The fewer questions you ask, the more data you get
Privacy scores big with most readers
I reported last week that MarketingSherpa and Intermarket Group have published “The E-Mail Marketer’s Guide: Hard Data for 2002.” This information-packed study has more than 100 pages of results from surveys of some 1,700 directors of online marketing.
Here’s the second part of my summary of the findings:
1. DON’T BE NOSY. The report cites NetLine, a marketing program that sent out an offer of a free white paper. One registration form requested contact info plus one optional question. A nearly identical form asked for the same things, but with THREE optional questions. The longer form garnered a 50 percent response from the pre-qualified group, but the short form received a 74.6 percent response. The less you ask, the more you get.
2. OFFER SOMETHING. When consumers were asked by Jupiter Media Metrix what a Web site could promise in exchange for typing in their personal information, 48 percent wanted a chance to win a prize in a sweepstakes. About 31 percent wanted frequent-flier miles or a similar affinity program. But most important, 73 percent wanted a guarantee that the information would not be misused.
3. KEEP IT FRESH. One site, iEntry, which sends 50 million e-mails per month to its opt-in subscribers, noted the percentage of readers who opened each issue. “If they subscribed within the past three months, they open at 85-90 percent,” says founder Rich Ord. “If they’re two years old, on average they could be down to a 15 percent open rate unless you really revamp content and find new reasons to make them open.”
4. MAIL EARLY. More than 3 out of 4 Internet users (76 percent) spend their first few minutes online reading and sending e-mail, according to figures from the U.S. Yankee Group. Gartner estimates that business users spend an average of 49 minutes per day managing their e-mail. This may explain why Travelocity found that it obtains the best results when it sends its messages between 8 a.m. and noon of each recipient’s local time.
The report is chock full of other good stuff: e-mail opt-in rates, click-through rates, and much more. You’ll find an overview and table of contents of the study at:
I mentioned last week that MarketingSherpa is also sponsoring the E-Mail Newsletter Publishers Profit Workshop in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. Registration is $495. Due to an editing error, the Web link you can visit for more information was left out. Here it is:
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LIVINGSTON’S TOP 10 NEWS PICKS O’ THE WEEK
1. Webshots.com registers 150,000 new users per week in comeback success story:
2. Visa implements new rules for online credit card transactions:
3. “Micro-size” e-commerce sites profit by staying small and simple:
4. Elvis Costello music auto-upgrades you to Windows Media Player 9:
5. MIT is posting its materials online for no charge as “OpenCourseWare”:
6. Many online “personals” lead to bogus pay-per-minute telephone lines:
7. Eight ways to dramatically increase your sales from online auctions:
8. Kevin Yank, “god” of SitePoint, discusses Java, PHP, .Net, and J2EE:
9. FTP tips: The basics on File Transfer Protocol and tricks it can do:
10. Woman caught embezzling $2.1 million to buy into African e-mail fraud:
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WACKY WEB WEEK: INTERNET CLOCK LETS YOU SLEEP IN
They’ve finally done it! Researchers at Brunel University in England have invented a clock that checks your local traffic via the Net and wakes you later than usual if there are no tie-ups along your route.
Inventor David Hunt says of using the clock, “I was so punctual it was scary.” That may be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but the story makes a thought-provoking and fun read:
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