Marketers Embrace 2015 Spending, Including Mail

Direct marketers have finally left behind recession-inspired cautionary spending, with many in a "full-steam growth mode," per Target Marketing magazine's "2015 Media Usage Survey." And the good news for direct mail data professionals like AccuList USA is that direct mail retains a key role in media budgets. Per the survey, about 44% of business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers reported that their media budgets are staying the same as in 2014, with 32% increasing spending and only 12% planning a budget decrease. Where are they spending? Most respondents (65%) are increasing e-mail spending, and most respondents (61%) plan to increase social media engagement investments in 2015. Search engine marketing (SEM) and optimization (SEO) also both continue as high priorities, especially for acquisition, so that content marketing, video and mobile optimization—each offering strong search benefits—were cited as high priorities, too. However, snail mail is still a critically important channel for most direct marketers. Overall, 30% plan to increase mail budgets and 37% will keep spending the same compared with last year. More than half are still using direct mail for both acquisition and retention. Yes, 11% of respondents reported decreasing direct mail budgets, but, as Target Marketing sums up in its report, that doesn't mean direct mail is withering away but that "newer strategies are factoring into the direct marketing equation, and its share is being spread around to other corners of the media landscape." For more detail, read http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/target-marketings-media-usage-survey-2015/

E-mail CTA: Best, and Hardest, Way to Up CTR

The best way to boost your e-mail click-through rate (CTR) is a meaningful call to action (CTA). That's the verdict of 65% of the marketing, sales and business professionals surveyed worldwide by Ascend2, as reported recently by MarketingProfs. Second place went to list segmentation for targeting (47%), followed by message personalization (42%). Tactics garnering frequent online discussion gathered the fewest votes by the way: social sharing (6%) and video e-mail (10%). There isn't a big surprise in those findings from marketers, who were weighted more heavily toward B2B (68% of surveyed). But before you rush off to spruce up your call-to-action effort, note that those same marketers also rated list segmentation and call to action as the most difficult tactics to implement for improved CTR, by 41% and 35% respectively. Clearly, knowing what to do isn't the same as knowing how to do it well. Maybe that's why the surveyed marketing pros saw e-mail CTR trends as relatively stagnant, either not changing (34%) or increasing only modestly (33%). For more details of the survey, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27811/the-best-tactics-for-improving-email-ctrs

Study: Consumers Prefer Priority Info Via SMS

SMS has become an essential communications tool for retailers as online and mobile shopping grow. In fact, 85% of consumers in a new survey said they would prioritize unopened text messages over e-mails and push notifications from apps. Direct Marketing News magazine recently reported on a survey of 1,000 UK consumers by eDigitalResearch, which showed texting as the most effective way to reach consumers in real time with time-sensitive information. The survey results are especially pertinent for retailers, suggesting they need to implement a comprehensive communications strategy that includes multiple channels to engage with consumers across the entire life cycle, said Steve Brockway, director of research (UK) at eDigitalResearch, in a news release about the study. The research not only showed that SMS is preferred (by 85%) for the delivery of priority information, such as order status alerts, but that 53% of respondents cited SMS as the preferred method of communication when on the go, and half said they'd choose SMS for day-of notifications. It's not an entirely text-happy world for marketers: 59% of respondents prefer to receive promotional information via e-mail, and 54% said they always or mostly always open offers received via e-mail. E-mail also had the highest open rate for marketing information, although closely followed by text messages. However, trust remains an obstacle for retailers when it comes to mobile technology. Only 43% of respondents said they were willing to share their mobile phone numbers with retailers out of fear they would be bombarded with irrelevant communications. For more detailed survey results, read http://www.dmnews.com/marketing-strategy/dont-text-and-drive-do-text-and-market/article/416397/

USPS Unveils Real-Time Mobile Notification of Mail

The U.S. Postal Service announced a new product to further marry digital and direct mail channels by allowing mail recipients to see what mail is arriving in real time on their mobile devices, reports Target Marketing magazine. Called “Real Mail Notification,” the soon-to-come product was unveiled to direct mailers by USPS Postmaster General Megan Brennan at the recent National Postal Forum in Anaheim, Calif. Nine out of 10 consumers participating in a Northern Virginia product pilot are checking daily on their mobile devices to see what’s arriving in their physical mailboxes, she told PostalNews.com, which also reports that a New York City pilot of the RMN program will launch later this year. Brennan touted RMN mobile notification to EcommerceBytes.com in the Target Marketing story: “If you see that you’re receiving a mailpiece from a favorite retailer, you can click on that piece for an additional offer that drives you to open that mail when you get home. Or, you might jump directly to a transaction. In either event, the physical mail piece draws you into the interactive experience.” In her speech to the National Postal Forum, Brennan claimed, “We saw a 10-fold jump in response rate for the pieces we tested.” For more detail and a link to Brennan's speech transcript: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/usps-goes-digital-with-daily-real-mail-notification/

