Although list brokering is a well known and well understood practice, sending e-mail to lists is still too often something that can result in brands being tarred with the brush of SPAM. 

In general, even if consumers have agreed to receiving information from "trusted partners" - many won't recall that they have agreed to these additional communications.

A far more effective way to reach consumers is to be included as a banner or other content in someone's current communications to their customers.  I mean - what better way to demonstrate that you are truly a "trusted partner" than to give you ad space in their regular newsletter.

Are there any agencies that are looking at this as an alternative to straight e-mail list rental?  i.e.; - Same request for targeted consumers, but instead of paying for a list, pay for space in an existing newsletter?

Thanks,

Troy

or - as these are not exclusive options - the sensible thing would be to test all three:

1. send out your own emails to someone else's list (being careful A: to choose the right partner & the right list and B: to acknowledge the relationship strongly enough that recipients recognise it, and don't see your email as spam)
2. put ads (or - infinitely better - actual value-adding content) in partners' email addresses (yes, there are very many companies that do this & facilitate this)
3. as Jeff says, gather email addresses for yourself & target that list

closely track & measure all three. as with all of your campaigns, discontinue (or improve) the techniques that don't go toward achieving your goals & put your efforts into the ones that do.

We've been preaching organic growth since we began email marketing, way back in the last century!

This lead us to the realisation that a newsletter that talks about more than just how great we are would be more interesting, more valuable, more useful to the recipient... and in turn, they are more likely to take a quick look, see WIIFThem.

 
We tend to assume we know what an email is going to tell us... if it's from WeAreGreat.com then if the first and second emails major on the owners, the third - three hundredth emails will probably go unread and added to the spam filter rather than unsubscribed... and when you hear about them 2 years later you'll assume they are still being great when they may have moved on to being happy!

One of our regular clients used our email system to send a message to a list they'd bought in. He did a spot of DIY, grabbing a web page and sending it out to over 14,000 schools... guess how many opened it... about 2000... and the real measure for success (for me), how many actually wanted to know more and clicked through? Less than 20!!!

He was gutted... I wasn't surprised and explained that why should they open it... had you made contact before... how many people do you think the list has been sold to... etc.

His own newsletter get around a 4% click through... not fantastic but realistic for his market where customers may buy once every couple of years. Many of his key accounts comment on the newsletter... so they may be too busy to click but are happy to be kept in touch.

As part of our www.businessinberkshire.co.uk newsletter, a recent article we published for him around the World Cup saw 23 people click through... the story was 12 in the stack and the most popular story had 40 people click on it.

Our target is to get 25% of those that open the email to click on an average of 2 links... And to get 20 links to achieve at least 10 click throughs.

Yes you can achieve 100% click through if you send 10 emails to 10 people who are ready to buy PS3... but we tend to live in the real world.

When your dealing with a community email / website then the reality is not just the email distribution... it's the traffic it picks up due to the volume of content and other factors that will make it attractive the search engines... the chances are it has not grown up over night... lots of hard work, sweat and tears will have been committed by the team behind it.

Let's say we despatch to 3000 email newsletters, 1000 will be open and 250 go clicktastic... on that same day 1500 - 2000 people will visit the site.

My advice would be to build your own organic list and connect up with web communities that can help you increase your website ranking and drive visitors to your website.

Upgrade your www.e-consultancy.com account so you can add more articles and press releases via its trusted network, take a look at www.businessinberkshire.co.uk and our call to UK Business Networks across the land... www.businessinberkshire.co.uk/ukbn/extra2.html

 
Have a nice day...

I also agree, however email has taken on a new face in that, through opt-in data and sustained, content relevant campaigns, database marketing is attractive as it provides companies with a diminishing cost per acquisition over time ( not to mention you have multiple attempts to contact the consumer, unlike PPC where you only have one chance unless they give you their details through registration- i won't go into the maths of not capturing aname VS capturing asthat would take a whole day). The only problem being you need a steady flow of fresh opt-in relevant names, in large volumes, to reduce ROI times. Most companies do not have the traffic on their sites to capture enough names to amortise their DB spend. There are solution based comapnies (like IPT) which can collect names on a brands behalf via opt-in questionnaires. Those with the patience, understandng and foresight within DB marketing have already seen massive increases in returns ( on and off line) over the past 4 years through email marketing, but many are still none the wise. Key here is to capture as many relevant names as possible at a nominal cost(usually not hard to justify vs ppc) even if it means using a third party to help and segment along the communication way against brand or sales objectives.

On 08:27:36 24 July 2006 JeffBarnes wrote:
>I completely agree with your comments about email list
>rental and the fact that some people still think it is OK
>to send out emails to a list compiled by a "trusted
>partner" amazes and saddens me. The idea of spending
>money to pay for ad space instead is a slight improvement
>but I never take any notice of online ads or click on them
>and I don't know anyone who does.
>
>Now here's a novel idea - if you want to collect people's
>email address why don't you try asking for them. You can
>do this on your site, when you meet them, why they buy
>something, when they ask for something etc. and provided
>you ask them whether it is fine to do so you then have a
>list that you can segment, and send targetted emails that
>will be well received and not have you labelled as a
>spammer and potentially black-listed by your ISP.
>
>Remember that the number of emails that you send out is no
>longer a measure of success - the number that get
>delivered, received, opened and clicked is.
>
>Jeff Barnes
>