Listrak: One To One Newsletter
"One to One" discusses email marketing intelligence and best practices for permission-based marketers. Each edition explores aspects of response-based modeling, segmentation, real-time reporting, testing, and message composition.
In this issue we look at the The Power of Plain Text, provide a Sender Policy Framework Whitepaper, discover Listrak’s newest features, and learn how to market effectively through multiple channels using Open Intelligence.
The Power of Plain Text
As Summer fades into Fall people all over the globe are focusing less on holidays and vacations and more on business. The briefcase has replaced the beach bag while tank tops are out and neckties are in. For B2B marketers this shifting of attention back to business spells ripe opportunity. If your primary target is business to business, you can count on having the attention of your prospects and customers for the next 60 days before the holiday season kicks in.
One of the most overlooked tools for business-to-business marketing is the Plain Text message. In my opinion, the plain text message still holds a lot of value based on the premise that most of the messages that people delete (solicited or unsolicited) are HTML-based while many of the messages people deem to be important are plain text. Why, then, do we insist on sending an HTML message for every campaign?
During the final quarter of 2004, I challenge you to add some well crafted plain text messages into your marketing mix. The best performing plain text messages will be written in a personal sense, just like any other one-to-one email communication. The message should speak directly to the recipient and should ultimately end up asking them to take some type of action. You should also keep your message short, limiting it to a four-paragraph maximum while addressing your recipient using their first name in the salutation.
Your overall goal is to reach your audience on an emotional level. The many efficiencies of an email-marketing tool, such as Listrak, will help you accomplish this. For example, Listrak gives you the option to deliver a message that appears to be individually written, when in actuality, that same message has been sent to a broad audience
Another important facet of the plain text strategy is to choose an optimum time for delivery. My advice has always been to deliver messages between 10AM and 2PM. How believable will your message be if it shows up at 11PM?
My final suggestions are to include your signature along with a physical address, as well as narrative-based removal instructions such as "If you would rather not receive email communications, please reply with 'remove' in the subject line." Additionally, I recommend disabling tracking links as they may confuse your recipients. Your main goal of the plain text message is to have your audience respond to your message to continue the conversation.
Follow through with these simple ideas and you will find yourself opening doors and creating new conversations with your prospects and current customers.
Whitepaper: Sender Policy Framework
To help our customers better understand Sender Policy Framework (SPF), we have created a whitepaper that presents a manager’s overview, as well as detailed technical information. In short, SPF will help to increase global email deliverability by verifying the origin of a piece of email through the Internet’s built-in DNS system. SPF helps fight email address forgery, makes it easier to identify spam, worms, and viruses, and assists ISPs in distinguishing legitimate mail from spam. It all works together to help get your messages delivered
The Listrak™ whitepaper is available here:
http://www.listrak.com/pdf/ListrakSPFWhitepaper.pdf
Tech Know
We have rolled out several new features within the past few weeks. Below you will find descriptions of our latest new features.
Save Message Feature
Listrak™ customers now have the ability to save a message for later use. Previously, in order to save a message, customers had to send a test or review message to save the message into the system. Messages can now be saved at any time.
Test Address Feature
Listrak™ customers now have a new field within the Author & Send email section of the application to designate as a “test email address.” This new feature will allow content authors to keep the real FROM address in place while sending tests to alternate addresses.
To Name Personalization
If you store your subscriber's name in profiling, you can take your personalization efforts to the next level by setting their name in the To-Name area. Simply paste the profile tag that holds their name into this field and Listrak™ will fill in the name when the message is sent.
Partner Spotlight
Listrak partner, Marketing G2, has launched Open Intelligence a marketing application geared towards the Newspaper industry that enables publishers to utilize multiple streams of marketing data. Open Intelligence technology is built on an open database standard to maximize accessibility to marketers. The data is refreshed nightly using subscriber transactions and internet registrations to ensure campaigns focus your target audience. Open Intelligence can accomplish several objectives for your marketing campaign including: marketing through multiple channels, merge sign-on processes into a single step, and manage pre-defined or ad hoc campaigns.
Learn more about Marketing G2 on their website, www.marketingg2.com
