JamBase Monetizes its Email Program

Last week, DMNews carried a great article describing how live music promoter, JamBase, is monetizing its email program by running ads inside the emails that alert fans when and where their favorite artists are performing. I think my friend, Andy Gadiel, and his gang may be on to something big here.
For brands that have been smart about building a quality email subscriber database, they now have a great way to capitalize on their efforts by offering advertisers a unique opportunity to reach a very qualified – and loyal – audience.
In case you got an early start on the Thanksgiving holiday, and missed it, here’s an excerpt:

“For online music site JamBase, monetizing e-mails just got easier. Since its ad network partner, Google Ad Manager, and its e-mail service provider (ESP), ExactTarget, integrated into one platform last week, JamBase is now running ads inside of its e-mails.

The new ExactTarget offering, deemed Live Ads, an integration with Google Ad Manager and Dart for Publishers, is helpful for a brand which usually finances its e-mails through sponsorships. The e-commerce site is a destination for music fans to learn all about upcoming concerts and music events. Fans who opt in to receive e-mails get updates about concerts coming to their area and information about bands they like.

Normally, the e-mails are paid for by the concert promoter, but this has caused a challenge when the promoter of a customer's favorite band did not sponsor an e-mail. To address this issue, last year the brand launched New Show Alerts, so that customers could always get an e-mail alert about a show for their favorite band no matter if the promoter was paying for the spot or not. But now, thanks to the new ExactTarget offering, JamBase is able to keep the consumer happy and finance their promotions.

“Because of [ExactTarget's] integration with Google Ad Manager, we can include ads in those e-mails so it solves the problem of who will pay for the e-mail,” said Andy Gadiel, founder/president of JamBase. “It helps us keep providing the service to help customers keep up to date with the music that they love.”

Hope to See You at NCDM
If you’re looking for an “executive primer” on email marketing, I highly recommend you sign up for the special pre-conference workshop that my friend and colleague Jeanne Jennings of JeanneJennings.com will lead at the upcoming National Center for Database Marketing Conference (NCDM) in Orlando. Our seminar, “Insider Tips for Making Your Email Marketing Efforts More Effective – and More Profitable” will be held on Monday, December 8th from 9:10 AM to 11:50 AM.

If you have not yet registered for NCDM, there’s still time and there are plenty of registration options to fit your needs. To register, just go to the NCDM registration page on the NCDM 2008 website where you can also download the complete NCDM 2008 Conference Brochure.

I Just Called…To Say….That Voice + Email is Powerful Punch

With all the buzz around channels like Voice and SMS, it can be tempting to implement new programs just for the sake of doing what’s hot.  And let’s face it, that’s not so hot for your subscribers.  So if you’ve been searching for a meaningful way to incorporate Voice into your own marketing campaigns, bravo! 

Truth is, we’ve been looking, too.  Sure, ExactTarget offers the integrated one-to-one platform to make sending Email, SMS and Voice from a single user interface a snap.  But we’ve been known as a leading email company for years, and our B2B environment often lacks the promotional and urgent nature that’s so conducive for some emerging media.

So when R.J. Talyor, one of our Product Marketing Managers and Voice Expert Extraordinaire, approached us about conducting a Voice test for the Email Marketing Intelligence Webinar Series we’re hosting with MarketingSherpa, I was a little apprehensive.  Would it add value for our webinar registrants?  Would they be receptive to new channels of communication from ExactTarget?  Can Voice make a measurable impact on the event attendance?

In short, all findings point to YES.  I’m pleased to report that the Voice testing results from the first webinar were extremely positive.  I hope you find the following information both useful and encouraging when considering how (and when) to add Voice into your own marketing mix.

Webinar Reminder Testing Goal:  To find the ideal messaging mix to drive webinar attendance via reminders

Testing Approach
Registrant list split into three random groups to receive reminders the day of the event.

