Transcript Lecture 28x
Lecture 28 E-Marketing E-Marketing Communications Instructor: Hanniya Abid Assistant Professor COMSATS Institutue of Information Technology Objectives After this lecture you will be able to know about E-Mail Marketing Viral Marketing Offline Marketing Opt-in email Savvy e-marketers understand that opt-in e-mail is a powerful online communications tool. As with direct mail it is most widely used for direct response, but e-newsletters in particular can also achieve branding objectives. It enables a targeted message to be pushed out to a customer to inform and remind and they are certain to view at least the subject line within their e-mail inbox, even if it is only to delete it. Opt-in email Contrast this with the web – a pull medium where customers will only visit your site if there is a reason or a prompt to do this. But there is a problem; in the minds of many Internet users, e-mail is evil. It is SPAM, unsolicited e-mail sent by unscrupulous traders. Some say SPAM stands for ‘Sending Persistent Annoying E-mail ’, but it actually originates from the Monty Python sketch. Remember that SPAM is now outlawed in many countries Opt-in email To achieve the potential benefits of opt-in e-mail, marketers should take careful measures to avoid SPAM. This section explains how to achieve this. Opt-in is the key to successful e-mail marketing. Customer choice is the atchword. Before starting an email dialogue with customers, companies must ask them to provide their e-mail address and then give them the option of ‘opting into ’ further communications and selecting their communications preferences, for example the frequency of e-mail and type of content. Opt-in email Privacy law in many countries requires that they should proactively opt-in by checking a box (showing consent in some way). E-mail lists can also be rented where customers have opted in to receive e-mail. Opt-in E-mail Options For Customer Acquisition For acquiring new visitors and customers to a site, there are three main options for e-mail marketing. From the point of view of the recipient, these are: Cold e-mail campaign Co-branded email Third-party e-newsletter. Opt-in E-mail Options For Customer Acquisition Cold e-mail campaign. In this case, the recipient receives an opt-in e-mail from an organization who has rented an e-mail list from a consumer e-mail list provider such as : Experian ( www.experian.com ), Claritas ( www.claritas.com ), IPT Limited ( www.myoffers.co.uk ) or a business e-mail list provider such as Mardev ( www.mardev.com ), Corpdata ( www.corpdata. com) or trade publishers/event providers such as VNU. Opt-in e-mail options for customer acquisition Although they have agreed to receive offers by e-mail, the e-mail is effectively cold. For example, a credit card provider could send a cold e-mail to a list member who is not currently their member. It is important to use some form of ‘ statement of origination ’ otherwise the message may be considered SPAM. Cold e-mails tend to have higher CPAs than other forms of online marketing, but different lists should still be evaluated. Opt-in E-mail Options For Customer Acquisition Co-branded e-mail. Here, the recipient receives an e-mail with an offer from a company they have a reasonably strong affinity with. For example, the same credit card company could partner with a mobile service provider such as Vodafone and send out the offer to their customer (who has optedin to receive e-mails from third-parties). Opt-in e-mail options for customer acquisition Although this can be considered a form of cold e-mail, it is warmer since there is a stronger relationship with one of the brands and the subject line and creative will refer to both brands. Co-branded e-mails tend to be more responsive than cold e-mails to rented lists since the relationship exists and fewer offers tend to be given. Opt-in E-mail Options For Customer Acquisition Third-party e-newsletter. In this visitor acquisition option, a company publicizes itself in a third-party e-newsletter. This could be in the form of an ad, sponsorship or PR (editorial) which links through to a destination site. These placements may be set up as part of an interactive advertising ad buy since many e-newsletters also have permanent versions on the web site. Opt-in E-mail Options For Customer Retention Since e-newsletter recipients tend to engage with them by scanning the headlines or reading them if they have time, e-newsletter placements can be relatively cost effective. For most organizations, e-mail marketing is most powerful for developing relationships with customers as part of e-CRM. E-mail Marketing Success Factors ● Creative – This assesses the design of the e-mail including its layout, use of colour and image and the copy. ● Relevance – Does the offer and creative of the e-mail meet the needs of the recipients? ● Incentive (or offer) – TheWIFM factor or ‘What ’ s in it for me? ’ for the recipient.What benefit does the recipient gain from clicking on the hyperlink(s) in the e-mail? For example, a prize draw is a common offer for B2C brands. E-mail Marketing Success Factors Targeting and timing Targeting is related to the relevance. Is a single message sent to all prospects or customers on the list or are e-mails with tailored creative, incentive and copy sent to the different segments on the list? Timing refers to when the e-mail is received; the time of day, day of the week, point in the month and even the year; does it relate to any