Tag Archives: acquisition email marketing

7 Pros and Cons of Email Marketing with Marketfish

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Our intern, Mikayla Chicquette, is back with another blog post. This time she dives into the benefits of using the Marketfish platform over traditional list marketing methods. Keep reading to find out more about how the Marketfish platform helps you overcome these common acquisition email marketing challenges.

1. Con: Isn’t email marketing dead?

Pro: Many people believe that email marketing is dying due to social networking. But email is still an important part of our day-to-day lives. Even social networks send email!

Email is a much more reliable and professional method of communicating and marketing to your target audience. It may be easy to send a tweet to all of your followers announcing your 50% off sale, but if they’re more focused on tweeting their friends about how their dog is chasing its tail, or about the latest celebrity breakup, your very important message will be drowned out.

Plus, email marketing campaigns through Marketfish’s record purchase and list rental marketplace allow you to gain new customers that were not yet followers of your social networking profiles. With a professional and polished email campaign, you can grab your readers’ attention long enough to get them interested in what you have to say. Once your email campaign is out the door, feel free to remind them throughout the day of your products or services with tweets and Facebook messages on your own.

2. Con: Doesn’t lead generation take forever?
Pro: With list rental or record purchasing through the Marketfish platform, you can search millions of records to find your target audience in real-time. It only takes 30 minutes to build and deploy a complete campaign!

3. Con: I have no idea what to write for my campaign.
Pro: First, figure out why you’re writing the campaign, and who you’re targeting. Content ideas will come swimming to you after you answer those questions. If you’re still stumped, we have several posts to help you along the way, check them out here, here, and here. Now get creative!

4. Con: I cannot find an email template that works for my brand, what now?
Pro: Marketfish Creative Solutions is a full-service creative team that can help you build effective email marketing creatives. They’ll even design and build your landing pages, and help you develop a successful lead generation strategy. If you’re interested, contact Marketfish Creative Solutions today!

5. Con: I want the ability to send multiple campaigns.
Pro: Marketfish now offers the ability to purchase over 50 million B2B records that you can use to send multiple email marketing campaigns, without re-renting lists. Head on over to our post and learn more about how you can use this feature.

6. Con: I want to send postal campaigns instead of/as well as email campaigns.
Pro: Marketfish allows you to rent records for sending email and/or postal campaigns, as well as purchase records for launching email, postal or teleprospecting campaigns. Just choose the option that works best for you. Be sure to test and refine your campaigns so you can continually improve performance.

7. Con: I don’t understand why I should use Marketfish instead of going the traditional route, or using another company.
Pro: The conventional method of list marketing could take several weeks and tons of paperwork before your campaign even reaches your target audience. Save yourself the headache and check out The Marketfish “Why” to see that Marketfish was created for clients just like you.

As you can see, Marketfish offers a number of cutting-edge solutions to common list marketing challenges. If you’re curious about the Marketfish platform, and want to know more, just set up a free account today.

 

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How to Leverage Customer Data to Strategically Improve ROI

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We strongly believe in the power of permission-based customer data. It allows marketers to tailor offers and content to customer interests and preferences, as opposed to sending blanket messages that don’t resonate with the majority of your campaign recipients.

We’ve taken this belief in the power of data, and used it to direct our platform’s development. Specifically, we’re committed to making it easier to use customer data more effectively.

In that regard, we thought it would be useful to summarize the ways our platform has evolved to better serve your needs.

  • Click Conversions – Our platform is integrated with DoubleClick. This integration allows you to insert a tracking cookie into your Marketfish campaign, and then track conversions with your DoubleClick dashboard. You can also use this integration to retarget your display ads based on the performance of your email campaign.
  • ROI Calculator – Our ROI calculator merges historical list performance data with your estimated conversion rate and click-through rate to estimate the cost-per-acquisition you can expect from your campaign. This helps you test lists and audiences to estimate ROI before making a purchase.
  • Demographic Reports/Customer Insights – These powerful features allow you to gain detailed insight into your current customers, as well as campaign responders. Customer Insights allows you to upload your encrypted house file, and then receive a free report detailing the key demographic details of your customers. Our Demographic Reports offers a similar functionality, but it covers the demographic details of those leads that respond to your Marketfish campaign. This customer data improves your ability target your campaigns and deliver offers to the audience that’s most likely to make a purchase.
  • Campaign Reports – Our campaign reports are unparalleled in their level of detail. They’re delivered in real-time, and they break down your opens, clicks, and other key ROI metrics in one clear and easy to understand report. These real-time reports help you analyze your campaign, and determine the areas you can improve to better your performance.
  • Engagement Manager – This new feature allows you to purchase the records of those campaign recipients that clicked on your offer, but didn’t take the time to complete your lead form. Purchasing these records gives you an easy way reengage these leads with new campaigns.

These are just a few of the ways our platform helps you use customer data to improve the effectiveness of your marketing. For a detailed look at our platform and the features we make available to marketers, take a tour today, or sign up for a free account.

P.S. If you found this post helpful, please share amongst your colleagues, and if you’d like a guided demo of the platform, contact us today.

How to Use Email to Build a Social Media Community

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Alright, the jig’s up. Marketfish loves email. We just can’t seem to keep our sticky fingers off the little fella. For good reason: it’s a proven tool for generating the leads that keep your sales staff happy. But it’s got other uses – email’s no one trick pony. Using email marketing to building your social media community springs to mind immediately. Here are a couple of quick ways that you can use email for this purpose.

