Your newsletters are just as valuable -- and important -- as your homepage (first of two parts).

Whether you are a commercial publisher or a marketer, your Web site’s homepage is generally the most valuable and scrutinized piece of real estate in your portfolio.

If you were to wake up tomorrow and have a second homepage with roughly the same value, I doubt you’d turn it down. In fact, you’d probably be willing to pay significantly to obtain that asset. If you learned that it could also increase your site retention by as much as 50 percent that would get your attention. How much would you pay for that? Here’s the good news -- most of you already have it or have a straightforward path to getting that new "homepage." What is it you ask? Your daily/weekly email newsletters and RSS feeds.

While RSS feeds are relatively new, email newsletters aren’t new. So where’s the news in this? While it may not be new, looking at your email newsletters as an asset on par with your homepage should cause you to think differently. The first activity most people take when they go online is checking email. An opt-in mail or RSS message from your site is likely to be the first (and in many cases only) exposure of the day to your brand. It’s worth paying close attention to that impression which in effect is an ad for your site.

After a concerted effort on a small budget, HomeAdvisor.com dramatically increased its newsletter subscribers -- by more than 50 times -- through a combination of site promotion, features requiring registration and promotion. Site traffic grew from 2-3 million unique users per month to more than 5 million while increasing retention by more than 50 percent. And the most important metric moved as well -- a large increase in what valuable actions, like signing up for a partner’s service where they got paid on a per-click basis.

A major concern they had was that since a healthy percentage of newsletter subscribers had come from promotions, HomeAdvisor thought they might not be valuable users. In fact, they performed valuable actions at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the site's user base. As a nice by-product of this effort, HomeAdvisor also increased valuable ad inventory -- ads in newsletters were highly desirable, given the high open and click rates.

At the time, industry sell-through was less than it is today -- so this would be more critical today. Of course, it took more than a snap of the fingers to make this happen, but it didn’t require a large number of resources. Rather, it took a focused effort that stayed well away from issues highlighted in the CAN-SPAM Act.

Unfortunately, most organizations don’t scrutinize their email newsletters in the same way as their homepage, and as a result are leaving money on the table. I find most organizations consider their email newsletters to be a cost of doing business rather than a strategic asset to be leveraged. When I was a general manager of Web businesses such as Sidewalk.com and Encarta.com, we analyzed virtually every pixel of our homepages to squeeze more conversions from that page. We tested positioning of functionality, ad placement, design, choice of text and offers to determine the highest and best use of the real estate.

• A baseball pitcher and his coach analyze the pitcher’s delivery -- how does he hold the ball, at what arm angle does he release the ball, what type of leg kick does he use based on the circumstance, etc.
• Retail merchandisers constantly monitor placement of products, promotions, end caps and window displays, all with the intention of increasing revenue and conveying their brand position.
• Gardeners test different soil pH, watering methods, seed types, amount of sun exposure, when to plant, etc.
• Direct marketers are always in test mode. They have a top-performing offer that they try to knock off with new, and hopefully, better offers, as well as ways of delivering that message.
• A chef evolves his dishes to take advantage of the best mix of herbs, cooking methods, in-season ingredients, accompaniments to main dishes, etc.

Imagine if you applied that level of thinking to newsletters and RSS feeds. Most organizations’ homepages have matured to a point where they can afford to divert some resources for a time to apply the same skills to newsletters -- and to a lesser degree RSS feeds, since the range of functionality is much more limited by design. Quite frankly, HomeAdvisor.com had very basic reporting and analytic tools, yet dramatic results were achieved.

Today’s email tools have come a long way. Companies such as DoubleClick and Memetic Systems offer rich toolsets that enable the kinds of analytics that we only dreamed about. For a more detailed look at evaluating email service providers, read Is Your Email Old School? and There’s Gold Outside CRM Mailbox.

While it’s critical to focus on the level of engagement with your newsletters -- low open and click rates are never a good sign -- be mindful that unopened mails can still have a positive effect if the rate of unopened mails isn’t too high. Interesting and provocative subject lines can reinforce your brand and what your site has to offer. This is not unlike the view-through most brand marketers now recognize as being at least as important to track as click-through. This effect should be tracked in studies you do on site satisfaction and key brand metrics.

Now that you have seen how the "other homepage" can lead to increased site traffic, retention, valuable actions and increased brand metrics such as brand favorability and message association, we’ll look at what that can do for your business.

Tomorrow: Approaches to take to avoid leaving money on the table.

Dave Chase is a partner with Altus Alliance which specializes in driving revenue traction for emerging businesses. Before joining Altus Alliance, Chase spent nearly 20 years in the industry with the last twelve years at Microsoft in various senior marketing and general management roles, including his role as MSN’s managing director for industry marketing and relations. In that capacity, he was responsible for MSN taking a leadership role within the interactive marketing industry to grow Online’s share of the overall ad market in concert with AOL, CNET, Yahoo!, Google and other market leaders.
 
Chase played leadership roles in launching several new businesses within Microsoft including Microsoft’s entry into the enterprise software and server business which is now an $8 billion business. This included co-leading Microsoft’s first vertical marketing efforts where he grew the Healthcare vertical market from virtually no presence to a market leading position. The healthcare business now represents over $400 million in revenue for Microsoft.
From there, he was integral in Microsoft’s entry into consumer Internet businesses that achieved both critical and financial success. These included Sidewalk, Encarta, and HomeAdvisor, which were among the first profitable consumer Internet businesses for Microsoft and heavily used email marketing to enable their growth.