±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Corporate buyers of BMWs are an eclectic bunch. There are fleet managers keen to learn all they can about diesel models that allow sales reps to get between appointments quickly and efficiently. Then there are the buyers who look for sporty or luxury models as perks for board members or star earners.

BMW addresses this disparity in its email marketing. Every month, its agency, InBox Media, distributes an email newsletter. The newsletter contains eight stories in dynamic content form. InBox analyses the nature of the stories BMW customers have clicked on in the past and, based on the findings, highlights the story most likely to be of interest to the recipient. In this way, the newsletter becomes a targeted piece of communication. "We profile the data, look at the clickthroughs and score them all," says Nik Margolis, Inbox Media client services director.

Bookmaker William Hill also uses email as a means of building response and driving up revenues. Its agency RedEye sends out an email to people seven days after they have registered on the William Hill web site - if they have not used the online gambling service in that time. Research shows that those who receive an email of this kind are five times more likely to use their William Hill accounts than those who do not.

"The automated email tool has enabled us to communicate with a very important segment of potential customers, and we're already seeing a tangible return on investment (ROI)," says Peter Nolan, William Hill group marketing director . "If we know that people bet on events, it makes sense to email them and tell them what they could be interested in. It's old DM, but in another medium."

Nolan's turn of phrase is quite telling. Technology is developing all the time, but there are very few fresh marketing ideas around. Most of the innovation currently taking place is through the reinvention of old ideas for the email channel.

Nevertheless, the journey from incorporating HTML in email marketing to more dynamic technologies such as Flash and Java has happened very quickly. "We're seeing a lot more streaming video and streaming sound. The idea is just to make the medium more interactive," says Broadsystem sales and marketing director Nick McConnell.

Rich-media email has been used to good effect by a number of clients, but many others have decided it is more trouble than it is worth. Video or Flash work in an email can bring a touch of excitement to a client's brand but may also encounter delivery problems. Many in the industry believe it is more important to get the targeting and message content right - more dynamic images can always be presented on the web site, a click away.

"Rich media is always available to the user one click away from the email on a web page, where the content can be much more reliably delivered," says Harvest Digital managing partner William Corke. "Our feeling is that most users aren't especially conscious of whether they are in the email or on the web page. And if you click your mouse 1,000 times a day, is it really worth all the trouble to save an extra click?"

Some email marketers are experimenting with the use of voting buttons in their email, among them cinema chain Odeon. This not only helps in engaging the recipient but also allows marketers to learn more about their target audience's taste and interests - which, of course, provides the opportunity for more tightly targeted communication and offers in future.

This ability to conduct quick polls is an exciting development. Questions can now be embedded within the actual emails, with options to click or open fields that can then be completed and submitted. "Form fields within emails will raise the likelihood of recipients completing questionnaires, making email marketing an ideal tool for both cost-effective qualitative and quantitative research," says Alex Lane, a director at Haygarth.

Important strides forward in email marketing are taking place in the areas of segmentation, evaluation and integration. As BMW's story shows, addressing customers' needs and adapting content to match can be powerful.

Le Meridien Hotels does this through its Moments loyalty programme. Offers are based on data Le Meridien has amassed on customers' preferences. "An offer of a week in Phuket is great but not everyone is in a position to do it. So we're always looking to improve segmentation," says Skip Fidura, director of European operations at Digital Impact, which runs email campaigns for Le Meridien.

"The most important thing with any email is the quality of the list and the relevance of the message," adds RedEye chief executive Paul Cook.

"We allow individual customers to effectively customise their data schema to reflect their unique requirements," says CheetahMail UK chief executive Denis Sheehan. "This means any amount of information can be linked to each individual within the database. We start with the email address and build from there. We can now run a query through our database and only send an email to all males in AB postcodes with a relevant offer, maybe 'visit our site, take a short survey and get a reward'."

Justin Anderson, managing director at Frontwire, feels that many clients are not using the information they have on their customers to its full potential. As a result, they are spurning the opportunity to deepen relationships and build loyalty. "If you have the birthdays of customers, why not send them a 'happy birthday' email?" he asks.

Personalisation does add to the cost of a campaign but it is a way of improving cut-through. Customers who have taken the trouble to give their personal information to a business expect that business to behave knowledgeably in regard to them. Why give out information otherwise?

One of email marketing's great virtues is its transparency - although the battle against spam is now biting into some practices, such as using single pixel-tracking images that the industry considers legitimate and useful. Clients and agencies can track how many emails have been opened and clicked through, and the best agencies work closely with internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure any delivery problems are circumvented.

Increasingly, clients want post-click analysis to get real insight into campaign effectiveness. If selling more products is the aim of an email-marketing burst, most clients now want to know whether it succeeded in driving up sales and by how much.

"While HTML open and clickthrough rates can provide useful insights, there is a clear opportunity for taking measurement to the next level," says Clark McKay & Walpole head of interactive Sean Hanneberry. "With clients like flybe, we are measuring email's commercial contribution in terms of revenue generation, yield growth and customer lifetime value."