particular events. There is also the relative timing – when is it received compared to other marketing communications – this depends on the integration. E-mail Marketing Success Factors Integration – Are the e-mail campaigns part of your integrated marketing communications? Questions to ask include: are the creative and copy consistent with my brand? Does the message reinforce other communications? Does the timing of the e-mail campaign fit with offline communications? E-mail Marketing Success Factors Copy – This is part of the creative and refers to the structure, style and explanation of the offer together with the location of hyperlinks in the e-mail. Attributes (of the e-mail) – Assess the message characteristics such as the subject line, from address, to address, date/time of receipt and format (HTML or text). E-mail Marketing Success Factors Send out Multipart/MIME messages which can display HTML or text according to the capability of the e-mail reader. Offer choice of HTML or text to match user ’ s preferences. Landing page (or microsite) – These are terms given for the page(s) reached after the recipient clicks on a link in the e-mail. Typically, on clickthrough, the recipient will be presented with an online form to profile or learn more about them. Designing the page so the form is easy to complete can affect the overall success of the campaign. E-mail Marketing Success Factors Effective e-mail should: Grab attention in subject line and body. Be brief and be relevant to target. Be personalized – Not Dear Valued Customer, but Dear Ms Smith. Provide opt-out or unsubscribe option by law. Hyperlink to web site for more detailed content. Have clear call-to-action at the start and end of the message. Be tested for effectiveness. Operate within legal and ethical constraints for a country. Opt-in e-mail E-mail is an effective push online communications method. It is essential that e-mail is opt-in, otherwise it is illegal SPAM. Consider options for customer acquisition including cold e-mail, co-branded e-mails and placements in thirdparty e-mails. For house list e-mails, experiment with achieving the correct frequency, or give customers the choice. Consider automated event triggered e-mails. Work hard on e-mail design and maintaining up-to-date lists. Stay within the law. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNHme2P1PCw Viral Marketing Ideally, viral marketing is a clever idea, a shocking idea, or a highly informative idea which makes compulsive viewing. It can be a video clip, TV ad, a cartoon, a funny picture, a poem, song, political or social message, or a news item. It ’s so amazing that it makes people want to pass it on. Viral marketing harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be effective in reaching a large number of people rapidly in the same way as a computer virus can affect many machines around the world. Viral Marketing Like most buzz words ‘viral marketing ’ means different things to different people. A viral marketing execution certainly needs to create a buzz to be successful. The two main forms of viral marketing are best known as ‘wordof-mouth ’ and ‘word-of-mouse’ . Both rely on networks of people to spread the word. Viral marketing also occurs in social networks. Viral Marketing To make a viral campaign happen, Justin Kirby of viral marketing specialists DMC ( www.dmc.co.uk ) suggests there are three things that are needed ( Kirby, 2003 ): 1 Creative material – the ‘viral agent ’. This includes the creative message or offer and how it is spread (text, image, video). 2 Seeding. Identifying web sites, blogs or people to send e-mail to start the virus spreading. 3 Tracking. To monitor the effect and to assess the return from the cost of developing the viral agent and seeding. Viral Marketing We distinguish between these types of viral e-mail mechanisms. 1 Pass along e-mail viral.This is where e-mail alone is used to spread the message. It is an e-mail with a link to a site such as a video or an attachment. Towards the end of a commercial -mail it does no harm to prompt the first recipient to forward the e-mail along to interested friends or colleagues. Even if only one in 100 responds to this prompt, it is still worth it. Viral Marketing The dramatic growth of Hotmail, reaching ten million subscribers in just over a year, was effectively down to passalong as people received e-mails with a signature promoting the service. Word-of-mouth helped too. Passalong or forwarding has worked well for video clips, either where they are attached to the e-mail or the e-mail contains a link to download the clip. If the e-mail has the ‘ WOW! ’ factor, of which more later, a lot more than one in 100 will forward the e-mail. This mechanism is what most people consider to be viral, but there are the other mechanisms that follow too. Viral Marketing 2 Web facilitated viral (e-mail prompt). Here, the e- mail contains a link/graphic to a web page with ‘e-mail a friend ’ or ‘e-mail a colleague ’. A web form is used to collect data of the e-mail address to which the e-mail should be forwarded, sometimes with an optional message. The company then sends a separate message to the friend or colleague. 