Services like Constant Contact or iContact make it pretty easy to start up an email program.  Just enter some names in a list, drop some content into a pre-designed template and send out that e-newsletter.  Easy right?  Well yes…but no.

Yes – it’s pretty easy to do.  No – it’s not so easy to achieve results.

That’s why I love seeing and learning from great work and  On occasion I’d like to share examples with you.  Here is the full case study text from a case study I saw on MarketingSherpa.com recently:

Case Study: Roku customer referral program

Following is the full case study text from MarketingSherpa.com.

SUMMARY: Customer referrals are a powerful way to pull in more sales and leads. Some companies offer rewards, but you can push results even higher with a few simple tactics.

See how this consumer electronics company sent an automated email to encourage new customers to refer their friends and contacts. This email generated 75 percent of all registrations in the referral program

CHALLENGE

Marketers at Roku, a video-streaming device for television, knew that word-of-mouth helped push sales. About 25 percent of their customers said they had first heard of the company from a friend or family member.

“Our goal was to try to increase that because word-of-mouth and referrals are one of the most cost-effective ways of acquiring customers,” says Lomit Patel, Senior Director, Direct Marketing, Roku. “Even if they don’t translate directly into sales, it helps create a positive image and a positive awareness of Roku.”

In response, Patel’s team launched a great referral program. It offered rewards to customers who sent referrals via email, Facebook or Twitter. But the team needed to get more customers to participate.

CAMPAIGN

Patel planned to send triggered emails to Roku’s newest customers to ask if they’d like to tell their friends about the product. Email would be central to the program’s promotion.

Here are the steps his team followed:

Step #1. Establish a program and relevant rewards

Customers could visit Roku’s referral landing page to suggest the product to friends via email, Facebook, Twitter or another channel. The page generated a customizable default message and referral link. Each link included a tracking code which tallied sales made through each customer’s referral.

Roku tested several different rewards to offer. Once Patel’s team realized that more than 80 percent of Roku’s customers were also Netflix customers, they settled on free one-month Netflix memberships.

- No limit on rewards

Customers received coupons for a free month of Netflix for every sale made through their referral links. There was no limit on the number and rewards were not based on the number of referrals sent.

“The program really started to go forward after we changed the reward structure,” Patel says.

Step #2. Design referral landing page

The referral landing page had two goals:
1. Get customers to register in the referral program
2. Get customers to send referrals

After arriving, visitors were shown an overlay that requested their first name, last name and email address. Once information was submitted, the overlay disappeared to reveal the referral page (see creative samples below).

The referral page emphasized the Netflix offer as well as:

- Email form

Visitors could type contacts’ email addresses or import them from a Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail or another email account. Recommended text for the email was included and could be removed or altered. The text:

“Try Roku – Brilliant device for streaming HD Movies from Netflix! My link gets you 10% OFF the Roku XDS.”

After visitors clicked “send,” the system generated emails for all listed contacts and included the referral link.

- Other sharing buttons

Visitors could use the page to share similar messages on Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. A unique referral URL was also offered, which visitors could copy and paste anywhere they preferred.

Step #3. Design email for new customers

Roku needed a systematic way to encourage new customers to send referrals. The team designed a triggered email to automatically reach out after a purchase (see creative samples below). The email included:
o Image of a TV with Netflix on it
o Large text: “Get a free month of Netflix for each friend who tries Roku”
o Description of three steps to getting rewards
o Button to visit referral landing page

- Test the timing

Roku has a 30-day money-back guarantee and Patel’s team wanted to avoid asking for referrals during that period. Likewise, he did not want to wait too long to send the email, since customers would likely discover the program through Roku’s other channels.

The team tested sending the email after three different periods: 35 days, 40 days and 45 days after purchase (results are below).

Step #4. Promote in additional channels

In addition to the automated email to new customers, Roku promoted the referral program in the following areas:

- Launch emails

The automated emails described above would not reach Roku’s older customers. But older customers still needed to be kept in the loop.

The team twice promoted the referral program in dedicated emails to its house list. It sent the first email at the program’s launch, and the second about three months later. These emails were similar to the program’s automated messages.

- Email newsletters

Roku’s monthly email newsletter typically reserved its upper right-hand portion to advertise for the referral program.

- Links on website

Links to the referral program were also included in Roku’s website footer and in a button on the website’s “reviews” section.

RESULTS

“Email has been the biggest way to promote this,” Patel says. “The newsletters definitely help, but these individual emails after purchase have had the most effect.”

