Email Acquisition: Interviews from Industry Pros
To add to last week’s article on Email Acquisition, I interviewed various experts in the field of email acquisition, lead generation and affiliate marketing. Thanks to the following for participating: Craig Swerdloff, Vice President (Return Path), Lana McGilvray, Vice President of Marketing, Datran Media, Sarah Barber, Vice President Acquisition Services (Yesmail), and Jason Cohen, Co-President, MediaWhiz Holdings.
Email Marketing as a lead generation tool is a polarizing subject to many mainstream brands. Why do you think this is so?
Swerdloff: Media campaigns often fail to reach their desired audience or have the intended impact. With email marketing, failure to reach the right audience and/or through a proper permissioned list could end in spam complaints, unsubscribes, and damaged reputation with ISP's. Many marketers have experienced it first hand and are therefore reasonably upset.
McGilvray: In short, the key barriers to entry are perception and need for education - In the vast majority of cases, any explanation of email acquisition necessarily involves educating the brand marketer on how to employ email as an interactive engagement tool to communicate and respond to audience needs in the most relevant and real-time way possible. When applied correctly, email is an interactive branding, CRM and acquisition channel not a push marketing mechanism. To use it otherwise is to completely dilute the power of the medium. P&G gets this -as Lafley and others on his team are evangelizing the digital engagement concept. Of course, P&G has long been a first-mover brand that others follow.
Barber: Email list rental has been around for about 10 years now with varying degrees of how it has been used for marketing. Yes, many have abused the medium and even with the introduction of the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, this marketing tool still is looked upon in a bad light. Many mainstream marketers have trouble discerning between spam and legitimate email marketing, until they are shown there is a definite difference. The press around unsolicited email and just the word Spam has tainted the jury pool and thus has caused this polarization among marketers. They avoid it not from a bad personal experience using it for their own program but rather subconsciously from societal influences.
How has this opinion evolved over the past few years?
Cohen: Companies have been slowly returning to email as a marketing channel, but this time, they are more informed about the risks associated with working with the wrong partner. Choosing a compliant and responsible email marketing partner is now a large part of the decision process for advertisers who are delving into email marketing.
Barber: In 1999, email marketing was hot hot hot. Then, a bunch of people abused it with technologies that farmed email addresses, creating lists that turned into what is now officially spam. Those lists were then, in the cases of many compiled email list, co-mingled with legitimate opt ins. CAN SPAM tried to clean that mess up but it was a poor attempt that ended up falling short of its original intention. Email marketing as a lead generation tool is still around today and has been a tried and true for the loyal marketers. The key is having someone working on your program that knows the good from the bad to help protect your brand.
Swerdloff: There continues to be a shakeout in the email marketing industry that started with CAN SPAM in 2004. Many of the companies involved in less savory practices have been forced out by sheer economics, and those of us that remain take reputation metrics more seriously. There are at least three companies including Return Path that measure reputation of 3rd party lists before testing them. The net effect is that those marketers still using the medium are having great success. Unfortunately for many of us these same marketers are not sharing their success metrics, so industry opinion has probably not changed all that much.
What types of programs are best suited for this? And how does this differ from managed lists vs. affiliate networks?
Barber: Business to business still enjoys much success with using email as a lead generation tool. In addition, marketers targeting a niche group of consumers (for example brides or seniors or home owners) also can find success using this medium to attain leads for their program. Lastly, when marketers need to attain leads where the information must be collected on their own website (usually for legal reasons or data they are collecting is sensitive), they also enjoy success with this tactic.
McGilvray: Companies like Datran Media offer a wide variety of performance-based CRM and acquisition marketing services as well as affiliate networking options. They also offer a combined solution for CRM and acquisition, adLoyalty. Companies like Entrepreneur.com are employing the solution to maximize the value they provide to both their current readers as well as prospective readers. Being able to select from a suite of service options makes it much easier for marketers to try it before you buy it so to speak which is an extremely welcome option for those just familiarizing themselves with email acquisition.
Some have contended that customers acquired through an email channel are more responsive over-time, what are your experiences with this premise?
Barber: There is some evidence that customers acquired through email are more responsive as they had to work a bit harder to become a lead (complete a form on a website vs. just clicking a check box). However, the real influencer of how responsive someone ends ups being is how the marketer handles that person once the lead comes to them.
