Prepping Non-Political Ads for Social Election Impact

The 2016 presidential election is already grabbing headlines, ad space and social media attention, and it's only going to get more intense. This election cycle, non-political marketers not only have to be concerned about competition for consumer attention in broadcast media and direct mail, they will need to plan for a political blitz in social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Marketers need to start planning now for how to prevent their non-political messages from being drowned out, squeezed out, and priced out of the social media space. A recent Direct Marketing News magazine article by Perry Simpson, digital content coordinator, warns that cost-per-click (CPC) pricing--a popular way to sponsor and boost posts on Facebook and other social sites--is likely to increase significantly as politicians fight for attention. Simpson suggests three ways to prepare now for the social impact of the election frenzy. First, analyze your geographic performance, especially on a state level. Excluding battleground states, which are likely to see larger CPC spikes, is one option if those states are not key to performance. Next, test and hone messaging now to make sure your creative is as compelling as possible, since cost-per-click on networks like Facebook is affected by click-through rate (higher response lowers CPC). Finally, tighten up CPC bids before the election grabs the market. Lowering bids closer to your desired CPC will avoid outstripping target spend when bids start to climb because of political competition. For more detail, read http://www.dmnews.com/social-media/3-tips-for-non-political-marketing-during-the-presidential-elections/article/427133/

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

Top E-Mail Marketers Widen Lead in CTRs, Opens

In e-mail marketing, there's a widening gap between top and bottom performers. A 2014 E-mail Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study from Silverpop found that the top-performing quartile of e-mail marketers scored a 9.5% click-through rate (CTR), six times higher than the overall median click-through rate of 1.5%, per a summary report in Marketing Land. Meanwhile, bottom-quartile performers mustered CTRs of just 0.2%. Analyzing marketing e-mails sent by 3,000 brands from 40 different countries during 2013, Silverpop calculated mean and median benchmarks for various e-mail metrics, including click-through rates, open rates and bounce rates. Evaluating the CTRs of fourteen different industries, the study found real estate, construction, health care, consumer services and nonprofits generated the highest median CTRs. According to the study, transactional e-mails – messages triggered automatically by events such as purchases, subscriptions and account activity – earned a median CTR of 4.2%, compared to a median CTR of 1.5% for non-transactional emails. The study also reported that unique open rates for the top-performing quartile of e-mail marketers stood at 39.4%, more than double the median for all marketers and way above the bottom-quartile performance of 6.5%. Health care, nonprofits and education represented industries earning the highest median unique open rates. For a summary of Silverpop's study in terms of CTRs and open rates by industry, go to http://marketingland.com/study-top-performing-email-marketers-see-60-higher-click-rates-87025

Q1 E-mail: Insurance Tops CTR; Mobile Design Lack

Insurance e-mail marketing led other industries in terms of response in the first quarter of 2014, according to Yesmail's "Q1 Benchmarks Overview." Insurance e-mails scored the highest average open rate (31.4%), unique click rate (7.6%) and click-to-open rate (CTR) of 24.1%. Per the Yesmail study of more than 5 billion e-mails deployed in the first quarter, marketing/advertising company e-mails had the dubious distinction of the lowest average open rate (9.8%) as well as the lowest unique click rate (0.7%). However, the lowest CTRs were earned by the e-mail creative of Financial Services (3.7%) and Technology (5.3%), despite high 28% and 20% open rates, respectively. Overall, open rates rose 6% in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2013, and unique click rates were up 8%, but those increases may have been due to 20% lower e-mail volume after the year-end holiday quarter. For e-mail marketers seeking to leverage mobile, there is some key news: E-mails using mobile-friendly responsive design had a 21% higher CTR in the first quarter when compared with non-responsive e-mails. Yet 75% of marketers neglected mobile design, with 31% not sending responsive e-mails at all, and 44% sending them less than half of the time. See more on the Yesmail e-mail benchmarks in the MarketingProfs report at http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/25246/marketing-email-benchmarks-open-rates-by-industry-device-trends