Email
Marketing - what can you offer?
What email marketing services do you supply?
What Email Consultancy do you offer?
Opt-in in-house lists?
Sourcing Third-Party Lists?
Creative Development and Copywriting?
Landing Page (s)?
Subscription / Sign up Form?
Preference Centre?
Tell A Friend system?
Viral [Buzz] Campaigns?
Email Broadcasting?
Multi-Part messages?
Segmentation?
Reporting and Feedback?
Email Marketing - what can you offer?
Put simply,
we can take on a portion of a campaign or manage the whole project on your behalf.
You may have in-house creative skills or you may wish to outsource the full email
creative, deployment and management. You may just want to broadcast a one-off
email, or a series of regular online newsletters.
Whatever the specific
campaign requirements, we'll work with you in the capacity you feel will best
achieve the objectives, to ensure you receive the best service we can provide.
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What
email marketing services do you supply?
MediaCo provide a
complete range of Email Marketing activities including:
Email Consultancy
We provide consultancy services to help clients gain maximum benefit from email
marketing initiatives. This includes contact database integration, contact acquisition,
contact retention, targeting and segmentation as well as campaign creatives, deployment
and measurement.
Email Sourcing
(third party lists)
Through its own resources and those of its trusted partners, MediaCo sources rented
lists that match the profile of clients' targeted market. The focus is on opt-in
matching. We can also review the content, manage the mail-outs and report on results
depending on the list used.
Email Creative
Development inc. Copywriting
Using our in-house copywriters with extensive editorial and marketing skills,
we aim to maximise the textual content for greatest effect (plain text and/or
HTML).
Then our in-house designers can create effective HTML content for delivery by
email. In addition, we often create custom web-based "landing" page(s)
focused on the campaign content.
Email Broadcast
(Management & Delivery)
We use the latest technology to manage and deliver clients' email.
Email Reporting
& Feedback
We report on usage, clickthroughs, opens, trends, subscriptions, unsubscriptions
etc. We can also help you with analysis of the results.
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What
Email Consultancy do you offer?
Our consultancy services
range from the development of email strategies and presentations about how to
develop email campaigns right through to specific in-house seminars.
Consultancy and research
are most effective when integrated as part of the ongoing marketing strategy.
We would discuss the nature of the requirements with you at the outset in order
to ascertain the best approach.
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Opt-in
in-house lists?
We all know the saying"it
is much cheaper to get new business from an existing customer than a new customer".
So, in the longer term, building an opt-in email list is key to any successful
online marketing strategy.
Forrester Research
estimates that more than 65% of future email marketing expenditures will be used
to increase customer retention, rather than acquire new customers.
Taking that a stage
further, once the list has been built, a professionally delivered and relevant
online newsletter (Ezine) builds the kind of trust, credibility and loyalty that
gains, retains and influences visitors and customers.
Online newsletters
differ greatly from offline versions in their content and presentation. But, with
creative and informative content being pushed at the recipients, we can strongly
encourage people to continue to use the services and products and to evangelise
on behalf of the sender.
MediaCo have extensive
experience in developing online newsletters for clients such as 3M Healthcare,
Scottish Enterprise, Vodafone, Scottish Courage Brands and more.
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Sourcing
Third-Party Lists?
A useful way to build
an in-house opt-in list can be to rent other targeted third-party opt-in lists
with a view to encouraging people to subscribe to regular email communications
from you.
Extensive demographic
and interest profile information may also be available, allowing a niche audience
to be targeted.
These permission-based
lists are built through various channels. They include:
* People who've indicated
willingness to receive email about a general category.
* People who've indicated willingness to receive email about a specific subject.
* Magazine subscribers who have agreed to receive email from the publisher and
relevant other third parties.
* Loyalty/rewards programme members who have agreed to receive email from the
scheme provider and relevant other third parties.
* Questionnaires and surveys (online and offline).
Tthrough its own
resources and those of its trusted partners, MediaCo can source rented lists on
your behalf. The focus is on opt-in matching and we provide advice and results
analysis as part of the package.
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Creative
Development and Copywriting?
Depending on your
own in-house capabilities, if required, MediaCo can assist in the development
and deployment of both plain text and HTML versions of the creative. We can provide
full creative and management services for both one-off email campaigns and online
newsletters. This includes:
* Advance feature
planning (if necessary);
* Copywriting & editing;
* Design, coding and formating;
* Broadcasting;
* Management & reporting.
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Landing
Page (s)?
Landing pages are
extremely useful because emails are best kept short and to the point. But should
a recipient require more details, these can be posted on the landing page, with
links from the email through to more information about the product or services
on offer.
