Web Marketing: Hunting for E-Mail Addresses

Online marketers are increasingly fine-tuning their strategies to capture consumer e-mail addresses.
Web Marketing: Hunting for E-Mail Addresses
(Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)
7/23/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/email52418997.jpg" alt=" (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)" title=" (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1827198"/></a>
 (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

Online marketers are increasingly fine-tuning their strategies to capture consumer e-mail addresses in an effort to promote their products.

Prospective vendors use time-honored marketing tactics such as consumer freebies, free memberships, online coupons, and other promotions to tempt consumers into providing their e-mail addresses.

Some content providers give out their services for free, yet require a user name (usually an e-mail address) and password to enter their Web sites—another effective tool for marketers to obtain e-mail addresses.

Tactics that promise a fast and useful way to capture e-mail addresses can come from inbound or consumer-initiated searches, according to more than three-fourths of the survey respondents in a recently released “2009 Email List Growth Study” white paper from ExactTarget, an online marketing platform.

“The best performing list growth tactics are built on gathering subscriber data rather than hunting for it,” Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy said. “Whether you are a B2B [sales or services between two businesses] or a B2C [sales or service to consumers] marketer, the best way to grow your subscriber list is to collect information during customer-initiated interactions.”

Researchers from ExactTarget collected information from 351 e-mail marketers about past experiences and future strategies. The survey questions were based on a list of 18 “list growth tactics in 2008” to determine the best and worst strategy.

Stumbling Blocks

Capturing e-mails is only the first step for online marketers. Cataloging and finding the lifestyle preferences of the customer after receiving the e-mail addresses are more important, though it requires a lot of guesswork and could result in mismatch.

“The core of a successful list growth strategy is incorporating the right subscribers into the right list. By putting your subscribers first, listening to their individual wants and needs, and leveraging permission-only tactics, you can create and grow a powerful, effective e-mail marketing program,” the researchers said in the paper.

Changing Tactics

“Tactics should be evaluated frequently in order to shift marketing dollars to the most effective tactics,” according to the survey.

Today’s volatile business environment requires marketers to change tactics frequently. What worked well in 2008 or even a few months ago may have to be scrapped, keeping marketers constantly on their toes.

More than one-half of the marketers will use more e-mail mining tactics in 2009 than in 2008. The study suggested that the most popular strategies in 2009 include capturing e-mail addresses from mobile phone users, as well as from social networking and coupon Web sites.

Social networking sites are viewed as “many-to-many” channels, where marketers use popular sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin, and others to capture e-mail addresses. One caveat is that business-to-business marketers report a much greater success rate with e-mail address capturing through social Web sites than consumer-oriented marketers.

“Mobile capture had a lower adoption rate, but it is expected to explode this year with over 500 percent growth,” the researchers predict.

The economic downturn has increased consumer appetite for coupons. Between October and November 2008, unique visitor collection has shown that consumer coupon downloads have increased by 32 percent.

Going forward, consumers would have to register with their e-mail addresses on coupon Web sites in order to receive them, if online marketers had their way.

Successful Tactics in 2009

US Airways Inc. uses a multifaceted marketing strategy. It asks travelers to join its frequent flyers programs using their mobile phones while waiting for their flights to leave. Initiated during the first three months of this year, the mobile capturing tactic increased frequent flier club members more than any other advertisement campaign the airline has initiated.

Wisconsin-based Carma Laboratories Inc., which manufactures the popular Carmex moisturizers, began a marketing campaign last fall using the social networking concept “My Carmex Kiss.” At the beginning the company had 3,000 e-mail subscribers and increased to 30,000 by Valentine’s Day 2009.

TripAdvisor LLC formed a Facebook application called “Cities I’ve Visited.” By the end of 2008, more than 30 million Facebook users have used that application. By implementing the application successfully, TripAdvisor has become a well-known brand, increasing sales substantially.

Pizza chain Papa John’s International Inc. also used social networking in its marketing campaign to capture e-mail addresses and new customers.

“Papa John’s Pizza does an excellent job of bridging this gap,” the ExactTarget report said. “In the 24 hours following their first Social Forward campaign, they were able to add 130,000 Facebook fans. The hook? A ‘free pizza’ offer that required fans create a profile on www.papajohns.com to have a personalized promotion code delivered via email.”