After launching the referral program:

o 75% of registrations for Roku’s referral program are driven by the triggered emails to new customers

o 30% more customers report that their decision to purchase Roku was influenced by a friend or family member

o 5% of all Roku customers participate in the referral program

By testing, Patel’s team discovered that sending the triggered emails 45 days after purchase worked best. The results of those tests:

Forty-five days after purchase:
o Open rate: 33.4%
o CTR: 14.7%
o Conversion rate: 22.4%

Forty days after purchase
o Open rate: 23.7%
o CTR: 12.1%
o Conversion rate: 17.7%

Thirty-five days after purchase
o Open rate: 19.8%
o CTR: 6.4%
o Conversion rate: 13.5%

- Page tweak surged conversions

After these tests, the team tested a change to the referral landing page. Instead of using an overlay to request visitors’ names and email addresses, visitors arriving from these emails had their information pre-loaded into the form.

This increased conversion rates for these emails to 55 percent, Patel says.

- Emailed referrals beat social referrals

Of all the channels through which customers could send referrals to contacts, referrals sent via email drove 70 percent of all sales in the program, Patel says.

“Our customer demographics tend to be in the 30s to 50s range, and that could indicate why they are more comfortable using email versus using social media.”

We all worry about our bottom lines. Whether we deal in products or services, it’s constant battle to make the numbers line up. We want to offer a competitive price, but we need to bring in enough to keep the business afloat. You don’t want to devalue your work, but you still need to make your customers feel that they are getting something of special value in their transactions.

It’s a constant dilemma we all face, and it’s hard to make your customers feel “important.”

Some people feel that offering a free item (like a seminar or informational report) means you don’t value your product or service.  But free products can create incredible valuable in your customer relationships.

Consider offering a freebie to repeat customers. First, make sure you offer quality products that encourage return business. Then offer the free item as a customer appreciation effort. It’s a great way to show your gratitude and build customer loyalty.

When you take this approach, you’ll demonstrate that you reinvest your earnings into the interests of your customers in efforts to create products and services that make their lives easier and better. You want your customers to believe you are a leader in your field, and offering value-added products will convey your confidence.

So, don’t let “free” deceive you. Giving free materials could actually make you richer in the long run.

The competition for your attention is in full swing…and it’s survival of the fittest.  Getting to the top of the pile has always been a challenge for direct marketers, no more so than now when time is at such a premium.

No, direct mail is not dead.  Far from it.  One client of our drops over 4 million pieces of mail each year and generates a very healthy ROI, thank you very much.

There are a number of tactics you can use to improve the response of your direct mail program.  Lead among them is the use of variable print data.  Enabled by technology, personalized messages can be created on each piece by pulling information from your database.

Research shows that mail with your name on it, along with a relevant message, generates a significantly higher response rate than those without it.  The additional costs of variable printing can be highly justified by the higher returns generated.

Does it makes sense for you?  Calculations depend on a number of factors including -

- What is the value of an individual sale?
- What has it cost you in the past to generate a qualified lead?
- What other elements are included in your communications mix?

Direct mail is a highly measurable form of lead generation.  Testing the effect of variable printing is a matter of organizing and tracking the effort properly.

For over a year now, I have preached the gospel of content.  More content.  Better content.  Relevant content.  Just keep generating and distributing content…it’s the “software” of marketing.

While preparing content and materieals for the launch of the “new” Burst Marketing, I’ve broken my first commandment:

“Thou shalt never stop producing new content.”

While attending to new clients and the launch of a new business, I ingnored the responsibility to connect with Burst Marketing’s readers.  And such, Google rankings are down.  I’ve lost some continuity with readers.  I’ve been a bad boy.  And I apologize.

So let my misguided ways be your beacon of light.  Once you start your blog, newsletter, friending campaign, tweeting, or however you communicate with your peeps – don’t stop, never stop.

That’s just the way it is.  See you next week.

Posted by: Steve Banis

A brief glance across the room. Penetrating eye contact and a smile. A brush of the hand…

Well you get the idea.

Good marketing aims to move beyond seduction.  To take a “passer by” beyond fascination with your shiny new thing to legitimate and immediate target.  That means dinner, dancing, and dating.

It’s rational economics.  Moving them through the sales cycle by helping them see the true cost of NOT acting.

