In this week’s blog I would like to share how a friend of
mine was able to build a 4 million high quality email database.
Building the database
The company was looking to independently build a high
quality email database for a specific region in Europe. In order to attract new
recipients they started to advertise for a competition that would give away a
city trip. After correctly answering three (simple) multiple choice questions,
the participants were asked to fill in a number of demographic data points
(Gender, Age, Education, Region) as well as their email address in order for
them to be eligible to win the price (a lucky winner was chosen every couple of
months). When subscribing for the contests the customer would also give
permission to receive promotional offers. After the subscription the customer
were immediately directed to a page with ads from providers of city trips. The
referrals the company made to these providers more than covered the in costs
made in the required advertisement to make them participate in the contest.
Monetizing the
database
The more you know of the customers in your email database,
the more the database is worth. Using the available demographics they were able
to provide publishers a tailored customer base.
Months after the contestants had participated in the contest
they were still eligible to win a free city trip. Each promotional email reminded
them that they were still participating in the next lottery. For this reason
the open rate was relatively high and the unsubscription percentage was still
low.
Since the company would be paid by referral it was in his
interest to maximize the life time value (LTV) of each recipient. For each campaign
the company carefully looked at the relevance of the message to each recipient based
on demographic profile and past behavior (did they click on a travel related campaign
before? what was the last time the person had received an email?). By analyzing
all past data and always using test campaigns (only sending out a small number
of emails to specific segments) the company only sent out a campaign to specific
sub-segment to ensure that they would always maximize the overall LTV of the
customer base.
A email list that is carefully managed has a value between
0.25 and 0.35 cents per user per year.
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