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.

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.

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.

• Clients who do not trust the source and quality of their internal data cannot expect a third party eAppend provider to perform any better. Every company looking to increase the quality of eAppend match files should look at their overall email acquisition practices first. Clients increase the potential for deliverability issues exponentially if they are not validating email address upon input, managing bounces, unsubscribes and abuse rates, and running hygiene on their entire customer file per industry best practices.
• It is just as important to track all email acquisition data sources in addition to tracking email append names. Furthermore, email has proven to drive traffic to offline sources such as store events, sales, and catalogs. Tracking of the appended records should be done across channels to ensure that the email subject line did not influence the customer behavior offline.
• Many companies run eAppend jobs infrequently, and with good reason. Email append data has a higher potential to go stale, so marketers should be more cautious and exclude customers that have not purchased in the last two years.  For those companies that have a large offline customer file and are looking to invest seriously in email acquisition, we recommend running frequent eAppend jobs on fresh data. Most eAppend providers will consider packages for monthly and quarterly commitments.
• Email append providers experience higher levels of filtering, and it is possible that not all intended recipients will receive the original permission pass. We strongly recommend that any company doing an eAppend job send a second invitation email from their permission email account. This email should clearly indicate that the company attempted to contact the customer previously, restate the value proposition of the email program, and provide an opt-out link. A banner may suffice at the top of the next email instead of a dedicated message approach.
• Lastly, I respectfully disagree with Pollard’s idea of a “sunset provision” where marketers would “discard appended addresses that show no open or click rates on the first six messages” sent. Companies send emails at different frequencies and experience seasonal behaviors with their customer file. Instead of choosing a hard number at which to discard an address, we would recommend running eAppend programs before your largest business ‘seasons’ and to build a longer term strategy. We are always hesitant to remove addresses from the file before testing varying frequencies and different messaging strategies (such as surveys) to improve inactive performance. Companies should only consider a more aggressive suppression of these names if the email addresses remain truly inactive, meaning across channels, after more than one business season.

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. 

In addition to cost-cutting measures, what have you seen marketers do to increase the relevance and revenue of their messages?

Yvette:  In preparation for the holiday season, retailers are sending email messages with short, embedded surveys about their holiday purchase needs and/or links to preference centers requesting that subscribers update their content interests. This allows marketers to send more dynamic, personalized content that aligns more precisely with user interests.

As a suggestion, I’d point out that the holidays are an ideal time to use integrated web analytics campaigns to send “category browse” emails (ReMarketing). If an opt-in subscriber is on your site looking at a particular product category, they will be more inclined to purchase based on their implied interest in that category. ReMarketing is a great tool for encouraging purchases when used in moderation.

Are you seeing anything unexpected this holiday season that is showing promise?

Yvette: Some companies are actually using the holiday season as an acquisition period, leveraging social networking sites by setting up Facebook pages that include holiday contests/sweepstakes/trends, etc. to acquire new subscribers. It’s a pretty clever concept that stands to yield some solid results.