Chris DeMartine, Director of Business Development at NextMark, discusses the recently published first quarter 2009 Data Card Quality Report. Chris' comments include some tips for getting high scores.
Posts Tagged ‘Mailing Lists’
DeMartine on 1Q09 Data Card Quality Report
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009An example of showing respect in data card video
Monday, April 6th, 2009Last week, I posted a tutorial on what to include in your data card video. In that tutorial, I recommended
"Your list owners and everyone else will appreciate it when you treat the people on the list with great respect. You should honor them – don’t treat them like data."
Here's a good example from RMI where they honor the Car and Driver subscribers.
See the full data card here: http://lists.nextmark.com/market?page=order/online/datacard&id=198033
What should I include in my data card video?
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
NextMark recently enabled you with the ability to add videos to your data cards. There’s been a lot of early interest in this new feature because it adds an exciting new dimension to the data card. In fact, DM News ran a story and early adopters such as RMI and Millard have already posted more than 90 videos in the first week of availability.
But there have been a lot of questions, too. In this tutorial, I’ll try to answer the question many of you have been asking: “What should I include in my video?”
The purpose of videos is to enhance your data card in a way that creates more interest for your mailing list. Don’t simply regurgitate the facts on your data card because it’s easier to just read them and those facts will frequently change and make your video obsolete.
Instead, you should tell them some things about the list that they might not find on the data card or might miss when scanning the data card.
Before I get into some specific recommendations, I want to encourage you to use your creativity when creating your videos. You want your lists to stand out from the rest and you won’t do that by following the same formula.
But I do want to give you some ideas for creating a good video for your data card.
First, you should describe the people on the list. You should certainly illustrate the typical profile of the list members.
But, whenever possible, try to tell a story.
For example, for a list of dog owners, you might say “These people love their dogs. They go to great lengths caring for them by feeding them the best food, keeping them fit with exercise, and socialize through doggy play dates with other dog lovers.” It’s a great idea if you can use pictures, videos, illustrations, sounds, or other media to help tell your story. For dog lovers, you might show pictures of dogs with happy owners or videos of them frolicking in the park.
Your list owners and everyone else will appreciate it when you treat the people on the list with great respect. You should honor them – don’t treat them like data.
Your video is a great way to tell others how your list is unique.
You should say why your list is different from all the other alternatives. On a doctors list, you might say “Unlike other doctor lists, this is a list of doctors who have specifically opted in to receive information on experimental cancer treatments.”
You should also say why it is better.
By saying something like “and because of the source method, results have shown these doctors are more likely to respond to relevant promotions.”
Your video can also advise the viewer on the best way to use your list. You should give information on how the list has been used most successfully through recommended uses, historical facts on usage, and you might want to tell some real life stories.
For example, you might say “In a recent promotion, Acme Corp tested this list in their widgets campaign and this list outperformed other lists by 15% in sales, 20% in ROI, 12% in response rate, and 20% in average order.”
It’s a very good idea to mention the controls on the list. Outside the list business, most people don’t realize how tightly controlled response lists are. Plus, your list owner will appreciate this.
You should mention the privacy policy. For example, you might say “Only those who have opted in to receive 3rd party mailings are available for rental.”
You should mention the approval policy. You could say something like, “Please note that any mailings to this list requires list owner approval. Your offer must be deemed relevant and in good taste to be approved.”
And you should mention how the data is secured. By saying something along the lines of “Your mailings must be delivered through a trusted 3rd party service bureau – you will not receive name and address data directly.”
Finally, and I probably don’t need to remind you of this, you should close with a call to action. Tell the viewer how to get more information or to place an order with you. One thing that’s often overlooked is showing your contact information on the screen because this will make it easier for the viewer to follow up.
If you have any special promotions, you should mention them.
For example, you might say “We’re offering a 25% discount on new tests to qualified buyers for all orders placed before June 30th.”
If you have any questions, you can call our customer support group at (603) 643-1307, email support@NextMark.com, or Visit www.NextMark.com.
And remember, video data cards is a free service. I look forward to seeing your creativity and I hope this helps your business!
RMI and Millard First To Add Video To Data Cards
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009RMI Direct Marketing was well-prepared for NextMark's latest software release (version 6.12) enabling video marketing for mailing lists. As of this morning, a NextMark list search revealed that RMI had posted a total of 90 videos to their data cards. Included in the mix were list management presentations exclusively for non-profit list brokers and mailers, and a nice pitch from Richard Leary regarding statistical modeling on the Guideposts Associates Masterfile. Check it out below:
RMI's Chief Executive Officer, Martin Stein was among tfirst to comment on this innovation.
