January 2002

The Power of E-marketing 

How e-mail marketing can boost attendance in tough times

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

The weeks leading up to the New York City-based Direct MarketingAssociation’s annual meeting, held Oct. 28-31, 2001, at McCormick Place in Chicago, were undeniably the worst weeks in U.S. exhibition industry history. If events weren’t cancelled or postponed, they suffered unprecedented attrition. The DMA forged ahead with its 84th Annual Conference & Exhibition, which drew an estimated 15,000 attendees in 2000, but an e-mail marketing blitz was the only way to get people there.

“We went out with some incredible offers, says Lesa Semaya, Vice President of Marketing for the DMA, which used a series of e-mails sent between July and October to complement direct mail promotions. “Given the time frame between 9/11 and the event, the only way to communicate was by e-mail. It was very effective for us.” From free airfare to Amtrak tickets, the incentives enticed people to travel when they could easily have stayed home.

At a time when world events conspire to curtail attendance at non-essential meetings, show organizers need to market smart. E-mail marketing is now being widely touted as just what you need to boost registrations and booth sales.

Personalized e-mail messages cost less to send and get a higher response rate than direct mail promotions. A carefully crafted e-mail campaign can talk prospects through just about any purchase — from an early-bird registration package to a post-conference getaway. Using industry best practices and making an offer prospects can’t refuse, e-mail campaigns pull.

The Trend
According to eMarketer, a New York City-based firm that provides aggregated e-business statistics, trends and analysis, e-mail is emerging as not just cheaper and faster, but safer than other direct marketing tools. The firm’s May 2001 The eMail Marketing Report estimates the average cost per opt-in e-mail message is $0.20, compared to $0.75–$2 for direct mail and $1–$3 for telemarketing. 

More important than the low cost is the response a message receives. Although an e-mail’s click-through rate (CTR) depends on the nature of the offer, the target audience, the type and quality of the list, and the skill of the campaign execution, eMarketer maintains that e-mail outperforms all other media. Estimates range from a conservative 3.2 percent average CTR to a high-end estimate of 16.4 percent, and personalization improves response rates by 8 percent. In contrast, traditional direct mail generates response rates of less than 2 percent, according to Sales and Marketing (SAM) Magazine. 

In every instance, response from house lists exceeds that from rented lists. Forrester Research, a Cambridge, MA-based independent research firm that analyzes the future and impact of technology change, found that average CTR for an in-house list is 10 percent, compared to 3.5 percent for a rented list. “It’s always better to use an in-house list if you’ve got it,” advises eMarketer Analyst Jonathan Jackson, author of the May report. “If you haven’t got an in-house list built, you’d better start with an acquisition campaign and go from there.”

A customer acquisition campaign, while costly, is worth it. According to IMT Strategies, an integrated marketing and technology analyst based in Stamford, CT, the cost of an e-mail message can range from $1.13 for retention objectives to $20 for acquisition objectives. Compared to the cost of a direct mail piece — from $26.66 to $50, respectively —e-mail offers a higher return on investment (ROI) for acquiring customers.

E-mail also shortens the sales cycle. It may take six to eight weeks to receive a response to a traditional direct marketing campaign, but 80 percent of e-mail marketing campaigns are responded to within 48 hours, according to New York City-based Jupiter Research, a division of Jupiter Media Matrix, a company that specializes in Internet and new technology analysis and measurement. “The short time to market allows marketers to test multiple messages and adjust the offer, the creative end or the segmentation for optimal results,” the eMarketer report says.

Because it’s a cost-effective way to reach a highly targeted audience, e-mail use is on the rise among direct marketers. In 2000, e-mail ranked second after direct mail among the top methods used by Direct Magazine readers. SAM Magazine reports that 22 percent of marketers spent more than 5 percent of their budgets on e-mail marketing in 2001. Forrester Research projects that e-mail marketing expenditures will triple between 1999 and 2004. 

