eROI Days Email Agency » recession marketing

DJ Waldow Talks about the Perfect Email

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:30:30 +0000

DJ Waldow, Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto, spoke at OMS about the perfect email in a recession. Read my tweets from DJ’s presentation:

@djwaldow starts his #oms presentation with his twitter police mug shot

Recession proof email marketing – adage did article on same topic

Relevancy is key. Batch and blast. Spray and pray.

Forrester said in 2008 that email marketers – only 15% – concerned about recession

Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who ask for them

Perfect email is like the perfect meal. Timely. Relevant. Engaging.

@djwaldow – good example of sierra trading post email – but do they consciously make their email design less polished compared to rei

@djwaldow shares @returnpath email campaign example of doing all elements of email right – subject, call to action, reminders

How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession

Hannah — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:11:13 +0000

Many companies have treated email as the “red-headed stepchild” of the online world, but as money gets tight and targeting become more important, “rock star” becomes a more appropriate term for the direct marketing technique. Natalie Zmuda’s article, How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession, shows that not only are businesses talking about beefing up their email, they’re actually allocating a budget for it. Because of the relatively low cost of using this form of marketing during a recession, email has been looked upon with new eyes. While other forms of marketing have flourished in the past, the interactive nature and sustainability of email has proven most effective. One of the most important aspects of a strategic email campaign is that it is trackable. In Zmuda’s article, Zappos.com mentions that segmentation will be a big part of their strategy moving forward. By looking at the data from their previous “mass mailing” technique they can start to identify what to send and to whom to send it to. A case study recently done by eROI lays out the importance of this and using the full potential of the data that is driven from email campaigns. Below is an excerpt from the Advertising Age article.

E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that are cost-effective and results-oriented. That’s led to increasing investment in technologies that better target customers and serve up more enticing messages.

“The economy has energized this channel,” said Ryan Deutsch, VP-strategic services and market development at StrongMail. “It’s become the rock star of direct marketing in a lot of these retail organizations because it’s the most cost-effective and most trackable.”

Read the entire article »

Historical Context: Continue to Market during Downturn

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:54:06 +0000

My business associate and friend Jerry Ketel, partner at Leopold & Ketel Partners, sent this email to several Portland agency owners to help prove to clients that marketing has been proven to grow a brand and its sales, profit, and market share during a recession (notice how I didn’t use this “r” word in the blog title – I’m not comfortable using it yet). Here was Jerry’s email to me (I added the image after searching on Google “marketing in recession” – it’s actually quite informative):

“There have been a number of studies over the years proving that marketing during a recession is a good investment in the long run. ‘In a recession, dare to invest aggressively in marketing, innovation and customer quality’, is the clear message to be drawn from PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) research into which business strategies aid success during and after a market downturn lasting several years. Author: Keith Roberts, Journal: Strategy & Leadership, 2003.
http://tinyurl.com/4sqx8j

The American Association of Advertising Agencies, or AAAA (4A), reports the following findings in a commissioned study, Advertising in a Recession by Bernard Ryan, Jr.

In 1947, Buchen Advertising tracked advertising dollars vs. sales trends before, during and after the recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958, and 1961. Not only did it find that sales and profits dropped off at companies that cut back on advertising. It also found that after the recession had ended, these same companies continued to lag behind those that had maintained their ad budgets. Cahners Publishing Co, together with the Cambridge-based Strategy Planning Institute, released a report in January 1982 outlining the results of an extensive study. The report disclosed that during recessionary periods, those businesses (who spent more) tended to gain a greater share of market. The underlying reason is that competitors, especially smaller, marginal ones, are less willing or able to defend against aggressive firms.” The study also pointed out those businesses that increased media advertising during the recessionary period gained an average of 1.5 points of market share.

MarketSense compared 101 household name brands during the recessionary period of 1989-1991. The brands Jell-O, Crisco, Hellman’s, Green Giant and Doritos saw sales drop by as much as 26 to 64%. Jiff peanut butter raised ad support and experienced a sales increase of 57%; Kraft salad dressings saw a rise of 70 percent. In the beer category, overall spending was down 1 percent, while Bud Light and Coors Light, each spending ahead of the category, saw sales increases of 15 percent and 16 percent respectively. Pizza Hut sales rose 61 percent and Taco Bell’s 40 percent thanks to strong advertising support, with McDonald’s volume down approximately 28 percent. http://tinyurl.com/3wtn5p“