Top Tips for Effective Emails

March 14th, 2011

Jaysen-01

Marketing Mag recently spoke to Jaysen Du Plessis, Head of Great Sites (our exclusive membership portal partner) about trends in email marketing and how  marketers are no longer just competing with other businesses by pushing their agendas via email, but also through strategic social media campaigns.

So, if email is still your marketing tool of choice, take some time to make sure you’re sending out the most effective emails possible by following Jaysen’s advice below:

Is your email subject line compelling?

It’s easy to quickly add a subject line without giving it the thought and attention it deserves. All the work that you have put into the entire email will be worth nothing if you can’t get people to open up the email in the first place. Make your subject interesting and relevant and don’t hesitate to try a few different options to see what gives you the best open rate.

Get the timing of your send right

This will vary depending on who you are targeting and what you are trying to promote but a little testing will reveal when the best time for you to reach your audience is.

If you are trying to reach business recipients, avoid sending emails first thing in the morning; try sending it after they would have deleted all their early morning spam. If you are promoting a weekend event, emailing on Thursday is generally going to be more effective than emailing on a Monday.

Be wary of images being blocked

Blocked images are the bane of every email campaign. If you have chosen to use text embedded into a large image for your campaign, and then this image is blocked, your click through rate is going to be very low!

Images may be blocked for the following reasons

  • - A company’s mail server may be stripping out any images to their employees
  • - Outlook blocks images to help prevent email senders identifying the recipient’s computer
  • - Default setting of a couple of mail clients automatically doesn’t show images until turned on

eg    Gmail and Windows Live Mail

It’s best to design emails that work equally well with images on or off by using normal text as part of your email creative and ensuring this appears above the fold and within a typical outlook preview window.

It is also worth placing a line at the top of your email that asks recipients to add your email address to their address book. Include this message in your opt-in confirmation and in all welcome emails. Another important link to have in an email is to an online version of the email if it cannot be displayed in the email client.

Is your audience sick of your message?

List fatigue can occur when you’re sending your campaigns too frequently and a list becomes tired of hearing from you. The answer is simply to send emails a little less often and with messages that are targeted to the audience.

You don’t have to stop marketing or sending emails, you can simply use different databases to send your message to.

What’s the point? Know your email’s objective

People get so much email on a daily basis, so why should they read yours? People want timely, compelling, and useful content. If they don’t get it, they’ll hit delete. Ascertain what the objective of your email is and keep it in mind so that the email focuses on one single objective – then get the user to click and be taken to your website with a relevant offer.

Avoid making your email too cluttered and confusing and you’ll have a better chance of getting the click throughs you’re after. The objective of most emails is to drive sales revenue, which means the email has one solitary function –guide the email recipient to the website. Once they have landed on the site, it is then the site objective to entice them to buy.

Avoiding the spam filters

So your message is targeted and valid and you can’t understand why your emails are being caught up in spam filters. It’s important to keep these filters in mind when writing your email content as many email newsletter platforms can check your content against various spam criteria. This means you will need to alter your email content if required. Check your email software for your spam rating (different software have different rating systems).

A good tip is to avoid too many capital letters, exclamation marks and spammy phrases like ‘GET IN QUICK’ ‘MAKE MONEY TODAY’.

Top words and symbols to avoid are $,!, %, Win, Free, Cash, Amazing, Discount, Winner.

Fast facts on what makes a good email

  • - File size is under 30Kb (all images are hosted externally)
  • - Envelope information is clear: the recipient knows who has sent it and trust who it is coming  from
  • - Subject line contains the offer details, but excludes spam triggers
  • - Minimal background colour (meaning that it can’t be stripped out of some email clients)
  • - Logo at the top left (no matter how they have their preview window set up – bottom or right,      they know who the email is from)
  • - Consistent navigation (consumers know what to expect when they receive the email and can be  linked straight through to specific areas on the site)
  • - Offer information is clear and at the top
  • - Privacy Policy link at the bottom of the email
  • - Includes opt-out option

Take a look at Jaysen’s Marketing Mag article here

marketing mag logo

Q Ltd launches Great Sites

March 10th, 2011

great sites logo

Today our parent company, Q Ltd has  launched a brand new membership website www.greatsites.com.au, the first step in the development of a comprehensive online membership portal which will feature an enhanced and expanded offering for members and advertisers.

Great Sites is an expansion of Q Ltd’s original The Great Australian Survey and for it’s 500,000+ members.  The new portal will continue to reveal a range of new features over the coming months .

