Targeting the right prospect is crucial...

Tweet The Business Challenge

In March 2009, AccuLink’s client approached them with a unique situation: How to successfully market a home for auction during a housing downturn. Although the house, located in Beaufort County, NC, was desirable waterfront property ‐ times were tight. The average time on market was 249 days. It was the middle of a recession. And, like the rest of the nation, housing prices were way off ‐ in nearby Pitt County, they had fallen nearly 25 percent.

The client’s initial plan was to obtain Beaufort County property tax records and send out a mass mailing.

“He wanted to mail to everybody,” said Tom O’Brien, co-owner at AccuLink.

At the same time, targeting the right prospect was crucial. An auction for luxury waterfront property needed to attract a very specific segment to be successful. “He was worried about getting the right people to show up and bid on the property,” said O’Brien.

Experience told O’Brien that there was a better way to target nearby luxury home buyers. “A general property tax list wouldn’t pinpoint the exact type of buyer he wanted.” After telling his client, “I don’t think I would do that,” O’Brien suggested a different approach ‐ a targeted mailing list from USADATA.

The Solution

Instead of a scattershot approach based on property tax records, targeted mailing lists allow companies to choose the exact demographic characteristics they want their mailer to reach. In this case, O’Brien recommended that his client target high income individuals in nearby Pitt County, rather than people already living in Beaufort County. Additionally, O’Brien suggested that they filter out people who already owned a second home, figuring that they wouldn’t be in the market to purchase another one.

They started the process by using USADATA’s online QuickPick targeting. QuickPick targeting allows customers to select a pre‐defined segment representing their best prospects in just one click. For additional mailing list assistance they contacted a USADATA Data Specialist. The Specialist worked with O’Brien to further refine the mailing list and develop the count and price quote.

“It’s important to work with a mailing list company who will spend time to help you make smarter choices,” said O’Brien. “It’s a much more personalized way of doing business.”

Together, with USADATA’s help, they created a highly targeted mailing list that targeted professionals earning more than $150,000 a year in neighboring Pitt County. Selection criteria included:
· Zip code area
· Age
· Net Worth
· Interest in real estate investing

Results

The auction was an unprecedented success: The house sold for more than $100,000 more than the owners expected. O’Brien was surprised at the auction price, but, then again he’s seen how successful mailing lists from USADATA have been for his clients.

Jon Rapkin, Senior Vice‐President of Sales for USADATA, is pleased with the campaign’s success. “This case study shows the power of a targeted mailing list,” said Rapkin. “This home auction’s success was helped by reaching the right people at the right time.”

Today, the client is thrilled with his results. He was so pleased with the success from his first mailing that he’s strategizing a new direct mail campaign with AccuLink ‐ and planning to work with USADATA for their mailing list expertise.

“They are a great group of people,” says O’Brien. “They give a darn about your success.”

USAData Case Study with AccuLink

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 4

Tweet Today we bring you part four of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Seven tips for improving your email design

In its white paper “Email Design No-Nos Guide for Nondesigners¹”, online marketing solutions provider Lyris offers advice on making sure your email graphics and design lift, rather than depress, response:

· Bear in mind that graphics are often blocked. That doesn’t mean you have to resort to text-only messages. But “when reviewing email layouts ask the designer to show two versions—one with images visible and one with the images blocked. Both need to work equally well,” Lyris suggests.

· Also bear in mind that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) do not work with all email clients. Outlook 2007 and Gmail, for instance, ignore CSS coding created on an external file and linked to the email. Unless you use Inline CSS to format your design, your emails may not render correctly in all email clients.

· Use your alt tag copy to sell. Alt tags are the HTML code that provides alternative text (hence the name) for images that cannot be displayed. “Many marketers settle for alt tag copy that simply tells the reader how to turn the images on. In today’s environment, you can rest assured that most email users know how to do this. Instead, why not consider giving the customer a benefit to turning the image on to see what it is? Try describing the product if the image is a picture of something for sale. Or selling the event or service through copy if the image is not product-related.”