E-mail Blasts Daily, But Tuesday Is Most Favored

What's the best day to send e-mail to get a response? Well, if you pick Tuesday, you are joining the e-mail marketing crowd. Using the exclusive e-mail campaign database from Who’s Mailing What (WMW!) for 2013 and 2014, Target Marketing magazine recently assessed e-mail volume by day of the week. The data ranks Tuesday as the most popular day for sending e-mails, with Thursday a close second, for both 2014 and 2013. A review of e-mails received by WMW! also shows that both days dipped slightly in 2014 — Tuesday from 17.8% of weekly e-mails in 2013 to 17.4%, and Thursday from 17.6% in 2013 to 17.1% in 2014 — but both days continued to hold the top overall spots. Those dips may have been due to more weekend sends for the 2014 elections, however. Meanwhile, the third most popular day was Wednesday, which took up 16.7% of weekly e-mails in 2014, up from 16.5% in 2013. Which industry categories are filling up digital mailboxes? Retailers send the most e-mails daily, followed by publishers (magazines and newsletters) and then nonprofits/fundraisers for politics and social action (causes), per WMW! data. Read the article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/day-week-send-email/

How 'Little Data' Basics Yield Big E-mail Results

E-mail marketers can get lost in "big data" analytics and lose sight of the "little data" basics of e-mail delivery that reveal faster response improvements, advises Scott Roth of consumer intelligence company Return Path in a recent ClickZ post. Roth's "little data" fundamentals go beyond engagement rates to inbox placement rates, authentication policies and domain security, and Roth provides a number of real-life examples of how analyzing these basics improved e-mail results. For example, large U.S. retailer Dillard reversed a trend of declining open and click-through rates by checking inbox placement rates across all major mailbox providers. Dillard found that 20% of promotional e-mails failed to reach subscribers, with many e-mail addresses no longer existent. Plus, subscribers who did get e-mail marked it as junk at an above-average rate. The retailer focused corrective actions to pump engagement rates 100% and push open rates above pre-decline levels. Similarly, when another brand saw inbox placement rates drop 50%, they checked their sending basics and discovered that an improperly configured authentication policy for their sending domain had caused most mailbox providers to treat e-mails as spam. With corrective action, the brand saw inbox placement rise 46% to 92%. Financial firms especially need to track basic data for signs of security problems, as Roth points out. For example, he notes how a financial services firm tracking a rise in suspicious domains and call center traffic was able to correlate its e-mail data with phishing outbreaks and then implemented e-mail security protocols. For the whole article, read http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2410356/sweat-the-small-stuff-big-results-through-email-marketing-fundamentals

The First Step to an A/B Test Win: An Open Mind

Although A/B testing is a marketing given, marketers often unknowingly limit their potential response results with preconceived notions about what audiences prefer. Approaching A/B testing with an open mind can yield the surprise wins that create market leaders. A recent DirectMarketingIQ article by Rohan Ayyar, of the E2M digital marketing agency, cited some telling A/B testing results for marketing efforts as diverse as mobile landing pages, e-mail subject lines and even product design. One example of a surprise test win comes from health insurer Anthem. For a mobile PPC campaign, Anthem A/B tested a landing page with no images and three different calls to action in a text-only format against a landing page with the image of a smiling woman, a single call to action and descriptive copy. Based on common assumptions about the digital conversion power of images, Anthem expected the version with the image to win--but they were wrong. On a mobile platform, the all-text version increased leads by 166% at a 95% confidence level. It turned out that mobile users scrolling small screens preferred multiple calls to action, including an easy call to customer care, to reading small soft-sell text. Another famous example of thinking out of the A/B testing box comes from President Obama's 2012 re-election e-mail fundraising. Politics is serious business, so the assumption was that e-mail appeals with formal subject lines would deliver more dollars. In reality, casual subject lines that even contained mild profanity ("Hell yeah, I Like Obama") or just the recipient's name did better, and the big winner was the famous "Hey" subject line series. The President's name as the sender combined with a friendly personal approach in the subject line to push winning e-mails $2.2 million ahead in revenue compared with the worst performing e-mail. For more on surprise A/B testing wins, see http://www.directmarketingiq.com/article/3-unexpected-wins-that-emerged-from-a-b-testing/1