• Email-Only Reminder Group
• Voice-Only Reminder Group
• Email + Voice Reminder Group

Test Findings

• Email + Voice reminders drove the highest webinar attendance (43%)
• Email-only reminder came in second (36.3%)
• Voice-only reminder drove fewest attendees (29.6%)

 We’ll be continuing to test Voice for the next few webinars, so sign up to see them in action and stay tuned for further results!

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

I have been a bit quiet recently--especially on the mobile email front. Two bits of news came out this week that I believe are interesting developments that impact how we think about mobile email, sms marketing, and coupons--three things that I watch a lot.

The first big one: the iPhone is the top selling mobile phone in Q3 2008. Well we know it was selling fast and was a clear favorite in the smartphone category, but that sales of iPhone surpassed sales of Motorola RAZR (which is available for half the price) is significant because of the iPhone's full support of HTML email. Thus, most new phone's being introduced in the US don't have the mobile rendering issues that have plagued us for the past few years. In April, I wrote that the mobile email problem would be behind us in the next 2-3 years. The recent news coming out of NPD Group supports that prediction. With the new Blackberry devices and Google Android hitting the streets, the big thing keeping this issue alive all those old phones already in the market. Unfortunately, the average user holds on to their cell phone for 2-3 years, and with the economic environment, our subscribers may hold on to those old phones a little longer. Nevertheless, the end is not far away.

BTW, if you haven't seen Google Android yet, check out this online review of messaging and email on the T-Mobile G1.

Dear Retailers:

We can’t see your images in your emails.

We can’t see your 20%-off merchandise or special offers. We can’t see your holiday sweaters, or dresses, or suits, or toys.

Why? It is because your emails are made entirely out of images, and due to image suppression at the bulk of receiving email clients and ISPs your emails look blank, imageless, and don’t reflect the brand you hope to portray.

Want to increase your holiday sales for 2008? Start by optimizing your emails using the principals of what we call “performance-based design.” How? Head on over to the ExactTarget design blog and learn about their recommendations for email marketing design best practices. Also, check out their latest whitepaper: Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.

The key to the success of your email program this fall will be about making an impact in the inbox that is relevant to each subscriber’s wants and needs…not about sending more email.

Sincerely,

Your Once Loyal Customer (Please give me a reason to buy from you)

I know you’ve heard me tout the value of personalizing email content hundreds of times. Still, I am amazed that many marketers don’t believe personalizing email is worth the effort! So, for those of you who still doubt the value of personalization, here’s more proof.

Writing in the October 28th issue of MediaPost’s Email Insider, Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon of email marketing agency, Smith-Harmon, note that a report put out this past summer by the Aberdeen Group found that top performing, or "Best-in-Class," organizations that collected and used data to personalize email campaigns, experienced an average order value increase of 57%.”

The report “Email Marketing: Get Personal with Your Customers” identifies the effects of email personalization on subscriber engagement. The study represents the views of more than 550 organizations and groups companies based on annual performance increases. Through their survey, Aberdeen found that top performing organizations (referred to as “Best-in-Class”) are twice as likely as “Laggards” to use the information collected within their database to personalize email campaigns.

Thomson CompuMark Believes in Personalization

Dave Wieneke, Interactive Marketing Manager at Thomson CompuMark, has proven the value of email personalization. He sends the monthly Client Times Online newsletter “on behalf” of CompuMark’s 22 account managers to attorneys who specialize in brand and copyright law. Each subscriber’s newsletter carries the photo and contact information of the CompuMark account manager with whom they work, and articles are personalized based on the defined preferences of each subscriber.

Says Wieneke, “The dynamic content tools of ExactTarget make this kind of personalization straight-forward; our marketing team implemented this without any specialized resources.”

Since Thomson CompuMark began personalizing email, the number of clickthroughs has increased by 63% and the amount of time subscribers are spending on content has gone up 41%! This is genuine subscriber engagement!

Using CRM Data to Personalize Email Content

One of the reasons Thomson CompuMark has been successful in personalizing email is because they have integrated their CRM system (Salesforce.com) with their email system (ExactTarget). To learn more about how to use CRM and Web Analytics data to personalize email content, download the ExactTarget white paper, “Integrating Email, CRM and Web Analytics”.