Stoke their fascination. Make friends. Have rational conversations. You offer a solution, or excitement, or notoriety. Whatever problem they really want to solve.  And you do it at a justifiable cost.  It’s not just money. Sometimes its not money at all.

Its time, comfort, or prestige for example.

Make it easy for them to talk to you. Online, offline, in person. Let them get involved with you – with forums, social media, and live events.

What brought them to your door was only skin deep.

What brings them into your living room is the comfy couch, great music, good coffee, and intelligent conversation that connects.

Posted by: Steve Banis

I heard a discussion on NPR last Friday that should cause anyone interested in Social Media to reflect on its use.  The maelstrom of information and ‘expert’ opinions out there casts doubt on their voracity, and drives people to seek the opinions of friends and others they trust.

Motion picture promoters spend months and millions carefully crafting their campaigns.  They rely on the buzz they generate to translate into good box office results – even if their movie is a bit of a stinker.  They hope the receipts are in before word get out.

Enter Twitter.

Today’s hip moviegoer starts tweeting minutes after the opening credits.  By the time the movie is over, hundred if not thousands of opinions are scattered about to followers everywhere.

Sorry Sacha.  But I guess Bruno stinks.  Because business dropped 40% between Friday and Saturday night.

So yeah, properly done, your message will probably get out.  Guess it better be a good message.

“That’s the way it is”

I was too young to remember Walter Cronkite in his heyday.  At the time of his signature television reports of the JFK assassination, Vietnam, Apollo 11, and Watergate, among others, I wasn’t yet 10.

But that doesn’t prevent me from knowing and understanding his primary legacy – truth, trust, consistency, and character.  He wasn’t called “Uncle Walter” or named the most trusted man in America without good reason.

Although those of us in the marketing business are often charged with helping to shape public perception – Walter Cronkite stood for ensuring that the basis of our perceptions was reality.

Posted by: Steve Banis

This is a tool offered within better equipped email platforms that allows you to program a series of messages to be delivered to your target lists at designated intervals.

What makes this so powerful is the ability to let these campaigns run by themselves. Further, with some extra work, you can separate, qualify, and bring your targets closer to doing business with you by following multiple communication paths.

Scooby Doo, where are you?

For example, say you want to reach customers that are interested in collecting old lunchboxes. (I had Scooby Doo in 2nd grade.)  Some of these babies go for thousands of dollars. (Mine got thrown out, along with my baseball cards. Thanks mom.)

So you set up a landing page showing off examples of some boxes you have for sale.  It also explains that you have a real nose for locating those hard to find boxes that make a collector drool.

Then your targeted communication program brings you visitors to your site who sign up to receive more information.  Now here’s where the autoresponders get to work.

You’ve written a series of messages that goes to every new person who signs onto your list.  Out goes a welcome message immediately.  Next day, you send them a little biography about yourself, and the big finds you’ve made in the past and how you’ve seen some of your clients make lots of money on their lunch box investment.

Lead them to water

One week later, you send out a testimonial letter with a story from one of your customers.  It says that you helped him relive his childhood and connect with his son by finding him the exact box he had when he was 8 – the Rocky and Bullwinkle one with a bright blue background. It made him cry.

Two days later, you send an email asking your reader to let you know what kind of interested party he is…a real collector looking for that hard to find, expensive treasure or someone just interested in the topic.  You can now create two lists from those who respond – qualified buyers and tirekickers.

Now separate them into two lists, and send each their own set of email messages. For the qualified list, it may pay off to make them personalized.  All the while, you’re bringing the qualified prospects closer and closer – without ever picking up the phone.

It takes thought, creativity, intuition, hard work, and a little bit of talent. But once you’ve got your process, it’s all automatic.

Posted by: Steve Banis

As the world continues to shrink, the number of things competing for our attention has gotten way out of whack. That’s been a big problem for media outlets – TV, Newspapers and Magazines in particular.

So marketers have been keeping a closer eye on you.

Don’t be surprised. You used to be able to simply buy a list of “high net worth investors” or “dog lovers” or “golfers” or “cooking enthusiasts.”  But now, those categories are way too big to be cost effective.

“Dog lover” is too broad. You need to drill all the way down to “Labradoodle lovers in Upstate NY.”

The era of 1 to 1 marketing is finally maturing. Mass advertising is inefficient. Enter “on-demand” TV. Direct mail needs more fine tuning. So add a personalized URL (PURL, landing page) to further qualify your list.

