Technique - Banish DM rules to get the most from email marketing

Whatever you know about mail targeting, put it to one side. The advent of email means that direct marketers now have to look at targeting and data in a completely new way, turning the old DM paradigm on its head.

But, before we get into the nitty gritty of targeting, it's important to remember that email marketing is all about making sure that emails are delivered to the targets' inboxes. Imagine the uproar, for example, if a sizeable portion of direct mail didn't reach homeowners' letterboxes.

Yet this occasionally is the case with email marketing because either the email broadcaster isn't able to deliver successfully (via lack of agreements with ISPs such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo!) or because the campaign creative contains wording that triggers an ISP's spam filter to kick in.

So, before you even look at email targeting and email data, make sure you look at the best ways of ensuring deliverability. Without this, anti-spam filters may be more influential than either the data or targeting, leaving your campaign to fall at the first hurdle. That said, how do you target email?

Banish preconceptions

Direct mail is based on the idea that the more selective and narrowly targeted a campaign, the better the return on investment (ROI) per pack sent. A typical direct mail piece comprises design and copywriting costs, paper costs, print costs, data costs, data processing costs, fulfilment costs and postage costs. Direct mail campaign planning, therefore, demands that target groups are picked as narrowly as possible to maximise ROI.

Email costs, by comparison, are much lower. Apart from basic design and copywriting, the only cost incurred is the data and email broadcast. Therefore, email marketing may allow you to broaden your selections, giving you a far bigger data universe and enabling you to target individuals who, rather than being the "most likely" to buy your product, might be individuals who "could" buy your product.

Above all, don't be afraid of being accused of "bad DM practice". Remember that email campaigns aren't spam because every individual has opted-in under EU law. Recipients have agreed to receive your email.

Widen your targeting criteria

If data and email broadcasts are the only real costs in email marketing, you should be able to broaden your data selection to include any person who is in the right age range and gender to buy your product.

Take, for example, a men's health vitamin product. In traditional DM you might want to narrowly select fit and active adult males to keep costs down. With email marketing, you can afford to email any male adult because the only cost is the data and email broadcast. Why restrict it to only fit and active adults? Indeed, you might find that no single male target group has a biased preference for a healthy vitamin product, and that response rates across all male groups provide a good ROI.

Broad data selections are normally cheaper to purchase than tightly selected data groups, making wide selections even more cost effective for your email campaign. Remember too that tightly selected lists will soon become exhausted, leaving you with no possibility to purchase more email records in the future.

Testing Options

When testing, use data segments of no less than 50,000. Just be aware not to test for testing's sake and, while it is possible to test campaign creative for each list by simply re-wording the headline or copy and changing visuals on the email, bear in mind that testing different creative executions will raise your campaign costs, so test intelligently.

Email marketing is the perfect medium for testing because it delivers results in real time, allowing you to roll out a successful test immediately.

Just make sure you're ready if you need to scale up quickly.

Don't give up

Email campaigns are influenced by a huge variety of factors, many of which are outside a marketer's control. If an email marketing campaign has failed, employ a professional to examine all the possible reasons why this might be the case. The professional will be able to identify why your campaign fell short and make recommendations as to how you can do better next time.

The rule book on email marketing hasn't been written yet, but it's in the process of being written by people like you and me. Therefore, banish preconceptions and don't be afraid to ignore many of the traditional direct marketing rules.

For email, many of the old rules don't apply. Only astute marketers realise this and it takes real courage to go against the DM grain and implement a new paradigm. You'll find, however, that the results will soon be worth it.

- Dan Bannister is director at Vivid Medianet.

CASE STUDY: PruHealth

PruHealth is a joint venture between Prudential UK and Discovery Holdings, the South African private health insurer.

PruHealth's approach to health insurance is to offer reduced premiums to customers who look after their health and offer large discounts with many health and fitness partners.

PruHealth was not convinced by the high costs associated with purchasing profiled email lists and wanted to promote its health insurance product in a fresh and innovative way.

It looked at emailing a broad selection of the UK population rather than focusing on narrowly selected data segments. The email's primary aim was to raise brand awareness and drive interested parties to their call centre for a personal quotation. Several million people have already been emailed in 2006 and have been offered a health insurance product, with the incentive of a gift for those who became signed up.

The successful campaign clearly showed that by buying data competitively and targeting widely rather than in tight segments, email marketing can deliver outstanding ROI.

Indeed, it confirmed the view that in email marketing, wide data selections can often be preferable to narrowly selected data groupings.

This article was first published on Direct Response

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