Members visiting the site will have access to competitions, offers, shopping, entertainment and research surveys. There will be more prizes and a focus on social media integration and engagement with and between members.

Jon Ostler CEO of Q Ltd’s digital asset development division QEDigital said,

“We have seen many rapid changes over the last three years with an increasing number of membership based sites playing in our space as well as the increased use of social media, one day deals and group buying sites by our members. We intend to respond to these changes to further position ourselves as leaders within the media space.”

Great Sites will offer improved options for advertisers including enhanced marketing data verification and quality controls, more members to target, higher response rates and additional contemporary advertising options including advanced targeting, co-registration and various research services.

The new portal  is based on a .NET CMS (content management system) and CRM (customer relationship management) platform which will support rapid development of new capabilities in response to rapidly evolving member requirements and online behaviours.

Q Ltd has also launched versions of GreatSites in the UK and New Zealand which will be available for advertising, affiliate and research opportunities from the 3di team.

contact us for more information on

1300 806 986 or experts@3dinteractive.com.au

www.greatsites.com.au

www.greatsites.co.nz

www.greatsites.co.uk


Demand for email increases in line with growth of digital advertising for 2011

March 9th, 2011

increaseProfit

The growth of digital advertising is estimated to continue to throughout 2011, industry forecasts have advertising within display media set to grow at between 15-18% year/year, to a level of $800M for 2011.

This is supported by the recently released estimates for the Future of Digital Advertising by PWC – IAB, predicting Digital and TV (free to air) will be on parity at $3.8billion in 2014.

Demand for targeted media is at an all time high, but as the options for targeting improve for larger publishers, they continue to struggle to offer true targeting. Website publishers are often left with technology driven targeting promises to try to sell to advertisers.

Technology that analysis masses of user data to try to deliver targeted banner advertisements based on users browsing history (behaviour) or against the very minimum details user may have completed as a member registration process.

This is VERY basic targeting, when do you remember a banner ad that is relevant to your interest?

For as long as there has been the internet there has been email advertising. In fact since the beginning of connectivity, email remains as the most popular activity across all internet users, yes bigger than Search!

More than 90% of Internet users between 18 and 72 said they send and receive email, making it the top online activity just ahead of search engines, & The number of marketing emails sent by U.S. retailers and wholesalers this year will hit 158 billion and grow 63% to 258 billion in 2013.

- Forrester’s c/o emailstatcentre.com 2011.

Currently demand for email advertising is far outstripping banner advertising, and we put this down to emails’ targeting capabilities, but targeting is not emails only benefit. Below are listed the key benefits of email as a advertising media.

targeted-social-media-marketing-300x267

  • Targeted Media– a stand out benefit when compared to banner advertising. Members join a database completing details in relevant to themselves. The most basic information captured is Name/ Sex/ Age and location. More detailed databases are asking up to 200 profile questions, on consumer behaviour, what they are interests. The best part is that consumers a granting their Permission to use this data to receive relevant offers. This rich information allows marketers the ability to send campaigns to a highly targeted member who is anticipating receiving offers.
  • Permission Marketing is an emerging marketing term on the verge of becoming mainstream. Consumers grant their permission to receive information based on the details they have entered during a registration process. The Spam Act 2003 requires consumer permission to be granted for email marketing. Once permission is granted communication is anticipated by the consumer and as a result campaigns consistently achieve very high response rates. Permission is a form of Pull Marketing.
  • Pull marketing – next to search marketing, permission marketing is the only other true form of Pull marketing. Consumers have a desire for information on their interests and offers based on their profile – targeted offers. Permission reduces clutter to consumers; marketers should be respecting the consumer’s request (permission) and moving from Push marketing to Pull Marketing. Stop shouting to try to be heard, listen as there are captive audiences wanting information, in their require timing and at their personal volume levels. What is to be received and how often
  • Reach and usage – email is the most widely used application on the internet – 90% of all people accessing the internet have an email account*. 35% of people surveyed checked their emails as one of the first activities each morning, 45% check their email at least 3 times per day and 70% have multiple email addresses. Email is a big part of everyday life! Email for marketing has mass reach possibilities. 3di’s email network provides access to over 5.2 million permisssioned members across b2b and b2c
  • Personal – the direct nature of email (delivered straight into the consumer’s inbox) allows a powerful opportunity for brands to build a one to one (1-1) relationship with current and perspective customers. The simple use of addressing the message with the recipient’s first name is a great way to start building this relationship. This is made possible via basic HTML coding within the email creative pulling information off the database.

