Email Lessons From a Bridal Expo

In a post at the Lunch Pail blog, bride-to-be Casey Barto recounts a visit to a bridal expo. “On the day of the show with pen in hand, I scribbled my email address and name on the contact lists of vendors who interested me most,” she says. What happened next taught her a few best-practices about following up with prospects met at tradeshows.

Here are four key tips based on her experience:

Follow up promptly. “After the show was over, I was ready to receive at least a few welcome emails,” she says. “I checked my email throughout the first week after the show—nothing. Didn’t they want my business?” Then, nearly two weeks later, they flooded her inbox en masse. By the time she got all the messages, she had a hard time remembering who was who.

Explain why you’re making contact. Jog a recipient’s memory with a quick reminder of how you met or why you’re touching base. “I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received … that have gone in the junk folder because I didn’t remember talking to someone or signing up for something,” she notes.

Avoid industry clichés. In Barto’s case, the sentence “You’re getting married!” dominated subject lines and introductions. “Of course I’m getting married,” she says. “That’s why I signed up for your emails. Tell me something I don’t know, like why I should do business with you, or what features may interest me.”

Beware the opt-in faux pas. A vendor who was unavailable on Barto’s wedding day continued to send promotional email. “Not only have you made it obvious that you don’t know me as an individual,” she says, “but now you’ve annoyed me.”

Take notes. Don’t alienate tradeshow leads with an email campaign that treats them like they’re still just a face in the crowd. Personalize your follow-ups.

Source: Lunch Pail.

 

When “Z” Comes Before “A”

You probably haven’t given much thought to alphabetical order since you said “present” as your high school teacher took attendance each morning. But in a post at the Neuromarketing blog, Roger Dooley reports on research suggesting you should. The reason? It seems that people whose surnames begin with letters between R and Z are more likely to respond—and respond speedily—when you give them urgent calls to action.

“We find that the later in the alphabet the first letter of one’s childhood surname is, the faster the person acquires items as an adult. We dub this the last name effect, and we propose that it stems from childhood ordering structures that put children with different names in different positions in lines,” write Kurt A. Carlson and Jacqueline M. Cona in the Journal of Consumer Research.

“In addition to responding quicker,” they continue, “we find that those with late alphabet names are more likely to acquire an item when response time is restricted and they find limited time offers more appealing than their early alphabet counterparts.”

In other words, notes Dooley, “a lifetime of being last in line (and getting the least-desirable slice of pizza or piece of cake) conditions these late-alphabet people to act quickly when they have the opportunity.”

But before you jump into a test campaign, he offers this caveat: “I’d guess that someone whose surname was acquired later in life, like a woman born an Adams but who became a Wilson via marriage, would not exhibit the same behavior. She wouldn’t have had the lifetime of conditioning that comes from always being last.”

Segmenting customers according to the first letter of their last name just might be the key to a quick sale.

Source: Neuromarketing.

 

Three Things You Must Do Before You Increase Email Frequency

Frequency has become an increasingly hot topic for email marketers. A recent article in The New York Times, for instance, reports research results from marketing firm Responsys that show large retailers sent an average of 152 messages per subscriber in 2010—a 15-percent boost in email volume from 2009.

Sounds like a good argument for you, too, to send more promos out, right? Well, hold on a minute.

Megan Feltes, writing at the Emma blog, warns against the knee-jerk reaction of sending even more emails in the hopes of making even more profit after successful results from an increase in frequency. “While email marketing remains the most cost-effective, most trackable direct marketing method and is still the champ when it comes to marketing ROI, those juicy returns only come with forethought to strategy and smart implementation,” she cautions.

To help you gain the benefits of increased frequency without alienating your audience, Feltes offers pointers like these:

Be sure your audience knows what to expect. A sudden switch from once-a-week mailings to two or three times a week, for instance, might feel like an ambush. “Encourage your recipients to update their preferences or answer a survey prior to increasing your volume,” she advises.

Segment your audience and target appropriately. ”Gone are the days of the mass e-blast (or as I call it, the e-bludgeon),” she says. Your best customers might love the additional access to offers and content; those who make one purchase a year might, however, resent the intrusion.

Consider non-holiday opportunities for extra messages. Subscribers are more receptive to increased frequency when content is tied to a special event or product launch, she notes.

The Po!nt: More isn’t always better. If you increase frequency without laying the right groundwork, you might find yourself sending more and more emails to fewer and fewer recipients.

Source: Emma.