Think Command Central

Usually when marketers have their focus on lead generation techniques they design campaigns that get respondents to do something once: request info, download a free white paper, buy a product, sign up for a newsletter.  The big challenge, it seems, is in getting the name. And the current thinking is that by getting an email address communicating with prospects is going to be much easier and more cost-effective.

All of these popular marketing tactics require you to tap into the overloaded attention span of your prospects.  But acquiring e-mail names as a marketing goal is only two-dimensional.  The burden of staying connected rests on the marketer's shoulders.  He or she must continually trigger interest and elicit response every time in the classic direct marketing model many companies use.

There may be a better way to go. 

Think Command Central:
Try to get an icon on your prospect's Windows page with your company or product logo.  Provide them with a tool or a game - something interactive that that adds value and is bound to intensify their relationship with your company.  That way you can pitch less and respond more to prospects' queries. 

Here's one real life example of how to do this:
All Metals & Forge (AMF), a metal brokerage firm in Parsippany, NJ, offers a downloadable program, SteelWeights™, that allows users to instantly calculate the weight of any material, in any form, size or quantity, then print that calculation for further use in an RFQ (Request For Quote) that users can send to AMF for a price quotation. The neat part about this program is that when it's installed it creates an icon on the Windows page of the user's computer.  Go to www.steelforge.com for the download.

Once SteelWeights is installed a lot of good things happen at once:  AMF gets important electronic real estate on a prospect's desk top together with all the ongoing branding the icon supplies.  But most of all AMF has offered a valuable tool to its target market that leads prospects right to AMF's web site and phone lines.  With this tactic AMF has infiltrated the minds of its prospects as they prepare proposals and given them a tool that can save both parties time in preparing cumbersome calculations.

According to Lew Weiss, president of AMF, 18,000 have downloaded the program over four years.  All these come in from response to print ads, banner ads on the web and pop ups on the AMF site. 

Now what can you do along these same lines for your prospects?

Experian Launches Email Prescreen for Credit Offers

Consumer-data company Experian said last week it has launched Email Prescreen to help credit-card marketers qualify leads before sending out email offers.

Clients using Email Prescreen will submit their offers and their email prospect lists to Experian. The company will examine its credit information to determine whether the prospect meets the client's criteria and email offers to those who qualify. It will also mail offers to the postal addresses of bounced email accounts.  Experian said the new service will cut marketing and mailing costs, reduce the cost and time needed to acquire new customers and improve response rates. A company official said the new service also allows clients to test campaigns and track results. (As reported by ListNews.com)

For more information,  http://press.experian.com/documents/showdoc.cfm?doc=845

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Internet Passes Print in Survey

The Internet is now ahead of newspapers and magazines as a source for news, views and entertainment, according to a study conducted for Internet service provider Freeserve. Television and radio are ranked as the first and second news sources, with newspapers now fourth. The change applies across all demographic groups, in every household that has Internet access. Internet users in the 16-34 age group spend 15 times as long online as they do reading newspapers. Women spend five times as long online as they do looking at magazines.

(MediaGuardian 28 July 2002 as reported by the IFRA Trend Report) http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,764264,00.html

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E-marketers Aren't Measuring Campaigns Effectively

Several studies of email-marketing managers show more than half don't track the effectiveness of their campaigns, while those that do measure click-through rates instead of branding, according to a story on eMarketer.com on July 30th.

The story which appeared on July 30th, reviewed research studies between September and April, conducted by e-Dialog, the Direct Marketing Association, IMT Strategies and DoubleClick and compiled the results, including these findings:

How Marketers Are Using E-Mail

Here's more stats from the above studies:

A June study by DoubleClick found

An April study by e-Dialog found

A September 2001 study by IMT Strategies found

(As reported in ListNews.com)

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Jupiter: Multi-Channel Customers May Not Be So Valuable

Did you catch this story that appeared recently in DM News? These findings are 180 degrees apart from other reports I've come across so far.  They're worth examining:

Customers who buy from the same merchant on multiple channels are not worth as much as marketers often think, according to a report released yesterday by analyst firm Jupiter Research. While what Jupiter calls "active" multi-channel shoppers account for a disproportionately high share of Web sales, they are more deal driven, more aware of pricing across channels, and consume more costly features, such as live help, according to the report. "They are actually a liability," said Juliana Deeks, an associate analyst at Jupiter. "And one of the most important findings is that their loyalties and their spending are divided among a larger number of stores online." http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=21154&dest=article

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Tip of the Month

How to Beat Prospects' E-mail Filters

One tactic I picked up in Email MarketingSherpa Weekly that may help get your mail past filtering software is to send a welcome message when people opt-in, telling them how all future communications will appear,  Your message could say,for instance, "All our messages will come from "sender name@your company.com" if you use filters, please add this address to your white list."  

Better yet - you could tell them people this after they opt-in on your confirm page. Even your welcome
message could end up being blocked.  By giving them the heads up beforehand you will may also peak their interest in receiving your welcome message and effectively turbo-charge the beginning of your e-mail relationship.