"The data card has always served the list community as a one dimensional marketing tool – a basic template of segments, selections and pricing. NextMark's introduction of videos offers a new vehicle for data managers to capture the attention of list brokers and mailers in a personalized fashion for today's digital world. This type of forward thinking is a boon to our industry, and RMI is honored to be a part of such ground breaking innovation."
Anthony DiNino, Millard Group also responded to the opportunity with the posting of an informative video that promotes the unique attributes of the Time Life Package Insert Program. Check it out below:
For the full story, check out today's press release titled "NextMark Enables Video Marketing For Mailing Lists". The DMNews article is also good and it points to the ROI associated with leveraging video technology for lists. I wonder what we'll see next?
MailingLists.com re-launched on NextMark technology
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009NextMark just helped Infinite Media to relaunch its MailingLists.com website. It now provides marketers with a free mailing list search engine coupled with free mailing list advice from live experts.
It's an interesting adaptation of NextMark's mailing list search technology and data card database. See for yourself at http://www.MailingLists.com.
NextMark Select sneak peek
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
This is screen cam the of alpha version of NextMark Select interface. This shows how we are solving the problem of slow counts. Still lots of work to do, but thought you would like this sneak peek. Also… Here's the High-Def version at vimeo.
Block bad lists from your mailing list searches
Monday, March 16th, 2009
NextMark just released a new feature in its mailing list research system that enables you to block lists and list managers from your search results. This feature is handy for hiding bad lists or list managers that you will never recommend. The block lists video (see above or click here for the High-Def version) shows you how to use this new tool.
Do List Managers Have Long Tails?
Thursday, March 12th, 2009Mary Elizabeth Hurn referenced the following search trend in her March 10, 2009 DMNews article titled "More words in average search query: Hitwise".
"Longer search queries are becoming more popular year over year according to a report put out by Hitwise. Though the majority of searches are one, two and three word queries, these length terms are down 3%, 5% and 1%, respectfully. But queries with four to eight words and over are all up year over year in growth ranging from 3% to 20%."
So what does this mean for you if you are a list manager? It may be good news for you if your data cards are on a search engine optimized (SEO) platform. Every mailing list data card indexed by Google as a unique web page contributes to a successful long tail SEO strategy. List managers, who focus on creating a list marketing environment and data card quality within a certain domain, will ultimately benefit from this trend. Yes, list managers do have long tails.
Every list title, segment, selection and description is a target for the web robots (bots). The more of your data card content they find, the better your chances are in getting noticed on the search engine results page (SERP). The most visited web page, other than your home page, may account for less than 1% of your traffic. However, it is the sum of all of the traffic from all of your web pages that you want to maximize. Winning the battle for the long tail will not only improve your search traffic, but it may also improve your conversion rate.
For example, an attorney looking for a mailing list of small business owners in Rhode Island searches on "small business leads" using Google and pages though 76,800 results. She subsequently clicks on a link that registers her for a third-party lead service that fills her voice mail and litters her in-box with responses from various sales agents. She is not a happy camper, but she knows from experience that it's not worth suing them.
Her paralegal comes to the rescue and runs a search on "small business owners mailing list and RI". He gets one targeted result linked to a data card showing over 12,000 small business owners in Rhode Island. He calculates the cost using the base rate directly from the data card, clicks on 'get more information' receives an e-mail with the contact information, places the order on his company credit card, and delivers the list to his manager that same day.
This count is sucking your blood
Friday, March 6th, 2009
See the Hi-def version of "This count is sucking your blood" on Vimeo.
There’s a count that’s sucking your blood. No, it’s not Count Dracula. I’m talking about mailing list counts. Slow counts are sucking the lifeblood out of your direct marketing programs.
When prospecting for new customers with direct marketing, you generally need to rent mailing lists. But you don’t usually rent the whole list. You order the subset of the list that matches your target audience.
For example, when ordering from a list of doctors, you might select the subset of doctors that are brain surgeons practicing in New Hampshire. So the question is… How many names meet your criteria?
To get this count, somebody has to run a database query to get the answer to your question.
Time for a pop quiz: How long does it take to get the count?
- 2 milliseconds
- 2 seconds
- 2 minutes
- 2 hours
- 2 days
- 2 weeks
Believe it or not, 2 days is the industry standard. I know what you are thinking… “No way! It only takes 2 seconds to run that simple query!” You’d be right about that. But this was a trick question. I didn’t ask you how long it takes to run the query. Instead, I asked how long it takes to get your answer.
So why does it take 2 days to get your answer? The slow turnaround is a result of a series 0f delays in the process… So let’s review the process
- First, the mailer asks the broker for a count. It sits in the broker’s inbox or voice mail for an hour or two.
- Then the broker reviews and refines the request and forwards it to the list manager. The request again sits for an hour or two.
