Email Marketing - Friend or foe?

1. Are clients fearful of using email marketing, because of its association with spam?
   
   Not in our experience. All campaigns we run for our clients with a data capture component have an opt-in option. Subsequent mailings from the company to the opt-in database shouldn’t cause problems. Clients need to be careful however, in their choice of releasing their database to their ‘selected third parties’ (or purchasing third party lists). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who has released your email address to a ‘selected third party’ and if the recipient doesn’t appreciate your choice, the repercussions for your brand could be damaging.
   
   
2. How do you go about assuaging those fears (assuming they exist)?
   
   N/A – Clients need to carefully choose who they release/buy their email lists to/from.
   
   
3. When do you suggest using email campaigns; for what purpose (tactical or strategic, etc.)?
   
   We recommend emails for both tactical and strategic purposes. Tactically they can work very well as the criteria often available to define the lists are sufficiently detailed to make it one of the most targeted mediums available. Combine that with highly relevant messaging and you can expect a great response rate. Strategically emails serve as a low cost, effective medium for ongoing communications across the year. We aim to encourage as many of our Clients customers to opt into receiving e-collateral as opposed offline collateral thereby driving down communication costs.
   
   
4. How do you measure the effectiveness of an email campaign?
   
   When we devise an email campaign we agree with Clients how we will assess the success of a campaign? Will it be based on CTR (click through rate), number of registrations, recall in post analysis research, length of exposure etc, no. of sales? Against these criteria we then track and rate effectiveness.
   
   
5. How do you build email databases?
   
   It depends on the Client. In some cases, we have Clients with a large number of existing customers on their database but without email addresses. In these situations we highlight the benefits to online communication at every offline touch point and communication to encourage users to supply their email address and shift online. For those without any kind of database there are numerous ways we seek to build email databases. In certain circumstances where we know a good database exists we will look to lease the list and incentivise response to a direct e-mailer. We run online competitions inviting online registrations where email is one of the mandatory fields. We provide multiple opportunities on companies websites for users to impart with their email address. This can be for anything which could be considered an add on benefit e.g. e-newsletter registration. We also try to engender a peer-peer element to email database generation. Encouraging users to forward a particular message on to friends and thereby collecting their email addresses.