Wedding Lists - Email and Direct Mail List Options

We just received recent updates on several of our wedding files:

• LetsBridal.com
• The Bridal Network
• NewlyMarriedLife.com
• And More!

Each of these files have wedding date available and consist of ideal prospects for a variety of consumer offers!

You can also receive a gift card for testing these files - for any test order of at least 10,000 names you will receive a $100 Amazon gift card!

Let me know what you’re working on and I’ll send over information.

CASL - Rules - Can I still do email marketing?

Canadian Companies have been working hard to determine how much CASL rules will effect them.  After working with many of our clients to develop a winning a strategy based on how the law effects their individual needs we have gained an indepth understanding of what works.

 

 Marketers looking to target consumers need to work hard to secure opt in from all people they wish to email.  Or they need to pay a 3rd party for the right to blast to their list.  As a list broker, we can connect you with list owners who have the right people for your offer.  These partners have gone through the hassle of acquiring permission to email these individuals.  As the email comes from their ISP, you are kept at arms length of any CASL issues.   Our partners have often gone to the extent of developing greater information sets around the contact.  These include surveys, buying behaviour, demographics, index data, etc.  This will enhance and ensure that your marketing message is reaching the right individuals.  

 

 If you are looking to target businesses and you have a relevant offer for them.  You can still do non-permission based email marketing.  As long as the contact has made their email conspicuously available for anyone to collect.  The offer must be relevant to the duties that the individual performs; ie HR SOFTWARE for HR Database.  This offer is something the individual would find of value, sending them an offer for dog walking is not the right fit. 

When we target the right offer with the right list, the response can be tremendous.  Email marketing is still the cheapest form of DM.  Don't be worried about the issues around email marketing, if you need to get something out we can help.

Email Marketing - How to achieve higher open rates

As we are doing a lot of email marketing for many of our b2b clients, we have seen a trend in open rates effected by the email. HTML messages are finding much lower delivery rates and thus lower open rates. Adding lots of images and jpegs might make the offer look terrific, but the more complex the code the higher the chance of it being caught by spam filters.   Spam filters are getting very good at catching emails that are unsolicited, most sales emails are unsolicited - even if you know the person.  Second, what is your unique selling point or USP? Why should I care about your offer.  Don't ramble on about how good your company is or bla bla bla.  If you haven't explained how you can help in the first 2 sentences, you have lost them.  Think about all the people that are viewing your message on their smart phone, give it to them straight.  This will help them straighten it out and respond to an offer that makes sense.    Build your offer around getting a specific response, are you looking for them to go to a link? Or do you want them to call you or set up an appointment.  Remember the old adage, always be closing.  Close them on a webinar or meeting, but get them to do something. The more they have invested, the better the chance they will respond or work with your group.

Keep marketing and keep growing.

West List Co.

How to improve email response and click thru rates

A report created by the Aberdeen Group found almost unanimous (96% of respondents), that message personalization will improve prospecting and email campaign performance. This starts with Here are some tools that will improve your prospecting and email campaign performance with:  build personalized subject lines to generate higher opens.  Interest-segment relevant content to drive more traffic to your website, and  In turn improve conversion rates, sales and ROI.

Personalize the message so you can prospect smarter with emails by: Gathering Competitive Intelligence:  gather valuable insight into each prospect's interest and behaviors. Look for a supplier that gives you the ability build in this added information. Subject Lines: Personalization in the subject line is another powerful tactic to enhance email ROI. You can include a variety of items such as; stores visited, brands purchased, interests, preferences, etc. Message Defaults: Eliminate concerns of empty merge fields in your sent emails. You can set ‘any text you want’ as a default to automatically merge your default data when a recipient’s record has blank data in the merge field.

Do Travel offers work with Email Marketing?

Marketers are always looking at new ways to build their business and even though they never know if it will actually work or not.  Our underlying belief that we are just seconds away from finding a great tool from building a business.  Travel companies frequently contact us looking for email options and we are always happy to help give them options.  The first tip I would suggest in picking a quality list is how recent is the list.  Meaning, when did the people agree to be on the list and did they opt in?  Second, is it Travel related?  How closely related to the travel industry is the list. There are lots of lists that overlap.  Time-Share files and RV lists often work well for Travel related offers. But it can be a stretch to try and use just any list to send an email offer.   The big challenge is people will often think, "what gives>?" What does this have to do with me and why should I care. 

Looking for high performance lists - not an easy task

The world of Direct Marketing is full of CPA advertisers looking for results.  Gone are the days of spray and pray it works, with no thought to the overall ROI.  Being able to test a file is very important, many large list holders will only do large deployments of the file.  This is a huge mistake, sending a blast to small random sample of your list will ensure success for all involved.  There is nothing worse than a potential client walking because the supplier is asking for to high a price purely based on trust.  Your list may be a good one, but the customer doesn't know that and what do they have if its a complete flop? Are you going to give them a refund, probably not.  Doing a small test file gives everyone full transparency and the client can better price your file and how much it will generate for their bottom line.  Clients like this are what makes our business successful.  Keep testing and keep blasting.

www.westlists.com

Learning from Medical Direct Marketing

Direct Marketers have been struggling to understand how to best reach people. With all the craze of the digital age, direct mail has been left to the waster side.  After chatting with Paul Richard from MedicalDirect,  we started to talk about the incredible results he was having with direct mail?  Yes, that is correct, Direct Mail was way outperforming his Fax and Email efforts.  Even with the increased cost of DM, email and fax marketing just don't measure up.  Now I am not suggesting this will work for all programs and target audiences, but its definitely something to think about. Here is a summary of the thoughts he shared about this recent trial.