McGilvray: Wise marketers definitely see an increase in customer loyalty and responsiveness via the email channel over time just as savvy, shop keepers saw more profitable, loyal retail customers as they matured their buyers from neophytes into seasoned, repeat, knowledgeable fans of their offerings. Our best partners see a significantly higher profit per customer over time. And, yes, customers acquired via the email channel are more responsive for three key reasons. They are engaged in real-time. They are responding to highly relevant communications. They can spend in real-time.
Cohen: Our clients find that customers who have been acquired through an email campaign are open to receiving further email communications. These end-users are least likely to unsubscribe or complain about receiving messages they opted in for.
Barber: There is some evidence that customers acquired through email are more responsive as they had to work a bit harder to become a lead (complete a form on a website vs. just clicking a check box). However, the real influencer of how responsive someone ends ups being is how the marketer handles that person once the lead comes to them.
There is a lot of concern about degradation of brand and reputation by doing acquisition. How do you respond to this assertion?
Barber: If done right – using permission quality lists, following best practices for creative and offer, and not over sending to an individual – brand degradation and decrease of reputation is not a problem. It goes back to the golden rule – if you do unto others, etc.
McGilvray: It's wise for brand marketers to be concerned about degrading their brand via acquisition because if done without the right strategy, it WILL happen.
The key is in understanding how to test and develop the best acquisition strategy for your brand. Those loyal to a brand are likely to have specific tastes and preferences that, if disregarded in the process of introducing new partners, will spoil your relationship. However, it is inaccurate to assume that your entire audience shares a taste or preference. Audience members' tastes and preferences change over time and vary greatly. It is the marketer role to respond to the individualized needs in as real-time, caring of a way as possible. Email makes this much more rapidly possible then less interactive media. Think of the auto-responder/abandoned shopping cart scenario in which a marketer can recapture a significant percentage of those that failed to complete a transaction.
Email Acquisition has long been a cause and effect event. How have your successful clients approach lead cultivation to get the most out of their lead generation spends?
Barber: When speaking to clients about lead generation, one of the first questions we ask is,” What plan is in place to handle these leads once you have them?” Successful clients (read: marketers that have found positive ROI using email marketing for lead generation) have a definite plan to start contacting these people right away with exciting offers and specials. The ones that have failed didn’t have the plan set before the lead generation program began. It sounds elementary, but you’d be surprised how many people put the cart before the horse.
Swerdloff: Segmentation and remarketing strategies are critical efforts. At Return Path we are lucky to employ the services of Stephanie Miller's Strategic Services group to work on these strategies with marketers. Stephanie is not only a thought leader on these subjects but very willing to get her hands dirty in the data. She may be able to provide client examples.
McGilvray: We have many customers employing abandoned shopping cart and other real-time triggered messaging campaigns to enhance lead cultivation as well as to reinforce loyalty across their valued customer bases. Our best clients truly understand what motivates their prospective and incumbent buyers. They respond appropriately. We refer to them as hospitable marketers and their customers adore them.
What are the top trends that marketers should note when considering this acquisition vehicle?
McGilvray: Off line media are still getting more dollars because of their expense and history of success. But, as the channels continue to converge, it's getting much more difficult to justify the off-line-only and difficult-to-measure line items. As attrition across off-line publishing and television media bottoms out, brands will increasingly leverage sister channels to recapture, cross and up sell and attract new buyers.
Cohen: Relevance, reputation and relationship. A good reputation is essential for deliverability and can be achieved by focusing on the relationship with the end-users and sending them relevant information.
Swerdloff: Reputation monitoring as a metric in email list rental success. Consumer control over the types and quantity of email they receive. Cost of sending email has steadily increased; the higher cost of sending email will eventually eradicate spam.
Final closing comments:
I was really hoping to get to an answer like, “By acquiring a customer through an email channel, we show a 50% more responsiveness through email over the lifetime of this customer relationship”. Something like that would compel me to change my spend behaviors. I was also looking for examples of great campaigns or industries that it is a no-brainer. Granted, I gave these people 2-3 days to respond to my request and had very pointed topics, the industry still suffers in my opinion around educating the masses and it needs a more compelling story. If anyone has great stories they’d like to share, I’m open.
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