E.g. Dear {member_firstname}

email

  • Impactful and responsive – 100% share of voice is the term used by media planners/buyers. Email is a advertising opportunity with no clutter. Direct into a consumer’s inbox, 100% share of voice, full page add, targeted and anticipated recipients’ generates high responses.

Below are some industry response rates by medium:

Display medium Average Response Rates

Banner ads – website 0.05%
Direct Mail – 3rd party list 1.0%
Direct Mail – in house list 1.5%
Email – in house list 2.0%
Email – 3rd party non -incentivised 5.0%
Email – 3rd party incentivised 15.0%

Source: Email and banner estimates via tracking technology utilised by 3di- DREAM mail (Epsilon), TPN for publishers (OpenX), Direct mail based on customer input

  • Timely – broadcasting an email can be timed to generate the highest response. Technology allows the choice of time of day and day of week for each campaign broadcast. The recommendation for highest response when broadcasting a campaign is based on generic consumer behaviour for the target audience. Across the board Tuesday at 11am yields the highest Reponses. Monday is normally jammed with admin that needs specific attention, but it is also well know for sickies and long weekends. 11am because generally people have got through deleting of overnight unwanted emails, and chats about the night before and are well into their working day. Response rates for emails opened are measured by the minutes/second with 60% of all responses received within the first 24hrs. Friday afternoons are perfect for competitions as most people are so anticipating the weekend they will respond to anything and complete a lot of details in entry forms
  • Social – we track a very high “Like” share with a friend element of majority of email campaigns, due to the tight targeting and offer relevance members will share with friends. We have experienced as high as 20% pass along rates for campaigns, with these views as a bonus to marketers – courtesy of happy members. We recommend the inclusion of links to facebook as standard within email campaigns allowing members to “Like” and post to friends the offer they have just received

facebook post to profile

  • Cost effective and environmentally friendly – it has dawned on me that this key benefit is the last on the list, however by no means should be last, in fact a key decision in all marketing planning is cost effectiveness. Compared to traditional direct marketing – Mailing, email rains supreme on the carbon footprint – No mass printing, no envelops, no stuffing no mailing house, and no stamps required. Email campaigns do come at a cost but truly a fraction of DM campaigns.

3di has been at the forefront of email sales, since 2000, offering clients access to AU’s premium permission databases. Start a conversation with one of our experts and we will be able to discuss your requirements and create a highly responsive campaign for your next media campaign.

By Mark Halstead, Head of Media, 3dinteractive

Follow: linkedin.com/in/markhalstead

VidMail The next generation video marketing tool

February 25th, 2011

Below is an example of one of our recent Vidmail campaigns for Movie Extra

Click here to view video

Click here to view video

Don Draper, the biggest ad man and ladies man in the business. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels.

Don’t miss this provocative drama series revealing the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising in the 1960s.

CLICK HERE MEET DON DRAPER
Winner of 2 Golden Globe® Awards and Nominated for 16 EMMY® Awards. Commences 9.30pm sundays from September 14. Encores Wednesday 8.30pm
MOVIE EXTRA
MAD MEN
Original and exclusive to Movie Extra Available on: Optus, Austar, SelectTv and Foxtel

Video Email 101’s

What is VidMail?

Vidmail marketing is a commonly used name for the streaming of dynamic content in the body of an email, to communicate a consistent, interactive message to a target market. Vidmail eliminates the need for large attachments when dealing with rich media and can be streamed direct to the user.

What are the benefits?

  • Simple: Vidmail is a simple way of communicating action packed or detailed information to your audience, by streaming direct it also eliminates the need for heavy and annoying downloads.
  • Engaging: Hold your consumer’s attention for longer, a recent Horowitz Associates report (Broadband Content and Service) indicates there is a strong trend that viewers are willing to watch longer video content, as long as it’s interesting. Stop thinking in terms of TV ad spots for your advertising. Entertain and inform viewers about your products or services and get them involved with interactive content alongside your video.
  • Dynamic: Why send a boring, standard email when you can send rich media full of interactivity? With dynamic content you have the opportunity to provide a dialogue with users. The ability to increase the depth of your message adds another dimension to your content.
  • Brand exposure: Expand your brand experience from that of just copy and images, let your user truly experience your brand proposition through video along with features such as sound, animation and effects.

What does it mean for the Marketing Mix?

