The Evolving Internet Marketer

What Media Delivers the Best Results? Word of Mouth of Course…

According to an article posted by eMarketer.com, “…when it comes to the question of which medium influences consumers most, the big advertising media all took a back seat to humble word-of-mouth (WOM), which may be far less manageable than conventional ad-supported media, but which also seems to be more effective…”

So how do you promote word-of-mouth (WOM) advertising? It’s as simple as 1-2-3:

1. Provide a great product or service.
2. Provide exceptional customer service … a great product/service experience can crumble to acrimony and dust if your organization doesn’t provide service and support to match. Conversely, great service and support can overcome a lot of product pitfalls.Case in point, I recently switched to a Blackberry Pearl phone and a new cellular plan provider – while the phone’s pretty cool and attracts a lot of attention, I’m constantly experiencing minor glitches with it. What’s saved my experience, so far, is that T-Mobile – my new cell plan provider – has provided unbelievably exceptional support. So while I might be a bit slow to recommend the Pearl, I won’t hesitate in the least to recommend T-Mobile!
3. Ask your customers for referrals (just be sure you’ve earned the right to ask first) and give your customers the means to easily pass-on the good word.A prime example; eBags always provides a means to forward their product communications and offers on to friends and colleagues. And believe me, I do when I feel their product will appeal to someone I know because my total experience with them has been highly satisfactory.

So yeah, while it’s a heckuva lot easier to plunk down a bunch of money for an email, direct mail, newspaper, radio, or TV — i.e., a traditional media — campaign, the rewards you reap will be so much more significant if you can WOW your customers to spread the WOM on your behalf.

Why Test Email Subject Lines? To Increase Your Open Rates

MailDog Papers reports the following statistic:

Permission marketers experiencing above-average open rates of 45% are three times more likely to test subject lines.

So why test? To obtain superior results.

 

Think Email for the Best Return on Your Marketing Dollar Invested

The October 2006 Power of Direct report from the Direct Marketing Association (via EmailLabs) once again established the supremacy of permission-based email.

Projected ROI per channel, 2006:

• Email ROI per $1US spent: $51.45
• Print catalogs: $7.20
• Non-email Internet marketing: $21.08

Total industry spending projected 2006:

• Email: $400 million
• Print catalogs: $20 billion
• Non-email Internet marketing: NA

 Projected sales generation, 2006:

• Email: $18.5 billion (+14.9%)
• All direct marketing: $1.939 trillion
• Non-email Internet marketing: $338.9 billion

Additional Benefits to the Direct Email Marketer

Not only do you have a significant cost savings from email marketing but it’s far easier to understand how the market responds to your offer and make appropriate adjustments. Open rates, click through rates, unsubscribes and purchases (or conversions) can all be – relatively – easily measured and reacted to.

Contrast this with direct mail. You have a very limited idea of how many pieces actually reached your market and practically no idea of how many were immediately discarded, read and acted on, or set aside for future action. To me, direct mail has always been a huge crap shoot.

The other thing about email vs. direct that can make it so powerful is the ease with which you can test various offers to make sure you have exactly the right offer for your target market. As a small business owner and manager most of my career I’d heard the mantra of test, test, test over and over with respect to my direct mail campaigns. Unfortunately, testing was something that I didn’t have the luxury of either a large enough list and, more importantly, a large enough budget to afford.

Email marketing changes all of that. Once you’ve eliminated (or vastly reduced) the costs of printing and distribution (postage, labor, etc.) you find that you do have the resources to test and effectively track the outcomes of those tests. Try this on your next email marketing send … Regardless of the size of your list, carve out 10% and send them 2 different offers. Try different pricing, free shipping, bundling, or urgency to name a few testable factors. Note which test offer got the best response – and, if this difference is significant – send that offer to the entire list. If both test offers sucked, you’ll have also learned something of value and you can take these lessons back to the drawing board.