TechTarget tomorrow plans to unveil TargetROI, an advertising program designed to help IT vendors maximize their return on investment by providing them with guaranteed leads and consulting services.
The information technology media company said that in a limited rollout of the program to 12 beta testers, their campaigns achieved conversion rates between 30 and 40 percent. TechTarget tested more than a dozen campaigns for clients such as Hewlett-Packard, Veritas Software and IONA Technologies.
Greg Strakosch, TechTarget's CEO, said the company can guarantee clients a specific number of leads because of its in-depth reporting capabilities.
“We'd been doing so many e-mail, live events and banners for each site that we began to get a very good feel for how many clicks a vendor could expect on their offers,” he said. “So we productized it.”
Each TargetROI campaign is assigned a Client Services team, which works on selecting the TechTarget vehicle to best reach the target audience, developing effective messages and analyzing campaign results. Each campaign typically features a mix of media, including e-mail newsletters, rental lists and live Webcasts.
TechTarget mails more than 300 million e-mail newsletters to more than 2 million IT professionals. It also produces thousands of sponsored Webcasts.
“There are not too many media companies walking in the door and guaranteeing traffic,” Strakosch said. “We know what each types of offers pull in relation to each other. We can hit the specific ROI that the marketer wants.”
Strakosch said pricing for the TargetROI service depends on the number of leads a client wants. It is priced on a cost per thousand basis and depends on the number of e-mails that are sent and the amount of banner ads that need to be created. The minimum, he said, is $30,000 for 250,000 impressions. CPMs run between $100 and $200
