Archive for February, 2012
Adestra endorsed with LiveIntent LiveCertified Alliance Program
LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, today announced it has launched LiveCertified, an alliance program for Email Service Providers (ESP) and other email marketing ecosystem partners. The program is designed to help ESPs and data partners stay up to date on the latest email ad serving and revenue generation technology available through LiveIntent. It also ensures that mutual clients are able to implement LiveIntent LiveTags with ease, making real-time advertising in email a turnkey and profitable solution for LiveCertified partners and their clients.
As part of the launch, LiveIntent has announced key partnerships with ESPs who have already joined the LiveCertified program, Adestra being one of them.
“The LiveCertified program is about compatibility and client growth.” said Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director of ESP Adestra. “As a member, our clients know that our LiveTag parameters have been tested and work as expected. We’re excited to partner with LiveIntent and help our clients increase their email publishing revenue.”
ESPs in the program can now offer their customers a simple way to include real-time ads in their emails without additional add-ons or development. ESP integration with LiveCertified offers publishers a way to offset the costs of sending email to customers, while helping advertisers and brands reach consumers where they spend the most time: their email inbox.
Before participating in the LiveCertified program, partners simply have their implementation and LiveTag parameters vetted by LiveIntent. Acceptance into the program certifies that partners are compatible with the latest LiveIntent LiveTag capabilities, which enable publishers and advertisers to buy and sell display ads within email newsletters, alerts and notifications.
Adestra Think Series Webinar Synopsis – SMS as a powerful marketing tool.
Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar yesterday, I hope it has left you with lots to think about with regards to SMS.
SMS is the most widely used mobile technology and 90% of SMS sent, are read within 15 minutes of receiving. SMS can work hand in hand with any other forms of marketing helping you to build an opt-in database. If you place an advert in a newspaper how do you know how well it has done? You’re left with only brand awareness to measure ROI, whereas if you place an SMS call to action on that newspaper advert you could see that you had x number of people requesting further information as a direct result because of the keyword used in the advert. Different keywords could be used for different mediums, acting as a unique identifier per medium allowing you to identify the most effective campaigns and stream line future campaigns.
We also looked at how SMS can work well with email as it is a great way to encourage people to sign up to your email communications when they may not necessarily be near a computer. For example rather than having someone with a clip board collecting email addresses at an event which you may or may not be able to read accurately when manually entering them into your system.
If you would like to see how SMS and email can work together, text the word ‘subscribe’ and your email address to 81222 in order to sign up to Adestra’s email communications.
Covered within the Q & A section we also discussed the legalities surrounding SMS, similar to email, SMS is covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations (PECR), which states that in order to send marketing communications via SMS you must have opt in consent, or is covered by soft opt-in. Make sure you are not sending unwanted SMS’s, as unwanted texts will annoy recipients, more so than other forms of marketing due to the personal nature of the mobile phone.
If you have any questions regarding SMS or how Adestra can help you please get in touch by emailing moreinfo@adestra.com. If you would like to view the recorded version of the webinar, click here.
Have you registered for our next webinar?
A Think series special feature:
Lighting the way for the email marketing
industry in 2012
The Adestra & Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2012
Date: Wed 28 March 2012
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 BST
Duration: 60 minutes
*Post webinar a recorded version will be sent to all
registrants whether they attended or not
The Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census results are hot off the press. This is your exclusive invitation to our special feature webinar to launch this report. This year, the focus has done a 180 degree spin – marketers are switching back to the demonstrative ROI of email marketing. The main challenges surround fundamental topics, including interoperability, database maintenance, and automation.
This webinar will give you a unique insight into the census results and how you need to adapt to stay ahead of the game. As an additional bonus, all attendees will also receive a copy of the report worth £250.
What you will learn:
1. Top line results – where is email marketing at as an industry?
2. How are marketers overcoming challenges of platform integration?
3. What are the key database maintenance strategies being used by market leaders?
4. How are email marketers benefiting from automation, in terms of both time and money?
The Agenda:
Want to build your list size? Don’t dive in head first.
A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”. He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.
A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.
One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!
- Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
- Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.
- Prioritise all ‘new things’ you’re going to do – You might end up with a big ‘ole list of stuff to do. All exciting, all stuff you want to do. But some will take time to implement, some will cost more. Factor all those in and prioritise in which order you’re going to tackle stuff. Don’t be afraid of paying someone Project Management fees to handle this either – it will help get it done.
- Get emails to new signups quickly – Whether this is enforcing a double opt-in process or just sending them a thank you email. You should aim to send them their first email from you immediately. It’s a technical issue to resolve but resolving it will be the biggest thing you can do to improve the engagement of your email list. I promise!
So assuming you’re rocking these four things, what’s next?