What do the numbers mean for exhibitions? As e-mail marketing becomes a bigger piece of the direct marketing pie, “the invitation comes by e-mail, not brochure,” says Jackson. “It’s definitely cost-effective. You’re getting great response rates from people who are willing to accept solicitations that way.” Moreover, using e-mail reduces the risk that a marketing message won’t be received and lightens the postal load during these troubled times.


How to e-market
The offer is the single most important factor in the success of an e-mail marketing campaign, according to Jackson. And the best way to make that offer appealing is to personalize the message. To craft a personalized e-mail marketing campaign, you need an up-to-date database that captures buying preferences and other information about recipients, a message that compels the recipient to act, and a reporting system that allows you to tweak the campaign based on individual responses.

“E-mail marketing isn’t just trying to market something,” says Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Arlington, VA-based Cvent, provider of online registration, e-marketing and data analysis. “It’s trying to understand your clientele so you can throw better events.”

Capture personal preferences. Building your house list is the first priority. Kim MacPherson, President and Founder of e-mail marketing agency Inbox Interactive in Bethesda, MD, recommends asking for e-mail addresses at every opportunity and requesting permission to send announcements via e-mail. Make e-mail a required field in online forms, then add a check box to accept mailings. Each subsequent e-mail message should remind recipients that they opted to receive the mailing and offer a way to opt out. 

Viral marketing is one way to rapidly build a house list. Asking recipients to forward the e-mail to friends and colleagues lets customers spread your marketing message. Jupiter claims 81 percent of people who receive viral messages pass them on to at least one other person, and nearly half pass them to two or more people. With the right incentive, the new recipients will opt to join your distribution list.

When prospects opt-in, Cvent recommends collecting two types of information: data generated based on behaviors and actions, such as when a registered attendee navigates the show Web site, and data supplied through responses and interactions, such as when a prospective attendee completes an online survey. Incentives, such as discounts for registered users, can increase participation. Be sure to state your privacy policy at the data collection point, revealing how personal information is used and with whom it’s shared. (See www.TRUSTe.org for privacy policy guidelines.) Once the data is gathered, create a password-protected area on your Web site where users can update their information.

Armed with this data, you can segment your list into categories and create customized messages for each group. “It gives you insight into your customers and helps you turn a no into a yes,” Aggarwal says. 

Create a compelling message. To be truly compelling, an e-mail message must engage the recipient in a conversation about his or her wants and needs, according to Effective Email Marketing, an August 2001 Forrester Report by Forrester Research. These conversations guide recipients through the purchasing process. 

Personalizing the pitch makes the conversation flow. It begins with a one-to-one e-mail with individual names in the “to” and “from” lines and at least three or four personal details in the message. For example, the message may have a personal greeting and demonstrate knowledge of who the recipient works for, where the recipient is located and whether or not the recipient participated in the last event. 

“All four of those points drive home that this is a personal e-mail,” says Aggarwal. “When that happens, they’re more likely to read it.” Recipients first read e-mails from friends and family, then colleagues, then the groups they belong to, then unsolicited e-mail (if at all). Personalization cuts through in-box clutter by raising the message in the hierarchy of trust.

Customize the offer to the target audience, and compel the recipient to act: click a link, call a toll-free number ore-mail a customer service representative. Response rates rise with incentives, such as discounts for online registrations, early-bird specials or special offers for first-time registrants.

Blasting the same message to all recipients isn’t always bad, according to MacPherson. For example, JCPenney’s strategy is to send one message to all customers, then follow up with customized messages — offering an incentive to those who didn’t respond, and cross-selling or up-selling to those who did. “You can impact your results and ROI by doing a more targeted, customized and personalized campaign,” she says. “We’re seeing double-digit response rates.”

n Tweak the campaign. Testing what works with your target audience boosts the end results. Do recipients respond to text, HTML or rich media? What day of the week is best for reading e-mail? How often is too often? “Test everything, especially in the beginning,”MacPherson advises. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests that HTML e-mail messages get two to three times higher response rates than plain text, according to eMarketer, but HTML takes longer to download. Experienced e-mail users may actually prefer text. “There’s a ‘Wow!’ factor when you’re first getting online,” says Jackson. “You love HTMLs because they’re fun to see. Then you get cranky because you get 20 a day, and you want to read them quickly.”

