The best times to send out your e-mail marketing campaigns?

E-mail marketing campaigns are still popular today. Social media has gone through exponential growth these past years, but e-mail campaigns are still highly effective as social media users tend to check in on their email for updates on work, social media and friends.

Who are your recipients?

Our first job to start an effective campaign is to discover and identify our target audience. To see the types of users your database has take a look at it and view the different domain names. If your database is more of a business to business (B2B) most of your users will have a commercial or private domain name. If you database have more of a business to consumer (B2C) you are more likely to have a database full of @aol.com, @hotmail.com. @yahoo.com and so on.

So what is the best time?

After we process the information in our database we see what type of user has a higher proportion.

Here is a basic guide

So as you can see it is very dependent on the type of user and your intended audience. It is important to remember this is only a guideline.

It is important to use this as a parameter, however it is very important to keep testing out different times and days. Every single database contains different users so this is more of guideline then a rule that must not be broken. According to vertical response.com  Experian launched an email marketing benchmark study where it discovered that recipients across different activities and industries were astonishingly active late at night. Another interesting discovery is that Revenue and click through rates were the highest between 8:00pm and 11:59pm.

With all this said it is important to know your database and your customers. It is important to try new times users are changing and so should you. So as you can see there is no right time to send out an e-mail marketing campaign. So I recommend to start some test campaigns. To do this separate your database in a couple of groups and test, which one had the best response from the recipients.

 

 

For some further reading on e-Marketing

http://www.sensibleemarketing.com

Behavioral Targeting

When trying to advertise to a specific crowd you will have better results if you target your ads. This is where behavioral targeting walks into a marketers arsenal.

Lets say, you are out in the street and you walk into a clothing store, this would tell marketers you might be in the market for some new clothing. The same is true for e-marketing, if you were to visit or search for clothing stores online this would demonstrate you have an active interest in a specific product range. This way, cookies are deposited into your browser which feed marketers and companies the information on sites that you have visited. With all this information on their hands, you will start receiving targeted ads relevant with your search and browsing history.

The ethical dilema

The main problem is where to draw a line on online tracking. The question  is, it ok for companies to track your blogs, twitter, or Facebook updates and posts?

Most stores and programs have a specific end user license agreement and as the video below states most of them have a specific clause that allows them to track your viewing history.

One the other hand, the main problem is the lack of transparency in which the information about us is handled. It is impossible to see what information is handled and what type of ads we might receive. However, their is an exception, Amazon has an option which they call Personalized Content; within this option it allows users to choose and delete specific search  history, browsing history and other information so they won’t get targeted with ads regarding those specific products.

Google

Back in 2009, Google integrated its Adwords advertising with its behavioral targeting information in its database and called it Adwords Remarketing. More importantly, google now has apps such as Google +, Google Maps, Google search history and youtube all of which track your location, browsing history, and preferences. With all this information on their hands they can segment you, so you will receive ads that you will be more interested in clicking and products that you will be more interested in purchasing.

Further reading:

http://www.sensibleemarketing.com/2013/11/behavioral-advertising-and-your-privacy.html

Engaging Through Email

Email marketing is one of the most powerful weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. It is very important to learn how to use this tool to be able to take advantage. Recent studies have found that there are over 2.2 billion email users in the world and over 4.3 billion clients. It’s important to follow simple tactics to have a successful campaign such as the one below.

The Canadian Tourism Commission inspired over 200,000 Canadians to holiday locally as a result of a full marketing campaign. One of the tactics used was email marketing.

In their email campaign they created a series of emails that made the user interact to find the ski village or city that the recipient had to discover. The email was constructed in such a way that the user could not see the answer right away but had to scroll towards the direction of the arrow to find the destination.

Furthermore, this campaign was one of the top voted marketing campaigns in Forbes.com. Over the 2 month period the campaign ran, the website had over 3 million page views and over 55,000 unique weekly visitors.

Most companies use some sort of email marketing tactic. However, many are just considered unsolicited email or spam. It is easy to fall into this category, which will make all your future emails become unsuccessful.