If you’re an online marketer and were not able to be in Las Vegas for Shop.org's 2008 Annual Summit, you missed a great presentation by Sheldon Gilbert, founder and CEO of Proclivity Systems, on how to use email to boost online sales and reduce customer attrition.

Sheldon offered seven tips that represent little things you can do that can have a big impact on your bottom line. I liked Sheldon’s ideas so much, I wanted to share them with you, so here they are:

1. Remind Customers about What They Already Want: Send a monthly e-mail of their 'abandoned products' and introduce cross-sell items, as well as use their shopping car as a default wish list.
2. Spread the Love: Thank customers for spreading the word with a 'your friend has received your e-mail' note. Personalize the experience for the customer and introduce a new offer.
3. Mix and Match with Precision: Use the 'thank you for your order' confirmation e-mail as a cross-selling vehicle. If 60 percent of the people who have bought X sweater have also purchased Y scarf, send an advertisement for the scarf to everyone who has bought the sweater.
4. Build Your Brand: Leverage the 'under the fold' portion of the e-mail. Educate customers about products by including a 'style guide,' or descriptions on how to use or accessorize.
5. Know Who Your High-Rollers Are: Identify segments that exhibit disproportionate buying power and start marketing to those groups immediately.
6. Never Say Never: Feature new and top-selling products, through 'null search results.' Just because a customer can't find a particular item on a company's Web site doesn't mean they aren't interested in that brand.
7. People are Only as Faithful as Their Options: Allow your customers to opt-down and select a lower frequency of e-mails instead of completely opting-out. Save the cost of marketing to recoup lost subscribers.

Sheldon is one of those guys who is simply a great common-sense thinker when it comes to using email to make money. You can pick up more ideas like Sheldon’s in ExactTarget's new Field Guide to Triggered Email. It’s full of easy to execute applications of triggered email like shopping cart abandonment, transaction confirmation, customer feedback, and product replenishment notification to help you get more juice for the squeeze from your e-commerce web site.

You just can’t make this stuff up. I saw this story on Yahoo a few days back which read: “U.S. doctors have found the Bee Gees 1977 disco anthem "Stayin' Alive" provides an ideal beat to follow while performing chest compressions as part of CPR on a heart attack victim.”

Now, since I’m a drummer in my spare time, using a popular rhythm to use as a comparison to a critical heart rhythm makes sense to me. It speaks my language. Thankfully, because of this article I now know that I can comfortably conduct CPR at the right pace since I seemed to have the tempo of Stayin’ Alive stored somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain.

Those connections to individuals are less easily predicted online. Yet these types of esoteric facts about an individual can make the difference between a non-response and a sale. The problem is most marketers don’t know what questions to ask or which behaviors to monitor.

In fact if a marketer wanted to target me differently based on my being rhythmically-oriented, they would have to guess, ask me, or append psychographic interest data from a database that somehow listed my subscription to Modern Drummer Magazine (which I haven’t had in 20 years).

Combining preference data and behavioral data is the only way to go. Neither are perfect, but combined they are very compelling. Preferences alone may point you in an entirely different direction than a subscriber’s actual behaviors. That is one of the points we made in our recent whitepaper, “Messaging Behaviors, Preferences and Personas.” Our research with the Ball State Center for Media Design showed combined observations on media usage behaviors with survey data on how each type of medium is used.

We found, for example, that teens tend to use social networks extensively and most often when communicating with friends. However, most of this same group said they were much more likely to respond to a promotion when presented to them via direct mail or email (unless it is spam) than via a social network or a text message. They hold these newer media to be more personal to them.

That isn’t to say that social networks should be devoid of marketing or businesses. In fact, a recent survey from Cone showed that adult users of social networks have some expectation that businesses will be there (not sure if it is expectation or “acceptance”).  In this survey 51% said companies should have a presence in social media but only as needed or by request. Our own research points to the same thing: Opt-in is still king and email is not dead….and now I can do CPR!

