email marketing fail

[herodigital]

i recently paid for a 2 week ad slot in an email from a local networking event organiser. the company claims to have 26,000 prospects on their list of businesses. the emails go out weekly and my ad appeared on the right side, 125x125 and slightly below the fold.

so my ad went out to 26,000 twice, over 2 weeks.

i did not expect any direct sales from this but i did expect to see a spike in traffic - even 10-15 clicks would have been nice - but nothing. out of 26 THOUSAND prospects my ad brought no extra traffic.

the guy behind the networking events is reputable and always puts on good events, but my suspicious mind is telling me something is wrong here. the ad cost was minimal and there is no reporting provided.

thoughts? have i been "done"?

 

[RedEvo]

Ask for the email stats. Number sent, who opened it, who clicked what. Assuming he used a system (which he should) that provides this info.

d

 

[herodigital]

Ask for the email stats. Number sent, who opened it, who clicked what. Assuming he used a system (which he should) that provides this info.

d

i asked this prior to the campaign being executed, the response was due to the low-cost, reporting is not provided

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Could be your ad just sucked

Don't think SEO business does well from advertising, especially in UK. Best source is cold calling, networking and (eventually) referrals.

As Red says, for any email marketing (or any marketing whatsoever) there should be some system to check who read/opened the emails etc.

 

[herodigital]

Could be your ad just sucked

Don't think SEO business does well from advertising, especially in UK. Best source is cold calling, networking and (eventually) referrals.

As Red says, for any email marketing (or any marketing whatsoever) there should be some system to check who read/opened the emails etc.

i agree, there should be.

like i said - didnt expect it to do well, sure as heck didnt expect any direct business from it. but surely the mere curiosity of just a few would have lead to a few clicks out of 26,000 addresses. this is the part i'm struggling with, lol

the ad actually looked really good, it was different to the other ones which were just logo's - mine had the logo and 3 selling points (i.e. get more traffic etc).

 

[fisicx]

Have you seen the email with the Ad?

This is the problem with these sort of cheap services, they are almost totally ineffective because there is no reporting and the email/ad combination are untargeted. Chalk up to experience and move on.

 

[herodigital]

Have you seen the email with the Ad?

This is the problem with these sort of cheap services, they are almost totally ineffective because there is no reporting and the email/ad combination are untargeted. Chalk up to experience and move on.

yes, i am a regular networker so am on the list. the placement was not invisible, a quick scan would allow you to see it

but alas i will not be taking out any more ads of this nature.

 

[smbchamp]

i recently paid for a 2 week ad slot in an email from a local networking event organiser. the company claims to have 26,000 prospects on their list of businesses. the emails go out weekly and my ad appeared on the right side, 125x125 and slightly below the fold.

so my ad went out to 26,000 twice, over 2 weeks.

i did not expect any direct sales from this but i did expect to see a spike in traffic - even 10-15 clicks would have been nice - but nothing. out of 26 THOUSAND prospects my ad brought no extra traffic.

the guy behind the networking events is reputable and always puts on good events, but my suspicious mind is telling me something is wrong here. the ad cost was minimal and there is no reporting provided.

thoughts? have i been "done"?

What if the prospects were not really your type of prospects? Suppose you had an SEO offer and your "prospects" did not even have a website!!!

First ask him how he got those 26000 people to subscribe to him. BTW, how much did he charge you?

 

[herodigital]

What if the prospects were not really your type of prospects? Suppose you had an SEO offer and your "prospects" did not even have a website!!!

First ask him how he got those 26000 people to subscribe to him. BTW, how much did he charge you?

the networking events run across two counties and there is a pretty wide cross section of the types of businesses it goes out to - i've met some of them at the events i've been to.

cost was cheap - £25 for the two shots

 

[cmcp]

Like Graham says, it's a cheap mistake.

I'd have named this topic planning fail, rather than email marketing fail

 

[herodigital]

Like Graham says, it's a cheap mistake.

I'd have named this topic planning fail, rather than email marketing fail

why? because i entrusted an (otherwise) reputable company and it didn't pay off?

