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Product Description
Email marketing began as a serious marketing discipline in the late 1990s. Since then, there has been a major seismatic shift in the entire email marketing industry. The standard approach to email marketing, batch and blast — is serious trouble. It simply no longer performs. Subscriber inboxes are overflowing with irrelevant permission-based emails that only annoy. Research shows that 60% of subscribers simply ignore the emails. There are two basic ways to approach… More >>
December 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Ken MaGill of Direct Magazine said: “In a case of seemingly perfect timing, a new book is due out March 3 that will help tip the scales in e-mail managers’ favor.
“In Successful E-mail Marketing Strategies, from Hunting to Farming, Arthur Middleton Hughes, senior strategist at e-Dialog and Arthur Sweetser, chief marketing officer of the e-mail service provider, take readers through a step-by-step approach to implementing database-marketing essentials to improve e-mail’s marketing returns intelligently.
Hughes is traditional database marketing’s Great Explainer. Among his achievements was founding the Database Marketing Institute in 1994, which in six years gave two-day seminars to 1,400 database marketing executives. He has a way of explaining concepts such as cost per order and average lifetime value–staples of database marketing–so everyone can understand, calculate and put them to use.
He also understands everybody’s got a lot to do, resources are tight and radically retooling direct marketing programs is not often possible. His writings reflect that understanding by offering suggestions on simple steps marketers can take immediately to get headed down the right path. Sweetser is no slouch either. Like Hughes, he has more than 20 years experience in direct marketing, many of them at S&H Greenpoints. He also did stints at Gearon Hoffman Advertising in Boston and Ogilvy and Mather where he worked on national accounts, such as American Express, Nynex, AMD Sony Professional Products and Bank of Boston.
Hughes and Sweetser have the perfect backgrounds to deliver much-needed database-marketing advice to e-mail managers while taking into account the channel’s differences from traditional direct marketing.
The book’s from-hunting-to-farming thesis contends that those who cultivate their customer e-mail lists using database marketing–the minority of marketers these days–can spot and exploit profitable list segments and send messages to them that result in higher opens, clicks and conversion rates than those who blast their entire files.
“Successful E-mail Marketing Strategies, from Hunting to Farming,” is no “The Long Tail,” the name for a niche marketing philosophy advanced by Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson in 2004.
In fact, the folks at Wired probably won’t get within 100 feet of this book. Good.
E-mail managers don’t need a new marketing philosophy. They need an old marketing philosophy with proven metrics explained in a way that allows them to weave it into their e-mail programs and get more out of their increasingly hard-to-acquire customer e-mail addresses.
“Successful Marketing Strategies” doesn’t just tell readers they should send relevant e-mail. It explains how to achieve relevance and measure it. It explains old-school concepts such as how to market using recency, frequency and monetary value. It explains calculating customer lifetime value and the cost to acquire a new customer, and how to use that information in easy-to-understand terms.
It also covers topics unique to e-mail marketing, such as crafting effective subject lines and harnessing the power of transactional messages. Besides being extremely timely, “Successful Marketing Strategies” is highly readable and, most importantly, useful. And that’s the best compliment a trade book can receive.”
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I found this book to be very insightful and focused from an email marketing standpoint. It is nice to come across a book that articulates detailed case studies and data analysis that is easy to understand. In today’s times, we are bombarded with email messages that are annoying and not very respectful on a daily basis. This book provides a sound foundation for building and cultivating relationships through e-mail.
As a business coach, I feel this is the most important transition to make if you want to maximize your email marketing efforts with better interaction and meaningful dialogue with your prospects.
I really enjoyed the information on “Farming Techniques.” I highly recommend this book as it is comprehensive, yet easy to implement the techniques and strategies right into your business now. This is the most up to date book on Email Marketing that I have come across.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Sending an e-mail is so cheap you might as well send every e-mail to every customer, right? Dead wrong, say the authors of a new book entitled, “Successful E-mail Marketing Strategies: From Hunting to Farming.”
