E-Mail Marketing - Tapping into this One-to-One Marketing Powerhouse

In the never-ending quest to attract new customers and nurture relationships with existing ones, more businesses are feverishly rushing to use the relatively new medium known as e-mail marketing. "The Internet (and e-mail marketing) is the gold rush of our times," said Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of the "Chicken Soup For the Soul" series of books, corporation and Web site, http://www.chickensoup.com. "If you aren't online, you're going to be on the bread line."

"When we announce a new book through e-mail, sales skyrocket," he said.

Because e-mail marketing is new and the rules seem to change daily, going online with an e-mail marketing program -- whether you market to consumers or businesses -- does not mean throwing caution to the wind. Astute marketers -- those who are successfully using in-house and outside e-mail data to prospect, cross sell, up-sell and build relationships with existing customers say that e-mail marketing has the power to deliver gold or unleash landmines.

Case Study: Using Permission E-mail For Hard Sales

Hansen and Canfield are e-mail marketing pioneers when it comes to using e-mail to effectively build relationships and market their many Chicken Soup products, having launched the "daily helping of chicken soup" e-mail program more than two and a half years ago.

Since then, their e-mail marketing strategy -- beyond selling books and other Chicken Soup products -- has been to ensure that recipients always want their e-mail messages. That's why Chicken Soup decided that the best database for its daily e-mail messages was one that it created itself through other types of online and offline marketing marketing.

The chief source of new subscribers -- more than 50 percent -- are referrals from existing e-mail subscribers. Others find the Web site and sign up for the program from the books -- more than 40,000 in print -- and hear about it at the multiple monthly seminars, personal appearances and speaking engagements the Chicken Soup team makes across the country.

How the e-mail program works: Online subscribers receive a short story from one of the Chicken Soup books. The idea is to create positive feelings about the series of books and to maintain customer loyalty by keeping the Chicken Soup name in front of the public. But each story is preceded with a quick paragraph promoting the products or services of Chicken Soup or other companies. Then there's a list of four or so other online businesses that sponsor the "daily helping of Chicken Soup."

"It's soft marketing to get hard sales," Hansen said. Since 1993, Chicken Soup has sold more than 44 million books -- 23 different editions and five storybooks. Other products include motivational seminars and speaking engagements and recently a new television program.

Since its launch, Chicken Soup's online database of subscribers has grown to more than 760,000 with more than 1,000 new people signing up each day.

"We have a lot of advertisers who want to dance with us because we reach more than 760,000 readers a day, " Hansen said.

Options and Permission

Hansen said he hopes the daily e-mail isn't too much, but the response so far has been positive. "We don't want people to choke on the "soup" so that's why we give them options."

Options and subscriber permission has been key to Chicken Soup's e-mail marketing strategy. With Chicken Soup, you can choose to receive a daily e-mail or only once a week. Or you can choose not to receive any e-mails and opt-out of the service. You can also easily change your daily and weekly settings any time you want.

Chicken Soup also has evolved with the times. Previously, subscribers could directly sign up a friend or colleague to the service. At its peak, Chicken Soup was receiving more than 2,000 new e-mails a day -- about 1,000 from people directly hitting the Web site and another 1,000 from referrals. Late this summer that program changed to make sure that those referrals did indeed want to receive the daily e-mail, Hansen said. Now online referrals receive e-mail notifications telling them the name of the person who signed them up with another link where they can complete the subscription process to receive the daily or weekly e-mails.

Chicken Soup now receives daily about 1,000 direct e-mail subscriptions and another 1,000 referrals that now have the choice to sign up. Though it's caused a slight dent in daily subscribers, the Chicken Soup team believes the change is better because it gives people the right to say "no" before they receive something they don't want.

Like Chicken Soup, other companies using e-mail marketing are finding that the quality of their e-mail data is one of the most critical elements to the success of the program. It doesn't matter if you are making straightforward direct response pitches to sell a product or service or sending motivational messages or newsletters.

This article originally appeared in the October 1999 issue of AccuTips.