The Next Generation of Email Prospecting

Acquisition email marketing is seeing a rebirth in the marketing mix. Interactive marketing is forecasted to reach near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing spend in 2014, according to Forrester Research, as marketers shift dollars away from traditional offline media.

As interactive channels continue to grab a larger share of the marketing pie, retailers are presented with an ideal opportunity to look at new techniques to better use email and other online methods as acquisition channels, and to properly attribute performance metrics to get a valid and justifiable return on investment.

Better Data Means Better Results
Developing and maintaining a successful marketing program requires more than just raw data. A number of new technologies are now available to lower online acquisition costs and improve return on marketing investments. Automating processes like address correction and email append can be effective means of growing an online customer file.

Some of the latest solutions to facilitate data enhancement and hygiene include email append, reverse append and real-time lead verification. These tools allow marketers to reach customers on a more timely and accurate basis, and serve as valuable assets when trying to communicate with prospects and customers when they're “in market” to buy. Keep in mind, however, that a stringent privacy policy is critical when choosing a service partner.

Increased Market Penetration
Repeating emails over several months has proven to increase awareness and new customer sales. These multitouch emails keep a brand top of mind until a consumer is ready to buy. Touches in several different channels (e.g., direct mail, email, telesales and website landing pages) tends to produce even greater results.

Illustrating the efforts of this strategy, an auto dealership with multiple luxury brands used a multitouch campaign to reach specifically targeted prospects within their core market areas as well as their competitors’ territory. The campaign targeted 60,000 new prospects. In less than a week after the launch, the dealership doubled the size of the program to 120,000 prospects and continued for seven multitouch campaigns. The average new customer acquisition cost was under $800, yielding high margin sales.

Measure it Right
While open and clickthrough rates are good indicators, the measurements that really count are new customers and sales. Email produces sales in all channels, so it's important to measure impact holistically — online, phone and retail. In many cases, 80 percent to 90 percent of these sales occur in stores and offline. Sophisticated email marketing analytic solutions use online and offline sales data and analyze it properly against the emailed group and a matched control group to show incremental impact.

A major communications company offering a broadband service tested this approach in a controlled environment. When measured using traditional online-only sales, the program was considered a dismal failure. However, when matchback analysis factored in phone orders and local store sales in addition to online sales, there was a 45 percent reduction in new customer acquisition costs. The offline sales to online sales ratio was 23-to-1. As a result, the program was deemed a success.

With smart strategies and proper measurements, highly targeted email communications get the best results, and ultimately deliver positive ROI.

Doug McCrea is president of Acquire Marketing Services, an email marketing solutions provider. Reach Doug at doug@acquireweb.com.