· Don’t make your call to action a graphic. That goes for phone numbers, URLs, and verbiage such as “call now” or “click here”.

· Include a call to action in the preview pane. The preview pane or window is the two- to four-inch-high space that many recipients see in their email inbox before they opt to open or discard the message. “Enewsletters should include headlines or ‘in this issue’ content teasers. Promotional emails should summarise or highlight the key value proposition and call to action. And definitely do not put any administrative items like unsubscribe or ‘add us to your email address book’ in this space at the top of your email.”

· Make the most of preheaders. Also known as snippet text, this is a brief bit of verbiage that appears in the inbox of some email clients along with the subject line. For instance, Gmail users viewing their inbox on a PC see the first few words of the email message immediately following the subject line. Outlook’s AutoPreview mode reveals a brief amount of text directly below the subject line. The text picked up by the email client is usually from the first line of the email message, so bear that in mind when crafting your messages.

· Test your emails in a variety of email clients to see how each renders the messages. By now it should be apparent that how your email appears to a recipient using Outlook isn’t necessarily how it will appear to a recipient using Yahoo! or reading the message via a mobile device. “A quick scan of your list or database report should tell you which email clients are popular with your audience,” Lyris notes. “At the very least, send tests to Outlook 2007, Gmail, and a mobile device, since these are the email clients most notorious for mangling formatting.”

¹Published: 12th May 2009
Article Link

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 3

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Today we bring you part three of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign

Just about everyone knows the basics of improving the effectiveness of an email campaign: keep your lists clean, make the content relevant, segment your file. But in its white paper “20 Quick Tips for Improving Your Email Programs¹,” email services provider StrongMail Systems offers some often-overlooked suggestions as well:

· Know your SNDS rating. SNDS stands for Smart Network Data Services, and according to StrongMail it’s “the Windows Live Postmaster Group’s method for reviewing your IP address(es). Microsoft has introduced the SNDS rating system as a way to fight spam, viruses and other email abuse… Microsoft provides ISPs with mail traffic data from all the domains hosted by Windows Live Mail and Hotmail. The ISPs in turn use that data to help prevent spam from being sent from their IP addresses.”

· Test your template code. “Program your email templates and test them through a rendering tool at the onset of the template introduction,” StrongMail advises. “Keep master copies of these separate from the ones reused in every mailing to avoid code corruption.” StrongMail also suggests avoiding XHTML.

· Determine your top domains and throttle accordingly. “Throttling” email is a matter of making sure you do not exceed an ISP’s limits regarding inbound mail volume or speed. Exceeding those limits can hurt your email deliverability. To ensure that you don’t, make a list of the domains that receive the bulk of your email messages, then check each one’s policies on inbound deliveries and if necessary modify your delivery rules.

· Link into feedback loops. A feedback loop (FBL) is an ISP’s report to an email sender of recipients who are reporting the sender’s messages as spam. You need to know about these complaints so that you can prove to the ISP that you are not a spammer before it blacklists you in response to the complaints. Various ISPs use different FBLs, so you need to visit the postmaster sites of each to sign up to receive the reports.

· Accommodate recipients who use handheld devices. “More and more people are using handheld devices to access their email, and for those users, it can be an aggravating experience thumb-scrolling through dozens of HTML links before they ever see your first image or text block related to the message content,” StrongMail reports. It offers two ways to accommodate these recipients, though “in either case, you will need to include language at the top of the message and a link to encourage them to click through”: 


1. Program a text message in the text window of your campaign management application. Use the recipient agent data to determine what browser was used to open the message, then flag that recipient record as a handheld user and always send that recipient text.

