Mailing to Millions - WhitePap

MAILING TO MILLIONS
Six Best Practices to Get Maximum Return & Revenue from Your
Million-Plus Email Database

MAILING TO MILLIONS

MAILING TO MILLIONS

SIX BEST PRACTICES TO GET MAXIMUM RETURN &
REVENUE FROM YOUR MILLION-PLUS EMAIL DATABASE
There’s no reason overseeing and managing a million-plus subscriber email database
should be a discombobulated and overbearing task. Start being an effective email
marketer by creating a plan, brushing up on your skills, and cleaning house.
Implementing these six simple tweaks will go a long way towards maximizing the
return, response, and revenue from your email program.

HAVE A PLAN WITH THE BIG PICTURE IN MIND
A larger list usually equates to more attention, expectations, and effort. Use your data,
and leverage your staff, executive sponsor, and your email service provider to create a
roadmap to success. Get buy-in from above and across other business channels, and
share your goals and objectives across the board. Set up weekly, monthly, and quarterly
reporting on your campaigns and perform regular assessments of your program to
ensure all efforts are working towards achieving the desired results.

Make sure your plan is sustainable. Beware the batch
“Beware the batch and blast and blast mentality (always think, how would I react
mentality. Always think, how if I received this?), think strategically, targeted, and
would I react if I received this?”
don’t forget about delivery! Email marketing
programs that perform the best do not sacrifice long-
term profitability for short-term return. Keep your
focus narrowed, consistent, and report on what’s
relevant.

Copyright © 2012 WhatCounts, Inc. 3630 Peachtree Rd. Toll Free: 1.866.804.0076 2
All Rights Reserved. Suite 900 Email: sales@whatcounts.com
Atlanta, GA 30326 Website: www.whatcounts.com

MAILING TO MILLIONS

KNOW YOUR PLATFORM
It is crucial that you and your team have a better than average understanding of the
capabilities of your email service provider, especially with a large database. You don’t
need to be an expert, but you should feel right at home navigating through the system,
understand its reporting, and know if it can support your ambitions.

Make sure your corporate language maps to what your email service is reporting, and if
your language does differ, make sure you can translate! If a brush up on your system is
needed, or you just aren’t quite sure about a function, contact your provider.

GET YOUR DATABASE ORGANIZED
Chances are, your database is multi-faceted, with multiple subscriber lists, templates,
reports, and segmentation rules that make finding anything a chore. What’s worse, these
countless variables make the chance of errors on deployment high.

The best-run email programs are those that organize by vertical or marketing effort.
Create folders for different groups and name them something that clearly spells out
what’s stored there (keep it simple!), and then migrate everything to their new homes.

If you have lists within lists, campaigns within
“The best-run email programs campaigns, or old reports for which you’ve forgotten
are those that organize by the details or context, create sub-folders for each (for
vertical or marketing effort.”
your old and irrelevant items, move them out of
sight, and out of mind, by creating archive
subfolders). This linear approach will make finding a
list or template to edit, or campaign to deploy, that
much easier.


MAILING TO MILLIONS

Here is an example of how you could organize one vertical:

STANDARDIZE EVERYTHING
Building on what we’ve already discussed, a large database means lots of opportunities
to create interesting ways to name things, but also provides ample opportunity for
human error. Standardize your naming convention for everything. Avoid complex, or
long and drawn out titles like, “marketing_customer1_campaign1_ddmmyy.” Your
design objective for naming should be that anyone can look at the title and figure out its
purpose. Keep it simple, but relevant to the material.

Don’t bother going back and renaming all your prior data, as it would cause confusion
when accessing older information, and make sure you manage to the changes you’ve
made. Leverage your partnership with your internet service provider (ISP) to ensure
you’re operating as efficiently as possible. Use their knowledge to help you automate
processes where you can. Grant system access only to relevant parties, and ensure
appropriate user rights and restrictions are enforced. Keep close tabs on who can edit
content, subscriber information, run reporting, and push the send button. The last two
are critical, as you want to make sure your data reflects the goals you’ve outlined. You
certainly don’t want just anyone to have the capability to deploy campaigns, do you?


MAILING TO MILLIONS

The best large-volume email programs clearly define who does what, when, how, and
who backs each functional owner up for each vertical.

DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT
There are always a lot of moving pieces to large-volume email campaign operations, and
therefore exceptional communication and documentation is necessary to ensure
everything performs effectively and successfully. Document clearly what your standards
are, make them known, and easily accessible to all vested parties. Your documentation
should also include staff, their responsibilities, automated processes, “how to”
instructions, and who(m) to contact in the event of an issue. Those with the largest (and
growing) lists and lowest subscriber churn percentage realize how important having an
outstanding knowledge base is to their success. Questions are answered, information is
readily available, and accountability is at hand.

KNOW YOUR SUBSCRIBERS
Last but certainly not least, your mentality and
“Report on what’s relevant, but treatment of a million plus subscriber email database
track everything, as you never should be no different than the mentality and
know where that next trend
treatment of a subscriber base of one hundred. All
lies.”
your efforts will be lost if you’re not cognizant of this
fact, with constant monitoring of your subscriber’s
reactions to your campaigns to keep this in check.

Report on what’s relevant, but track everything, as you never know where that next
trend lies. Target your base and send them only relevant offers or information. If you’ve
been tracking everything, you can easily look into your subscriber’s habits by reviewing
their opens (total and unique) and clicks. Look for highest open rates by subject line,


MAILING TO MILLIONS

clicks by offer, and open-to-click ratio by campaign. Use this information to segment
your database and build marketing campaigns that make sense.

Test your ideas on a large enough percentage to ensure an adequate amount of relevant
data is collected to secure confidence in a new initiative and executive buy off. There’s
no real “right” percentage of your base to test, however, feedback from email marketing
managers at large organizations say anywhere from 10% to 20% is sufficient.

Also work with whoever is responsible for monitoring visitor engagement and
conversion on your site, and look for improvement opportunities here. Offer subscribers
the opportunity to control mailing frequency through a preference center, and segment
inactive subscribers (those 6 months or older) into reengagement campaigns.

Both of these efforts will help you maintain a positive reputation and enhance the
deliverability of your campaigns.

RESULTS FROM IMPLEMENTATION
Implementing these six steps to success does not have to be a complicated matter. As
one large organization proves, there are simple measures that can be taken that can put
you on the path to executing the six steps, and make a significant impact to your bottom
line. This company had not, historically, paid much attention to its email marketing
program, however, their new management had different ideas. Recognizing that their
database of an estimated 3 million subscribers was an asset with significant revenue
potential, they developed a plan centered on improving organization, campaign
management, and production, i.e., the big picture. The case presented to the executive
level detailed how purchasing a project management tool could help them organize their
operations, standardize their processes, and free up staff time to focus on more targeting
and testing. The executive team signed off, and the tool was added to their arsenal.


MAILING TO MILLIONS

After a year, the team was pleased to learn that this simple tool had rewarded them by
reducing a campaign’s production time by one third.

In addition, with their new found “free time,” the email team was able to launch 5
lifecycle marketing programs, which netted a 40% increase to site visits and a 65% year-
over-year lift in revenue. The minor investment in an organizational and
standardization tool freed up enough resources to get to know their subscribers a little
more, and lifted their program to new heights.

So, are you and your program ready to take the first step?

The solutions are there for the taking.


MAILING TO MILLIONS

ABOUT US
WhatCounts, a private Atlanta-based company
founded in 2000, is a leading email technology
innovator offering a fully integrated lifecycle
marketing platform supporting dynamic and targeted
content delivery, robust segmentation, API and
transactional capabilities as well as integrated video
and social media tools.

WhatCounts offers deliverability management,
strategic coaching, best practices benchmarking,
CRM integration and advanced analytics facilitating
ROI maximization.

The robust WhatCounts platform is delivered as a
hosted Web-based SaaS application and as part of the
unique Broadcaster on-premise appliance line.

WHATCOUNTS, Inc.

3630 Peachtree Rd. Telephone: 404.995.8600

Suite 900 Toll Free: 866.804.0076

Atlanta, GA 30326 Fax: 404.995.8611

www.whatcounts.com Email: sales@whatcounts.com

ATLANTA • BALTIMORE • CHICAGO • SEATTLE • SYDNEY • WASHINGTON DC


Mailing to Millions - WhitePap

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