Coupled with the ability to drive direct response and gather deep insight into performance, video is taking a powerful new role in the marketing mix. “
“Case in point: We’ve been working with dozens of local publishers who have incorporated video into their standard 300×250 display ad packages.” In our case, here at Global Video Tech, our standard is a 640 X 480 large format video with extremely high quality, no downloading and never pauses to “buffer”. Let your prospects REALLY see what you have to offer.
“Advertisers are seeing measurable performance results that exceed what they expected if they were running regular display ads. Beyond click-through rates and possibly conversion data, advertisers are seeing a new set of metrics emerge: Video ads offer brand exposure (we’ve seen video ads run that are longer than two minutes) Note: Our sample streaming video email is 22 minutes long and plays immediately – no downloading required; video ad interaction (repeat plays, sharing, expanding the player); measurable engagement (play through, exit point); and conversion (lead generation, clicks). “
“Advertisers take this data and turn it into insights on how effective their creative is: How many leads am I getting and when in the video do they occur? How much are viewers watching? When in the video do they abandon watching my video ad?” Global Video Tech has provided these capabilities, and many others, to our customers since day one.

Video in email represents new revenue opportunities and click-through optimization for email marketers, coupled with the ability to drive direct response and gather deep insight into performance, video is taking a powerful new role in the marketing mix.

How does it perform?

Advertisers are seeing measurable performance results that exceed what they expected if they were running regular display ads. Beyond click-through rates and possibly conversion data, advertisers are seeing a new set of metrics emerge: Video ads offer brand exposure ; measurable engagement (play through, exit point); and conversion (lead generation, clicks).

Fact: Video in Email can increase click through rates by as much as 2 – 3X
(
Assessing Video Email Opportunities, Forrester Research).

For more information on Vidmail and it’s capabilities, get in touch with the team.

TPN launches co-registration option

December 8th, 2010

TPNThe Performance Network (TPN), a premium performance based advertising network, has launched a co-registration option offering publishers a new revenue stream at the same time as offering advertisers increased customer leads.

Co-registration (co-reg) is a form of online lead generation that involves asking consumers if they would like to opt-in for third party offers when they have signed up on a site, it’s already widely used especially in the UK and USA, however this trend has only recently started to hit the Australian market in a significant way.

By having the option to purchase  co-reg via a network advertisers are able to easily take advantage of this more contemporary online marketing tactic to expand their campaign beyond the usual display advertising (banner ads).

Jaysen Du Plessis, Head of TPN is already seeing more and more  advertisers adding  this additional component into their marketing mix as the resulting increase in the advertisers return on investment is significant.

“Advertisers are only paying for actual leads they receive rather than paying per ad impression or per click.” Mr Du Plessis said.

“One of the most frequently asked questions we get from publishers is how can they make more money from their site. Co-reg is a great solution as publishers can earn money on a variety of offers being made on their site and the consumer does not even leave their website,” Mr Du Plessis said.

It is often difficult for many publishers to offer co-registration to their advertisers owing to the amount of technical development and campaign management involved to ensure that the information gathered is verified as well as not a duplicated lead already held by the advertiser. TPN has created an ad platform that manages this whole process as well as offers real time reporting. All a publisher needs to do is copy and paste some code on a page and the network will do the rest.

With co-registration, a relationship is formed between a website publisher and advertiser, where the advertiser can use the consumer information provided to the publisher to communicate directly with the consumer once they give their permission.

As consumers have specifically chosen which offers they are interested in before an advertiser can contact them it means the consumer expects to be contacted, they are genuinely interested in learning more and the advertiser therefore has a higher chance of achieving a conversion or sale.

TPN are offering co-reg campaigns across a range of premium Australian and New Zealand websites and are looking to expand this in 2011. Leads can include email, phone or postal data.

3dinteractive is the exclusive sales agent for TPN. To find out further information  please contact your Account Manager or contact 1300 806 986 / experts@3dinteractive.com.au

Digital Promotions…5 Common Mistakes

November 12th, 2010
oops!

oops!

When businesses are looking for a fun, creative way to engage with customers, boost their sales and enhance their relationships with consumers, a digital promotional campaign is one marketing tactic that often ticks all the boxes.

As the online sector continues to grow, more creative concepts for digital promotions are being thought up and we’re seeing exciting new forms of instant wins, games, competitions, lucky draws, sweep stakes and rank and wins.

