Yesterday, I tried an experiment in linking some marketing concepts that I’ve never before seen combined. The idea: Appeal for referrals advertising features in The Design and Construction Report with a time-limited coupon offer to double the usual compensation, including a potential $500 cash rebate.
The sale lasted 12 hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. I sent the email to 2948 readers, mostly subscribers to the Construction Marketing Ideas newsletter with some additions including former advertisers in our publications.
We received four referral leads from three readers (one sent two). The leads were thoughtful, which we would not normally seek out ourselves. (One person in the U.S. Midwest sent a lead for a significant Ottawa, Canada business which I didn’t know about!)
I received one significant complaint. A key person involved in the development of the publication said one of his co-workers, on receiving the email, thought “DCN is going ghetto”. I wasted no time in calling the complainer to gain additional background and seek clarification. Apparently the person who made the remark thought the email degraded the publication but the person I spoke with said if the leads received through the exercise convert to profitable sales he would not question its value.
As well, two readers reported the email as spam and eight opted out. These spam/opt outs are not out of line with previous emails of this size including my regular bi-weekly newsletter which is light on promotional messages and heavy on (hopefully) useful information. Overall, as I write this blog posting overnight on March 12, 622 or 21.5 per cent of the people who had received the email opened it, and 37 o4 5.9 per cent of the people who opened the email clicked. Just 11 readers clicked on the actual referral form and, as I noted earlier, three readers completed it. With Constant Contact, I can drill down even further and know exactly responded. The “referral sale” offer closed on schedule at 8 p.m. last night, but the last click to the referral form occurred about 2:00 p.m.
So, can I call this campaign a success or failure? I think, as the person who initially reported the complaint told me, it will depend on whether any of the four referrals we received convert to profitable sales. We’ll track the results and I’ll let you know how things progress.
Of course, when you send out any kind of promotional email, you pay a cost in asking for readers’ time, energy, and support. It is easy to send this type of request and I won’t know (outside of the one person who complained) how many people who received it didn’t bother answering but found the email irritating.
As well, of course, I realize that it may be some time before positive impact from the email occurs. The email included a coupon for a free advertising credit in the Design and Construction Report which can be cashed anytime within a year. How many will accept that offer and purchase something else later? We need to wait to see.
Meanwhile, Bill Caswell reported some intriguing follow-up from the Take Your Construction Business To the Next Level Webinar we held last month. Despite technical glitches and an attendance of just five people, two visitors followed up with intriguing potentially highly profitable business for Bill. With these results, Bill told me yesterday he wants to host another Webinar with me and we have scheduled it for May 17 at 2 p.m. In addition to Bill’s response, one participant agreed to a feature in one of our Canadian publications. This success proves that sometimes marketing initiatives can lead to profitable business in unexpected but worthy directions.
I wouldn’t rush to hold a “referral sale” every day but right now count the experiment as a success. Sometimes we can gain useful results by going outside the normal boundaries or combining apparently unrelated marketing concepts.