Posts Tagged 'email'

We’re talking email lists before the mind starts to wander. More specifically the difference between purchased lists and lists grown organically from within the business, the list that comes from interactions with individuals who know your brand and know your product – the reason why nothing beats a bit of home grown.

A word of warning about purchased lists, more specifically purchased consumer lists. Don’t expect to get much of a response. Why? Well if you’ve never heard of the company who drops the email into your inbox, and you didn’t give the express permission to email you, would you visit their website and buy their product? No, me either.

Its not all doom and gloom though, acquisition marketing via email can be successful. It just works a lot better if you can build your own house list. It’s slower, yes, but your response rate will be so much better. List co-registration with a relevant partner site is an option too. Just try where possible to avoid the purchased list if selling product directly from the email is your objective. There are plenty of other options available that deliver a better CPA for you to explore SEO and PPC for starters….

Lastminute.com just sent me an email. They’ve invited me to tune into their latest advertising campaign this weekend.

For those of you that haven’t seen the email, I’ll let lastminute explain the concept…

“On Saturday 28 February at 9.50pm, watch us (lastminute.com) on telly and win a big bundle of good stuff.

We’re creating a television first – and we want you to be part of it. Tune into ITV on Saturday 28 February at 9.50pm. Three 60 second adverts will be aired, straight after each other, starting on ITV, moving to Channel 4 and then ending on Channel 5.

It’s going to be the world’s first Mexican wave of thumbs up”

I love the idea, A novel and interesting approach and perfect for the target audience. Something fun and easy to engage with, but I can’t help feeling like they’ve got their choice of launch day a little, well, wrong.

I see their target audience, as (after a quick straw poll) most people do. As 20-35 somethings with reasonable levels of disposable income and an appetite for travel. The type of audience that are out on a Saturday night, in restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs. The type of audience that won’t see this advert this coming Saturday.

Of course lastminute.com have access to reams of consumer data, and have fantastic insight on their typical consumer profile, but I can’t help thinking that the advert break at 1:30pm between Hollyoaks, the Eastenders omnibus, and re-runs of Friends on ‘lazy’ sunday might just be more appropriate.

Maybe this is a clever ploy to capture the attention of a whole new audience? Which begs the question, how have lastmintue reached them to let them know about the 3 adverts, 3 channels idea?

I for one remember downloading Seth Godin’s e-book “Permission Marketing” way back in 1999, and what a fabulous tome that was.

So it’s both sad and joyful to see that he is still beating the same drum, 9 years later as this link to his blog shows http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/email-campaign-case-studies-one-good-one-bad.html

About time we ALL got this methinks