Target Tips to Test
* E-mail: The Offer is Where it's At
* Publishing: Editorial Exclusives Drive New-Customer Acquisition

Target News
* Hochwert Awarded DMA's First MTIC Award
* Quantummail.com Offers New Media Options for Direct Mail Service
* Tooker Joins KnowledgeBase as Solutions Architect
* Calendar

Target Practice
* Six Steps to a Cleaner E-mail Housefile

Target Tips to Test

* E-mail: The Offer is Where it's At
By Hallie Mummert, editor in chief, Target Marketing & Inside Direct Mail

Most consumer and B-to-B audiences expect e-mail efforts to get to the point—in other words, what's the offer? But does the need to be succinct mean your copy should be devoid of emotion? Not at all, says Mark Irace, chief analytical officer, Proflowers.com, as long as you remember that the offer is still the driving force in the promotion. Irace shared some of his experiences in e-mail testing with attendees at the Direct Marketing Association's Annual Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL, earlier this year:

* A Strong Offer is More Important Than a Deep Emotion. Proflowers.com wanted to see if a more emotion-driven copy approach would connect with its customer base. So it tested an e-mail effort featuring a narrative brimming with guilt-inducing copy that led with the line, "My Mom called last night ...", against an offer-driven effort that pushed the following promotion: "Last chance to save $10." The winner? The more direct copy beat the emotional approach with a 54-percent lift in response. Irace joked that while people love their Mom, don't forget that they love a good deal even more.

* But a Strong Emotion Paired With a Strong Incentive is Even Better. Irace found that you can turn a response deadline into a discount offer with the use of fear and a little bit of old-fashioned greed. For Valentine's Day, Proflowers.com sent an e-mail that positioned early bird pricing as a savings on future price increases. The copy reminded recipients of how prices for flowers usually increase around major holidays—especially Valentine's Day. Recipients were encouraged to "save" money by ordering their flowers in advance. The e-mail performed incredibly well, which Irace says proves that the power of this medium lies in the user's ability to leverage knowledge about its customers and their purchase activity.

* Publishing: Editorial Exclusives Drive New-Customer Acquisition

By Hallie Mummert, editor in chief, Target Marketing & Inside Direct Mail

A good way for publishers to build an e-mail list and gain news subscribers via the Web is by using what Richard Riccelli, president of direct response agency Post Rd, calls "editorial exclusives." These are editorial-based freemiums—such as a salary survey, the 10 best Christmas cookie recipes or a set of business best practices—that interested prospects can download for free in exchange for providing their e-mail address. Riccelli notes that the content can be anything, so long as it's of strong interest to your target audience and provides instant gratification. In fact, he cautions against using an overly promotional creative approach; the emphasis should be on the information. (For an example, visit Post Rd's site at http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097578-14792905. The firm rotates different report offerings in case one topic doesn't fit every visitor.)

The benefit of this approach: If your Web site didn't convert a browser to a subscriber, then you can follow up quickly with a subscription offer that capitalizes on the probability of the visitor wanting more content like that found in the editorial exclusive. Once you've tested and fine-tuned your offer and creative on your own Web site, says Riccelli, "use your documented results to barter, negotiate and buy online placement" on the sites of affiliates, advertisers and other e-commerce marketers with an affinity to your product and customer type.

Riccelli can be reached at RR@postrd.com.

Target News

* Hochwert Awarded DMA's First MTIC Award
By Paul Barbagallo, associate editor, FundRaising Success & Inside Direct Mail

The Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Marketing Technology & Internet Council (MTIC) this week awarded its first MTIC Award of Excellence to Stuart Hochwert, president and founder of Northbrook, IL-based Ampere Media.

According to the DMA, Hochwert and Ampere Media, which publishes 45 titles that deliver content through e-mail, e-magazines and Web sites, embraced the Internet's power and functionality in its early stages to generate leads, acquire customers and create revenue opportunities for clients. The interactive lead generation division of Ampere has created proprietary technology that is deployed on its Web sites and 3,000 other partner sites.

The recipient of this award must have at least three years of marketing technology and Internet experience, and make significant contributions to the marketing technology and Internet industries through innovation and application.

Hochwert also has spoken extensively at industry functions. He will be honored today during the National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL.

* Quantummail.com Offers New Media Options for Direct Mail Service
By Paul Barbagallo, associate editor, FundRaising Success & Inside Direct Mail

Direct marketing solutions provider QuantumMail.com has made available new media and format choices for designing, printing and mailing direct mail pieces through its Web site, the company announced this week.

In addition to QuantumMail.com's Jumbo QuantumCard (an 8.5* x 5.5* postcard), several new self-mailer formats are offered, including the "Panoramic" (5.75* x 11*, mailed flat), "Foldover" (8.5* x 11*, folded in half for mailing) and "Flyer" (8.5* x 11*, folded in half for mailing). All new options are printed on #80 card stock, except for the Flyer, which is printed on #28 bright-white paper.

Prices start at 42 cents per QuantumCard; list and postage included. For more information, visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097577-14792905 < www.quantummail.com >.