 

[cmcp]

Because you should've been looking for those stats before you signed up.

 

[Call Tracker]

They must know the open rates - or at least their own click through, as that can be tracked through Google Analytics at the most basic. If it was sent to opted in subscribers with relevant content it should at the very least have had a 15-20% open rate.

The only thing I can think of is that the advert was a picture and most people cannot get pictures through emails without turning them on in Outlook. This could have damaged your chances of even being seen. Be grateful it only cost £25. I would still ask for stats and maybe even ask for it to be run again in text format (the ad not the email). Supply them with a basic link to your services with a bit of text - emails that are too image heavy don't travel well.

 

[Mystro]

Because you should've been looking for those stats before you signed up.

For £25 he was told there was no stats and at that price was worth a punt, it could have paid off but it sounds like it did not

Its a lesson learnt and i bet we have all done it somewhere down the line

Paul

 

[Call Tracker]

Its a lesson learnt and i bet we have all done it somewhere down the line

Indeed and for alot more than £25!

 

[cmcp]

Its a lesson learnt

That's what I just said.

 

[antropy]

It is a weird one, 26,000 people is a LOT of people. Do you know how he sent it out? Did you receive the email in your inbox or did it go to spam?

I'm thinking it may have been blocked somewhere. I would have thought you'd get one click almost by someone accidentally clicking while trying to close the email lol!

 

[debbidoo]

Might sound like a silly question, but did you click the ad to make sure it was pointing to the correct website? Maybe people did click it, but the link had a typo in it and the visitors ended up somewhere else instead.

 

[herodigital]

It is a weird one, 26,000 people is a LOT of people. Do you know how he sent it out? Did you receive the email in your inbox or did it go to spam?

I'm thinking it may have been blocked somewhere. I would have thought you'd get one click almost by someone accidentally clicking while trying to close the email lol!

i didnt get blocked, and thats in windows mail which blocks loads of stuff!

 

[herodigital]

Might sound like a silly question, but did you click the ad to make sure it was pointing to the correct website? Maybe people did click it, but the link had a typo in it and the visitors ended up somewhere else instead.

yep, i clicked the ad to make sure and it went to my homepage as intended

 

[debbidoo]

yep, i clicked the ad to make sure and it went to my homepage as intended

Always worth checking

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

How on earth did you fit a logo and three selling points into a 125x125 pixel square?

That could have been your downfall. If too much small text was crammed into that little advert, then nothing would have stood out, and the ad would have went by unnoticed.

 

[Probafix]

Some succeed, people might think that email marketing messages are just spam mail to their account so they ignore it, but if they know the brand being advertise they would read it along the away.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

cost was cheap - £25 for the two shots

That should tell you something.

52,000 for £25.00. That's less than 1/20 of a penny each.

No-one with a brain would sell advertising so cheaply if it brought a decent return.

I suspect he has an untargeted list, a really, really low open rate, a really low scroll rate from the people who do open (so they wouldn't have even seen your ad). And, as Mediamonitor said, the people who don't see images couldn't see your ad.

That could explain it.

Either that, or he's just a bullshitter who doesn't have a 26k list and he stiffed you.

Steve

 

[emailblaster]

Even if you paid a token fee, they should provide delivery stats. Any decent email marketing system will have a stats suite built in - then its just a case of emailing a PDF report, it takes 2 seconds!.

Your are best off generating your own marketing list and building it. Then use a decent professional system to send it out and view the results.

 

[JElder]

Already mentioned, but most recent mail clients block images by default. For most newsletters I get, they stay off, so if your advert did not have a compelling text alternative that was still visible (some emails get mangled when graphics are off), the numbers actually seeing it would be much reduced.

 

[saxondale]

Some succeed, people might think that email marketing messages are just spam mail to their account so they ignore it, but if they know the brand being advertise they would read it along the away.

just had a quick look, there are over 30 emails that I opted into at some point sat in my spam box this week, I wont open any of them and I certainly wont be scrolling down a page to look for adverts on the ones that are on my white list.