Hanneberry elaborates that, in the case of airline flybe, CMW conducted a full data audit and analysis of email data and consolidated this with transactional and behavioural data to develop a customer-centric email programme. The agency is in the process of implementing geographically-targeted emails segmented by customer value. It is also measuring the performance of email campaigns with post-click tracking to measure direct email sales.

Italian fashion retailer Forzieri has been using email marketing for more than five years and now works with CheetahMail. According to Andrea Forzieri, chief executive at Forzieri, the use of advanced analytics enables the company to accelerate its customer relationship marketing (CRM) strategy.

"From improved CRM, we also see improved ROI, primarily from segmentation, ensuring highly-valued information is received by those it will have most impact with and upon," says Forzieri.

"By analysing CheetahMail Mailing Preview response data and combining it with customer and site feedback, we have been able to tailor the content and layout of our mailings for Excel Airways, achieving, in less than eight weeks, an ROI in double figures," comments David Shiell, founding director of Web Liquid, which manages digital marketing for Excel Airways.

A key question is whether evaluation should be conducted by agency or client. Not surprisingly, the agencies agree it should rest with them.

Frontwire's Anderson argues that the leading email-marketing agencies, sometimes supported by venture capital, have invested a significant amount in measurement systems in recent years - systems that perpetually need to be updated and fine-tuned as technology moves on. To replicate this amount of expertise in-house would be costly for the client.

"The more interesting part of measurement, which is still developing, is the brand effect," says Syzygy managing director Stephen Priestnall.

"What does your email communication say about your brand? Relatively few email-marketing campaigns take this into account; they are, to use a metaphor from the wider internet, where web sites were 18 months ago. Tracking numbers is enough to say whether the email was effective, but now marketers should be keen to understand how customers perceive their emails and how this relates to the brand."

Answering the brand-effect question, Priestnall asserts, will be the big development in the next year. It will need to take into consideration customer perception of tone of voice, which for email marketing is equally, if not more important, than design, and also where email addresses are sourced from.

What further developments are likely to take place in the near future?

Integration is certainly a buzzword at the moment. And this is likely to manifest itself in a number of ways.

First, through clients harnessing communication synergies by bringing email and other channels closer together. For example, as Margolis points out, to make telemarketing (an expensive undertaking) more cost effective by integrating it with email to reduce the cost per customer. An instance of this in action is a customer clicking through on an email link but not purchasing - this could then be followed up by a phone call from a contact centre that may lead to a sale.

Broadsystem's McConnell sees applications in boosting the effectiveness of direct-mail campaigns; for instance, sending out a teaser email ahead of (or even after) a mail pack goes out. Fidura also thinks we will see more email marketing working in tandem with other channels such as direct mail and above-the-line advertising. Most obviously, an email dialogue can be initiated when consumers engage with interactive TV advertising and supply their contact details.

Second, the broad expectation is that there will be a move towards closer integration of data from a variety of sources in order to measure marketing effectiveness and ROI with greater accuracy. Unica, which provides marketing-management technology called Affinium for companies such as Marks & Spencer Money, HBOS and Vodafone, expects this trend to develop as marketers strive for credible answers.

"Now marketers are taking a much more holistic view of their marketing efforts," says Unica senior manager of product marketing Todd Piett. "They are integrating email response data with other cross-channel response data, and analysing those results across both segments and time. This level of analysis allows marketers to get a better view of the effectiveness of their marketing spend.

"Did the user who clicked through yesterday and browsed on the web site make a call to the contact centre and purchase today? What were the results of a given offer across the various channels? Did these results vary significantly by customer segment? Was email a low-cost acquisition channel or was it better as a brand-awareness tool, driving purchases to stores?"

Great strides are being made in email marketing, but it is fair to say that many clients still have a long way to go. Those that are segmenting audiences with diligence, sending them relevant information and evaluating ROI assiduously, are several steps ahead of the pack. Maybe one or two are doing it so well that they will be rewarded with a BMW.

CLUB NOKIA EMAIL REWARDS LOYALTY

Club Nokia is a loyalty club for owners of Nokia phones, offering reward points, repair, maintenance and advice.

Core objectives include increasing customer satisfaction and boosting loyalty to the Nokia brand.

"When we ask members to join Club Nokia they can choose to be contacted by SMS or email," says Nilam Patel, a senior account manager at Haygarth, which works with Club Nokia.

Two versions of a bi-monthly email newsletter are sent out. One version is sent to customers aged 16-27; another goes to those aged 28-plus. Content is adapted to suit the age profile. Different handset products are targeted to each age group.

The newsletters feature prize draws, discounts on accessories and ticket offers.

Nokia also sends out one-off targeted emails. One offer linked to movie Touching the Void was sent out to members who had specified an interest in action films and climbing.

"Nokia uses email to identify its most responsive Club Nokia members, assess their interests and build member profiles," says Nokia UK marketing manager Charlotte Fionda.