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Email Marketing

Getting Readers to Respond Now... Before They Scroll Away

Your email audience is literally a moving target. They are scanning, screening and scrolling through their email inbox at a rapid clip. How do you get them to stop and click on your email?

Create a reason for the reader to open your email RIGHT NOW. Not later, not tomorrow, not next week. IMMEDIATELY.

One way to get readers to pay attention is advertise a One-Day Sale. Another approach is the Instant Win Contest.

Here's a daily instant win contest I created for a major toy company that tripled their email acquisition rates over the prior month.

Hasbro Toys

This project was a fun one for me as a parent. I knew that the chance to win free toys would have fantastic appeal. However, as with any sweepstakes, you have to get over the perception of, "What are the chances that I'll win - I never win anything!"

That's where a daily instant win contest really makes a difference. Every day, 5 winners were selected to win a prize of $100 worth of new toys. The contest, named "What's in the toy chest" (or "game room" for parents of older kids or adult gamers), gave contestants 4 toys to select from. Immediately, they could find out if they won - and if not, were invited to try again the next day.

Contestants were also encouraged to "tell a friend" - which 10% to 15% of the players did - increasing the acquisition rate even more.

One caveat though: Creating an instant win contest is not an instant process. Sweepstakes are subject to legal review - and there are rules that preclude kids from playing on their own without parental permission (you can get permission online, but it adds extra steps). Besides the initial email, which you see here, there were over 60 other email auto-responders and communications to create based on audience versioning, winner/non-winner responses, the forwarding component, and the parental approval process. So give yourself time to develop something like this.

Looking for ways to increase your email response rates? Contact me. I'm a resident email "expert" on ClickZ. By writing a biweekly column and interviewing e-marketing pros and technology providers ... and reviewing case studies ... I stay up-to-date on the latest email marketing trends, which I would be happy to share with you.



Karen's ClickZ Columns on B2B Email Marketing