Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

I often get asked when is the best time to send out email newsletters. The answer is that it depends on you and your audience.

Common wisdom says consumer-targeted email newsletters often do better on weekends, while B2B newsletters should go out during the workweek. But, your mileage may vary.

The truth is, the answer is often found in testing different dates and times. You also want to know when your competitors send their newsletters. You might choose to transmit when your competitors do not.

I normally send out Web Digest For Marketers on Mondays, as it allows for a longer shelf life in the inbox. When Monday is a legal holiday in the U.S., the newsletter goes out on Tuesday. LC

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Having an opt-in email list is an assumed cost of entry for any serious Internet Marketing campaign. The email channel is just too big to ignore.

But, just because you have opt-in subscribers doesn’t mean they’ll stay with you or even continue to pay attention should they not bother to unsub from your list. List vitality is key.

A critical way to keep a list invigorated is to offer hot content. It may be commercial content for your house offers. It could also be editorial content for which you pay real money.

The point here is if you want your subscribers to respond to you and your email communications, you have to respond to their needs first and foremost.

When they see your name or your company in the “from” field, you want them to say “Oh, boy!” or “I’ll save this for when I can really concentrate on it.” In short, subscribers have to value your communiqués, even before they open them. LC

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Direct Marketers know that regular, small (even imperceptible) changes can increase response rates. In other words, a reader might respond to something he/she didn’t respond to previously, just because the layout is a little different.

Some small changes will have noticeable effects, while others won’t. The ones that work well, you’ll want to keep. So, in addition to testing big things, make small changes to your Website, email newsletter landing page, or what have you. Then, watch how response rates change from one week to the next. LC

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Conventional Direct Marketing wisdom says that making two offers in a single ad can lead to lower response rates. That’s because providing two offers gives the reader more choices than you intended: to think about it later or make no choice at all. Very often, “I’ll think about it later” translates into “never.”

However, I know of at least one scenario in which you can make two offers in order to boost response rates. I call it the “Straw Dog” offer. This is where one choice is a no-brainer for the reader to reject in favor of the other. For example, “Pay for Your Subscription Now” versus “Sign Up for Your Free Trial.” The first offer should drive more responses to the second offer. LC

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In my interview with comScore’s Eli Goodman, he confirmed what I suspected, that the longer a user’s keyword search phrase, the more likely that user will be a qualified lead.

Think about it. If you know the exact product number of a running shoe, for example, the better educated you are about said shoe. This means you’ve spent time online or offline researching what you want.

With time invested in finding out the product number of an item, the more likely it is you intend to buy that product.

So, in your PPC keyword selection, consider buying those product numbers as keywords. You’ll get less traffic, and while you may pay more for such specific keywords, they are more likely to convert into a sale for you. LC

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Social Media or Web 2.0 is all about engaging the end user in some sort of dialogue or participation. It might be an invitation to submit a video, picture, comment, or what have you.

Social Media is all about inviting your audience to take some sort of action, even if it does not lead directly to a sale. Many marketers don’t want to dedicate resources to handling the responses solicited. But, it doesn’t have to be so labor-intensive.

For a slightly twisted but effective example of a large brand inviting participation, look at Burger King’s recent “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign on Facebook. It gave a coupon for a Whopper sandwich to anyone who defriended 10 Facebook friends. The company gave out 23,000 coupons before ending the promotion. LC

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Internet Marketing always has a shiny new object to swoon over. It could be the hot new mobile app, a new Social Media outlet, or a new platform not yet devised. But, don’t forget about email marketing.

Many Internet Marketing cognoscenti “pooh-pooh” old-fashioned email marketing. It’s not hip enough. It isn’t hip anymore. But, do you want to be hip, or do you want to sell products or services? Email marketing does a lot of heavy lifting, because it’s pretty reliable and inexpensive to produce and execute.

Whether you’re comparing B2B or B2C rate cards and response rates, you’re going to have a tough time beating the ROI email marketing offers. Of course, building your own email house list legitimately is a no-brainer, no matter how unhip it might seem. Remember, the smarty-pants people who thumb their noses at email marketing are probably not your target audience . LC

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Everyone who looks at response rates is acutely interested in how many clicks a given offer yields.

But, behind those clicks are people with their hands on the mouse. Some of those people are at the top of the sales funnel. Some are ready to buy, and some are your competitors.

You could easily say, “Not all clicks are created equal.” It’s helpful to create “personas” for each segment you can identify. Each segment comes with different agendas.

Naturally, the most sophisticated way to track clicks is all the way to the back end, where they convert to a buyer, sign up for a newsletter, or what-have-you.

Yes, it gets wonky and time-consuming. In a B2B situation, it can take up to 18 months from click to purchase. But, it’s the only real way you’re going to know if your budget is spent properly. LC

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You can easily find out which sites are linking to your competitors and not linking to you. It’s a good practice to find out why they’re pointing to those sites. Is it good content or a partnership? Or, is it a paid ad? If so, how much?

If you have worthy content on your site, it isn’t so far-fetched to ask the sites that point to your competitor to point to you, too. The worst they can say is “No.” The best that can happen is you improve your link neighborhood, which should impress the search engine crawlers the next time they come around to index you. LC

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Funny thing about many marketers: For some reason, they disregard what sales people tell them. This is arrogant and short-sighted.

Sales people are where the rubber meets the pavement. It’s where your organization often makes the conversion to sale or loses it. Sales people can sense emotional shifts in a phone call or face-to-face encounter with a prospect. They see how target audiences respond to marketing campaigns.

So, why do so many marketers not listen to their sales departments? Beats me. I get some of my best ideas from talking to sales people on trade-show floors, the phone and in stores. Try it.

Talk to a sales person today. Better yet, take one out to lunch. You’ll learn something you can use in your marketing efforts. LC

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