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Marketing Wisely with E-mail in a Down EconomyBy Dave Cannon, Director of Interactive Services

In a down economy e-mail marketing can be both a B2B marketer’s friend and enemy. As cuts are being made across the board and marketers look for ways to increase sales, they must not lose sight of the fact that while price and selling are important, value – or the perception of value – is equally important. On the B2C side, marketers can deliver value in the form of discounts and loyalty rewards – keep in mind a $200 camera sold at $150 is still valued in the customer’s mind at $200. On the B2B side, the same principles hold true. B2B companies can deliver value through free consulting services, knowledge sharing, priority company event access and relevance. Yes, relevance. Your customers and prospects are getting bombarded with offers from companies trying to win their business and that’s where e-mail could work for or against you.

Value and price are the key factors customers use when making purchasing decisions in a down economy.

All marketers know e-mail is a cost-effective means for getting their message in front of customers and prospects quickly and easily. The temptation in a down economy is to increase the frequency of e-mail in the hope of increasing response. However, the reality is that relevancy outperforms frequency, and the more relevant the e-mail, the more value it holds for the recipient. So unless you can increase both the frequency and relevancy of your messages, the smart play is to focus on increasing relevancy. The e-mail industry has proven that targeted, relevant e-mails deliver better initial response and engagement over the long term. At the same time, consumers have little patience with irrelevant e-mails and will quickly become disengaged. Marketers who move away from the “batch-and-blast” approach and embrace the targeting power e-mail affords will realize greater returns and avoid falling into a sea of white noise with all the other marketers out there bombarding those same customers with irrelevant offers and messages.

Improve your relevance. Send the right e-mail at the right time.

There are many ways marketers can segment their lists to increase the relevance of their e-mails. Here are three key steps to developing successful segmentation strategies:

1. Use E-mail Behavior

Use open, click and link activity to identify which subscribers are most interested and market to them, targeting specific topics of interest. Inversely these data points allow marketers to identify dormant subscribers to either reengage or remove them.

2. Use Off-line Data

Off-line customer behavior and purchase data can be used to drive renewals and send targeted promotions, such as cross-sells of products and services that are related to purchases made.

3. Use Preference Centers

Successful e-mail marketing is about allowing the audience to dictate the terms of the communication. The best method for defining those terms is to simply ask how often they would like to be contacted and what content is most relevant to them.

Don’t forget the creative.

Creative relevance is also key. The aforementioned segmentation drivers help define the audience and the topic of “conversation,” but it’s the offer and the message that drives action. The more specific marketers can be with their subject lines, the higher the open rate. Similarly, the more compelling the offer, the higher the conversion rate. This may seem obvious, but in this economy marketers should take nothing for granted. It’s the combination of segmentation, subject and offer that delivers the value and cuts through the clutter to ultimately strengthen the bond between the customer and the brand.

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