I went to a great low-key concert the other night and saw a clever, unconventional email acquisition strategy in action. As my friends and I were eating dinner waiting for the show to start, we were handed a simple song request flyer. You could immediately see people getting excited over the idea – a chance to have a favorite song played and to ask the artist any question they chose. The added touch, however, was how these flyers were to be sent up to the stage via paper airplane. The only request from the artist was to submit your name and email, interestingly enough.

After the first few songs, the artist in her own sarcastic yet humble way asked, “so… any requests?” Then came the onslaught of airplanes. I’m sure from her angle this must have looked like a reenactment from WW2. While retuning her guitar, out came an assistant to gather all the wreckage and begin sifting through the requests.

This was clearly not the most efficient way to capture an email address (given the manual labor involved), but her approach got me thinking. Adding a fun and interactive way to get people to sign up without beating them over the head with an offer could perhaps go a long way. The acquisition would probably provide more interested subscribers and could also serve as a great viral component as well.

As any seasoned email marketer knows, there are almost an unlimited amount of ways to segment email marketing subscriber data. In the third and final installment of this three-part overview, Jordan Lane provides a summary of some common email segmentation sources, tips, and best practices.

Part III – Segment by acquisition channel

One of the most effective yet often overlooked methods is segmentation by acquisition channel. From my experience working with clients across various industries, I have found that customers acquired through different channels tend to have different behavioral characteristics. Here are some thoughts to consider:

• Email subscribers acquired through co-registration pages will usually respond or convert differently than organically acquired email subscribers.
• Subscribers who have been acquired in-store have already indicated that they are at least somewhat likely to purchase both at a local POS and online. Take the ZIP of the store into account and be sure to coordinate your multi-channel marketing efforts to maximize customer value.
• New email registrations acquired via mail-in forms and call centers may indicate that the customer is looking to shift from print to online shopping. You may consider a “go paperless” email offer to these customers that builds a positive, eco-friendly reputation for your brand – not to mention saving you print costs along the way.

With any segmentation program it is important to take a step back and realize that there is a real person on the other end of each email address. Every time you create an email, ask yourself whether your email content is addressing the specific needs of your audience. Email segmentation is not a one-size-fits-all discipline, but with a little tweaking here and there, you can find the right method for targeting your customer base.

While a lot of the industry talk today revolves around the latest technologies and newest communications tools, I thought I’d offer a personal anecdote about using relatively low-tech means to drive customer data acquisition.

Take a look at the attached photograph I recently snapped on my Blackberry from a Robeks smoothie shop. That’s a store-owned laptop computer sitting by the cash register, inviting customers to fill out the email registration page on their website. It’s an idea so simple that it comes off as clever — just an open laptop with a browser opened to their email registration form. The top of the form had a rotating banner offering special coupons via email, which demonstrated the value of signing up.

I took a moment to fill out my information on the laptop, received my smoothie and left the shop. The next day I received my welcome email and appeared to be entrenched in the customer lifecycle. To be honest, Robeks could use a little help on the follow up communications, but the acquisition effort was simply perfect. The rotating screen and form gave me — and others — something to look at and do as we waited to place and receive our smoothie orders.

To make it even better, Robeks simultaneously offered a mobile program where I could send a text to receive coupons on my phone. I love the idea, particularly during the holidays, of providing an incentivized mobile or email sign-up opportunity while customers wait in checkout lines. It’s just a great way to make a customer feel wanted and appreciated, and it certainly gives you something to do while waiting to get to the register.

In the April 22nd issue of Clickz, Stephen Pollard urged marketers to follow established best practices and to reevaluate their ongoing strategy for addresses acquired via email append programs.

I agree with many of Pollard’s comments about eAppend. Inherently, eAppend carries more risk than organic email capture methods, such as at point of sale or via an email sign up form. Pollard also makes valid arguments about the deliverability risks that can occur from appending email to your customer file. In this tough economy when companies are closely evaluating their budgets, it is very important that they do not compromise quality for price when evaluating third party data providers. Regardless, eAppend can be a very effective means of growing a traditional offline customer file.

One thing that Pollard doesn’t address is the quality of the client data submitted for an eAppend match, or the frequency at which a client runs an eAppend program.

We have a few of our own best practices that are worth mentioning in addition to those mentioned in Pollard’s article.

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Every few weeks, we saddle up with our team of email marketing experts to check the pulse of the industry. This week, we are joined by Yvette Mitchell, who oversees a number of high profile email marketing accounts in the retail, financial/credit, and consumer packaged goods industries.

The financial fallout caused by the sub-prime mortgage market is on everybody’s mind these days. With high gas and energy prices adding more hardship to consumers this holiday season, what tactics have you seen retailers implementing to meet their holiday numbers?

Yvette: Well, many retailers were smart in the months leading up to their holiday planning — they saw a clear path to cutting costs by reducing wasteful print dollars. With printing costs on the rise, a number of retailers got ahead of the game by sending fewer print catalogs in the spring and summer months. Other retailers reduced their catalog mailing list size by incorporating ‘catalog preference’ options in their online preference centers so that only interested customers would receive them. 

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