5 Strategies for Maximizing Search and Email Marketing
In today's challenging economic environment, marketers and advertisers are looking at different ways to maximize the return on their marketing and advertising spend. Due to the emphasis on ROI, more companies will be using a direct response channel like email marketing and search marketing to drive measurable results in 2009 and beyond. In each channel there are key strategies and tactics that need to be employed for maximizing marketing investment, and a marketer can compound his or her success by leveraging each channel’s insight to drive success within the other.
Here are five key strategies for driving ROI in SEM (search and email marketing).
1. Use search marketing as a test bed for both channels. With the excess advertising inventory available to advertisers, there is an industry-wide movement to be more efficient with media allocation. A comprehensive search strategy begins by understanding customer targets and creating the most defined keyword matrix which customers use when "finding." With the abundance of data available, and the immediacy of the paid search market, a healthy testing process should be the first key step to understanding the optimal mix and creative strategy. Note that having access to media allocation, after the testing is completed, is also necessary to ensure that budget is available to execute campaigns.
Considering how quickly a paid search campaign can be implemented and measured, this becomes an excellent source for testing, both in terms of media performance as well as in measuring customer response.
2. When using push messaging, be ready to capture the pull insights. Push marketing, as seen in display media campaigns, is the means wherein marketers promote the brand or product and influence consumers' desire. Through effective marketing in push media an advertiser influences interest and leads consumers to active search, whether for information, navigation or transaction. While consumers or conversions are not yet tracked with the concept of time and media consumption very efficiently, (Microsoft’s Atlas Institute: The Long Road to Conversion) it is paramount to ensure that all media are viewed and measured in aggregate with the imperatives of each channel taken into consideration. Although optimization should be performed on individual tactics to maximize effectiveness, it's the aggregate level intelligence that drives holistic marketing insights. To inform the most efficient and effective search marketing strategy road map and tactical plan, the selection and optimization of keywords and positioning is crucial to not only success in the paid channel, but also to informing broader marketing insights. When specific language structures are performing on a search engine results page, this knowledge can be applied to drive results in other channels. Email is particularly well-suited due to its linguistic foundation, and the real-time nature of search offers an amazing laboratory to test language and calls to action.
3. Invest in the landing page to maximize marketing spend. Increasingly, with the volume of competition in PPC (pay per click), the QS (quality score) is becoming more and more central in gaining the ROI from a campaign due to its function in maintaining relevant messaging to the end user. The consequence of not factoring in the elements of the QS requires marketers to pay more to rank in the key positions on the SERP.
Optimizing landing page content is an important area on which to focus attention to improve QS and ensure campaigns are producing ROI. Many organizations today do not employ this in their tactical mix and send all visitors to a generic landing page or their home page. There is plenty of research in the market that illustrates that value of optimizing your landing page experience, and one recent example can be found at Marketing Experiments. Example: Marketing Experiments, Optimizing Offer Pages: Steps that Increased Conversion by 148%.
4. Integrate messaging strategies based on both SEM and email data. Using the search keyword and query strings, organizations can optimize and tailor the landing page or home page content to match the visitors’ interests and preferences to increase performance. With the diligent application of analytics and testing, a marketer can measure and optimize against performance data to produce dynamic results.
Once a data set is created from the campaign data, a search marketer can build segmentation models and drive specific treatment strategies for the individual segments. Customizing content based on the search query string, serving relevant landing pages and ensuring a seamless click stream to conversion then ensures the PPC effort is well set for performance.
With the economy pressuring every marketing effort, and with customers and businesses watching their purse strings, it is more important than ever to have a robust plan in place with retention as the goal. Paid search is one of the key DR channels a marketer can use for results, and another vital channel is email.
Email marketing is one of the most effective DR channels. Email marketing has evolved from a mass marketing to targeted marketing in the last few years and more and more organizations are using enriched insights on customer to drive email communications and marketing offers.
5. Use email insights to inform SEM execution. At the heart of a successful email marketing strategy is developing deep customer insight. A key need is to understand and consolidate all available data (online and offline) to determine the customer's true interests and then to be able to seamlessly use those advanced insights in email marketing. Search marketing data is especially valuable in driving marketing offers as keyword searches provide valuable insight about the customer.
A data strategy is required that combines offline data with online Web analytics data to provide a complete holistic view of the customer. A key aspect is to gather the search marketing data using Web analytic tools. A holistic view of customer is created using the offline data sources and online transactional and understand how to match and merge the data sources. Organizations should deploy a Web analytics platform to streamline their ability to gather online data.