As with all marketing efforts, attempts to cut corners and costs can lead to an ineffective digital promotion, so if you’re considering such a campaign, it’s worth knowing where companies often go wrong

Mistake 1: Over complicating the message

K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple Stupid!

Your customers don’t want to have to work too hard to win a prize. This is the key point to remember when implementing a digital promotions campaign, starting with the initial message you use to reach the consumer. Keep it simple! What are they going to win and how do they enter? If this information is lost in the flyer amongst detailed content, you will just as easily lose the customer’s interest.

A simple glance at the flyer should be enough to entice them to enter.

Mistake 2: Reinventing the wheel

Although for some companies, digital promotions are a new concept, they’ve actually been around long enough for a number of techniques and systems to be well and truly tried and tested. There is no reason for you to start from scratch; this is an easy way to make many of the most common mistakes.

Similarly, if you hire a team to run the promotions and they’re excited to create a new site or program that hasn’t been used before, you may get some innovative ideas but you’ll end up paying them for trial and error. Inject that energy into exciting creative but make sure the technical side of the campaign can run like clock-work.

stone-age wheel

Mistake 3: Too many barriers to entry

If you compare digital promotions to traditional competitions when people had to cut out a coupon, fill it in, buy a stamp and post the entry, you’ll understand how much easier the digital age is!

We like things to be easy, so by adding barriers of entry, for instance asking customers to purchase 20 of your product to make them eligible for entry; it’s just too much hard work! Even including a game of skill like making entrants write in 25 words or less why they deserve to win the major prize, automatically cuts a large number of possible entrants from your competition.

Not only do you lose the people who can’t be bothered to write an entry, there are also those who just believe someone will do a better job so they don’t bother trying. The best advice is to remove as many entry barriers as possible and open up the promotion to as many people as possible.

Mistake 4: Offer prizes customers don’t want

It’s like giving your dad socks for Xmas…

If you’re running a competition on a men’s razor packet, you’re not going to have the winning prize as a luxury spa treatment as this is not really going to interest your target audience. If the prize is totally irrelevant to your customer you’re going to find it very difficult to get people to enter.

The other mistake is not making the prize attractive enough or big enough to make it worth the customer’s time to enter. This mistake could be in the form of spending $5,000 on prizes compared to doing an underwritten promotion for a $1 million lucky dip at the same cost.

Socks

Mistake 5: Not storing data securely

With so many options now-days for people to enter competitions and sign up for mailing lists, consumers are becoming savvy about where they share their personal details. If you’re not storing your entrant data securely, you could be one step away from breaking privacy laws and seriously annoying your customers who suddenly end up with unsolicited marketing materials.

If you don’t have a way of storing sensitive data securely you increase the risk of data loss or manipulation which can damage your business’ credibility.  Do it right the first time and treat your entrants’ personal information with the utmost respect.

Speak to the 3Di team for more information about the benefits of hosting a digital promotion and for ideas on interactive online promotions for your or your client’s brand.

1300 806 986
Contact Us

About Great Promotions

Great Promotions is a comprehensive end to end digital promotions service build around a powerful digital promotions platform. The technology platform offers leading advertisers and promotion agencies a reliable, secure, flexible and proven platform to meet all their digital promotional needs. Available supporting services include promotion strategy, creative, development, media and campaign management. The platforms list of features is extensive including; Instant Win, Scratch Cards, Rank & Win, Q & A, Trivia, Leader Board, Sports Tipping, Interactive Games, Unique Entry Codes, Coupons, Tell a Friend and Social Media Integration supported by a powerful CMS & live reporting.

www.greatpromotions.com.au

Digital Promotions Platform Now Available

November 12th, 2010

GP-Logo-240

Our Parent group Q Ltd has just launched Great Promotions, a digital promotions service built around a powerful promotions platform. Available through 3Di Australia and New Zealand, the Great Promotions platform is designed to add an interactive element to sales promotions and lead generation campaigns by facilitating online games, competitions, scratch cards, instant win and a range of other customer experiences, and is a great way to grow your database.

The platform is designed to help marketing departments and agencies with all aspects of digital promotions including design and build, hosting, legal and fulfillment, campaign management and reporting services.

If you are thinking of running a digital promotion, the more effective medium for promotions get in touch with our team for examples and ideas on how you can make your next promotions stand out.

In the meantime take a look at some more information about the platform and how it helped Australian icon, Weet-Bix host a successful online promotion here >>

Great Promotions (PDF)

www.GreatPromotions.com

Great Promotions