Broker Roundtable: What Are the Trends in E-Mail Lists?

This week’s question for the broker roundtable: What are the trends in e-mail lists? Are you seeing more mailers considering e-mail for prospecting?
Our current panel features Christopher Pickering of MeritDirect, Stephani Wright of Focus USA, Becky Hagadorn of the Catamount Group, John Ahern of MDx Medical, Lisa Horder of Institute Lists and Kathy Duggan-Josephs of RMI Direct Marketing Inc. (Would you like to be considered to be a member of our roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs at [email protected].)

Christopher Pickering, senior vice president, list brokerage, MeritDirect:
There are more alternatives for coordinated direct mail and e-mail campaigns now and merchandise marketers are beginning to use these effectively. Using an e-mail to reinforce a direct mail promotion can be a great tactic. The key becomes being able to credit all response behavior to the effort to get the best gauge of response to see what works.

Stephani Wright, national sales manager, Focus USA:
We’ve seen a total shift in how marketers view e-mail. Not only is it fast, measureable, and responsive, it allows the same targeting as a traditional postal campaign often at half the cost. Marketers can get immediate response and action. E-mail helps to build relationships, loyalty, and trust for a brand while still leaving the choice in the consumer’s hand. They can dictate everything from the frequency of communication to what that communication is about.

We try to strategize with our clients on ways to market to the right people at the right time and because integrating e-mail marketing into your strategy is not difficult, it has become so much more popular. Often a client can be ready to go in two weeks with a campaign.

E-mail alone is an important branding tool. Consumers spend a lot of time at their computers; it makes sense to include this channel in a marketer’s loyalty and acquisition strategies. Trend we are seeing include dual-push campaigns where we integrate both the postal and e-mail component, where one reinforces the other and gets the message out twice to the same consumer in a different way which helps with branding. We also use multiple-touch campaigning as a way to encourage brand recognition.

Areas where we see e-mail marketing flourishing: insurance offers with the auto, health, and life markets, health and fitness products, education and self improvement offers, and travel. We’ve even helped to move some nonprofit clients into the online channels with success.

Becky Hagadorn, senior account executive, Catamount Group:
Yes and as a matter of fact the majority of the acquisition efforts the Catamount Group brokers is online in either e-mail, site display, lead generation or sponsorships. In terms of trends, I see costs per thousand (CPMs) coming down or being agreed to at a much more reasonable rate. I am also witnessing more data owners making their e-mail files available whereas previously they were untouchable. This allows them to increase the value of their database and many have found that their client base likes to receive endorsed offers from them.

John Ahern, director of list and data marketing, MDX Medical Inc.:
Yes and no. While more mailers are considering e-mail as an alternative to traditional postal marketing, the cost of an e-mail list three to four times the CPM of a postal list. However, when the cost of paper and postage is added to the mix, it really depends on the offer, time of year and strength of the list which is the deciding factor for many companies to decide which is more profitable for them.

Lisa Horder, director of list brokerage, Institute Lists:
More and more traditional direct marketers are testing e-mail. We are encouraged by this trend as we have seen many successful campaigns including, but not limited to, product promotion, webinars and surveys. To get the most mileage out of these marketing dollars, we suggest testing subject lines and various creative formats. We try to set realistic expectations with our mailers regarding response rates as house files tend to produce higher click-thru rates than external files. As companies adopt greener practices, e-mail will naturally become a bigger part of direct marketing initiatives.

Kathy Duggan-Josephs, vice president of multichannel marketing, RMI Direct Marketing:
There are still not any great success stories in e-mail prospecting. Based on that, many list owners have dramatically reduced the price of their lists to entice mailers to test. We have started some testing for a number of our clients that are showing some limited success.