V12 Group Blog

Email Marketing Programs – Impact on Brand

Email marketing programs can have a very powerful impact on brand perception –and if you follow our advice, it will be a good brand perception. Market research data underscores the point that in today’s digital age it’s absolutely critical that the image you are projecting online, especially in your email programs, is an accurate reflection of your brand.

• 40% of internet users in the US changed their opinions of brands based on information they gathered online (SubscriberMail 2009)
• 50% of a survey’s respondents said they’re more likely to buy products from companies who send them Email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business (Epsilon “Branding Survey” – Feb 2009)
• 32% of a survey respondents said they have stopped doing business with at least one company altogether as a result of its poor Email practices (Merkle – Feb 2009)

It’s obvious that the relevance of your Email marketing is a critical factor in the perception of your brand. Marketing programs with Email messaging and audience segmentation based on accurate customer profiling drive both increased conversion rates and positive brand impressions. On the other, hand irrelevant Email marketing programs can easily drive increased opt outs and negative brand impressions.

V12 Group has the tools and experience to make your Email marketing programs more relevant

Our rich database of 208 consumer records, with attributes including demographic, geographic, interests and lifestyles will make your Email marketing programs far more effective. These records are overlaid with self-reported offline data from sources like magazine subscriptions, catalog purchases, travel destinations, public real estate transfer records, and much more to create a powerfully effective database.

Our unique partnership with leading third party advertisers means we connect our offline data to over half the individuals in the U.S. They are then mapped to 196 distinct audience segments. Online data combined with off-line means you’re not dependent on IP data along. Now you’ll have “real world data” to make your brand more relevant to your prospects.

A direct marketing services firm with the highest standards

The last thing you want is for your Email marketing programs to be viewed as spam by the consumers you are trying to acquire or retain. Once you’ve been branded as a purveyor of spam it’s very hard to work your way back into that consumer’s good graces. Consumers and B2B customers hate spam. It chokes their Inboxes and eats up valuable time. There’s so much spam out there that the federal government enacted the CAN-SPAN Act in 2003 which is enforce by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The CAN-SPAM Act has seven major provisions

1. There must be no false or misleading information in the header. The “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. No deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the contents of the message.
3. You must identify that the message is an ad.
4. The message must include your address. This can be a current street address, a post office box, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency
5. You must clearly tell recipients how to “opt out.”
6. You must honor opt-out requests promptly (within 10 business days)
7. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sent the message may be held legally responsible for violations.

At V12 Group we have developed Email marketing standards that go beyond the CAN-SPAM act to guide our clients on the best practices in Email marketing programs that produce favorable results. They are:

• Full CAN-SPAM Compliance
• Immediate opt-out handling
• Strict creative guidelines to ensure proper rendering (ISP/Email reader)
• Testing that includes top email providers (AOL, Gmail, etc.)
• Complaint management and feedback loops with major ISP’s
• Ability to set-up dedicated domains and IP’s
• Standard and custom campaign reporting

In addition to these standards our highly experienced creative services team brings a unique combination of creative talent, industry best practices and state-of-the art software tools to implement creative designs that are optimized to impact your email marketing campaign’s response rates. Contact us or go to our Email Resource Center to learn more about how the V12 Group can help you to create high impact Email marketing programs

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Programs – the Challenges
2. MarketingSherpa's 7 Takeaways to Improve your Email Marketing in 2010
3. New Chart: Most effective email marketing objectives by channel
4. Email "Fliers" and what it means to email marketers
5. Why Email Marketing Still “Rules”
6. Key Email Marketing Trends to Act on in 2010
7. The “From” Name: Perhaps Your Most Important Email Marketing Decision