Guide to Marketing

Transcription

1 Guide to Marketing

2 Why Marketing? Isn t Dead? is not dead. In fact, it s very much alive. More and more businesses are using as an effective form of communication, and more importantly, to drive ROI. Compared to other digital channels such as social media or banner advertising, s have a longer life span. This means that there is more time for businesses to leverage for making a direct sale or closing a deal. In fact, by the end of 2017, it is expected that there will be 4.9 billion business accounts! is also credited for bringing in 23% of total sales. THE AVERAGE TIME SPENT READING AN INCREASED BY NEARLY 7% TO JUST OVER 11 SECONDS BETWEEN 2011 AND Source: Econsultancy, Litmus

3 One-to-one. Not one-to-many. Mass marketing is not only ineffective, but it s also taboo in the industry. The most successful marketers deliver engaging content, messages and offers to targeted contact lists. If you have a large list, or don t know how to start segmenting, engaging a scoring system or data scientist is recommended. Establishing your business as a thought leader includes understanding how to serve up your value proposition to multiple segments. A product, service or even a pricing bundle may be extremely appealing to a segment of your database, and not so relevant to others. In an age where customers and prospects expect you to know them, it s critical to send the right message. Scoring, profiling, data hygiene and appending are all ways to make your current database richer. Better data leads to better insight for targeting, and ultimately better results. For example, a professional development company may have mul ple audience segments, with mul ple messages selling the exact same product or service. What s my target audience s pain point? How do I fix it? Segment A Time/Resources Technology- Scalability Save me Segment B Professional Development Educa on-thought Leadership Segment C Cost/Budget Introductory Offer Low Price What is my message? Learning opportunity

4 Best Practices Checklist. Customize the From line. Write clear subject lines. Address your reader by name. Brand your company. Personalize your content. Send HTML and plain text s. Make it easy to unsubscribe. Pre-populate customer information. Disclose your location. Throttle large sends. Deliver a strong call to action. Most service providers will throttle back the number of sends based on ISP s preferences to protect the sender's reputation and deliverability. As a marketer, we want to get our message out to as many people as quickly as possible, but ISPs don t think that way. Work with an service provider who understands large and small sends and can provide an articulate recommendation on how much to send on a daily basis.

5 It s A Two Way Street. is a powerful tool for communication, but it should be much more than a one-way form of communication. By having a no-reply address as the reply-to address in your marketing , it s sending a signal to your customers that you don t want to hear from them. Doesn t send a great message, right? By allowing your customers to reply directly to an campaign, you re opening up opportunities for conversations you may have never been able to start before.

6 Scan and Read. As businesses send more and more s to subscribers in 2017, you ll end up facing more competition. And that only means one thing: it ll be even more difficult to get your s opened and clicked. To cut through the clutter and immediately catch and maintain your reader s attention, your s will need to be easy to read and scan-able. Write short paragraphs and sentences. Use a balance of images and whitespace. Use dynamic content and personalization.

7 Take Advantage of Automation Automation is a simple way to utilize technology to generate a high tech, low touch engagement. Automation frees up marketers time to develop and build out other goal-oriented campaigns and promotions. Messages most frequently automated include welcome, transactional, re-engagement and content downloads.

8 Mobile Means Business! By now, you should already know that the vast majority of web users do most of their browsing on mobile devices. That includes reading s. If the messages you send out aren t easy to open and read on a smartphone or tablet, you re alienating a large portion of your customers and they are also more likely to hit the spam button!

9 Mobile Tips. Reduce the size of your images through compression. Make use of an HTML editor to alter the style of your so that the images are sized by screen rather than by pixel. Increase the size of your buttons and links. Consider investing in a responsive template.

10 Manage Your Reputation. Get to know and learn about these critical issues that shape your reputation: Your domain or IP address. Recipient feedback (spam or fraud complaints). Open and click action or inaction. Traffic patterns (sending to Invalid addresses, spam traps). List hygiene. Longevity of your domain or IP. Location. How you process unsubscribes. Use of authentication. Your affiliate and partnership relationships. Privacy policy. Bounced s (process immediately). Feedback loops (actively manage).

11 Blend and Social! Consumers are multi-channel, and marketers should be, too! Statistics yield that a consistent message across multiple channels reinforces the benefits and drives awareness of the brand. Simple Suggestions Upload your list to social media and create a seamless message experience by creating a custom audience. Ask a question in your that drives people to your social networks. Create s around some of your most popular social posts. If you ask, be sure to listen and respond!

12 Let s Talk Tech! Technical Development Best Practices: Make sure your is less than 102kb to prevent clipping in Gmail. Avoid bad tags, too many closing tags, or incorrectly nested tags. Avoid font color too similar to background color, which hides text in your . No Embedded Javascript. Avoid large font sizes. Avoid use of an iframe. Eliminate HTML comments in your code. Don t provide attachments. Avoid using characters that are not standard ASCII characters. Eliminate any blank lines in base64 coding. Don t paste directly from a Word document into an HTML editor.

13 Let the Data Decide! Use campaign data to inform your future strategy, refine your messaging and optimize details like send time and audience segments. Testing is a must. Remember, it s not about which option you like best, it s about which option generates the highest level of audience engagement. Common areas to test include subject lines, call to action messages and offers. At the onset of any new campaign, it s critical to leverage any current trends, data, profile or scoring information. Building your campaign with clean, accurate data is the foundation for success.

14 MCH Resources and Services erespond TM Reach hot leads faster with MCH s erespond product. Our proprietary scoring solution uses real-time data to rank and score individuals in institutions most likely to respond to offers. Target smarter, eliminate inefficiencies and improve engagement and deliverability. Data Hygiene Accurate data is the foundation for sales and marketing programs. Improve your data accuracy by working with the experts in our Response Lab. Services include; append and reverse append, CASS, File cleaning, and validating address formats. Channel_e TM Services MCH can deploy your campaign for you. We use state-of-the-art inbox placement tools to help you get into the inbox. Our optimized reports will help you make the best decisions for future campaigns.

15 About MCH Strategic Data Since 1928, MCH has consistently delivered quality data and information to the institution market. We invest in U.S.- based data experts to deliver quality data every day. We know that every data element clients have to power their operations, sales engagements and marketing programs improves results. For more information about our data and information services and the markets we serve, go to mchdata.com.