2. Host the HTML version of your message and ask handheld users to click to view the HTML.

¹Published: 15th April 2008
Article Link

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Tune in Thursday, January 28 for Part 4: Seven tips for improving your email design.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 2

Tweet Today we bring you part two of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Ten tips for improved email deliverability

Email can be a highly cost-effective marketing tool—assuming your emails make it to their destination. To improve the likelihood of your messages getting through, email services provider Silverpop offers a number of suggestions:

1. Minimize spam complaints. That’s commonsensical enough; but how? For starters, be sure to send emails only to permission-based lists, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. “Don’t send unexpected mail,” writes Silverpop in its white paper “Email Delivery Rates Above 95 Percent: 16 ‘Must Dos’ to Make It Happen”¹. “If subscribers opted in to receive your ‘Tips & Tricks’ newsletter, don’t suddenly start sending them your pure product promotion emails, unless they clearly requested them.” Avoid exclamation points in your subject lines, flashing red type fonts and anything else that smacks of spam.

2. Validate email addresses at the opt-in stage. According to Silverpop, you can add code to your sign-up forms that detects typos and incomplete addresses and then notifies the subscriber of the mistake immediately.

3. Make sure your coding is accurate and standardized and that your messages render properly in a variety of formats. Before sending an email, view it on multiple platforms and web browsers, with images on and off. In addition, a number of software programs are available to check your messages and templates for coding, content and other elements that could lead to a spam filter or an ISP blocking them.

4. Unless your email volume is very low or sporadic, use a dedicated IP address. If you share an IP address with other senders of email—even if those senders are other divisions within your company—you could find emails blocked or blacklisted because of problems in messages that they send.

5. Authenticate your messages with the major protocols. Many of the major ISPs check messages for authentication with Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Sender ID and increasingly, Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). Your IT staff or email service provider can help with this.

6. Use your company or brand name in the “from” line. While you’re at it, make sure the message line is clear. “Avoid overly aggressive subject lines. What might work in direct mail may get you a high spam complaint rate in email.”

7. Keep your list clean. Remove hard-bouncing addresses—those that are nonexistent or blocked—immediately, as well as any addresses that have generated a spam complaint. And don’t retry soft bounces—failed deliveries due to a full mailbox, an unavailable server or another temporary reason—repeatedly. “Most email marketing systems are set to retry bounces from one to three times over the course of about three days,” according to Silverpop. “Many systems will also not retry at all to certain ISPs such as AOL.” Don’t exceed those rules of thumb.

8. Comply with ISP throttling limits. This is how many messages can be sent within a given time frame, and the limits vary by ISP.

9. Monitor your sender reputation. Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) provides a summary of how Hotmail/Livemail perceives a sender’s IP address; many other ISPs offer feedback loops, listings of recipients who are reporting a sender’s messages as spam. Sign up to receive these.

10. Track your delivery rates and related metrics. At the very least, monitor hard bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes, any blacklists you may have been added to and inbox delivery rates by ISP.

¹Published: 30th September 2008
Article Link

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Tune in Monday, January 25 for Part 3: 5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 1

Tweet As we work on pURL campaigns for clients that involve email marketing, we often find ourselves educating our clients on the best practices needed in order to garner the success expected. In the following four-part series, we will share with you what we have learned through our research in email marketing and how valuable it can be in helping educate your clients.

Quick pointers for better email marketing

In the July 2009 issue of Catalogue e-business¹, DotMailer’s business development director, Tink Taylor, takes an in-depth look at his company’s Hitting the Mark 2009 benchmark report on marketing email. Here are his top five email marketing tips for retailers:

1) Include “forward to a friend” and “add to social networks” links. Half of the marketers surveyed in the benchmark study failed to include any kind of viral link in their emails. Yet viral and word-of-mouth marketing is an inexpensive way to spread your marketing messages, drive traffic, collect contact information, and ultimately boost sales.

2) Personalize your greeting. Seventy percent of the emails reviewed failed to open with a personalized greeting—even though such personalization has been proven to significantly improve both open and click-through rates.

3) Check renderability before sending. Nineteen percent of recipients will delete an email unread if it fails to display properly—and only 20 percent of the emails reviewed rendered correctly in every type of email account.

4) Make sure your template has a good balance of text to images. As well as helping your campaign to pass spam filters, this ensures that an email is readable when an email server switches off the images.

