If you’ve been involved in email marketing for any length of time, you’ll probably know that building a responsive subscriber base is a matter of attracting subscribers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, and sending them content that compels them to take the kind of action you want them to take.

Do both and you’ll experience relatively low unsubscribe rates, high open rates, high click-through rates and high conversion rates.

Sounds simple… but when it comes to providing the right content… what exactly IS the right content? Is it necessarily articles or sales promotions? Is it both? In what proportion? Should both articles and promotions appear in the same email (as in this newsletter) or should they be sent separately? Or should you send both kinds of emails? And, if so, when should you send each kind?

The answer is, of course, to test what works best with YOUR audience. But before you jump into testing… you need something to test. In general, I recommend modelling yourself on a business that is doing well. We have done that with Kikabink News and Success Accelerator which are both somewhat based on the newsletter + solo promotion model used by direct response marketing companies such as Agora, Inc. Then it’s a matter of surveying readers and testing things to elicit ever improving results.

So what kind of insights are you likely to get when you survey and test? Well, consider a recent MarketingSherpa case study about a pet supply company. The company split-tested sending an email with (a) a promotion (including image and copy) at the top of the email and a link to an article below the promotion, and (b) a link to the article at the top of the email with the promotion below. In both cases the article link was actually a hot-linked title (and an appealing title at that) which led to a page where people would see the (short) article, along with various promotions.

Interestingly, version (b) achieved 7 percent higher click-throughs and 6 percent higher sales conversions than version (a). In other words, not only did the article attract more click-throughs, but people who clicked-through to the article tended to buy more than those who simply responded to the ad.

Now this does NOT mean that all your emails should now contain a link to an article at the top, with a promotion below. There are still many, many variables – the target audience for one and the landing page for another – that impacted on the pet company’s results. But the results do support the idea that email subscribers value non-promotional content… and that if they believe you are giving them something of value by way of a helpful article, they will be more willing to buy from you.

Source: Case Study, “Test Content To Create Best Layout To Boost Email Revenue, Conversions, CTRs”, MarketingSherpa, November 5, 2008

One of my favourite direct response marketing companies to watch and learn from is Agora, Inc.

Agora, Inc. publishes a bunch of financial, travel, wellness and all sorts of other newsletters and publications. One you might recognize is Early To Rise. It’s also renowned for its command of direct response marketing.

But did you know that its flagship business is “Gazeta Wyborcza”, the largest and most profitable Polish daily newspaper, and that Agora is also a public company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange?

Confused? Well, if we’re supposed to believe the profile of Agora, Inc. given on ZoomInfo.com, Agora, Inc. has annual revenues of $143.9 million, employs 500 staff, is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, has a website at http://www.agorafinancial.com… and is also known as ‘Agora SA’. Agora SA is:

“one of the biggest and most recognized media companies in Poland and in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 1999 its shares are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the GDRs are traded on the London Stock Exchange.”

Either there’s more to Agora, Inc. than we’ve been led to believe… or ZoomInfo has totally lost the plot! It appears to have combined information about two entirely different companies – Agora, Inc. and Agora SA into one profile. Which leads me to ask: can we really trust ZoomInfo to deliver accurate information about companies and people?

Now, ZoomInfo allows companies to ‘claim’ their profiles and update these with accurate information. So, presumably, Agora, Inc. can simply claim its profile and make sure it’s accurate. But, why is it up to Agora, Inc. - or any other company - to create an account in order to correct blatantly wrong information that has been made public?

Of course, that’s not to say ZoomInfo is the only - or even major -culprit. I mean, how many companies and people have inaccurate profiles floating around on the Interne… and how much of this is assumed to be true? I think we all know the answer…

Source: ZoomInfo.com, Do a company search on ‘Agora, Inc.’

Marketing - the conscious effort to sell you stuff - is more prevalent than ever. You’d think, by now, it would be more sophisticated too.

Yes, in some cases, it is. But when I consider how many small businesses and large corporations pour their marketing dollars into vague campaigns that lack any real understanding of the needs of their target market… lack a specific call to action… are never properly tracked or tested… and are chosen based on their “creativity” rather than their effectiveness… I can only think that millions of dollars are being wasted.

And let me reiterate - we’re not just talking about “inexperienced” small businesses investing in weak, ineffective marketing efforts. You might be shocked, for example, at how many large, prominent corporations invest enormous sums of money in campaigns they never bother to split-test. Split-testing is simply testing two executions of a campaign in order to find out which is the most effective. Ideally, you should always be split-testing, in order to continually improve your results (e.g. response rates, sales, etc).

Why don’t more companies split-test or apply more rigor to their marketing? It’s because they’re lazy. Not lazy in the sense that the average marketing department doesn’t work hard. Of course they do. But lazy in how much effort they put into continuously improving their marketing in order to achieve optimal results. It’s so much easier to choose one execution… rather than test and improve, test and improve, test and improve.

Many marketers and ad agencies also want to be “right” or be “creative”. After all, if you “just know” that a given campaign will work… or opt for a campaign because it’s the “most creative”… you don’t have to put any effort into testing, tracking, innovating, improving , etc. And you get to be the expert too.

But any marketer or advertising executive who thinks they’re “right” or is the “expert”… is deluding themselves and the company or client they work for.

The only person who is “right” every time… is the customer.

And any company that doesn’t test its marketing properly is leaving money on the table. No joke - lazy marketing is costing companies millions.