Just Say Yes

YesMail’s lists reach willing audiences

Crafting a message is only half the battle in direct marketing. The other half – reaching a receptive audience – can be very difficult, especially when operating online.

That’s where YesMail.com (www.yesmail.com) comes in. A key player in Chicago’s growing online community, the $40 million company helps marketers “reach people, one-to-one, who want to hear about your product or service,” says Dave Menzel, chief executive officer of YesMail.com. “It’s built on the foundation of sending marketing messages only to those people who have specifically given their permission to receive them.”

YesMail’s growing stream of members is supplied by approximately 160 network partners – such as New York Times on the Web, LookSmart and MapQuest.com – who offer membership in the YesMail Network as a value-added service to their own subscribers. These partners generate revenue by providing lists of members who opt in to receive promotional e-mails on 750 interest categories. These partners enable YesMail to offer its 1,300 customers the ability to target a segmented audience from a pool of 16 million willing recipients. YesMail Network marketers include both online and offline companies.

Professional services are also offered by YesMail, including direct marketing consultants who help customers develop, execute and measure the effectiveness of their personalized campaign message. These can be delivered to the consumer in HTML, rich media or AOL-enabled formats. And for those who want to do it themselves, another service, YesConnect, was recently introduced. YesConnect allows YesMail clients to target, create, manage and track e-mail campaigns online via a self-serve interface, allowing them to monitor everything from clickthrough to conversion.

One customer is Allaire Corp., a $100 million provider of software for companies building their business on the Web. Ryan Minor, Allaire’s direct marketing strategist, decided to use YesMail for a campaign to support leads for a very specialized content management product. Minor was faced with the dilemma of reaching a very specific, yet diverse, audience of senior IT managers, chief information officers and line-of-business managers – all with the same message.

“Low-tech media to generate leads doesn’t work as well when dealing with people in front of a computer all day,” he says. “But a marketing manager won’t necessarily download software.” So a three-pronged e-mail offer was extended including a downloadable software evaluation copy, a link to an information page on Allaire’s site and the ability to register for a field seminar. “We went after two good YesMail lists. One was The Industry Standard and the other was CIO Magazine,” says Minor. “The entire campaign cost $30,000 and we got about 400 leads from some very big companies. Sales would pay anything for those leads.”

Although many variables, including the quality of an offer, recognition of a marketer, timing of the message and the message itself affect campaign response, Menzel says e-mail campaigns are executed for a fraction of typical marketing costs. “In the offline world, the average cost runs between $1 and $2 per piece of mail including preparation, postage and fulfillment of the offer. That’s basically five times the cost of a permission e-mail campaign,” he says. “Our base price starts at $250 per thousand, or 25 cents a name, with discounts provided for volume.”

But money isn’t everything. Other benefits of permission-based e-mail marketing include speed of execution and higher response rates. “E-mail marketing responses are usually received in two to three days, compared with offline marketing responses, which can take weeks,” Menzel says. And more people are responding. With permission-based e-mail campaigns, he says, response rates range between 5% to 15% vs. offline response rates of 1% to 2%.

In addition to the ability to run a huge direct mail campaign with just one person, combined with e-mail’s cost-effectiveness and its phenomenal response and conversion rates, Minor notes another benefit to permission e-mail campaigns. “I can do what I call just-in-time marketing. If I’m running a field seminar in New York and need more people, I can send out an e-mail to bring up registration a week before the event,” he says. “Try that with direct mail.”