Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Eight Email Marketing Tricks Designed To Grow Share.+Automotive News' Radio Dawn to Dusk King

INSIDERADIO
November 11, 2015


Granted, marketers may have shinier, sexier tools in their arsenal than good old-fashioned email, but seven in ten say such messages are core to their business, according to a survey by invespro.com. And that remains very much the case for radio broadcasters. Long a core proficiency for broadcasters, email marketing as part of integrated sales offerings can help stations book from $100K-$650K a year, according to a leading database marketing solutions provider. “Reports of the death of email have been greatly exaggerated,” Michelle Novak, manager, client sales & services, Presslaff Interactive Revenue, said during a webinar last week. “It’s changing and evolving and with data segmentation and automation; it’s becoming more powerful.” One in five consumers say they read every email they receive, according to Forrester Research, and 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day on their smartphone. When sold as part of an integrated sales package, email marketing can help radio grow its share of digital dollars. Novak outlined eight different types of email marketing campaigns for radio: Dedicated Sponsor Advertiser Offer—One of the most lucrative and common ways to monetize email, these are savings and special offers sent to database members who have opted in to receive them on behalf of an advertiser. Send: 3 times/week; Price: $250-$1,050 per sponsor. Multi-Sponsor Advertiser Offer—A savings email that includes multiple offers from multiple clients. Send: Weekly; Sponsors: 4; Price: $150-$750 per sponsor. Dedicated Content Newsletters—Devoted to a specific topic area, such as health and fitness, real estate, concerts or recipes. Send: Weekly; multiple categories; Price: $500-$4,000 per sponsor/month. Daily Newsletter Advertising—Includes sports, news and business headlines along with sponsor ads. Send: Daily; Sponsors: 3; Price: $495-$1,500 per sponsor/month.

 Healthcare, Jobs—Ripe for Email Marketing Wins. As radio mines loyal listener databases to tap email-marketing budgets, several ad categories are seen as especially ripe targets. Healthcare, already one of radio’s strongest and fastest-growing ad categories, represents a prime opportunity. “Healthcare advertisers report measurable results from the campaigns,” Michelle Novak, manager, client sales & services, Presslaff Interactive Revenue, said during a webinar last week. “The email goes out, their phone rings.” Recruitment is another hot category for the channel, enabling radio to target dollars being spent on job sites such as Monster and LinkedIn. Email campaigns can be packaged in with station-sponsored job fairs. Furniture stores are also ideal for bundling email with an on-air schedule to drive listeners to a sales event. For example, stations can send an email on a Friday to remind listeners to take advantage of a weekend mattress sale. Ticket sales are also a natural for email—recipients can click a buy button, allowing the station to deliver measurable results for the advertiser.

 Radio Ranks Well Among Consumed Media Options. In a world of ever-evolving—and constantly measured— entertainment consumption options, Bridge Ratings is echoing a mantra that continues to echo loudly in 2015: “Broadcast radio more than holds its own.” In its new “Media Consumption Hierarchy” study, which explores media options available to 12+ consumers during different dayparts, the research firm finds that “while digital activities—texting, social media and Internet radio—have rapidly grown to be high-value activities, broadcast radio and television have managed to maintain an important place in consumers’ daily entertainment activities.” In mornings, text messaging leads with 90% of those surveyed saying they “start texting almost as soon as they wake.” Social media activity ranks a close second, with 87%. Owned music listening follows, with 70% of consumers during the early morning hours; and broadcast radio is next, at 55%, tabbed as a “primary source of information or entertainment” in mornings. All told, radio ranked ninth among 16 activities, and its online simulcasts attract 33% of the sample in mornings. In daytime, text messaging remains dominant at 90%, followed by social media, with a rise to third place for streaming pureplays such as Spotify and Pandora, claiming 70%. News and light news (gossip) websites also do well during the day, with broadcast radio landing solid as the seventh-most utilized medium, gaining 65% of the sample, with radio’s online streams used by 39%. And in the evening, with text messaging still on top at 90%, social networks are used by 84% of the sample across all age groups, and Internet radio listening increasing to 79% to land in third. Broadcast radio listening lands here in 12th place at 40%, and its online streams are used by 25% of the sample.

 Broadcast Radio Remains Dawn-To-Dusk King. Digitals channels still get lots of hoopla, but fresh data from cross-media measurement service USA Touchpoints is reinforcing the inarguable pervasiveness of broadcast radio in U.S. media habits. AM/FM/HD Radio, and its companion local streams, capture a combined 19.2% of daily media usage among persons ages 18-64, Monday-Sunday, 6am-12 midnight. That figure puts radio second only to live and time-shifted network TV (22.5%) and live and time-shifted cable networks (20.5%) on the usage grid. It also puts it significantly ahead of the Internet on any device—excluding work (13.8%), mobile apps other than email (9.0%) and any social media (6.8%). And radio moves to the front of the media class in its traditional 6am- 6pm daypart stronghold (see chart). “Radio has always done well as a medium to reach people who are out of home and shopping,” says Alice Sylvester, chief growth officer, sales & strategy, at USA Touchpoints parent company Reality Mine. “It plays an integral part in the path to purchase, which has a lot to do with the mobility of U.S. consumers, the ubiquity of radio and their reliance on it from a local market basis.” The new data from USA Touchpoints, which combines active and passive measurement to provide a picture of consumers’ daily media lives, follows a September Nielsen study showing radio as the dominant reach medium during the daylight hours.

 For Car Buyers, AM/FM Is Top Route To Showroom. When riding the often-circuitous path to buying a new vehicle, radio is the consumer’s top GPS, new media usage research shows. Radio reaches 84% of buyers age 18-64 who visited an auto showroom during the Friday-Sunday period that accounts for 80% of all dealership traffic, and it outshines every other medium. What’s more, radio captures a 30.7% share of media time among these showroom visitors during that crucial period, second only to broadcast TV networks. The story is similar during the total week. The new data from USA Touchpoints is significant as automakers shift large portions of their ad budgets away from traditional media to digital channels. With each media playing distinctly different roles in the auto purchase funnel, the new data highlights radio’s unique role in the mix. “Making the decision of what kind of car you’re going to buy occurs in a very short compressed time period,” says Alice Sylvester, chief growth officer, sales & strategy, at USA Touchpoints parent company RealityMine. “Given its ubiquity, radio is part of that last-minute crush of thinking and evaluating and making the decision on a car purchase.” While the Internet plays an important role in research and info gathering, radio’s calling card is its immediacy, local nature and proximity of exposure during the compressed final phases of the buy process. “Radio plays a very big role in getting people to the showroom and exposing consumers to messages as they’re going to the showroom,” Sylvester says. “Radio owns a very important part of the journey and is a very viable media for people who are shopping for new cars.” The USA Touchpoints data is based on a nationally representative sample of 3,255 smartphone owners age 18-64.

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