Have you compared response to email, fax and mail?  Our client did.

            He tested all three using similar copy in a single campaign to target physicians.  Here’s how they responded.  

                        Email:                   9 of 3,000 responded (0.003%)

                        Fax:                    42 of 5,000 responded (0.008%)

                        Mail:                506 of 4,600 responded (11.0%)

            Why did so many respond to mail?  Three reasons.

1. Physicians still trust information delivered in a stamped envelope more than they trust information delivered digitally or by fax.

2. The kind of mail tested was more potent than everyday advertising mail.  A personal letter invited physicians to respond to a series of informative questions on the relevance of the product to their practice.  By walking the physician through the product story, this mail effectively duplicated personal detailing.

3. This mail gave physicians who don’t see reps a way to learn about the product.

If you reach these not called on physicians the way they prefer, you will gain sales and market share you would otherwise forgo.  We explore this further, enclosed.*

DoctorsDialog is a unique method of personalization and generating a quality relationship with doctors.  We can all learn from their methods to ensure we cut through the noise and provide impactful programs.

Bill C-28 - Marketers are still free to use email

When Bill C-28 has been a challenge for businesses in Canada.  How does it affect you?  Quite simply, most business marketers were very confused how the new legislation would affect them.  After a year or so to review and better understand how the legislation will affect outbound email marketing.  The ability to email business contacts without express consent has been at the core of business development.  If they knew who you were, it would be an existing business relationship.  But if they don't know who you are, how can I still email them an offer or piece of information that will help them grow their business?  Here is the wording from the industry Canada website.  I have underlined the passage that I feel properly explains where targeted business to business marketers can still reach potential customers with an offer, even if they have never done business with that person. 

I am a legitimate business owner who uses bulk email to reach my customers. How will I be affected by these new anti-spam measures?

Legitimate businesses that use email to market their products to Canadians should not be negatively impacted by this legislation. The consent regime is based on existing marketplace best practices and uses a consumer opt-in approach, which stipulates that businesses must get express consent or implied consent prior to sending commercial electronic messages. Apart from express consent, consent to receive commercial messages is implied:

1. where an existing business relationship exists with a customer or client, or
2. the electronic messages are relevant to the recipient's business, role, function or duties, and the electronic address has been conspicuously published or disclosed, without a statement that the person does not wish to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages.

Bill C-28 - The Truth of what this may do to Small Business Canada

Hey Guys,

As you may have heard, bill C-28 should be coming into affect shortly and your email will be safe from evil doers who may trying to sell you a good or service that may or may not improve your business.  Unfortunately, because you haven't opted in these offers you will not be coming into your email box.   Unfortunately you are still going to receive email from the rest of the World sending you offers.  The sad fact is that somewhere along the way, business email become a private account.  SORRY, you are in business, meaning that other businesses may only grow their business by trying to sell you a product that may improve your business.   Why people think they have the right to feel harmed when they are interrupted by another email in their inbox.  Oh my gosh, you may have to delete it.  Wow.   Granted, if the offer makes no sense or they are trying to sell you vacation package to bora bora you may have a right to be angry.  But if you are head of HR and someone is trying to sell you HR Software, you should probably take note.

Guys, lighten up and click unsubscribe.

Can Spam Wording - Disclaimer

Hi All,

I just received an unsolicited email and was intrigued by the bottom of the email. It gave a very clear disclaimer about Can Spam Laws. I thought you might find this of interest.

"This is an advertisement and a promotional mail strictly on the guidelines of CAN-SPAM act of 2003 . We have clearly mentioned the source mail-id of this mail, also clearly mentioned the subject lines and they are in no way misleading in any form. We have found your mail address through our own efforts on the web search and not through any illegal way. If you find this mail unsolicited, please reply with "Remove" in the subject line and we will take care that you do not receive any further promotional mail."

Expected click and open rates for Email Blasts

A question that we seem to get alot in regards to email marketing is what kind of open rates we should expect with our email blast. Also, what is a good range and how do we determine if it is successful. Here are some rules to live by to help you determine the success of your next email program. For B2B email marketing the open rates are often lower than consumer blasts. An average open rate will be 10-18%, anywhere in this range should be thought of as successful. If it is lower you may want to work harder to target the right individuals. Business to Consumer email broadcasts are often higher on the open rates, usually 15-25%. The challenge with consumers is on the conversions. Consumers have become very guarded with their information and as a result will not respond to even the most intriguing offers. Consumers focused emails work best to create buzz for an event, send out a printable coupon or just communicate with a niche.

A business contact is often less likely to be sent spam. Hotmail, Yahoo and MSN accounts are often the most likely to be spammed. This makes it difficult to get through the gate keepers and present your offer as a trustworthy individual.

www.westlists.com

Building an Effective Email Marketing Program

What makes an effective email marketing program? So many marketers think they can throw some code together, rent a list and bingo - financial fortunes.

Sorry folks - it really isn't that easy. When you buy something - what is the first thing you need to have before you shell out the dough to pick up that new shock absorber or sofa? Trust. You need to have trust that the merchant is who they say they are. In creating your email marketing program, put yourself in the position of the prospect and ask yourself. "Self, would I respond to this offer or mail piece?" If not, then you are wasting your time and your prospects. Further, you're doing more damage than good.

Work on growing your relationship with your prospect. Be the authority for you product or service and you will gain the trust of your group. Just like any other offer, you need to communicate why what you have to say is important to the prospect. Marketers have made the mistake, that email marketing is the quickest way to sales in any niche group. This may be true when done correctly, but you still need to grow your relationship.

Best of luck,

Troy