5) Present a clear call to action. The key to the success of an email campaign is to help recipients answer three questions: Who is the email from? What’s in it for them? What should they do next? Provide clear guidance on what you expect a recipient to do once he has read your email—click through to a product page, forward to a friend, contact someone in your sales department, request a catalogue.

¹Published: 9th June 2009
Article link
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Tune in Thursday, January 21 for Part 2: Ten tips for improved email.

The Official Social Media and Mobile Glossary of 2010

Tweet We came across this funny AdvertisingAge article today and felt it was worth sharing on our blog. How many of you can be labeled by more than one buzzword shown below?

Top 20 Labels, Buzzwords to Describe Our Curious Stampede to the Social-Media and Mobile Future
by Pete Blackshaw

My, how the digital times are a-changin'. We're downsizing to small screens, friending the world, thinking in 140 characters and downloading -- dare I say -- "billions and billions" of apps designed to make everything we do simpler, faster and more convenient (well, we think).

And so, only days into 2010, it seems fitting to take a big look over my shoulder (and even into the mirror) and affix labels and buzzwords to our curious stampede to the social media and mobile future. Here's my top 20. Miss anything? Leave comments or tweet me (@pblackshaw).

SPURNED MEDIA: Just like it sounds, earned media that goes horribly negative, invades otherwise pristine search results or bleeds into traditional media. Bad customer service is a top driver of "spurned media."

MOBILENECKING: The alarming tendency to have our necks titled down or shifted sideways -- ever glued to our mobile device. This anywhere, anyplace epidemic is increasingly common in cars, airplanes and crosswalks. Closely related to term "Eyevoidance," where no one looks at anyone anymore.

JACK RIPPER: The device warriors who hog outlets anywhere they can find them -- in the airport, via the USB port of a colleague's computer, even a restaurant reservation desk. They get a charge from a charge.

WIKI WART: A bad piece of news or an embarrassing brand episode (e.g., an activist protest or a social-media campaign that backfired) that just won't go away in a brand's Wikipedia description. PR pros often give false hope to brands of removing the warts, but relentless Wikipedia editors put them right back.

OEDIPOST COMPLEX: The curious neurosis that compels folks to sleep with their Blackberry or iPhone. The afflicted can't stop checking -- even in late hours -- for responses to tweets or blog and Facebook posts.

DECIPROCITY: When everything you post actually decreases your friend and follower count. Even when you friend or follow others, the rules of reciprocity just don't apply. Soul searching is typically in order here.

FAUX POST: When you are talking to someone on the phone and they notice an unrelated tweet or Facebook status update from you showing up in real-time. Bad form -- don't do it. (Trust me!)

APPFUSION: An inevitable outcome of app overload. Very common among iPhone users who download so many apps they can't find their address book. Appfusion can lead to as many problems as the apps solve.

BRAND TEASE: A consumer who "friends" or "fans" a brand, only to never return for a second date. Brands feed the cycle by forgetting to court the consumer with engaging, interesting or sustaining content or value.

CONVERSATIONAL DIVIDE: The huge gap between what marketers preach about social-media "conversations" and the brand's actual customer-service or call-center operations. Stems from cost vs. profit-center tension.

SHELF STORM: When organic search results suddenly go haywire, or shift to the dark side, thanks to the link-love logic of social media. Consider Tiger Woods' search-result shift from 95% positive to 60% hostile (in a matter of days). Or how brands with highly publicized service failures quickly acquire shelf-venom.

APPTOSTERONE: The mojo that fuels intense "mine's bigger/better" conversation about mobile apps. "Dude, you got Bump, but I've got FourSquare." Marketing techies are loaded with Apptosterone.

BUCK SUCKED: The condition that typically slaps you in the face when reading your credit card bill and you see dozens of "dollar" charges for music and "what the heck" iPhone or mobile apps. Expect much more of this as it gets worlds easier and more convenient to pay for online content. (Good news for publishers!)

TRUST LAPSE: The frighteningly popular tendency we have to "open up" our friend network to a cool, unknown social-media service or app. Ego, vanity and impatience often collide with rationality here.

RUNWAY REBEL: That guy (or gal) who keeps the "electronic device" going well past the airline warnings and prohibitions. We see them everywhere, and no one is innocent here.