They argue that bombarding consumers with e-mail blasts is akin to hunting, in that the marketer is setting traps, hoping to capture new customers. Instead, marketers should adopt a strategy more analogous to farming, cultivating their best customers by sending them relevant e-mails and using e-mails to build a relationship, say the authors, Arthur Middleton Hughes and Arthur Sweetser. Hughes is senior strategist and Sweetser chief marketing officer at e-Dialog, an e-mail service provider that was acquired last year by e-commerce technology provider GSI Commerce Inc.
At one major retailer an e-Dialog analysis found that 1% of the customers on the list accounted for 50% of the revenue from e-mail marketing, Sweetser says. But the retailer was not marketing to those customers differently. And that’s not atypical, he says. “Maybe 10% of our e-commerce retailers have messaging tailor to prior purchase and loyal customers,” Sweetser says.
For many retailers, only 10% of the individuals on their e-mail lists ever make a purchase, Hughes says. “The 10% who do should be treated like kings,” he says. “They’re the ones keeping the company going.” That includes sending them relevant e-mail, sending birthday greetings and thank-you notes, and encouraging interaction by inviting them to review products they’ve bought.
Relevance is key, says Hughes, who notes that his wife unsubscribed from e-mails from Macy’s–a store she likes to shop at–because she was getting five e-mails a week from the department store chain, most of them irrelevant. He says sending relevant e-mail starts with building a database with information about customers. That can include information the retailer can gather itself–based on purchase history and short surveys–and data from outside companies that collect consumer information.
Once a retailer knows something about a consumer, Hughes says it’s easier to send that individual e-mails relevant to him, and avoid sending messages that will only annoy him. “If he lives in a high-rise don’t tell him about lawnmowers. If he’s 60 years old don’t tell him about baby food,” Hughes says. “A database is a bunch of information that helps you build long-term relationships.”
The authors also advise marketers to determine the lifetime value of customers, information that can help a retailer decide, for instance, how much to spend to acquire new names for an e-mail list. For e-Dialog’s retailer clients, the average value of an e-mail address is $20 in sales per year, Sweetser says.
In determining customer value, marketers should remember to factor in the offline impact of e-mail. Hughes and Sweetser say that e-mail generates $4 in store sales for every dollar of web sales. And just e-mailing customers to tell them they have a catalog can make a difference–housewares cataloger Miles Kimball found in a test that customers who received an e-mail telling them a catalog was coming bought 18% more than customers who did not receive that e-mail. “The e-mail just said, `Look in your mailbox,’” Hughes says. “That shows that e-mail can work in conjunction with direct mail to boost sales, and that’s particularly important right now.”
Internet Retailer, Monday, February 16, 2009
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
As reviewed in Beyond Madison Avenue
References on how to effectively make use of email marketing strategies can be solicited once again from this new book reference that was recently launched.
e-Dialog, a proven provider of advanced e-mail marketing services and solutions, today announced the debut of Successful E-mail Marketing Strategies: From Hunting to Farming, a book co-authored by marketing veterans Arthur Middleton Hughes and Arthur Sweetser. Available from RACOM Books, Amazon.com and Borders.com, the book outlines how to create and measure e-mail messages that are relevant to subscribers.
Understanding that competition has never been more fierce, nor margins more slim, the authors guide marketers in FARMING techniques; sending e-mails that prompt recipients to take a desired action based on a database of demographic and behavioral information. In essence, they direct companies in optimizing and measuring the most impactful and cost-effective medium today.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 4:11 pm
DMNews had this to say about the book:
“”Successful E-mail Marketing Strategies,” a new book out by Racom Communications by consultant Arthur Middleton Hughes and e-Dialog’s Arthur Sweetser, looks at the evolution of e-mail like the evolution of man -from hunting and gathering societies to farming cultures. The book argues that by building out an e-mail program, based on a farming mentality, aka planting seeds, nurturing the crops, etc., that marketers will reap in the harvest.
The book includes tips on campaign performance measurement, data collection, list growth and balancing frequency with profits. It also looks at how to increase retail and catalog sales through transactional and triggered e-mails, and it outlines e-Dialog’s own relevance factor. With lots of case studies included, the book aims to show how testing and using analytics can help turn e-mail marketers into farmers.”
Rating: 5 / 5
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Hello.
I would like to put a link to your site on my blog roll if you want to do the same for mine. It would be a good way to build up both of our readerships.
thank you.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:23 am
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