they wanted so you can follow up
in a later email) and having sign-up postcards next to the cash
register. You can even use a spiral bound notebook. It also helps to
offer something for signing up (like cookies, or a flower, or discount).
Two, sending email in a professional way using an email service
provider has become very low cost, under $20/month for lists under
1,000 names. Companies like EzineDirector.com, Intellicontact.com,
CoolerEmail.com (and others) are great alternatives to consider
alongside ConstantContact.com. Some like EzineDirector, even let you
send 250 emails a month free (their number changes from time to
time). And I found recently MailChimp.com, an easy to use service
that charges based on how much you send, not a monthly fee.
All these services handle the hassles of getting on whitelists, off
spam blacklists, the tedious subscribe/unsubscribe process, and
reporting of open rates and clickthroughs. The main difference I've
seen in these services is how they handle reporting for multi-email
campaigns, something small businesses don't often do but might.
ConstantContact (as of today) doesn't provide the ability to report
multiple emails within a single campaign line item; Intellicontact
does. So you do have to do your research based on your needs.
Three, the best way to measure the impact of an email message is to
require people to mention the email, print the email offer, or use a
promotion code in the email. It's not 100% scientific but you will
get a very good idea how people use your emails. I also find that
using the personal voice elicits mentions of an email, and some
inbound email responses. Rather than a cold clinical voice selling
something, putting your pitch in a story that resonates with your
readers and their needs works better. This could be an elaborate
story or just a few colorful words and/or phrases to personalize your
copy. Write as if you were speaking to a person seated in front of
you who has only a minute or two to spare. It'll get better responses.
Four, coding html emails is still a fine art because even new email
services like Google Mail insist on displaying html email in funky
ways. Some email service providers offer templates that, in theory,
are designed to work around these anomalies. At the least, it is
worth a little money (<$500) to have someone create an email template
that is simple in design that works across the major email software
clients (Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google Mail, Outlook, ...). You also should
set up test email accounts with these email vendors and send your
email to your test list to check that everything displays properly
(including the subject line and >From address!).
Thanks for a great read, as always!
Tim Slavin
Red Horse Communications, LLC
"We spur sales, participation, and satisfaction"
480.209.1917 office/fax (AZ) 203.512.1772 mobile (CT)
http://www.redhorsecommunications.com
http://www.reachcustomersonline.com
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[4] Office Live goes live
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Microsoft's web-based office product, called Office Live, is being
released in beta. Office Live will integrate with existing Microsoft
Office products Jupiter analyst Joe Wilcox has the early word on the
release. He firstly points out that Office Live is in no way "a
hosted version of Microsoft Office". That's true, but personally I
expect Microsoft (and probably Google) to eventually release a fully
functional Web Office suite. It's just a matter of time. Note that it
won't just be a replica of desktop office, because it'll need to be
native to the Web. And I'm talking years not months, unless Google
comes out with such a product sooner than expected (which is always a
distinct possibility with Google). I'm going to write more on that
subject in the near future, but for now let's focus on what IS in
Office Live. Here are the main features:
o Basic e-mail and calendaring
o Collaboration functions (similar in nature to SharePoint Portal Server)
o Project management functionality
o Domain name and Web site ("security-enhanced and "affordably
managed and maintained by Microsoft", according to the current Office
Live homepage)
o Document management tools
o Customer relationship tools
All of these things will integrate in some way with existing
Microsoft Office programs - and we'll probably see more integration
when Office 12 is released later this year.
Office Live is targeting small businesses in the US only (less than
10 employees). As Wilcox pointed out, those kinds of small businesses
would be "highly unlikely to run server software products like
Exchange, SharePoint or Project." So Office Live fills an unmet
demand in that sector and some of those customers will in time
upgrade to Microsoft's full server software products.
Richard MacManus
http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=118&tag=nl.e550
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