It's not just about the technology; it's also how you use it.

This is the first installment in a three-part series on response marketing in email. Look for future pieces on How to Manage Your Campaign's Triggers and Getting More Mileage with Response Offers.

Attention, email marketers and online publishers. What if you could consistently deliver performance boosts of up to 50 percent over primary campaigns with no additional cost or effort with response marketing techniques? Any marketer would want to drive these kinds of results, and their secret resides not just in the technology used, but also in the tactics; that is, how you use it.

In terms of the technology, it’s vital to have a response engine that performs real-time advertising selection and delivery precisely based on the consumer’s response to the original message. Automating this process puts contextual marketing in the correct context. This way, when consumers react, you can react with the right messages. The marketer has to have an understanding as to what the correct context really is, however, and this is where the right tactics come into play.

Precision counts. So any offers provided need to be based not just on a given interest category, but also on historical data that indicates what other “types” of offers a user is likely to interact with. “Types” is in quotes here because each marketer may develop their own taxonomy upon which to base these criteria. The important thing is to develop that taxonomy with offer provisions in mind and allow it to “self-educate” in order to facilitate more precision.

Any behavior on the Web or response to an email is a triggerable event. This added relevance guarantees a more targeted message which results in better response. Combine demographic, psychographic, transactional and purchase information, and you have created either a contextual o behavioral relevant offer. This is true one-to-one marketing.

This way, the performance boost provided by a given auto-responder will be higher not just because the context of the ensuing offers will be more precise, but also because less relevant offers, which many recipients may regard as spam, will be eliminated. This also will help preclude opt-outs, which is an ancillary objective of any campaign.

The contextual offers the consumer sees next should be delivered not just via email, but also via other means when possible, depending on a given publisher’s environment. Many people criticize pop-ups, but this is one scenario in which pop-ups perform extremely well. Banners and rich media also outperform as auto responders when measured against standard demographic targeting. 

Ideally, following up a publisher’s email with the right kind of tactical offers implies blending the delivery mechanisms. So, the first offer could be followed by another email, then a pop-up or pop-under, followed by another email or even a banner. Just as surround sessions drove extremely high response rates when they were introduced, and many still manage to outperform most banner-style campaigns, the right kind of auto responders will amplify a marketer’s message and repeat it, marrying the fundamental principals of marketing -- amplify and repeat -- while doing so in a contextual environment based on a user’s own, previous selections.

Technology Requirements

Any auto response engine must be able to deliver these results seamlessly, of course. No hiccups or too-fast delivery can be tolerated. In terms of the ad specifics, the emails that are accepted by a given publisher should include HTML, Flash and any other rich media format. The publisher’s sales rep should have this information. In terms of the standards for the pops that are used -- both pop-ups and pop-unders -- the sizing should be 730 x 500 maximum and 250 x 150 minimum.

From a deliverabilty standpoint, the advantage differences between a trigger on a user’s on-site behavior and an email response are great. For one thing, the relatively low volume of auto responses to actual consumers online, which they should receive right away after their on-site interaction, should provide an advantageous targeting opportunity, especially if these auto responses are sent immediately, and if they come from the brand of the site. Whatever technology you choose to work with should have this option, as much of the relevance of any offer provided by a third party return address may be offset by the seeming intrusion on the consumer by that third party. Brands matter in all marketing, but never more so than in email auto response marketing. At the very least, the brand that the consumer has interacted with must be mentioned in the ensuing offer, even if the email comes from “our marketing partners …”

Properly delivered auto responders with the right kind of response offers provide publishers with a significant share of the overall revenue for any performance-based campaign. That 50 percent figure I mentioned at the opening of this piece is not an uncommon figure for the campaigns we run regularly on behalf of branded publishers in automotive, finance, OTC pharmaceuticals and other verticals. 

By combining the fundamental principles of direct-to-consumer marketing with the newest technology, smart email marketers can maximize profits for list owners and advertisers one opportunity at a time.

Be sure to work only with a vendor who offers a turn-key solution with no set up costs. That way, they will deliver pure, incremental revenue to your results. Better contextual and behavioral marketing will equal increased revenue for all your campaigns.

Sean O'Neal is Chief Marketing Officer for Datran Media. He has managed Marketing and Sales for the company virtually since its inception. Over the past 2 ½ years, O'Neal has built out a world-class sales and marketing team.