BLOG DODGER: Someone who has abandoned his or her blog for Twitter or some other lower-hassle social-media substitute. This was big in 2009, and we'll likely see much more of it in 2010.

QUAD STALKERS: Folks from your past who "friend" you (e.g., folks you marginally knew from the high-school quad) and who seem to comment on everything you post on Facebook. Mostly benign, but a tad curious.

TWEET-SHIFTING: Delaying or mixing Twitter posts so axe murderers don't know you're miles from home. Increasingly common as a spousal and family covenant among folks who travel with high frequency.

CURBCASTING: The almost unstoppable cacophony of loud voices barking all manner of silliness into the airwaves thanks to Bluetooth devices. You see this on every street corner and curb.

TWITSTOP: A bathroom detour from a meeting or conversation in order to check e-mail, Twitter or the latest and greatest via an app. (Swear on the Bible, I don't do this ... but I'm told lots of others do.)

DIGITAL DETOX: What we all need -- at least in doses. As we've learned, total digital immersion has side effects. Let's all pursue a roadmap for balance in 2010. (This is likely the topic of my next book, so send feedback.)

Reprinted with permission from January 12, 2010 AdAge Magazine article by
Pete Blackshaw, Exec VP of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services.

Two-dimensional...going beyond 'flat thinking'.

Tweet Here is an excerpt from our newest white paper on 2D Barcodes. If you would like a copy, please send an email request to: rose.ehrecke@acculink.com with "Whitepaper" in the Subject line.

The current economic climate is forcing marketers to rethink how they reach their customers. What was considered savvy marketing yesterday is considered old news today. We must think outside the box and look to new avenues for generating revenue not only for ourselves but for our clients as well. AccuLink likes to refer to this as going beyond flat thinking.

The emerging generation of consumers falls into the 15-35 year old range. And most consumers in that age range, own mobile phones. In fact, there are more mobile phones than TVs and computers combined in the USA today. One-fifth of consumers access the Internet on their cell phones every day, and among consumers who shop online, 58% have Web-enabled phones. This gives marketers unprecedented access to their customer base not just by text messaging, but also by web. Smart phones are the new personal computer, contact manager, entertainment center and mobile communication device all in one. What form of technology can bring together traditional print, internet, relationship building and metrics? 2D codes.

What are 2D Barcodes (commonly referred to as QR codes)?
A QR-Code is a two dimensional barcode that is designed to have its contents decoded at high speed, allowing for accuracy in link recognition and convenient functionality. The acronym QR is derived from the term Quick Response. QR Codes were created by the Japanese company Denso Wave in 1994 as a way to track parts in vehicle manufacturing. Other industries began seeing how useful they were and started adapting the technology for their own use. From that point, mobile phone companies saw the potential in this technology and came up with QR code readers so that cell phone users could read these codes right from their phones. This technology is widely used in Asia and Europe and was voted trend of the year for 2009 in the UK.

Two dimensional barcodes are being used in convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). The basic idea is simple. The user scans a two dimensional barcode with a cell phone loaded with barcode reader software and it takes the user directly to a web page with marketing content. This might be coupons, promotional videos, a survey, a blog, or product purchase page. The URL can also be a link to download an MP3, dial a telephone number, or auto-fill your email client with a sender address. Two dimensional bar codes storing addresses and URLs have appeared in magazines, on signs, business cards, billboards, even coffee mugs and t-shirts.

Because scanning a two dimensional code is much easier than entering a URL into a phone by hand, these codes are touted for their ability to reduce the barrier to response. This can translate into higher response rates from consumers with web-enabled phones. Interaction takes place immediately – creating a faster way to reach the consumer. People are more likely to respond to an ad at the point of initial interest, than waiting to access the content from a computer. Higher response rates increase a marketer’s ability to form new relationships (via text messages, electronic coupons, email opt ins, etc) that may never have occurred via more traditional channels of advertising.

To view the white paper in its entirety, be sure to send an email request to the address listed above.