- The list manager forwards this to their counts person. This person may be on staff or at a service bureau. Again this request sits in a queue for a couple of hours before it gets serviced.
- The counts person then configures the query
- runs the count
- and sends the result back to the list manager. This process only takes a couple of minutes. But again the answer sits in the list manager’s inbox for a couple of hours.
- The list manager then reviews the results for accuracy. In many cases, the count is off and we have to rerun with different criteria. However, let’s assume this is acceptable and so it gets forwarded on to the list broker. Again this sits in the list broker’s queue for a couple of hours.
- The list broker then has to review and incorporate the count result into their recommendation along with the counts from all the other lists in their recommendation. The chance that at least one of these counts is delayed is very high.
- Then finally, the broker sends the counts with the recommendations back to the mailer.
With all the delays and hiccups, this process typically takes two days!
Why is this process so slow? It’s disconnected from the workflow. It’s a low priority because nobody makes any money running counts. It’s error-prone, time-consuming, and disruptive. It’s just very difficult to manage.
What do slow counts cost you?
It drives up your personnel expenses. The slow service makes you look bad and forces hasty decisions. Those bad decisions hurt the performance of your direct marketing campaigns which lowers your revenue which, in turn, lowers your return on marketing investment. All of this combined reduces the demand for your services, which puts you into a viscous cycle of lower profits and reduced service.
What’s missing is infrastructure.
What’s missing is a bridge between the data card and the data. Data cards are central to the daily workflow of list brokers and list managers. They use data cards all day every day to get their job done. If we bridge the gap between data cards and the data, then we will dramatically streamline the workflow
Consider the data card. If we add a counts button to the data card, then it would enable buyers to request counts electronically in a consistent way.
And because the count requests are electronic they can be handled efficiently and tracked automatically. In most cases, the query can be run automatically once approved.
The result of this technology is a dramatically streamlined process that cuts turnaround time to hours, minutes, or even seconds!
This simple act of streamlining counts has many benefits. It will drive down your personnel expenses. The fast service makes you look good and enables better decisions. Those good decisions will improve the performance of your direct marketing campaigns which increases your revenue which, in turn, increases your return on marketing investment. All of this combined increases the demand for your services which now puts you into a virtuous cycle of higher profits and improved service.
This technology isn’t some far off pipe dream.
NextMark Select is the name of this technology… and it’s very real. And it will soon be available to you. Stay tuned.
Are you going postal? You should be… (Winterberry Group)
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009The Winterberry Group has just released a white paper reporting the first decline in direct mail spending in recorded history starting in 1945. The white paper, entitled A Channel in Transformation: Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail 2009, is the New York-based consulting firm’s fifth annual study of trends in direct mail media. It stresses the importance of the trends away from "mass" and towards "targeted" direct mail programs:
"Squarely impacted by the “triple assault” of the recession, rising postage rates and growing marketer preference for low-cost digital communications, total U.S. direct mail spending declined sharply in 2008—falling 3.0 percent—and was accompanied by an even more significant cutback in mail volume"
[…]
"The accelerating shift from “mass” to “targeted” direct mail programs has been enabled by an increasingly powerful array of marketing automation technologies, many of which are making their way into the toolsets of marketers both large and small."
[…]
“The dramatic events of the last few years have come home to roost for direct mail. Postal shocks, environmental pressure, recession, media consumption shifts and enhanced targeting tools have brought about an end to the ‘batch-blast’ era of direct mail,” said Bruce Biegel, Winterberry Group’s senior managing director. “In the face of exceptionally challenging conditions, it is apparent that mailers have shifted their focus to lower-volume, more targeted and higher-value campaigns, with traffic generation to the store, Web and call center being the primary objective. In turn, this shift is generating a realignment of the supplier community and the marketing operations process—opening the door for more and better integrated marketing over the next several years.”
A Channel in Transformation: Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail is available for complimentary download via the Research page of Winterberry Group’s Web site, located at http://www.winterberrygroup.com/research/.
So what are these automation technologies that will enable you to survive and thrive in this scary new world?
First, consider the fact that your choice of mailing lists is a very significant factor in the outcome of every direct marketing program. Experts attribute more than 40% of the success of direct marketing to your choice of mailing lists:
As Winterberry reported, it's even more important than ever to be targeted in your marketing. Direct mail is one of the few channels that enables this level of precision.
Good news!… in the last few years, there's been innovations in technology that can help you find better mailing lists. A great example is NextMark's Mailing Lists Search Tool.
And the best part? It's free.
Access to this information and technology used to be hidden behind passwords and high user fees. Now, thanks to Marketing Freeconomics, you get it for free.
Now is a great time to be in the mail. There's less noise and competition. There's better tools. If you do a good job with your targeting, you will be positioned for growth. Start today by finding some great mailing lists!