Business
Introduction
The advent of technological advancement in communication and connectivity allowed businesses to reach out to their customers beyond the constraints of time and space. E-mail marketing is considered the as one of the most convenient ways in which a company can communicate with the customers simultaneously. However, one of the downsides of e-mail marketing is the slow rate of response, which impedes the effectiveness of the marketing channel in conveying the message of the ads being sent via e-mail. For this scenario, a company’s e-mail marketing will be tested in order to facilitate improvement of the response rate. The evaluation encompasses several combinations such as e-mail heading both detailed and generic, Email open either yes or no, and e-mail body of text and HTML. These combinations were studied to measure the response rate and determining the cause and effect relationship with the company’s business process will utilize a design of experiment (DOE).
The collected data from the e-mail response rate shows greater response to detailed headings using text while the lowest response showed on the combination of detailed headings using HTML. After DOE was performed, the cause and effect relationship shows that the average response for HTML body of email is between 31 and 57.5 while the average response for text is between 26.5 and 74. In terms of interaction between heading and open e-mail, it appears that the heading affects the response to e-mail regardless if the recipient opens the email or not. On the other hand, the body of the e-mail plays a significant role in terms of generating response as observed on the results of the DOE where text body of e-mail had the most response as compared to HTML. In terms of relationship, the combination that showed positive interaction is the combination of open e-mail and body.
This means that regardless of the headings, a response can be expected as long as the email encompasses either an HTML body or a text body. In relationship to business process, the outcome of the DOE suggests that the company should send marketing emails that has a detailed heading and should appear with plain text body. One of the things that the company should avoid in the process of sending marketing e-mails is using vague headings and embedding the email body HTML codes. By doing such, the respondents would initially perceive the e-mail as a marketing campaign and would not easily capture their attention as compared to e-mails with more detailed headings the recipient can easily understand.
Recommended Actions and Proposed Strategy
It is apparent from the result of the DOE that the company should improve the response rate of its e-mail advertising by incorporating a detailed subject line and the email should have text body rather than HTML. Arriving to the desired response volume should make use of unique subject line that the does not scream marketing at the first glance. Making the first impression through the subject line and detailed headings will sure to capture the interest of the email recipients (Hines, 2015). Despite the outcome of the DOE, the results suggest that email should encompass a personal to it, which demonstrates how the company is aligned with the interests of the person receiving the email. For instance, sending a marketing email about a recipe to a list of recipients will not guarantee a favorable number of responses unless the majority of the recipients are moms or home cooks. However sending an email with a detailed and specific subject line will ascertain a higher probability of open rate
When it comes to the overall strategy for developing a process model for the company, it is important to consider what the recipient is really interested about. One of the strategies available for the company on the subject of process model for improvement is the permission-marketing model. In this approach, the company would be able to ascertain a higher open rate and response rate at the same time (Rettie, 2002). Sending emails without knowing who will receive the message and how the recipient relates to the content of the email is critical in securing higher response rate. Applying the principles of permission marketing model will allow the company to determine beforehand who will receive the email. Through a selective approach, the recipients should be grouped according to their common interest. For example, if 25% of the recipients are health conscious adults, the headings should relate to such attribute. In addition, the model considers the factors such as monetary benefits, personal information entry, message relevance, message processing cost, and privacy levels (Lee, 2015).
References
Hines, K. (2015). How to Increase Outreach Response Rates | SEJ. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 23 February 2016, from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/get-people-open-email-increasing-outreach-response-rates/128863/
Lee, J. (2015). Forbes Welcome. Forbes.com. Retrieved 23 February 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2015/04/03/email-marketing-strategies-you-can-borrow-from-billion-dollar-e-commerce-giants/#6e64be897aeb
Rettie, R. (2002). Email Marketing: Success Factors. Eprints.kingston.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2016, from http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/2108/1/paper.html
