Starbucks Creates Online Instant Connections

June 28, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Strategy 

My Starbucks reward program…

provides customized rewards that provides customized rewards based on frequency of visits.

This is clever marketing since it comes from the old school database marketing theory of always approaching the lowest hanging fruit in your active customer database of frequency, recently and amount of sale.

Segmenting

Segmenting frequent customers will assure a higher probability of sale if the offer and campaign is executed appropriately.  Starbucks is using this direct responser model for mobile customers through cell phone in real-time at their stores.

This gives Starbucks the opportunity to to connect with their customers and build loyalty, since many of their customers are early adopters or trendy and embrace new technologies like mobile direct response.

This program also works well with social networking like Facebook and Twitter and Starbucks recently introduced two new apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

With Starbucks success of these mobile apps they were able to further explore opportunities to  reach their best customers through mobile applications. Starbucks created special offers targeted for specific beverage products like Frappuccino and Fourscore with offers of a dollar off coupons, customers appreciate the connections with the brands they love, amd mobile presents an opportunity to do this.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

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About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection,

How Do I Make My e-mail Messages Relevant?

June 25, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 

The more relevant and “personalized” the message

the higher the response rate.

But how do you determine which information is necessary to make your communications more personalized?

Write a short marketing plan to determine your objectives. How you plan on using the information—for example, for promotions, for invites to special events or for up-selling opportunities—will drive the type
of information you gather.

Customer Profiles

Customer profiles can include are they business to business or consumer if so will we need certain titles and job descriptions along with company size and location.

Consumer would include net icome or worth, credit rating do they
purchase online frequently using credit cards or PayPal, do they spend over a $100 per purchase?

Capture information

Now that you know what information you need, how do you capture it? Ask your customer. If don’t already have a way to do so, a powerful technique is to set up a preference center on your website.

A preference center gives you a mechanism to capture useful information such as name, age, gender, ZIP code, mobile telephone number and permission to use it for SMS messages, type of communications they want to receive and which social media sites they’re using.

Driving customers to the preference center and encouraging them to share information there can be as simple as sending an e-mail (or posting something on your Facebook page) and offering special discounts, coupons or contest eligibility in exchange for preference information.

Gathering these data into a customer database enables you to create more relevant, personalized messaging:

  • ZIP codes help you to better promote local events.
  • Demographics can help improve the relevancy of lifestyle-related product offers.
  • Collecting mobile numbers and getting permission to use them for SMS allows to you send out last-minute clearance sale
  • announcements.

Network” e-mail links to Twitter or Facebook can help you leverage these channels and determine the influencers within your customer base.

Web-click data can be tracked to determine product interests and allow you to immediately respond to abandoned sessions.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

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DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. 

E-mail Marketing for Nonprofit

June 23, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 

With the current recession stinging non-profit orgainzation budgets, it can be difficult for businesses to effectively stay in touch with their customers.

Those in the nonprofit organizations dealt with these challenges before the economic downturn. Those in nonprofits find e-mail marketing is a cost-effective, timely way to reach donors, volunteers and sister agencies.

Nonprofit that use a monthly e-mail newsletteror blogs to publicize everything from fundraising events to special facility tours. Can cost effectively take advantage of e-mail campaigns.

Using templates available in the iContact application, its monthly newsletter gives them a professional look and feel, without costing them significant resources.

In iContact’s experience, nonprofits enjoy a higher open rate than the average for-profit business due to the recipients’ increased level of trust with the
organization. The Conservators’ Center has seen open rates between 24 and 28 percent for their e-mail marketing messages.

For nonprofits, the benefits of e-mail marketing has sereral advantagres and they include cost-efficient communication; the ability to attract and retain constituents; and the delivery of timely information in a professional manner.

The cost of entry — in both application knowledge and staff time — is relatively low, making e-mail marketing the best communication channel for nonprofits that rely on reaching their donor and volunteer base to be successful.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

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About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options.

Dig Deeper Into Database for Marketing List

June 21, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

New technologies allows direct marketers to dig deeper…

than ever before to find the elusive list.

Database marketing use to be about pulling a list from a customer or subscriber for a consumer or business to business promotion. Direct marketing usually worked quite well back then but today’s state-of-the-art technology can reach far beyond the old preferences.

Today’s database marketing

…is evolving into something with a multiplicity of new channels and behavioral analytics, segmentation and precise overlays.

Database marketing today is about refining the sales process and list building. This may involve feeding a marketing database into a on demand cloud computing platform that feeds into a CRM prospect list that is appended and enriched with Internet search engines for prospect list titles and e-mails.