 

Several key factors you might want to stick to are the following:

Be thoughtful of the subject line

The subject line is one of the most important parts of an email. This line will make either the reader open or delete the email. Don’t use any punctuation as emails with punctuation are normally marked as spam

Adjust your content

On the other hand, it is important to adjust your content; you don’t want to send the same email to everyone on your list. If you adapt your message to specific audiences you will receive better results.

Segment your audience

In addition, create a database were you can segment your customers by purchase history, size of company, job titles, etc. This way it will be easy to create tailored emails for specific audiences.

Include Calls to Action

Calls to action should be included in the email. Calls to action should be persuasive and compelling. Follow this link to obtain great tips on optimizing your Email Call to Action.

 

 

Another great blog discussing E-Marketing:

http://www.sensibleemarketing.com 

Whats the future of social networking?

Its hard to imagine but at one point in time their was a fight between Facebook and Myspace to be the most popular social networking website.

Myspace came after friendster and other social websites but it grew to be the largest. Myspace developed a platform that allowed users to personalize their page. It was full of animated gifs, background music and personalized backgrounds.

Just a couple of years later Facebook came along; promising clean standardized pages (at that time internet was slow loading a single myspace page could take minutes). The amount of fake profile pages were low at the beginning since it was necessary to have a college e-mail address. One of Myspace’s biggest problems was the amount of spamming due to fake user profiles. These fake user profiles were set up to advertise porn, and other dubious businesses.

In 2008 Sarah Gilbert wrote a great blog post she saw many of the differences and put it this way, “Where Facebook pokes, MySpace cackles wickedly; where Facebook exposes me to unwelcome questions from first grade classmates, MySpace exposes your children to unwelcome advances from questionable adults. Facebook is silly; MySpace is spooky.”

I believe users will change a social media network if they feel they cant control their privacy. People want to limit the amount of people that view their profiles. They also want to limit which friends can view specific content. Facebook has been great with their privacy settings creating a strong and loyal customer base.

New social media sites such as twitter (which allows users to send tweets of messages 140 characters in length) and others were created because Facebook was missing some features. Twitter allowed anybody to connect with a company, restaurant, actor or other thing they might be interested in on. Facebook since then has created “fan pages” which allow users to follow these profiles that will allow them to connect or tell them when the next sale is, or the specials of the day.

Now as for the future of social media, everybody will have their niche. I think myspace will continue to exist and specialize even more in the music industry. Facebook most likely will continue to be the giant purchasing many companies such as Instagram that might pose a threat. As far as Twitter goes I don’t have such an optimistic future. I think it will slowly loose users and advertising to Facebook and other social media sites.

 

Some further reading

http://www.sensibleemarketing.com/2013/10/will-twitter-linkedin-and-tumblr-really.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2012/08/06/facebook-twitter-can-the-decline-of-social-media-come-fast-enough/

New Internet Sales Tax: Why is Amazon supporting it?

To many’s surprise Amazon.com is supporting the Marketplace Fairness Act. The Amazon we know was built avoiding taxes and one of its main strategies was that the price was more important then convenience, offering customers a good price with no sales tax. At one point one of Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, famously stated that he investigated setting up Amazon.com in an Indian reservation to avoid taxes.

What is the Marketplace Fairness Act

As described by marketplacefairness.org “the Marketplace Fairness Act grants states the authority to compel online and catalog retailers, no matter where they are located, to collect sales tax at the time of a transaction – exactly like local retailers are already required to do. However, there is a caveat: States are only granted this authority after they have simplified their sales tax laws.”  The act was passed through the Senate last may, this act included exceptions for smaller retailers that had revenues under 1 Million. However, today a new version of the bill is being debated through congress without any small business exemptions.

Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and other Brick and Mortar stores are leading the coalition pushing the congress to approve online internet tax. However, at the other end we have eBay and many other small retailers which say “many would go under if they had to start collecting sales tax”.

Small businesses doing business online, claim that it would be extremely costly and nearly impossible for them to collect sales tax rates from country’s roughly 9,600 state and local taxing jurisdictions. The added costs would most likely make these small retailers go out of business.

eBay is one of the strongest opponent to the bill. This would mean that eBay buyers and sellers no matter the size would be taxed. It would also mean that a small seller would have to file sales taxes in a different state increasing their operating costs. One of eBay’s selling advantages is that it offers stores a huge marketplace at very low costs, many times 1% to 3% of the sales price. This cost would have to be increased, making it too costly and time consuming to small seller selling online.

