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New Product Launch
December 22, 2006
Now we normally don’t like to push our client's products but in this case feel that this was a valuable one to talk about. CleanWell Today recently launched their site and I think has a great product. As sustainability is becoming more and more important in today's world and using healthy alternatives is vital, especially for our children, CleanWell Today recently launched a line of all natural hand sanitizing solutions that uses plant oils instead of alcohol and potentially harmful chemicals.
Their products are great for parents of young children, teachers, healthcare workers, etc. Check out the site here or you can look at their store.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 10:13 AM | Permalink
Free shipping gets e-mails opened
December 19, 2006
This article, written by Dianna Dilworth, ran today in DM News and featured >ReturnonSubrciber.com scribe (sorry, it was too easy), Jeff Mills.
Free shipping gets e-mails opened: eROI
"Free shipping is the No. 1 offer that customers look for and will respond to in an e-mail, per online marketing firm eROI Inc. in its 2006 holiday e-mail marketing survey.
The study interviewed consumers and found that free shipping is important because it gives online shopping a competitive advantage.
“Online is the place to go for a bargain because it’s easier to comparison shop, but the price of shipping can negate the cost of the savings,” said Jeff Mills, analyst at eROI, Portland, OR. “And so many retailers offer it, that consumers expect it.”
In fact, the survey shows that the majority of respondents prefer free shipping over discounts.
The study found that a discount by itself is not necessarily the most important thing in an e-mail. Also, more than one-third of those surveyed felt that if they cannot quickly see what an e-mail is about, they will delete before even getting to the offer.
Discounts are somewhat significant, though. EROI found that 31 percent of people surveyed prefer a percentage off, with only 22 percent favoring a dollar amount off.
According to Mr. Mills, this is because people are willing to trade higher savings for flexibility. Respondents favored getting 10 percent off any purchase over getting 15 percent off a purchase for a specified amount.
While nearly one-third of respondents say that e-mails are for sales, 42 percent say that improving customer relationships is the most important aspect this holiday season.
This was troubling to Mr. Mills, because he said that it made retailers seem focused only on building a customer relationship around the holidays when they are likely to spend money.
“I think that this is a reactionary thing, because retailers want consumers to spend more with them,” Mr. Mills said. “We are such a society of short lifespan, where the retailer isn’t thinking about the future, but wants consumers to spend their money now.”
Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 11:39 PM | Permalink
"I'm too annoyed to look at stuff like that"
December 17, 2006
Tonight, while sitting on the couch with our laptops, I showed my girlfriend a newsletter that I love getting - DistantReplays.com. I told her how their marketing person loves me, because I read and click thru on their newsletter everytime I got it. I then asked her, "I want you to start signing up for these so you can tell me what you like or don't like about them."
She replied simply, "I'm too annoyed to look at stuff like that." She will delete them, even if she has opted-in. Always.
I thought about read rates, and how many of "her" that are out there. In 2007 we need to find this part of the email list, and try everything to get them to interact with us. The subject line is more important than ever.
My $.02.
Comments (0) | Posted by alex at 8:52 PM | Permalink
We've Made Changes to our Blogs' RSS Feeds
December 15, 2006
Just wanted to throw out the news that we have changed out RSS feed address. For those of you that subscribe by RSS, make note to update your feed for us to:
http://feeds.eroi.com/ReturnOnSubscriber
And for our other blog:emaidays.com
http://feeds.eroi.com/LoveEmailHateEmailViralEmailMarketingInbox
And for the TheEmailWars.com
http://feeds.eroi.com/TheEmailWars
IF you have no clue how to use RSS, then you can subscribe on the right hand side for weekly email recaps using our new RSS to EmailROI platform. That's right, you will be using RSS and have no clue how or why, but it powers the emailROI plaform for you automatically. It's magic like how Santa gets his big can down that skinny little chimney.
Thanks for continuing to read the rants.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:30 PM | Permalink
Segmentation does it stop at the form?
December 5, 2006
Segmentation based on form data is a great start, but what do you do with those individuals that are not responding to the emails based on your segmentation rules? Most marketers stop their segmentation once the form is filled out, but one of the key attributes to effective email marketing is making sure that the content is relevant to your subscribers over time. People's preferences change, a married couple might have children, the offers they respond to are going to vary once they do, a college student graduates and gets a job and now has purchasing power. Someone that was not previously a purchaser or was not responding are likely to respond to different content as long as it is valuable.
How do you create your segments, how do you know what will work? Initial surveys are valuable here to get an understanding of what segments to create. Get a good comprehensive survey put together to get a real understanding of demographics, preferences, product/service categories, etc. and compile the results to understand that if you have an average household income of under $35k that is subscribing and a fairly equal split of gender with an average age of 25. You know that you are more likely to direct those products that fit within the budget and lifestyle of your subscriber base, but beyond that is understanding what products to market, what sells to this group. This survey is going to help you move people between segments and test those people that are not fitting into the "bucket" they originally came in as.
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 8:12 AM | Permalink
Holidays, email, and you
December 1, 2006
We are running a survey just in time for the holiday season. We will be releasing the results next week as long. This survey is only about 10-15 questions long and will provide some very valuable insight to you and other readers.
Take 2 minutes (literally) to take our survey
Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 8:50 AM | Permalink