Forrester reports only 9 percent of marketers are trying rich media, the Super Bowl ad of e-mail marketing, but the organization predicts 30 percent will use it by 2003. Prohibitive costs and recipients’ inability to view an audio and/or video message may make this format impractical. But by sending multiple formats and using sniffing technology, you can detect which format is readable and serve the right one.

Timing is crucial. According to eMarketer, mid-week deployment, timed to arrive in the recipient’s inbox right after lunch, produces the best results. As a rule of thumb, send no more than one e-mail a week. Forrester suggests that the more personal the conversation, the fewer messages are needed to achieve the same or better conversion rate. 

When you tweak your campaign strategy, segment your list and test one thing at a time: subject line, offer, message, format, day of week and frequency. For each test, track how many recipients respond, don’t respond or unsubscribe. The unsubscribe rate should be less than 2 percent. “If it’s more than that, you’re sending it too often or you’re not hitting their hot buttons,” MacPherson says. 

Off-target or too-frequent e-mails break down trusting customer relationships. Aggarwal cautions: “Once you abuse your customer relationship with e-mail, it’s very difficult to get it back.”


Case Study: The DMA
Representing the $1.86 trillion-a-year multimedia industry for direct and interactive marketing, The DMA used an e-mail marketing campaign in combination with direct mail, telemarketing and broadcast fax to promote attendance at its annual meeting in October. 

The campaign launched 14 weeks out in conjunction with a third-class mailing. The goal of this first wavewas to drive recipients to the conference Web site (www.dmaannual.org) for a $100 early-bird discount. About 135,000 members and prospects on The DMA house list received the direct mail piece, and 21,121 of those also received e-mail.

The e-mail targeted five categories of recipients — B2B, catalog, creative, past delegates and general — with a message tailored to each. Priority codes tracked registrants to their e-mail source, and the discount offer expired eight days after e-mail delivery as an incentive to act quickly.

The DMA deployed three versions of the e-mail: a rich media message produced for free by Pentastel Technologies in Delray Beach, FL, that auto-launched an audio invitation from The DMA president; an HTML version with a link to a streaming audio message; and a text version with a prompt to click the link. A sniffer delivered the format that matched recipients’ capabilities. All three versions invited recipients to register via the conference Web site, forward the message to a friend or opt out of future mailings.

Of the 21,121 e-mails sent, less than 10 percent were undeliverable. (The industry average is 20 percent.)

The average recipient who successfully opened the message viewed it twice. In addition, 204 forwarded the message, 23 opted out and 39 recipients registered. “I was pleased with these results,” says Semaya. “Our goal was for 60 percent of recipients to view the message and 30 percent to interact. We had 96 percent view the message and 51 percent interact with it.”

The DMA forged ahead with its annual meeting despite the tragic events that preceded it. A post-9/11 push went to all 40,000 in The DMA’s database with a free airfare offer for anyone traveling in the continental United States and Canada and staying through Saturday. Non-Saturday stays could get 50 percent off airfare. The initial offer expired on Oct. 5, then was extended to the 12th. “A substantial number of people took advantage of the offer,” Semaya says. Given the success of the e-mail component, “e-mail will play an even greater role next year, especially now with the anthrax scare,” she says. 


The Future
E-mail marketing presents great opportunity as well as significant risk, including privacy violations, e-mail saturation and unwitting spam, according to eMarketer. But by implementingan integrated campaign that reflects best practices in direct marketing, show managers can avoid the pitfalls and succeed in boosting campaign response. 

“I guarantee you’ll always get a better response through e-mail, and the cost savings will be anywhere between 50 and 90 percent,” Cvent’s Aggarwal says. With an eye on the bottom line in a down economy, show managers may see the potential for cost savings and safer, speedier marketing message delivery as an incentive to become e-marketers. 


Cathy Chatfield-Taylor covers technology solutions for business and industry. E-mail:cathy@cc-tunlimited.com.