Stefan Pollard shares his vision on IP address ramp up best practice guidance over on ClickZ.

Sound familiar? It should, as it echoes the best practice guidance we give on the subject daily.

I certainly DO NOT mean that Stefan stole or re-purposed any of the guidance we give. What I mean is: Great minds think alike!

ExactTarget has always ensured compliance with the FTC & FCC mandate regarding wireless domains. We don't allow these domains to be imported or mailed to, as required by the law. For more information on why, you can find quick links to the FCC's pages on the topic by visiting our Wireless Domain microsite.

We at ExactTarget are not alone in our interpretation of the wireless domain requirements. Just the other day I ran across the following on Mickey Chandler's Spamtacular blog. What should best practices be, according to Mickey?

1. You should make certain that you regularly download the list of wireless domains maintained by the FCC and wash addresses in those domains from your general lists.
2. You should segment your wireless domain addresses into their own list.
3. You should make certain that you implement double opt-in for addresses on the wireless segment, even if you don’t use double opt-in in general.

ExactTarget does periodically download the list of wireless domains maintained by the FCC and we include it in our list detective filter. This ensures that addresses in those domains are never uploaded or mailed to.

If you're looking for the ability to be able to send to these domains, please feel free to contact us to discuss. We can help you feel out whether or not there is a legitimate business case to proceed, and if so, how to do so in a way that's compatible with both the legal requirements, and ExactTarget's opt-in policies. The process can be a bit tricky, but we're happy to help you navigate your way through.

As you may know, a few months ago we launched ExactTarget’s Landing Page capabilities.  The response has been overwhelming.  If you’re not familiar with ExactTarget’s Landing Pages, I’d invite you to read the press release or check out the product page for more info.  At a very high-level, this functionality gives marketers the ability to create customized web pages on the fly – all with the same look and feel of your corporate web presence.

From a development perspective, our goal was to take what we’ve learned about creating and deploying engaging emails, combine that with the digital assets clients already have stored in ExactTarget, and create a solution that provides the ultimate level of flexibility on the web to marketers – regardless of their level of technical expertise.

In just a matter of months, we’ve seen a solid increase in the number of clients adopting this new functionality.  So I wanted to share some examples of what those customers are doing with you. To help keep things straight, I’ll break the examples down into three categories – static pages, dynamic pages, and integrated lead capture forms.

Static Pages: This is the most straightforward example of landing page functionality. In this case, clients are creating basic HTML web pages that are displaying the same content to every visitor that arrives at that page. Clients are using this for things like promoting an event, announcing the launch of a product, storing documentation, tying relevant content to paid search engine phrases, and countless other scenarios. Here are two links to real live pages that ExactTarget clients have created:

• Strophe Product Launch Promotion 
• ExactTarget Landing Pages Product Page

Dynamic Pages: Moving up a notch in the level of sophistication, dynamic pages are landing pages that display unique content based on the preferences and attributes of individual subscribers. You could use this functionality to improve the relevance of pages you’re linking to in an email, or even to create unique landing pages that are promoted from print documents/brochures.  Think about sending a postcard to an individual with a completely customized web page for them to visit!

Investing in a dynamic approach will help improve the performance of your campaigns by delivering a more personalized and relevant message.  After all, just like in email, your subscribers are unique – so it wouldn’t make sense for me to link all of you to the exact same page, would it?
Instead, here’s a screenshot of one of our personalized landing pages in action…



Lead Capture Form Pages: Last (but certainly not least!) are lead capture pages tied directly in to backend systems.  If you’re looking to send the captured data directly into ExactTarget (or perhaps you want to send it directly into your CRM system like Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics CRM) these are the landing pages for you. These pages help streamline the collection of data – and allow you run automated programs that engage the individuals that submitted their information. Here is an example of lead capture form pages:

• Compendium Blogware

Whether you’ve heard about the Landing Page capability or not, hopefully this helps you understand why we’re so excited about their potential!

Scott Roth
Director, Product Marketing