- Social sign up - If someone likes you on Facebook, follows you on Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn, that’s great. At some point though, any or all of these social channels might change the game, making it more difficult to market to these valuable brand advocates. It is not uncommon these days for a brand that has 300,000 likes on Facebook but only 30,000 people on their email list. The value of your efforts on your social channels is fine, and can be discussed elsewhere – but at least for now email is the still the best route for you to send messages with traceable results. Every place you have a presence in the Social world you should link to, or embed, a sign up form. And in available text boxes (think Twitter bios and G+ “About” pages) promote it (even incentivise it) and say what they should look forward to when they get your emails. Have a read of Parry, one of our Account Director’s blogs on the subject here.
- Text signups – Lots of ESPs (like us) offer the ability to rent a shortcode (or a shared shortcode) and use it for data capture. Pick up your phone now and text the word ‘subscribe’ and then your email address to 81222. You’ll then see it in action. It’s great for events, great for charities, shops and many other applications too. As per the social sign ups, if you go for this, don’t hang back in promoting it, put that text everywhere!
- Leverage all customer/prospect touch points – even if you can’t run with the SMS signup route, and you only have a website signup, think about all the places you might be able to entice people on to your list, and how you can entice them. Trade shows, training sessions, conferences… point of sale, shop window, partner websites, banner ads. Check out the section in the emaildirect blog post here, entitled “How to Build an Email List: Offline”
- Give signups something in return – doesn’t have to be money off offers, we could be talking about some top tips. Send a personalised offer.. doesn’t have to be about money. Lay it out all through the signup process – tell them what they should expect to receive and show examples. You can also think about ranking these new signups – ask them what and when they might be interested in joining a paid program of some sort. See how our client Celtic Manor grew their email list organically by encouraging their existing subscribers to recommend their friends – also check out Jordie van Rijn’s excellent signup process on Emailmonday.com.
- Don’t forget your website – you may push all channels towards one form on your website. All cool. Don’t forget though that you can improve signups on your site through search or organic traffic. Make the form more obvious. Link to it from your header and footer. Place links to it at points across your site enticing people with exclusive content if they sign up.
- A step further? – Do you have “share this email” or “share this article” links in your existing emails? You can make this shared version of your email carry specific content – so think about adding a data capture form to all shared versions of email newsletters or promotions.
Right, that was enough to get my friend started list building. What about you? Would be great to hear your ideas on how to build a list organically.
Steve Denner
Director
Adestra endorsed with LiveIntent LiveCertified Alliance Program
LiveIntent, the platform for buying and selling email ad inventory exactly like display, today announced it has launched LiveCertified, an alliance program for Email Service Providers (ESP) and other email marketing ecosystem partners. The program is designed to help ESPs and data partners stay up to date on the latest email ad serving and revenue generation technology available through LiveIntent. It also ensures that mutual clients are able to implement LiveIntent LiveTags with ease, making real-time advertising in email a turnkey and profitable solution for LiveCertified partners and their clients.
As part of the launch, LiveIntent has announced key partnerships with ESPs who have already joined the LiveCertified program, Adestra being one of them.
“The LiveCertified program is about compatibility and client growth.” said Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director of ESP Adestra. “As a member, our clients know that our LiveTag parameters have been tested and work as expected. We’re excited to partner with LiveIntent and help our clients increase their email publishing revenue.”
ESPs in the program can now offer their customers a simple way to include real-time ads in their emails without additional add-ons or development. ESP integration with LiveCertified offers publishers a way to offset the costs of sending email to customers, while helping advertisers and brands reach consumers where they spend the most time: their email inbox.
Before participating in the LiveCertified program, partners simply have their implementation and LiveTag parameters vetted by LiveIntent. Acceptance into the program certifies that partners are compatible with the latest LiveIntent LiveTag capabilities, which enable publishers and advertisers to buy and sell display ads within email newsletters, alerts and notifications.
Adestra Think Series Webinar Synopsis – SMS as a powerful marketing tool.
Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar yesterday, I hope it has left you with lots to think about with regards to SMS.
SMS is the most widely used mobile technology and 90% of SMS sent, are read within 15 minutes of receiving. SMS can work hand in hand with any other forms of marketing helping you to build an opt-in database. If you place an advert in a newspaper how do you know how well it has done? You’re left with only brand awareness to measure ROI, whereas if you place an SMS call to action on that newspaper advert you could see that you had x number of people requesting further information as a direct result because of the keyword used in the advert. Different keywords could be used for different mediums, acting as a unique identifier per medium allowing you to identify the most effective campaigns and stream line future campaigns.
We also looked at how SMS can work well with email as it is a great way to encourage people to sign up to your email communications when they may not necessarily be near a computer. For example rather than having someone with a clip board collecting email addresses at an event which you may or may not be able to read accurately when manually entering them into your system.