Social sharing and social following buttons

If you want your recipients to share your content and offers through their networks, you need to include sharing buttons in every email. But you also want to build a healthy social media community around your brand.

Allowing folks to share your content and offers works well for extending your brand’s reach, but giving the option to Like or Follow is critical to building an engaged community. Ultimately, an engaged social media community is going to produce more brand evangelists, and a larger, significant conversation around your brand.

Build offers and content that require people to Follow or Like you 

I can understand the reluctance to adopt this strategy, but if your offer or content is good enough, don’t sweat it. Every whitepaper you’ve ever downloaded is a great example. You need to provide contact info before you can access that valuable content. Dropbox also does something similar.

If you Like and Follow their social communities, or Tweet about your love of Dropbox, you get free storage space. It’s a win win for both parties, and if you can build offers or content that deliver the same value, people will participate in your social media communities.

These are just two quick and easy ways to use email to build your social media community. There are many other strategies out there, and if you’ve used one to success, please share in the comments. We value our readers and love hearing from them.

5 Personalization Tips for Email Marketers

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Email’s a nimble little channel. It’s highly targetable, highly testable, and for the most part, highly flexible. Email is also very personal. The act of giving an email address to a brand, even if it’s a work-related email address, is a sign of trust and faith.

As marketers, it’s our job to reciprocate this act of trust. Personalization is one way we can do that. But, you need to be careful. There’s a thin line between using data to write a thoughtful marketing email, and coming off like a creepy, quasi-omniscient internet marketer.

Here are a couple tips for non-eerie email personalization.

  1. Personalize the from line. You get a lot of emails. Most probably come from some faceless corporation. Instead, have the from line list a real person’s name. Perhaps, someone from your sales or marketing staff. You can use the same tactic with email signatures. Include a real name, and contact info if you want to go that far. This will definitely make your email stand out from the pack.
  2. Use past purchase history. If you’re in continuing contact with a current customer, use their past purchase history to tailor offers or content that aligns with those purchases. This shows that you remember that customer, and are making an effort to create sincere marketing.
  3. Say Hi. If the lead filled out a lead form of any kind, at the very least you should know their first and last name. Starting your email by saying “Hi, Ted, Julie, etc.” and speaking to the individual is a great way to build the strong connection that generates repeat customers.
  4. Segment your list. This will ensure that the content and offers you send to potential or current clients are tailored to their interests, verticals, and pain points. Segmented lists generally deliver better performance and engagement metrics, because they allow you to better market to the individual.
  5. Use site activity. If you’ve got a lead that’s engaging with your brand through your content and marketing collateral, but hasn’t converted yet, use their activity to personalize content, demos, and eventually offers that they’ll find appealing. This is similar to using past purchase history, but you don’t want to make a product recommendation at this point. It’s best to continue to nurture this lead with information that they’ll find useful. The hard sell can come once they’re familiarized with your brand.

I hope you found these personalization tips helpful. You may be using some or all of these tips already, but if you’re not, consider using personalization to improve your marketing performance.

 

P.S. If you’ve used personalization successfully, please share your tips or thoughts in the comments. If you enjoyed this post, please share. Thanks!

3 Ways to Make The Most of Your Thank-You Pages

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If you’re a master email marketer, you understand the concept behind “thank-you pages.” If you’re new to the game, here’s a brief explanation. After a lead converts on your landing page, you should either direct that lead to a thank-you page or send them a thank you email. This gives you the opportunity to not only thank your lead for showing interest in your company, but also add to the lead’s positive brand experience.

That’s the straightforward explanation, but you can also use thank-you pages as a secondary landing page to present additional choices or information to your leads. Here are a few ideas for squeezing every last drop of marketing goodness from your thank you pages.

Provide product or content recommendations. If your lead converts on an offer for a product, use the thank-you page to recommend related products. Just don’t push the hard sell. Nothing will turn a lead off faster. You can do the same thing with content. Did a lead register for a webinar? Then providea link to a whitepaper or ebook on a similar subject. The idea is to give the lead a variety of options for engaging with your brand.

Use a video. That’s right, a video. If you don’t have a video yet, make one and put it on every thank-you page. They’re a great tool for promoting and educating leads about your brand. Video is easier for leads to digest than a blurb of copy, and if done correctly, your video will leave your leads with a solid understanding of the products and services your company provides. You can also get fun with videos and show the human side of your brand. Check out the Marketfish video for an example. For some additional information about the awesomeness of video marketing, check out this study by the WVMC and Flimp Media.

Collect customer feedback. Thank you pages are excellent for collecting customer feedback. In fact, it almost seems natural to present a survey after your lead converts. Using a thank you page for this purpose is less intrusive than sending out a standalone email soliciting feedback. Just be sure to keep the survey short and simple. You can also offer links to customer support and other internal departments that your lead might want to contact.

Some extras you should include if possible:

  • Social media following buttons
  • Social media sharing buttons
  • Positive customer testimonials

I hope these tips got that hamster wheel spinning, and now you have loads of ideas for getting the most from your thank-you pages.  If you successfully use thank-you pages, and have a tip to share, do so in the comments.

 

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