Show and Sell Give your potential customers front-row seats for your ads with rich e-mail.
By Peter Kooiman •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Want your e-mail marketing messages to jump out of the inbox?Then try using rich e-mail. Featuring streaming video and audio,these minimovies are inspiring customers everywhere to click andwatch.
"Our e-mails are 30-second commercials," explainsClelland Green, founder of America's Choice Health Plan, basedin Philadelphia. "They're combinations of music and Flashpresentations." Are the glitzy ads more effective? "Webegan using streaming e-mail last fall and had a 23 percent readrate; that's 6 to 8 times greater than a direct-mailcampaign," says Green, 38. "Ten to 20 percent of thosecustomers are [active customers], and our sales grew 78 percentfrom December to January."
| If you'reprimarily a B2C company with customers who have e-mail accounts atAOL, Hotmail or Yahoo!, you should know about a potentialroadblock: These free Internet providers make it difficult for yourcustomers to access rich e-mail. Many ISPs ask users to open aseparate browser or cut and paste a new URL to access these mediamessages. Though most e-mail marketing companies don't chargefor unopened messages, conversion rates will be lower if youcan't get the message out to everyone on yourlist. |
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