Innovating Email List Marketing

What happens in Vegas…ends up in your inbox (and that’s a good thing:)

By Jenifer Joyce, Director of List Acquisition and Secret Vegas Junkie

The MGM Grand loves me. They send me a nice little email about twice a month to let me know about special events at the hotel, or great savings opportunities on rates and other travel packages. I’m excited to see these emails – with 3 kids under 10, who doesn’t long for a little escape – and I eagerly open them to learn about what great offer might just tempt me to book that trip right now.

I am “Me” media incarnate. Email is the one medium on which I depend to bring me great offers, and still leave me in charge of what I read. See I don’t consume as much media as other people. With a busy work and home life, if I’m lucky enough to watch TV, it’s with TiVo, and I skip all commercials. I listen to music on my iPod, not the radio. I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in years (though I will occasionally go to my beloved Chicago Tribune for the latest back home), and only subscribe to Better Homes & Gardens. Believe it or not, I don’t even get the mail (hubby’s job). My recreational online time is limited to about 10 minutes a day on FB, with one exception. I always check my email. If there’s one dependable way for marketers to reach me, it’s email.

So I’ll cop to the fact that I willingly put myself on the MGM Grand’s mailing list. I’ve been there before, I have one of their club cards, and I said it’s OK for them to send me messages. And let me tell you as a side note, their retention marketing campaigns are working. Since my last trip, which was a first to the MGM Grand, I’ve since decided that I’ll never go anywhere else to stay when I’m in Vegas. (Sorry Venetian).

But what about everything else? There are other offers that pop into my email box from brands that are new to me, or ones that I haven’t thought about in a long time. Love it? Hate it? It’s actually just fine with me. I enjoy getting other offers from time to time in my inbox. If it’s not of interest, no biggie. I just delete it. It’s my inbox and I’m in charge of it. And if for some reason I receive an email from a brand that is annoying to me, I’m in charge there too – I can just click a button and it goes away forever. Why can’t laundry have a button like that?

List Publishers need to think on a “Grand” Scale

In my work life, I also spend a lot of time talking to publishers of great brands, both in print and online, that have cultivated good email marketing programs in-house, but haven’t made their lists available more broadly to marketers. Like the MGM Grand in how they’re nurturing me, these great publishing brands have nurtured and cultivated their audience members. They’ve invested a lot of time and money, and sweated each opt-out. (In one of my future posts I’ll tell you why you need to love the opt-out!) But what happens if more marketers have access to their great list? They worry about losing control, about more offers meaning more opt-outs. They fear their customers will be inundated with messages and they’ll flee like birds on a wire. Not the case. At least with Marketfish. Here’s why.

Marketfish brings the finer things to email marketing

First, like me with the MGM Grand, if the publisher has a true opt-in program, their audience members at some point raised their hand and said that it’s OK for these publishers to send them third-party advertising messages from time to time. Check.

Publishers most likely have been sending offers to their audience, either within newsletters, or as stand-alone messages from advertising partners. So these messages aren’t something that is new to the audience member. Check.

Now let’s think about opening up the publisher’s list so that other marketers can learn about their audience, and ask to send a stand-alone marketing message to the publisher’s list. Publishers have shared concerns with me that they don’t feel like they’ll be in control of their list if they make this possible. Here’s where Marketfish comes in. The buck always stops with the publisher. And the audience member too.

When Marketfish clients, like AT&T, Adobe, and Mountain Outdoor Gear, discover the publisher’s list and want to send a message, we empower all of our publishing partners to see the actual message up front, to make sure that it is in line with what the publisher’s audience expects. If it’s not up to snuff, no big deal. The publisher rejects the campaign and the message is never sent. But if the publisher likes the message, and the campaign, they approve it, and it is sent out by Marketfish on the schedule the publisher approves as well. If the audience member receives the message, and they don’t like it, per CAN-SPAM, they have the power to click that button, and never receive a message from that marketer again. The power remains with the publisher and the audience member.

Oh wait, there’s one more thing, and let’s just say it. Money is involved here. Publishers design email programs to do great things like extend content to their audience members, and acquire and retain customers, but they also like to make money, too. Marketfish helps publishers do that, by extending their reach to marketers that might not have ever discovered them, allow the publishers to set their own rates, and decide which campaigns they want to accept. Because hey, trips to Vegas don’t pay for themselves.

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