Saying "Nothing" may be more important than saying anything

We all have stories about the the contradictions we see in marketing and sales. We'll say "no one will ever respond to this" or "this will really bring in the responses," and then you get more responses than you can handle or no one responds and all you hear are crickets.

Well, here is one of those stories.

I deployed an email for a client of mine yesterday to approximately 1100 prospects. Only when the email arrived, there was NO TEXT. No message, no nothing. A really big silence, if you will.
My client immediately called me and I immediately started digging into what happened.

Well, my client called me this morning and told me that I "may be onto something new." You see, in the past 24 hours, he's received over 20 phone calls from people who wanted to let him know that they received his email without any text.

That's a 2% response rate.

My client, being the resourcful fellow that he is, actually sold a $600 membership to one of the 20. That covers his cost of the campaign.

Why did this happen?

I think it primarily has to do with his association's brand to the people on the list - in other words, this is a good list. They are familiar with, and believe in the quality of, the association. So much so that THEY will follow up, taking time from their lives to qualify a communication.

Did I say this is a good list!

So, when you are struggling with your messaging, while you most likely shouldn't do it, why not think about doing the same thing - send out an email saying "nothing" and see what happens?

Email Marketing Metrics

I am often asked if there are benchmarks for open, click and bounce rates, which we can use to evaluate the effectiveness of email as a channel to deliver our promotions and messages. I recently found a study published by Silverpop (www.silverpop.com) which presents a "...classic list of email marketing benchmarks..."

While I have not yet found anything relating directly to association marketing or membership marketing, I think that you'll find the following interesting and useful as a reference.

In a recent study published by Silverpop (International Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, Silverpop, 2009), the acclaimed e-mail marketing company pulled a random sample of 7,000 email messages generated in July of 2009, which equated to approximately 50,000,000 emails delivered to 188 countries.

Here is a summary of those benchmarks.

1. Open Rate (Unique Opens)
	Average	Median
Overall	22.20%	19.40%
US	21.30%	18.30%
UK	22.50%	19.80%
Germany	24.90%	23.00%
2. Open Rate (Gross)
	Average	Median
Overall	42.10%	29.70%
US	41.20%	27.30%
UK	38.30%	29.70%
Germany	44.30%	35.70%
3. Click Through Rate (Unique)
	Average	Median
Overall	4.50%	2.40%
US	4.50%	2.30%
UK	4.80%	2.70%
Germany	5.00%	2.80%
4. Click-To-Open Rate
	Average	Median
Overall	18.50%	15.00%
US	19.10%	15.10%
UK	19.20%	16.20%
Germany	17.80%	13.80%
5. Bounce Rates
	Average	Median
Overall	5.50%	2.40%
US	4.10%	1.80%
UK	3.60%	1.30%
Germany	4.40%	1.70%

In regard to methodology, the authors write:

"This study examined messages generated in July 2009 by Silverpop's Engage client base. Researchers pulled a random sample set of 7,000 email messages, delivered to a minimum of 50 recipients in the United State, United Kingdom and Germany. Approximately 50 million emails were delivered across the messages to 188 countries."

"A broad set of email message types was included in the study, from promotional to content-based newsletters sent by companies in a variety of industries. Email campaigns and newsletters comprised the message content examined for the study."

"...researchers analyzed various metrics for bothe the Overall category (all 188 recipient countries, including the US, UK and Germany) and country by country for the US, UK and Germany. We did not perform individual country analysis for any of the 185 remaining countries."

As always, the best benchmark to measure YOUR current programs against are YOUR previous programs. However, we're often asked if there are industry standards that we can at least include in our evaluation of a campaign. In light of that reference, I hope that you find the above useful.

This was only a brief summary of the results. If you are curious, I recommend that you go to www.silverpop.com to learn more.

Have you tried these? 7 Innovative Ideas to Fight this Recession

A few months ago MGI published a white paper I wrote entitled "Seven Innovative Ideas to Fight This Recession." The purpose of the paper is to present seven practical ideas that membership leaders are using now to keep this recession from eroding their membership. Here is a brief summary of four of those seven ideas. You can find the complete white paper on the MGI website at www.marketinggeneral.com under 'white papers.'

