With the right two ingredients, every marketer can rent e-mail files to increase business. Whether the business is direct response, fundraising, publishing, retail or any other manner of marketing business, the same basic principles hold true.
The great news is that direct marketers already use the two ingredients, or practices if you prefer, in other efforts. By leveraging existing capabilities for e-mail list rental, an additional customer acquisition tool that can be quantified in sales generated becomes available.
Before discussing the two ingredients, a brief historical view is appropriate. Not long ago, the interactive channel embodied the Wild West of marketing. Ideas and dollars were tossed around with reckless abandon. Rental e-mail lists were no exception, with astronomical rates and limited perspective on how to make the tool work. Today, market forces have driven the maturation of e-mail list rental. Rates are consistent with result potentials, and more qualified, brand-name files are on the market.
Here are the two ingredients that will let any marketer succeed with e-mail list rental. The first is very simple: a well-developed plan. It is the planning that builds the potential for success with e-mail list rental. The plan needs to define the target audience, campaign and response objectives, and the results-tracking mechanism. Will this be a sales generation push where the end user is driven to a specific Web landing page to place an order? Will it be a subscription or fundraising activity with a registration page?
The global campaign objective and end-user “physical” response objective will drive the development of the landing page creative and functionality. It also will drive decisions on what the success factors for the campaign need to be and how results will be tracked.
With a solid plan to operate as the framework for the campaign, the second ingredient is called into action. This ingredient is the right audience. With a defined customer profile, the e-mail universe of millions of records can be researched to identify only those that are appropriate for your offer.
Brokers and marketing firms can help in this area, as they deal with the e-mail universe on a daily basis. If you have had success dealing directly with a publication, this may be the appropriate place to start. Regardless of the manner you elect to access them, there are e-mail files with selectivity on the market that can be targeted to responsive end users for all kinds of offers.
Though the two ingredients have a number of layers, the important point is that by leveraging existing capabilities we can add an extra customer acquisition tool. This tool, unlike other marketing mediums, can be quantified in sales generated. Marketers who are taking advantage of this medium now understand this and have positioned themselves to continue to benefit from multichannel marketing.