3 Web facilitated viral (web prompt). Here it is the web page such as a product catalogue or white paper which contains a link/graphic to ‘e-mail a friend ’ or colleague. A web form is again used to collect data and an email is subsequently sent. Viral Marketing 4 Incentivized viral.This is distinct from the types above since the e-mail address is not freely given. This is what we need to make viral really take-off. By offering some reward for providing someone else ’s address we can dramatically increase referrals. Viral Marketing A common offer is to gain an additional entry into a prize draw. Referring more friends gains more entries to the prize draw. With the right offer, this can more than double response. The incentive is offered either by e-mail (option 2 above) or on a web page (option 3). In this case, there is a risk of breaking privacy laws since the consent of the email recipient may not be freely given. Usually only a single follow-up e-mail by the brand is permitted. So you should check with the lawyers if considering this. Viral Marketing 5 Web-link viral. But online viral isn ’t just limited to e-mail. If you click on any of the links on a web article article – that can also be considered to be online viral marketing or you could call it online PR. Links in discussion group postings or blogs that are from an individual are also in this category. Either way, it ’s important when seeding the campaign to try to get as many targeted online and offline mentions of the viral agent as you can. Viral Marketing With viral techniques, traffic is built either through using e-mail (virtual word-of-mouth) or real-world word-ofmouth to spread the message from one person to the next. Let’s watch a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoCRbTBcIEM Offline marketing to direct traffic In this section we will see that offline communications are a key component of the e-communications mix. Companies need to decide on whether advertising is incidental or specific; whether specialist messages need to be communicated and the mix of techniques used. All ten offline communications tools from Smith and Taylor (2004) can and should be used to build online traffic. Offline marketing to direct traffic How significant is offline promotion? After evaluating the range of online promotion techniques available, you may be asking yourself, ‘if all these online techniques are effective, why do companies spend so much on offline advertising? In fact, the spend on online advertising is dwarfed by spend on advertising in traditional media such as print, TV and radio. Offline marketing to direct traffic In 2007, the UK Internet Advertising Bureau research showed that online ad spend had exceeded 15%, but 85% spend offline is still significant! At the start of the new millennium, global online advertising spend was around 1% of total advertising. On average, it has still not reached double figures, but some leading adopters are now spending more than 10% of their budget online. Offline marketing to direct traffic Important aspects of the online brand to communicate are: ● The URL (of course). In print, using a sub-folder in URL www.domain.com/campaign name can help direct users to the relevant section. ● Online value proposition . The ad creative should give a specific benefit for immediately visiting the site. ● Traditional brand values. ● Sales promotions and offers. Summary We have talked about: Email Marketing Success Factors in e-mail marketing Viral Marketing Different ways of viral marketing Offline Marketing The Life of an Ad - Terminology “impression”/“pageview” “click” “click-through rate”: (# clicks)/(# impressions) “landing page” “target page” “conversion” or “action” “conversion rate”: (# conversions)/(# page visits) “tracking code” <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yahoo.com/conversion.js"> </script> Search Advertising Advertisements are sold in auctions Advertisers bid on search terms [show live] Different payment models CPC (cost per click) de-facto standard Advertiser pays $X when an ad gets clicked CPA (cost per action) growing popularity Advertiser pays $Y when a click on an ad leads to a (trans)action/purchase CPM (cost per mille [page impressions]) used for display ads Advertiser pays $Z for 1,000 ad displayments Bidding for search terms Advertisers compete for search terms “warsaw hotels”, “online advertising”, … A click has a different value for different advertisers Searchonengines need to depends profit margin anddecide: on conversion rate * How should slots besearch assigned? There’s a ranked list ofthe sponsored results MyComputer.com * How much should be=>paid perclicks click?(CTR) Assumption: higher ranking more 99% of web site visitors don’t purchase anything Advertisers to decide: 1% buy a bid computer onversion rate (frominclick transaction) Advertisers forneed a- c(good) slot theto results Profit per computer sold $100 * How much- to bid? per How $ 0.01 per click $ 100.00 click would you do it? Expected profit per visitor $1 – value of a single visit/click Search engine order/inclusion Guess thedecides most the expensive search term? slots are assigned to (successful) bidders When a user clicks on a sponsored search result … … payment is made by the advertiser Display Advertising Contextual Targeting How would you do it? Taken from: http://tutorialfreakz.com/30-misplaced-ads/ Demographic Targeting Image is taken from: http://realblogging.com/christine-wade/targeted-ad-on-facebook-test-and-the-results/ Behavioral Targeting […] for instance, if a visitor has a recent history of researching SUVs and is a regular visitor of Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! BT will have the insights to serve up a relevant SUV ad while the visitor is browsing the Yahoo! Music homepage.