Creating landing
pages for each campaign means that all clicks on these pages are a direct result
of that campaign. Plus, landing pages focus solely on the offer in question ie:
they are campaign-specific - they aren't like the homepage of a site which has
to have multiple functions. MediaCo can create landing pages tailored to your
campaigns.
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Subscription
/ Sign up Form?
MediaCo can provide
Subscription Forms so site visitors can sign up to receive further information,
and select which format they prefer (eg Plain Text or HTML).
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Preference
Centre?
Alternatively,
we can provide a web based Preference Centre which, in addition to the
above, also allows subscribers to confirm their areas of interest for
future mailings.
This typically includes
a list of topics as well as email address, name etc and is often used for segmentation
purposes.
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Tell
A Friend system?
This functionality
can also be provided (a recommended feature for both main websites and ezines).
This system enables recipients to tell other people about the service or site
in question simply and also records all details sent so the company being promoted
is aware of the referral.
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Viral
[Buzz] Campaigns?
Viral means different
things to different people. It can range from a simple tell a friend system (as
above) through to a professionally-created Flash game.
Whatever the method,
the communication process involves email. We can help to develop viral strategies
including implementation (depending on the nature of requirements).
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Email
Broadcasting?
A professional email
campaign should never be delivered though a program such as Outlook, as not only
is it highly unprofessional, but a variety of key components are missing such
as reporting, speed of delivery, personalisation etc.
The benefits of email
marketing can only be measured and achieved through the use of a fully-developed
broadcast and reporting system.
MediaCo can provide
a full online broadcasting, management and reporting service, within which subscriber
databases are held and managed. Features include:
* Europe-based server
and data processing, compliant with EU Privacy directives;
* Security: Secure "https" standards for both platform and data load;
* Speed: Over 200,000 unique messages per hour;
* Compatibility with various email formats - plain text, HTML, AOL, multi-part
MIME, or rich media messages, including streaming video, audio and Flash;
* Personalisation and other customised content features;
* Sequenced messaging with personalisation based on time or action events;
* Detailed reporting including open rate, click-through and unsubscribe tracking;
* Mailing list performance and member activity can be assessed and managed with
the system's analysis tools;
* Automatic bounce handling and classification into hard and soft bounces;
* Identify and eliminate invalid addresses according to specified rules and correct
specific invalid addresses;
* Foreign language support, including double-byte character sets;
* Triple-tiered, password-protected security system.
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Multi-Part
messages?
Through the Email
Management System, MediaCo can send multi-part messages, coded to contain Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). This enables the sending of email messages that
contain both text and HTML, with the recipient's email program displaying the
version it can see best.
However, best practice
is still to establish at the point of registration what format subscribers would
prefer to receive and where possible data houses will split their data this way
to accommodate user preferences. Please note that for bandwidth reasons we do
not host images, these will normally be hosted on your/the clients server.
A note about Streaming
Video: our system can handle streaming video. As for images, this would be hosted
on your server. It is important that the email be coded in such a way that if
the recipient can't view embedded video in an email (ie: most webmail clients),
this is detected and a still image presented asking them to click to view the
video online.
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Segmentation?
Segmenting members
by any criteria within our system is very straightforward. The only requirement
is that the data you supply to us contains the data you want to segment by. It's
not essential to use this part of the system, but it can help to make campaigns
more effective.
For example, to send
one newsletter to your clients members who sell DVDs and a different newsletter
to those involved in Stationery (or the same newsletter with slightly altered
content), means that the member database needs to contain fields containing their
area of business so we can target accordingly. Within the newsletter, we can segment
your member list by each area of business and broadcast the correct information
to each one.
For newsletters which
should only be broadcast to those members who have, for example, not purchased
a certain product, we can create a segment using data provided which flags that
requirement. We would then broadcast the newsletter to those in that business
area, excluding the segment of members who have already purchased, as they may
require a different message. Nothing is removed permanently, it is put to one
side (as it were) for that specific broadcast.
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Reporting
and Feedback?
With regard to reporting,
if MediaCo are broadcasting, you would be given web-based, password-protected
access to real-time activity. This includes:
* Total clicks;
* Total unique clicks;
* Total number of opens;
* Percentage of members on list who clicked;
* Who clicked (individual email addresses) and when;
* Which link(s) they clicked on;
* Number of emails successfully sent;
* Number of bounces, unsubscribes.
Another major advantage
is that the subscribe form on your web site can be linked directly with the email
database, so that the subscribers details are entered automatically. In addition
if they then choose to unsubscribe this is also done without any intervention
by you or us.
Our managed service
provides a range of security measures that protect email data from unauthorised
outsiders. We also provide automatic error handling of invalid email addresses,
provide a full list 'clean up' after users unsubscribe or email bounces and provide
a clean list back to you after each mailing.
We can arrange for
a demo/virtual walkthrough of the reporting system should you require it.
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