Finding your target is a tricky thing. Creating a virtual marketing “GPS” is the way to go. Surround your target and triangulate their coordinates. Then fire off your rounds of communication.

***************

In appreciation

As a father raising a growing boy, I don’t like that at all times, war wages somewhere on the globe…and that all too often our nation is caught in its grip.

Today, however, is Memorial Day. A day to put aside ideology and honor those who have followed their convictions to serve our country. I want to offer my sincere gratitude to all our veterans and to the memory of those who passed in service. My dad is a Holocaust survivor and neither he nor I nor my son would be here without the sacrifice of those in our armed forces.

Posted by: Steve Banis

Consumer telemarketing has achieved the unfortunate reputation achieved by used car salesman, carnival game operators, and Bernie Madoff.

However, to reach the communities you’ve built over time – your customers, prospects and other contacts – using voice to deliver your message can be both courteous and extremely effective.

The people on your lists expect that you will engage in ongoing communication with them by virtue of your relationship. So you’ve already received their permission to contact them. That makes you compliant with CAN-SPAM and perfectly OK to pick up the phone.

Boston College did just that.  Well, sort of.

Kickoff

The Boston College football team had a strong 2007 season, eventually going on to its first ever Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) title game.  The game was set to take place on December 4, 2007 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Great news.  Except that the Eagles clinched their spot only two weeks before the ACC Championship game.  BC had just two weeks to sell as many tickets as possible and ensure solid support for a game taking place 1,160 miles away.

They needed to drum up support from alumni and get fans to travel down . And they needed to do it quickly and cost-effectively.

Nothing like the spoken word

Boston College used an automated voice-messaging solution to target more than 115,000 season ticket holders and alumni.

They had their star quarterback Matt Ryan record the message, explaining the historic event and the sense of urgency to participate – and then offered up a call to action.  Even if fans couldn’t come, they asked them to donate their tickets to a Jacksonville-area charity to help fill the stands.

The response was immediate, with ticket sales flying through the roof on the day of and the day following the message’s release. In all, close to 5,000 tickets were sold, with more than 400 purchased and given to charity.

In the end, Boston College was able to ensure it was well represented in Florida and managed to profit $200,000 from a campaign that cost $10,000 to launch.

The phone is alive and well my friends – it’s just living a different existence in your marketing mix.  It’s extremely cost effective.  And it can work very well when delivering a timely message.

Have a particularly important piece of news to deliver?  A once in a lifetime sale?  A special event you don’t want people to miss?

Use voice.  But don’t use it too often.  Like endless jabbering from the person seated next to you on the plane – it loses its charm quickly. Then it’s just annoying.

[case study was reported on Marketingprofs.com]

Posted by: Steve Banis

There is opportunity now. But where? With whom?

I need to hang onto my customers What’s the best tack to take?

I’m determined to get aggressive. Where’s my best bang for my buck?

Last year’s questions might have been about branding, advertising, or how to go “viral”. Many wanted to talk about that. And agencies are only too happy to oblige as these are the highest margin products and services they sell.

Today it’s different. It will stay different.

The right questions to ask today are who, what, and what’s the return on that? For the most part, that means starting with the few and working outward.

Back on April 2nd, Seth Godin wrote a little about this approach. Begin with 10 utterly loyal clients, friends, associates, etc. and work from there. Start slowly and let it build.

Depending on your situation, the place to start is with your team, moving onto your key customers, and then finally to dedicated FOOs (friends of the organization).

Let your team in on the secret…you need them. They need you. You both have roles to play. Yours is to lead – provide vision, direction, tools, and resources. Theirs is to perform their jobs with gusto. Relate to customers better than ever. Spread the word with more sincerity and urgency. Share ideas.

Strength in numbers

Same with your customers. Not only do you want to keep your important customers happy, you also need them to know that you need their help to succeed with other customers as well. Testimonials, invitations to present within their circle of influence, and asking for their ideas is not only helpful, it can also be flattering.

FOOs can also be a fountain of good ideas. They have exposure to other industries, competitors, and can help you get a handle on things that might be working for others. Also, because they typically have no axe to grind, any referrals from them, even those that may not lead directly to business, may lead to something more concrete.

Bottom line? Yes, there is opportunity now. Yes, there are customers out there up for grabs. Most of the best ones seem to be laying low.

Now’s not the time for a big splash. Now’s the time to throw a bunch of pebbles into the water and make many little ripples. In time they’ll all connect to make a big wave.

Posted by: Steve Banis