A few weeks back, we started a series on where standalone email advertising fits into your media plan. Our first post explained why you should put part of your Facebook ad budget into an email ad campaign.

With the holiday season fast approaching, many online retailers are looking for ways to showcase “door buster” promotions that attract traffic and sales. Some online stores are doing this through daily deals websites.

We thought we’d take a look at why stores should funnel their budgets into standalone email ads instead to drive similar results with less outlay:

Messaging

Many daily deal sites rely heavily on email marketing to drive sales, but they send out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different email messages each day. While that level of customization to consumer preference increases inbox placement and sales, it means that brands being represented don’t get to vet each of the appearances of their brand before daily emails go out. Most frequently, the emails sent out by daily deal sites have many brands included, reducing the potential branding

Bottom line: With a standalone email ad, you can keep total control of the messaging. Not only does your brand always get top billing in the creative you design, you can be certain that your branding is never displayed next to products or companies you don’t want to be associated with. You get a high impact ad that you can design completely to your specs.

Landing Page

Daily deals websites are very sophisticated in using email to drive sales and visitors. However, they send that traffic to their own site, not those of the brands featured. That works out well on the sales side for the deal site because even if a subscriber doesn’t buy the deal they clicked through on, they may buy another featured deal.

Bottom line: Sometimes businesses that use daily deal sites to advertise their products can end up feeling like they’re paying to advertise the daily deals brand rather than their own. Standalone email advertising drives potential new customers to your site. So customers see your branding, can buy your other products, and can share your deals on their social networks. All of that helps drive your sales and traffic, not someone else’s.

Audience

Subscribers to Groupon, Living Social, and the like are often motivated by the deals-style pricing. They may not be interested in offering repeat business to the brands featured on the sites.  In a recent New York Times article covering the experience of small businesses who advertised on deals sites, most of the businesses didn’t see repeat business from their promotion.

Bottom line: By contrast, email advertising has a much more diverse audience. At ividence, we work with many list owners, from traditional publishers to web properties. Subscribers on their lists aren’t necessarily deal shoppers.

Email ads sent through our platform are targeted by the past behavior. So if your brand wants to promote a special deal on cat toys, the ividence platform would automatically target subscribers with a history of interest in correlated products and services, sending likely customers, rather than deal hunters, to your site.

Revenue & results

This is the big one. Stories of businesses that have complained of daily deals sites driving down revenue, profits, and even Yelp review scores are everywhere. It seems that the math simply doesn’t work out for some businesses.

Deals websites often require a steep cut from retail, anywhere from 50-90%. The deals site then keeps 50% or more of the sale, so that the ultimate discount that brands take is anywhere from 75-95% off retail. Meaning the advertiser lays out considerably more in costs than they make back from the deal.

All businesses recognize that they need to spend money on marketing and advertising, but very few plan to spend more on advertising than they make in profit from a sale!

Bottom line: While the calculus of daily deals can work well if the new customers become repeat purchasers, it can be damaging if they only make a single purchase. By contrast, the same business could run a similar deal through standalone email ads which would allow them to reach new customers without giving up 75-95% of their revenue.

How to set up your branded deal through email advertising

There are two simple ways to create your own “deal email ad” using a standalone email ad provider like ividence:

• Changing Daily Deal – Many online stores run special daily or weekly deals through the holiday season to keep customers checking back on the site regularly. If you already have a program like this, you can create an ad that promotes your program and drive people to a landing page with information about that day’s deal.
• Coupon Code Deal – If you have a specific promotion in mind that you’d like to run over a longer time, you can design an email creative that includes a coupon code for the promotion. For instance, you could offer a 50% off deal on gift cards for first time customers or a free gift with a first purchase. (Note: You should then suppress your current customers from the mailing as these are new customer acquisition campaigns. You can target current customers through your retention email marketing).

You can run either type of campaign on a CPC basis. You’ll be able to track all of the new customers who came in through the campaign and test different creative and landing page treatments. As an added bonus, you can even pixel the landing page to run a retargeting campaign promoting your deal to potential customers who clicked through via the email ad but didn’t buy from your site.

Our advice:

• Get several email creatives “ready to go” for your campaign. Most end-users like to see some fresh pictures and content, rather than always the same ones, and creative design can be your bottleneck.
• Be imaginative for the subject line; don’t lie, but be imaginative. End-users decide to open your email based on (1) your brand and (2) the subject line

Have you tried running your own “daily deal” through email advertising? We’d love to hear how it worked in the comments below.  

Images courtesy of Tax Credits and Jurgen Appelo

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Mary Byrne Mary Byrne leads ividence’s sales and marketing team in the U.S. as SVP, Americas. She has nearly 15 years of experience in the technology sector, with special emphasis on advertising technology and email deliverability. Previously, Mary led the sales, marketing, and client services efforts at DoubleClick, Microsoft and Level 3 Communications. She can be reached at mb@ividence.com.