If you would like to see how SMS and email can work together, text the word ‘subscribe’ and your email address to 81222 in order to sign up to Adestra’s email communications.
Covered within the Q & A section we also discussed the legalities surrounding SMS, similar to email, SMS is covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations (PECR), which states that in order to send marketing communications via SMS you must have opt in consent, or is covered by soft opt-in. Make sure you are not sending unwanted SMS’s, as unwanted texts will annoy recipients, more so than other forms of marketing due to the personal nature of the mobile phone.
If you have any questions regarding SMS or how Adestra can help you please get in touch by emailing moreinfo@adestra.com. If you would like to view the recorded version of the webinar, click here.
Have you registered for our next webinar?
A Think series special feature:
Lighting the way for the email marketing
industry in 2012
The Adestra & Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2012
Date: Wed 28 March 2012
Time: 15:00 – 16:00 BST
Duration: 60 minutes
*Post webinar a recorded version will be sent to all
registrants whether they attended or not
The Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census results are hot off the press. This is your exclusive invitation to our special feature webinar to launch this report. This year, the focus has done a 180 degree spin – marketers are switching back to the demonstrative ROI of email marketing. The main challenges surround fundamental topics, including interoperability, database maintenance, and automation.
This webinar will give you a unique insight into the census results and how you need to adapt to stay ahead of the game. As an additional bonus, all attendees will also receive a copy of the report worth £250.
What you will learn:
1. Top line results – where is email marketing at as an industry?
2. How are marketers overcoming challenges of platform integration?
3. What are the key database maintenance strategies being used by market leaders?
4. How are email marketers benefiting from automation, in terms of both time and money?
The Agenda:
Want to build your list size? Don’t dive in head first.
A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”. He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.
A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.
One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!
- Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
- Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.
- Prioritise all ‘new things’ you’re going to do – You might end up with a big ‘ole list of stuff to do. All exciting, all stuff you want to do. But some will take time to implement, some will cost more. Factor all those in and prioritise in which order you’re going to tackle stuff. Don’t be afraid of paying someone Project Management fees to handle this either – it will help get it done.
- Get emails to new signups quickly – Whether this is enforcing a double opt-in process or just sending them a thank you email. You should aim to send them their first email from you immediately. It’s a technical issue to resolve but resolving it will be the biggest thing you can do to improve the engagement of your email list. I promise!
So assuming you’re rocking these four things, what’s next?
- Social sign up - If someone likes you on Facebook, follows you on Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn, that’s great. At some point though, any or all of these social channels might change the game, making it more difficult to market to these valuable brand advocates. It is not uncommon these days for a brand that has 300,000 likes on Facebook but only 30,000 people on their email list. The value of your efforts on your social channels is fine, and can be discussed elsewhere – but at least for now email is the still the best route for you to send messages with traceable results. Every place you have a presence in the Social world you should link to, or embed, a sign up form. And in available text boxes (think Twitter bios and G+ “About” pages) promote it (even incentivise it) and say what they should look forward to when they get your emails. Have a read of Parry, one of our Account Director’s blogs on the subject here.
- Text signups – Lots of ESPs (like us) offer the ability to rent a shortcode (or a shared shortcode) and use it for data capture. Pick up your phone now and text the word ‘subscribe’ and then your email address to 81222. You’ll then see it in action. It’s great for events, great for charities, shops and many other applications too. As per the social sign ups, if you go for this, don’t hang back in promoting it, put that text everywhere!
- Leverage all customer/prospect touch points – even if you can’t run with the SMS signup route, and you only have a website signup, think about all the places you might be able to entice people on to your list, and how you can entice them. Trade shows, training sessions, conferences… point of sale, shop window, partner websites, banner ads. Check out the section in the emaildirect blog post here, entitled “How to Build an Email List: Offline”
- Give signups something in return – doesn’t have to be money off offers, we could be talking about some top tips. Send a personalised offer.. doesn’t have to be about money. Lay it out all through the signup process – tell them what they should expect to receive and show examples. You can also think about ranking these new signups – ask them what and when they might be interested in joining a paid program of some sort. See how our client Celtic Manor grew their email list organically by encouraging their existing subscribers to recommend their friends – also check out Jordie van Rijn’s excellent signup process on Emailmonday.com.
- Don’t forget your website – you may push all channels towards one form on your website. All cool. Don’t forget though that you can improve signups on your site through search or organic traffic. Make the form more obvious. Link to it from your header and footer. Place links to it at points across your site enticing people with exclusive content if they sign up.
- A step further? – Do you have “share this email” or “share this article” links in your existing emails? You can make this shared version of your email carry specific content – so think about adding a data capture form to all shared versions of email newsletters or promotions.
Right, that was enough to get my friend started list building. What about you? Would be great to hear your ideas on how to build a list organically.
Steve Denner
Director