With a consolidated data in place, analytics can be used for segmentation and predictability. Marketers want to leverage the analytics to drive targeted email communication and marketing offers. Emails allow for measuring clicks allowing for ease of ROI measurement. Another opportunity would be to optimize the click call to action landing pages using the derived insights and analytics. It is important that marketers continually test, optimize and refine all aspects of their strategy to maximize their marketing ROI.
[insidecrm]
Here are five key strategies for driving ROI in SEM (search and email marketing).
1. Use search marketing as a test bed for both channels. With the excess advertising inventory available to advertisers, there is an industry-wide movement to be more efficient with media allocation. A comprehensive search strategy begins by understanding customer targets and creating the most defined keyword matrix which customers use when "finding." With the abundance of data available, and the immediacy of the paid search market, a healthy testing process should be the first key step to understanding the optimal mix and creative strategy. Note that having access to media allocation, after the testing is completed, is also necessary to ensure that budget is available to execute campaigns.
Considering how quickly a paid search campaign can be implemented and measured, this becomes an excellent source for testing, both in terms of media performance as well as in measuring customer response.
2. When using push messaging, be ready to capture the pull insights. Push marketing, as seen in display media campaigns, is the means wherein marketers promote the brand or product and influence consumers' desire. Through effective marketing in push media an advertiser influences interest and leads consumers to active search, whether for information, navigation or transaction. While consumers or conversions are not yet tracked with the concept of time and media consumption very efficiently, (Microsoft’s Atlas Institute: The Long Road to Conversion) it is paramount to ensure that all media are viewed and measured in aggregate with the imperatives of each channel taken into consideration. Although optimization should be performed on individual tactics to maximize effectiveness, it's the aggregate level intelligence that drives holistic marketing insights. To inform the most efficient and effective search marketing strategy road map and tactical plan, the selection and optimization of keywords and positioning is crucial to not only success in the paid channel, but also to informing broader marketing insights. When specific language structures are performing on a search engine results page, this knowledge can be applied to drive results in other channels. Email is particularly well-suited due to its linguistic foundation, and the real-time nature of search offers an amazing laboratory to test language and calls to action.
3. Invest in the landing page to maximize marketing spend. Increasingly, with the volume of competition in PPC (pay per click), the QS (quality score) is becoming more and more central in gaining the ROI from a campaign due to its function in maintaining relevant messaging to the end user. The consequence of not factoring in the elements of the QS requires marketers to pay more to rank in the key positions on the SERP.
Optimizing landing page content is an important area on which to focus attention to improve QS and ensure campaigns are producing ROI. Many organizations today do not employ this in their tactical mix and send all visitors to a generic landing page or their home page. There is plenty of research in the market that illustrates that value of optimizing your landing page experience, and one recent example can be found at Marketing Experiments. Example: Marketing Experiments, Optimizing Offer Pages: Steps that Increased Conversion by 148%.
4. Integrate messaging strategies based on both SEM and email data. Using the search keyword and query strings, organizations can optimize and tailor the landing page or home page content to match the visitors’ interests and preferences to increase performance. With the diligent application of analytics and testing, a marketer can measure and optimize against performance data to produce dynamic results.
Once a data set is created from the campaign data, a search marketer can build segmentation models and drive specific treatment strategies for the individual segments. Customizing content based on the search query string, serving relevant landing pages and ensuring a seamless click stream to conversion then ensures the PPC effort is well set for performance.
With the economy pressuring every marketing effort, and with customers and businesses watching their purse strings, it is more important than ever to have a robust plan in place with retention as the goal. Paid search is one of the key DR channels a marketer can use for results, and another vital channel is email.
Email marketing is one of the most effective DR channels. Email marketing has evolved from a mass marketing to targeted marketing in the last few years and more and more organizations are using enriched insights on customer to drive email communications and marketing offers.
5. Use email insights to inform SEM execution. At the heart of a successful email marketing strategy is developing deep customer insight. A key need is to understand and consolidate all available data (online and offline) to determine the customer's true interests and then to be able to seamlessly use those advanced insights in email marketing. Search marketing data is especially valuable in driving marketing offers as keyword searches provide valuable insight about the customer.
A data strategy is required that combines offline data with online Web analytics data to provide a complete holistic view of the customer. A key aspect is to gather the search marketing data using Web analytic tools. A holistic view of customer is created using the offline data sources and online transactional and understand how to match and merge the data sources. Organizations should deploy a Web analytics platform to streamline their ability to gather online data.
With a consolidated data in place, analytics can be used for segmentation and predictability. Marketers want to leverage the analytics to drive targeted email communication and marketing offers. Emails allow for measuring clicks allowing for ease of ROI measurement. Another opportunity would be to optimize the click call to action landing pages using the derived insights and analytics. It is important that marketers continually test, optimize and refine all aspects of their strategy to maximize their marketing ROI.
[insidecrm]
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