Database segmentation

Database segmentation will be one of the biggest trends in modern day list building. Some people have a natural feel for the type of list that they need for a marketing promotion. Many marketers use analytics to find the correct segments when building their lists.

Database segmentation is relying less on age, gender and location and more on segment hoping or moving from one category to another or hopping segments. These are more dependent on society or anthropology and looking at data in a different way.

The ability to monitor or measure customer interactions on websites at a much deeper level, behavioral information can outperform lists any day. Never before in history have we ever been able to customer behaviors on Websites at such a deep level.

We are at the place where it is possible to pull data on profiles and transactional data but also on behavioral information and behavioral information is being uncovered by social media, but the effectiveness of social media hasn’t been proven yet.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List.

Improve Email Response With Great Offers

June 18, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing List Broker 
Trying to determine the best offer to improve e-mail response has never been easy for marketers.
They question how much they should give, if a percentage off works better than a flat fee; or whether giving a discount or coupon trains customers to expect similar deals via e-mail.

Speaking as an e-mail subscriber, I appreciate a good offer.  this can best be determined with segmented testing when possible.
Thes best way to test email open rates is to only change one small element and test with an A/B split randomly.

Sort out into two seperate files of equal size, with similar elements.

For a consumer, this is the best of two worlds. He or she gets a discount, and a flat $25 off of that marked-down price. Even if I am not in the mood to shop.
Most people would feel obligated if the offer is good. Inside the e-mail, there is a coupon for 20% off a $250-to-$499 online or in-store purchase, and 30% off a purchase over $500 — plus, of course, the $25 off. Give a deadline to respond to this once in a lifetime offer of less than 3 days.

Its subject line is

Two days left: Save an extra 20% at REI-Outlet‏.” The message works because it has a good offer — an extra
20% off already discounted items. It is also timely and compels the consumer to act now, because there are only two days left.
Both e-mails are excellent examples of how a marketer can use offers and timeliness in subject lines to move inventory and drive sales.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. 

Trucking Company Uses Twitter for Lead Generation

June 16, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing List Broker 

Con-Way Inc,

A trucking company and logistics provider is currently using social media to communicate to listen and extend it’s mission.

Con-Way has guided it’s brand onto Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube and also uses blogs to scour the Web for lead generation. This is used for both new customers and new employees as a thought and leadership system.

Unfortunately the reach of social media in business to business marketing isn’t as deep as consumer marketing but the opportunities are still tremendous.

The customers that are currently doing business and have a long term relationship with the companies brand and if one of these customers feels strongly enough to say something online about the services than the return on investment is very high if you can respond right away.

Con-Way uses a simple tool to listen and to respond to posts about the company and it is finding uses for social media that go beyond simple branding. In June, Con-Way launched  a new members-only Twitter page that pushes out load listings to Twitter followers.

The load listings are picked up by independent truckers across the country the trucking industry including individual truck drivers is dependent on mobile devices which makes Twitter a great way to distribute these posts.

The potential audience for the Con-Way Twitter apps is 10,000 third party trucking companies does business with.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options.

Papa John’s Markets Using e-Mail List and Social Media

June 14, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 

The pizza chain Papa John’s

is encouraging it’s customers to create a new pizza from it’s menu.

The promotion name is Papa’s Specialty Pizza Challenge

and Papa John’s is e-mailing its customer database using banner ads, TV ads and Facebook page to promote the promotion.

They had a Facebook app developer in house to work on the social networking application.

The pizza giants objective was to draw attention to it’s better ingredients, better pizza brand positioning. They wanted to do something that was authentic and engaging and to give customers a reason to learn more about the ingredients.

Consumers can enter the contest on facebook.com/papajohns and entrants must share the recipe and name and tell about the company in 250 words or less and what makes their pizza special.

Papa John’s will feature all entrants on their Facebook page and judges will consider each items name, recipe and story when picking the semifinals. The company’s goal is to both customer acquisition and retention.

Pizza business is very competitive…

with every body actively engaged in marketing and talking about their products so they can reinforce loyalty from existing customers while encouraging new customers to stay with you.

Papa John’d founder, John Schnatter and CEO will test different recipes at the headquarters in Louisville and give three finalists a $1000 marketing budget to drive sales to their recipes.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. 

Consumers Demand Personalized E-mail Lists

June 12, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 

More than half…

of US consumers said they would be more responsive to e-mails from marketers if they were more personalized and highly-targeted.

