#email acquisition

[b2bdataservices-blog]

Acquisition Email Marketing Tips from the Trenches at MarketingProfs

“MarketingProfs started in 2001 and built up entirely organically a list of mailable email addresses that stands at over 300,000 today. In 2013, we deployed over 10 million such acquisition e…

[rivalstudent]

Implementing a Proper Email Subscription Point on Your Website

Email acquisition is a hot topic right now at Listrak. With Twitter’s release of the lead generation card and Listrak’s recent whitepaper on the importance of acquisition, I felt it relevant to talk about implementing a proper email subscription point on your website.

Beyond a modal popup solution, the subscription point should be a mini form in the header or footer of your site. By positioning it there, you’re ensuring that the mini form will be on all pages of your website. The most common placement is in the footer, but including it in both the header and footer certainly isn’t  a bad idea. The bottom line is you want the mini form to be easily noticed. Don’t ask for lots of information. Keep the form short and sweet. Ask for  email address only. You can work on acquiring more info later via a welcome message that points to your preference center.

Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Here’s a great example of what a subscription point should be. This example was located in the footer. It’s a mini form that only asks for your email address and it was very visible and easy to find. Well done.

This example has the subscription point located in the header. In this case it’s a text link that upon click displays a pop up mini form. The problem here is it’s hard to find. I really had to scan the page before I saw it. While this example does display a mini form, they would be better served having the mini form directly on the page.

In this example the subscription point was located in the footer. This one had several things going against it. It’s a text link that wasn’t easy to locate. This link directs you to another page that explains the benefits of receiving their email. You then have to click on yet another link that takes you to the account login page. So basically you need to create an account in order to receive their emails. Like it or not, people tend to be impatient, which is why a quick and easy solution is vital. Also, asking the visitor to create an account feels like a commitment. If it feels like a commitment, you’re surely going to scare some potential subscribers away.

Finally, let’s take a look at an example that has all the right things going for it. This is a great example for retailers to follow. There are three subscription points in this example, a link in the header, a modal pop up, and a mini form in the footer.

[offerpop-blog-blog]

Facebook Needs to do a Better Job Pitching Mark Cuban

Last Tuesday, our head of sales forwarded a conversation Mark Cuban, tech billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner, had with Dan Lyons for ReadWrite – saying that he'd be moving his business away from Facebook.

We were a little worried because we'd just signed a deal encompassing the Facebook pages of a bunch of Cuban-owned properties, including the Mavs and HDNet, the day before.  I took a quick read through the blog and had a couple of thoughts:

Facebook Needs to Prove Value Before Taking a Toll...

Cuban acknowledged that Facebook is an important venue for brands (good news for us!), but didn't see why he should have to pay to reach them.  A lot of brands feel the same way.  They're spending time and money to organically build strong fan bases on Facebook.  Shouldn't they be able to reach out to those fans without being charged for it?  Most probably feel that way because Facebook hasn't yet established a solid connection between fan growth / engagement and bottom-line return.  

We face the same issue when discussing our platform with potential customers.  And given how new social marketing is, we feel like it's our job to help prove the connection.  That's exactly what we did when we were courting Cuban's social marketing team.  We highlighted a few performance benchmarks –  like the fact that Offerpop campaigns deliver organic fan growth of 10-15% for brands with huge fan bases, vs. the Facebook average of 2%.  And that we typically deliver 15,000 qualified email addresses per campaign.  Then we gave them free access to the platform.  Now they're a customer, and it's our job to demonstrate continued value across the key performance metrics that are important to them.

...But They Do Deserve to be Paid

Brands are beginning to treat Facebook like any other marketing channel – moving beyond Likes and looking at how the platform delivers on performance.  This usually means bringing in members of the marketing team who are more focused on return, like their email and search marketers.  And those team members are discovering a lot of value.  One simple example – according to the DMA, the cost of acquiring an email address for a B2C company is $8.73.  So the value of email addresses collected via a typical Offerpop campaign is probably $120,000 on the low end (15,000 emails x $8 per email address).  But the average cost of such a campaign comes in at a fraction of that – probably around $5k, including our rate plus the customer's time and effort.

This kind of value is possible because Facebook has created a pretty amazing platform.  So they probably deserve a few bucks when brands decide to amplify campaign reach.  I'm sure Cuban would agree, if someone just walked him through the numbers.

Mark Cooper

Offerpop Co-founder

[digitalista]

Google, you sexy beast... sign up for a newsletter in your search campaign without ever going to a landing page= genius.

[emailrocks]

Perfect example of the value exchange for an email address. Trust me marketers ... A customer's email address is worth at least a great cup of coffee.