Fair and Simple

Amazon’s main lobbyists are fighting for the bill to be Fair and Simple as they are in favor of paying sales taxes. Nevertheless, they want all retailers no matter the size to collect sales tax.

What will happen next 

They are betting that many small businesses that sell on eBay will be demotivated to sell by the increased costs in taxes. Many speculate that when the bill passes, Amazon is more likely to open more fulfillment centers. This way, they will offer a faster delivery at lower costs. Amazon Locker is an initiative to lower the shipping price to the consumer. Amazon is trying to lower as many costs as possible to keep the prices and costs low that way they will always be lower priced then regular brick and mortar stores.

 

Further suggested reading:

http://www.sensibleemarketing.com

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-19/the-internet-sales-tax-is-back-now-without-small-business-exemptions

http://www.marketplacefairness.org

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-24/business/42343922_1_online-sales-tax-marketplace-fairness-act-exemption

 

 

E-Marketing in the Consumer Buying Decision Process

E-markenting has been influencing  the consumer buying decision process the last couple of years. To understand the the influence on E-Marketing in the consumer decision process we have to go through the stages of the Consumer Buying Decision Process (sometimes referred to as Consumer information processing model)

Many versions exist for a typical buying process; starting anywhere from 3 to 5 or more steps (generally used for more complex decisions). I will use a 5 step process, which is usually used to purchase a computer or a consumer durable.

1) Problem Recognition

In this stage the consumer begins to recognize a problem or need to be satisfied by a specific product or service.

2) Information Search

This stage is critical for E-Marketing as the consumer has already discovered the problem. Now he starts to search for information and also becomes more attentive to ads. The consumer might also engage in actively looking for information by searching online, visiting stores and even talking to friends about this product.

3) Evaluation and Selection of Alternatives

During this stage the consumer evaluates the different products and attributes of the different options with which he was presented with. The consumer sees each product as a “bundle of attributes” with different levels of ability of solving benefits to satisfy his or her need.

4) Decision Implementation

At this point the consumer is ready to satisfy its need for a specific product. The person may visit a store to purchase one of the items he was evaluating or he might purchase online. This point is critical as the buyer will purchase a unit that is at the right “place”.

5) Post-Purchase Evaluation

Post-purchase evaluation can have different levels of involvement depending of the product. If the product is just a diet soda their will likely be little post-purchse evaluation. However, if the purchase is a computer the consumer might ask himself a couple of questions such as “Did I make the right choice?” “Should I have purchased a different brand?”, the user might also right reviews and opinions of the product which might help attract other consumers to purchase the same product during their evaluation stage.

At this point we start to consider that the buying decision process is a funnel in which the consumer enters and exits with the purchase of the product. However, according to Sound Marketing from the American Marketing Association the way that consumers research and buy the products have changed.

http://www.psama.org/2012/11/12/forget-the-funnel-todays-buying-decision-process-is-a-continuous-active-evaluation-of-options-and-conclusions-before-during-and-after-purchase/

A study done by McKinsey, a large consultant firm, has discovered that the funnel analogy which “has been a basic guideline for marketing thinking and planning for many years  in which consumers start with a number of potential brands in mind (the wide end of the funnel) and then systematically move through linear stages of familiarity, consideration and purchase by narrowing the choices along the way to get to the one brand they ultimately purchase.”

Marketers should understand that the internet and the availability of information through a smart phone is a major influence on the buying decision process

The internet and the availability of information have changed some of the steps as described above one of the steps most affected by internet and e-marketing is the second step in which now the consumer has access to other consumers post-purchse experiences an almost unlimited number of options and has empowered the consumer.

The post-purchase experience

Another step that has been drastically altered is the post-purchase experience. Today the consumer will go online and research if the purchase made confirms the wisdom of their decision. At the same time the consumer will compare his experiences with the experiences of other consumers reading reviews, social media and other blogs.

It is important for todays marketer to understand the importance of e-marketing and to build a bridge between the brand and the consumer. This bridge may be created by Facebook fan pages, blogs or even hotlines which allows the consumer to contact and share its experience of the product with the brand and start a start a relationship between that person and the brand.