Not Just a Shot in the Dark

March 2002 By Dave Hendricks

multipage

This capability, unique to e-mail marketing, is very valuable. Key information can be captured at the time of the e-mailing event and easily stored in a database for later retrieving and targeting.

By measuring the opens, clicks and purchases that your e-mail campaigns generate you can learn who is interested in your e-mail and who isn't. This is valuable for determining whom to send follow-up messages to, who doesn't care, and who absolutely doesn't want to hear from you ever again.

Applying this information correctly, you then can establish a true picture of your list for a prospective rental customer or sponsor.

You also can determine which products, articles or links they respond to and click on, providing you with a rough gauge of their interest categories, even if you didn't ask them when they signed up.

Real Targeting

But performance is only part of it. Real targeting comes when you match this behavioral data with demographics that you collect at sign up. This is a simple process that yields great results.

Imagine your home-page form, but add one thing: a drop-down list for preferences, such as "music type" if yours is a music retail site. Your drop-down list could be populated with, say, rock, jazz, classical and blues.

Marry that demographic data with the behavioral data you have collected from mailing. Now you have a profile behind a name, say, "classical fans who are repeat clickers and one-time buyers."

Let's face it: The days when you could make $100, $50 or even $20 per thousand from a list of random

e-mail addresses with limited demographics and behavior history are over—a casualty of the dot-com frenzy that we all witnessed in the late 1990s.

The reality today is that these lists crowd the market, and there is fierce competition to market them to the remaining e-commerce companies and any other acquisition-minded prospects.

Does this make e-mail marketing less important and valuable than it was just a year or two ago? No. Rather, it just makes it more interesting.

How do you make your e-mail list more profitable for you and more attractive to renters? Following are some final tips:





Together these data points begin to form the history that a direct marketer or cataloger wants from any list.

Dave Hendricks is executive vice president, sales and marketing, for CheetahMail Inc., an e-marketing technology solutions company based in New York City. He can be reached at (212) 999-5632 or by e-mail at dave@cheetahmail.com.