* Tooker Joins KnowledgeBase as Solutions Architect
By Paul Barbagallo, associate editor, FundRaising Success & Inside Direct Mail

Twenty-five-year direct marketing veteran Richard Tooker has joined KnowledgeBase Marketing's strategic consulting and analytics team as vice president/solutions architect, the company announced this week.

Tooker has created and managed database programs across multiple industries including insurance, banking, consumer finance, retail, B-to-B, fundraising, membership, dealer organizations, publishing and association marketing. Most recently, he was responsible for business development, strategic partnerships, database marketing and interactive marketing initiatives at DMW, a direct response agency.

Tooker has spoken at conferences sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, American Marketing Association, Bank Marketing Association and the European Direct Marketing Association.

* Calendar
THE ART & SCIENCE OF MIX MARKETING MODELING, Dec. 4, DMA Seminar Center, NY. Learn how to retain/grow profitable customers and maximize your usage of analytical tools in the CRM industry. For more information: (212) 790-1500, or visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097573-14792905.

HOW TO DESIGN NEWSLETTERS, BROCHURES, ADS, CATALOGS, REPORTS, PROPOSALS, PRESENTATION MATERIALS & MORE, Dec. 4-5, Hotel Pennsylvania, New York. This workshop covers the essentials of professional-quality desktop publishing and graphic design. For more information: (800) 258-7246, or visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097580-14792905.

THE DMA ADVANCED COPYWRITING WORKSHOP, Dec. 8, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago. This seminar will cover the elements of direct marketing copywriting: diction, sentence structure, imagery, repetition, coherence and description. For more, call (212) 790-1500, or visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097583-14792905.

25th ANNUAL PROMOTION MARKETING LAW CONFERENCE: THE MAGIC OF PROMOTION MARKETING, Dec. 8-9, Hilton Chicago, Chicago, IL. This conference will highlight the latest developments in promotion law and examine changes to the law, etc. For more: (212) 420-1100, or visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097579-14792905.

HOW TO BETTER MANAGE MULTIPLE LOCATIONS, Dec. 10-11, Holiday Inn Beach Galleria, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. This seminar will feature 24 ways to become a better off-site manager. For more information: (800) 258-7246, or visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097582-14792905.

Target Practice

* Six Steps to a Cleaner E-mail Housefile
By Hallie Mummert, editor in chief, Target Marketing & Inside Direct Mail

Just because the cost to execute an e-mail campaign is much less than that of a direct mail campaign doesn't mean that list hygiene is less important in the online arena. Without good list hygiene practices for e-mail housefiles, you still wind up mailing undeliverable addresses that you paid to try to reach.

Siebel Systems, a leading provider of multichannel, e-commerce applications software, advises marketers to follow these six procedures to keep their e-mail housefiles clean and deliverable.

1. Automate Your Subscribe/Unsubscribe Process. By linking your mailing mechanism directly to your database, you make it more cost-efficient and -effective to keep your e-mail addresses current. With real-time updating, changes are enacted immediately and you are assured of having the most deliverable addresses possible.

2. Collect Only Good Addresses. When collecting e-mail addresses online, ask prospects and customers to enter their e-mail addresses twice, so that your software can verify that both entries match. If they don't, you can post an error page that urges visitors to check their entries and correct any inaccuracies. Another way to keep bad addresses out of your database is to identify phony e-mail addresses, such as joblo@blah, and remove them. You also can weed out bad addresses through double opt-in marketing: Send a confirmation e-mail to the provided address that requests the recipient to reply to confirm the address' authenticity.

3. Follow Up on Bounces Immediately. While it's tempting to deal with bounces when you can fit them into your schedule, it's best to process these delivery problems after each campaign for optimal list maintenance. Hard bounces—those addresses that are not valid or no longer in service—should be removed from your housefile immediately. Soft bounces—e-mail that is turned away due to a server being down or a full mailbox, etc.—indicate the need to re-send the campaign to these addresses, an action that can be automated for easier deployment. If an e-mail address soft bounces repeatedly, you'll want to consider removing this record from your active housefile.

4. Remove Duplicate Addresses. Some e-mail software or services allow for duplicate e-mail addresses to be housed. Marketers using such solutions will want to run a de-duplication sweep on a regular basis to pull out extraneous records that cost you money to e-mail and might annoy customers who receive multiple e-mail from you. Better yet, investigate solutions that allow only one entry of a specific e-mail address per list.

5. Keep a Careful Eye on Customer Service E-mails. People do not always remember to use automated e-mail reply options to unsubscribe or communicate changes to their personal information (address changes, shutting down address for an extended period, etc.). For this reason, you need to review the e-mails that are sent to your customer service e-mail address or that come in response to your outgoing e-mail promotions. When a customer or prospect takes time to contact you, he or she expects you to read and honor the request.

6. Make It Easy for Customers to Update Their Addresses. Just as you want to make it easy for customers to respond to your offer, you also want to provide them with a quick way to update their e-mail address. On every e-mail message you send, be sure to include a link to a change-of-address form; you also can put this link on your Web site in high-traffic areas. If this is too challenging to offer and maintain, then consider at least including a special e-mail address in your e-marketing campaigns to which your customers can send their address changes.

To learn more about Siebel Systems, visit http://128.241.247.146/cgi-bin/redir.html?id=00097576-14792905.