#1 - Create Member "Evangelists"

Cindy Simpson, manager of education for the National Society of Professional Engineers, worked for an association that made past presidents Membership Ambassadors, who worked with the membership department in recruiting new members.

#2 - Personalize the Member Experience...Literally

Kimberly Gray of the Associated General Contractors of Alaska told me about how they started a group of assocate members called the Associates Council. They meet with new members when they deliver new member packets, answering questions and personally assisting the new member with understanding and taking advantage of their membership.

#3 - Outrageous Offers!

At an ASAE Idea Swap that I was leading, one attendee state that her association was having trouble getting people to register for a conference. So instead of not filling the rooms, they gave away (FREE) the rooms to attendees.

#6 - Member Relief Programs

Belinda Reutter, director of member services for the National Institute of Government Purchasing, presented the idea of a 'transitional membership...which is an extended, time-bound complimentary membership for those between jobs.' She took this a step further in thinking about creating a similar category for those members who serve in the military.

These ideas are working. If they fit directly into your need, then use it. If not, I hope that they'll lead you to an idea that fits better into your situation. Again, you can download a copy of the original white paper from the MGI website OR simply call/email me and I'll forward one to you.

A Master Strategist Gives Us a Successful Strategy

John Day, the Director of Membership Development for IEEE, is most likely one of the best membership pros that I'm fortunate enough to call a friend. A real "strategist" in every sense of the word. We met a few years ago at CESSE and have exchanged ideas for a while now. Recently he related to me that he has had tremendous success this past year in growing membership. I asked "how?" The following is what he wrote back . I hope that you'll find it useful information.

"The growth came from different channels, and fortunately compensated for the decline in year-over-year recruitment in professional grade members. We instituted a massive and well-coordinated reinstatement campaign, that returned about 3,000 members more than the prior and uncoordinated year (a large proportion professional grade members).

We instituted a campaign for members who did not complete the online application, which brought in 16,000 members (a large proportion students). And, through an intricate and expansive renewal campaign, we increased professional grade retention by 1%.

Between e-mail and postal direct outreach, 3+ million contacts - furthermore, we concurrently mobilized our Volunteer ranks worldwide in ways we hadn't before. All messaging reinforced career-related benefits, job site, and reduced-dues assistance provided to unemployed members. Our thought better to keep them, albeit at a lower amount, than lose them."

John, thanks for sharing this.

I think that we can agree that this was a well coordinated, multi-channel strategy that took into consideration several different niche-markets within a pretty expansive base. What's important to look at here is that, while John does work for a power-house of an association, his strategy could be implemented by any one of us who has taken the time to understand the markets he is serving and develop the offers, tactics and channels to attract and effectively communicate with them.

If you'd like to communicate with John, I'll be happy to forward your information to him.

Integrated member acquisition strategy

Many of us appreciate the positive impact that an integrated marketing strategy can have on driving member acquisition and retention. But for those of you who may still question its effectiveness, I want to bring your attention to a program we recently executed for a client here at MGI. The person who oversaw this program is Tony Rossell, a dear friend and mentor. On today's installment, he summarized his findings in his blog the "Membership Marketing Blog" http://membershipmarketing.blogspot.com/

"We tested...recently using mail and email simultaneously to prospective members. We split our audience into two groups. One group only received a direct mail membership solicitation. The second group received the same direct mail package, but also received a follow up email. The mail only group produced a 1.23% response rate. The combined mail and email group produced a 2.08% response rate. This represents a 69% lift in overall response by adding the email."

For over 50 years, the mantra for advertising has been repeat, repeat, repeat again! Any 'sale' is oportunistic by nature. It is the measureable result of multiple exposures of an organization or product to a specific prospect. What is often the question is the "type" of exposure (Trump has often said he does not care what people say as long as they are talking about him), over what time period, and the "personal impact" it carries on the prospect (this is also covered a bit by Tony's posting so I really really really recommend that you take a peek at it).