Email marketing can be as complex or as simple as needed. Understanding the different variables within your campaign; when and where to place offers, how to price, creative requirements, CAN-SPAM requirements, as well as how to track, analyze and optimize is necessary for a successful email marketing program. That’s a mouth full, I know, but having the right partners in place to help you navigate different opportunities can make your life much easier.
Why Email Marketing?
- Email has a median ROI of 122% — over 4x higher than other marketing formats including social media, direct mail, and paid search. (DMA and Demand Metric)
Where and Why?
Know your target market and offer. Understanding the vertical of the offer is important. Email lists are not all created equal. Initial questions for offer testing:
- Age
- Income (prime verses sub-prime)
- Gender
There are many more demo and targeting questions you can ask, but this initial information will provide you with enough to know if it’s worth moving forward and possibly testing. Ask them what days perform best with your vertical. Also, make sure it’s geographically limited to your requirements (US, UK, China or specific States).
i.e. Sending a dating offer on a Friday should work much better than a Monday or Tuesday.
i.e. Sending an investment offer to a sub-prime list would be a waste of time and money.
How to Price?
There are lots of theories on this matter. A lot depends on the quality of the list, the stage in your testing, and the flexibility needed. Are you looking for a lead, a sale, traffic, to build a list?
- CPM – Cost Per Thousand Delivered (impressions)
- CPC – Cost Per Click
- CPA – Cost Per Action: CPL is per Lead and CPS is per Sale
1. List Quality:
The more analytics, the better. Find out average open rates, CTR (Click Through Rates) and in-boxing if possible. These will give you an idea of deliverability standards. You don’t want to send a CPM to a list that has an average open rate of 2%.
2. Testing:
Is your creative proven? Has it been tested with that list? When a list decides to test your offer on performance, they will usually pick one creative and test a small amount. They will not continue to allocate inventory if it does not do well. That does not leave much room to test multiple creatives and find the one to scale. Learn the system of the list owner, and decide what is in your best interest to start with. It might be beneficial to start CPM and get multiple creatives, then move the optimal version over to CPC or Vice Versa. If those payouts are allowed with that list. Ask questions and know your options. What works on one list does not always work on another. Testing is necessary.
3. Flexibility
How flexible are you? Do you need a specific volume? Do you need a specific date? Do you need to split creatives or offers in one send? If none of these matter to you, then CPA and CPC may be best, since the traffic will depend on how your offer performs against the other offers running. But if you need specific volume or a specific date, CPM might be the better option. With most list owners, if both CPM and Performance are options, you will usually have more control with CPM. Once again, understand how the list owner works so you can use your best judgement and test to scale.
Creative and CAN-SPAM
Most emails are sent with HTML creative. If you are not versed in making HTML creatives, ask your list source if they offer creative services. They may be able to look at your landing page and handle this for you. If the list source is CAN-SPAM compliant and of quality, they will require an opt-out link and probably an address at the bottom as well. A suppression file will also be requested to make sure you don’t email people that have already opted out. A good list will make every effort to keep you CAN-SPAM compliant and make sure your creative is as well.
Track, Analyze and Optimize
These three are necessary if you plan to scale your email marketing campaign with higher volume and ROI. The list owner source should give you stats with open rates and CTR. That will help you optimize your subject line to improve open rates and creative to generate more clicks. There are also other programs that can be used for your own internal tracking. The URL used for the landing page should be tracking URL so you can analyze the success of your creatives and campaigns with more detail. One program that many people use for tracking multiple campaigns in larger marketing plans with multiple sources is HitPath. HitPath will not only track and provide reporting to help you analyze, but they will store your creatives suppressions, and help keep the more complex email marketing campaigns in order.
Having the Right Email Traffic Source
Having the right tracking partner is one side. Having the right list owners and sources is just as important. At Whitedelivery, clients receive guidance on how to place your offer on specific email lists. As a trusted traffic source, we are happy to test, optimize and scale your campaigns. There are thousands of list owners and sources for email traffic, but finding the ones with high standards, quality, and vested effort to help you succeed is not so easy. If you have any offers or questions, Whitedelivery is happy to assist!
To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.whitedelivery.com or email us at sales@whitedelivery.com.