That is among the key findings of a new report issued from e-mail service providers

According to the report for E-mail Marketers

Consumers Demand Relevance, 64% of consumers want marketers to know the types of products or services they like; 54% want marketers to know whether the consumer is a new or returning customer and 36% want marketers to know their shopping habits.

In addition, 85% of surveyed consumers want companies to ask about their e-mail preferences at registration.

Consumers have clearly indicated, according to the experts that they will reward marketers for personalized, preference-driven messages
with their engagement.

E-mail marketers…

Need to capture information that allows them to get to know their subscribers better, group director of strategic services for e-Dialog, in an e-mail.

They need to stop looking at e-mail as a tool for a quick sale and instead look at it as a way to build more profitable and enduring customer relationships.

2,000 consumers were polled in an online survey, which took place during the first quarter of 2010.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options.

4 Myths about Direct Mail Testing

June 10, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Mailing 

Is Direct mail marketing making a comeback in 2010.

Copy, Offer, Lists, Formats, Personalization —Questions that you might have yourself before testing your next
campaign.

With reduced competition in the mailbox and e-mail essentially failing as a prospect tool, 2010 can actually be the year when response to direct mail picks up, especially if you test and do it right.

Do you look at response rate or profit per hundred mailed or profit per order when evaluating results?

Make sure your measuring your direct mail marketing results accurately. Response rate is not as critical, in my opinion, as the other two, although it can greatly influence your profits.

What can I do to convince my company to start reinvesting the marketing budget back into direct mail instead of throwing the entire marketing budget at Web marketing?

Make a compelling case for direct mail’s accountability, and show them what your competitors are doing—or not doing—to make your case.

Talk about the control package failure aspect of direct marketing a
Direct mail is the best way to drive more site visits; even Facebook users are finding that out.

Present a compelling case, supported by statistics you find.

You’ve heard that a different headline would pull up to six times more than another. Is this true?

Headlines and, in a sales letter, the P.S.Post Script are read first, so that’s where you’ll see a good deal of impact. Even changing a single word in the headline can make a significant difference.

Decades ago, the legendary John Caples increased response 20 percent by changing “How to repair cars” to “How to fix cars.” Sometimes surprisingly mundane changes work wonders.

An educational institute for bankers once asked us how to get more branch managers to respond to its newspaper ad.

We suggested simply adding the words “branch managers” in large type at the top of the ad, leaving everything else, including the headline, unchanged. Replies shot up.

It makes sense that a product priced at $24 would outsell the same one priced at $29, but the opposite is often true.

So, rather than try to reason which wording will sell more, you can know by doing a split-copy test. (I assume you’re dealing with a headline. If the wording is buried in copy, I would stress over other things first.)

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. 

The Secrets to Buying E-mail Lists Versus Renting

June 8, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Email Lists 


Rent an e-mail list or buy it?Do you understaand the advantages and dis-advantages?

Buying an e-mail list gives direct marketers complete control, allowing them to slice and dice data to create segments and append that data to get better targeting.
E-mail 10 or 12 times per year if you desire. The little known secret lie about list purchase and rental to help marketers make the decision.
List Broker Secrets
Choose rental partners that prospects respect to get the best results. Imagine you are trying to reach 1,000 Chief Financial Officers.

Which is a better list source:

A popular trade publication like Crain’s Business to Busines or a well-known blogger? It depends.
Which one are your potential clients more apt to trust? When you rent a list, your message comes directly from another brand.

The most respected brands are the ones that are going to inspire the best click and open rates It’s amazing how brand-loyal people are.
People will often open something from a company they have never heard of just because they trust the conduit.
You can survey your current customers to determine how they feel about various list sources. Their answers may be surprising and may help you save money.
There’s is pay-for-performance option when it comes to list buying or renting.
Pay for performance is much easier to pull off in the list rental space, since they use this technique with affiliate marketing it is strickly performance based and sometimes pay-per-click
but it’s also possible in the list buying space, too, though few providers talk much about either option. You have to ask for it but, if the spend is there, most companies will work with you on a performance-based campaign he said.A good list manager will share some of that risk around performance because they know their list is going to deliver.

A good strategy, is to go to prospective partners and tell them exactly what you’re looking for in terms of how many leads you’d like to generate and how much you’re willing to pay to acquire a single customer or lead.

If your numbers are reasonable, the vendor may agree to get paid when you meet those target goals.

Until next time, here is to your continued success!

.

DYMO Label Writer Twin Turbo The perfect printer for any small business! See why people rave about this direct mail marketing printer and why you can’t survive without it!

About the Author:

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options.  

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