The right offers triggered to the right people can produce up to 30 percent additional revenue.

This is the third installment in a three-part series on response marketing in email. In the first piece, Making Email Auto Responders Work, we emphasized that it's how you use the technology that matters. The second article explained how to manage your email campaign's triggers.

As I've covered in the previous two pieces in this series, maximizing your own auto responders and triggers on campaigns is challenging enough. But, third-party database managers have even greater challenges, especially since the passage of CAN-SPAM. The third-party database managers that have been best able to monetize triggers within their clients’ campaigns, which we call Response Offers, have become some of the big winners in email marketing.

For most practitioners in this segment of email marketing, the term Response Offers itself applies only to this third-party database management. The syndication of Response Offers to a reputable third party should provide pure incremental profits to the bottom line of any campaign. In fact, we routinely add 20 percent to 30 percent of new revenue to existing campaigns purely through well-executed Response Offers.

Any third party who provides this service should be able to do so on a completely pay-per-results basis, with no set up fee, no initial costs and with no cannibalization of the primary campaign. As is the case with so many direct marketing tactics, the details are where the value is. So, let’s take a look at some.

Any vendor you choose should have clearly productized technology that makes whatever they term their Response Offers simple to the client (you) and relevant to the consumers in your database. Choose only a third-party vendor whose products send these up-selling and cross-selling emails without actually compromising your database. This allows the database manager to maintain complete and exclusive control over their own list without foregoing the additional revenue stream provided by a quality third-party marketing partner. 

Let’s use the education sector for an example of how this works for some of our clients. Let’s say a client of ours manages a database against which he sends an email for Kaplan University. A company like ours manages their Response Offers, so when anyone on that database responds to their Kaplan University email, they may next receive an email from Free Scholarship Guide that can help them get money for an education. Any interaction with the scholarship email catalyzes the sending of another, this time from a company such as Directtextbook.com or another text book provider. Recipients of the second and third emails that contain Response Offers are far more qualified than the ones who received the first one, and typically have the highest effective CPMs. The relevance of the offers to the initial email is -- naturally -- what makes the up-sell here compelling. But, the management of the up-sell has to be done seamlessly and with technology that sends the right email at the right time. 

It’s important to work only with third parties that can manage Response Offers such as these and other kinds of up-sell campaigns in a completely transparent fashion, providing the database manager with added value to his or her campaigns with no set-up costs or additional overhead. If the program is turn-key, the database manager can focus on their core business while the email marketing partner optimizes delivery and targets the most relevant offers to their list.

It’s an easy choice. As a database manager you can add 20 to 30 percent to many of your campaigns without diminishing the value of your most important asset -- your users. As always, it’s all in the partner you choose.

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 two-and-a-half years, O'Neal has built out a world-class sales and marketing team.