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Groupon, the world's leading group-buying website, was valued at approximately US$1.3 billion during its financing in April 2010. Eric Lefkofsky, a partner at LightBank, an early investor in Groupon, said, “Groupon’s scale and profitability are rare among high-tech startups. The reason is the power of its business model and its excellent execution capabilities. "Towards the end of the year, Groupon's revenue is expected to reach $500 million. Comparing Google and Amazon, Groupon reached $500 million in revenue faster than them. According to sources, Groupon is planning a new round of financing with a valuation of US$3 billion and a price-to-sales ratio (P/S) of an exaggerated 6 times.
What’s the secret to Groupon’s rapid growth? Email marketing at its best.
Groupon's success came not from a groundbreaking new technology, but from email marketing. Groupon President Rob Solomon recently said, "Groupon couldn't have been born in Silicon Valley, because most venture capital firms and technologists in Silicon Valley would try to use pure technology to solve problems." I am a Groupon myself. As a member, Groupon sends me emails every day promoting heavily discounted items such as cupcakes, yoga classes, dental checkups, and more. From the perspective of professional email marketing planning, Groupon has very strong creative and controllable capabilities in sending emails, which is particularly outstanding in many aspects such as sender, title, template, button, host site, form, etc. I recently did another host site research, and I discovered another fact. Groupon's website is also being upgraded very quickly. I guess that this rapid upgrade is the result of deep data mining of email marketing history. In other words, it is precisely because Groupon regards email marketing historical data mining as the main basis for website upgrades that Groupon is extremely efficient in integrating upstream and downstream resources, which naturally leads to ultra-high growth and ultra-high capital value. So, what is Groupon’s email marketing philosophy?
1) Personalization of the sender
Usually, the name of the sender only displays the company brand, but Groupon even lists the full company name, and even occasionally lists the personal name.
2) The tone, personalization and benefit points of the title are all important.
Groupon's email headers contain at least one customer benefit point. The interest point can be heuristic, such as using rhetorical questions, questions, doubts, etc., which are generally not disclosed directly. The academic term is called psychological suggestion; the interest point can also be relational, related to the latest hot topics in the industry/field. /noun; this point of interest can also be negative to cause anxiety in the recipient, and is often used with domineering and crude words and interjections.
3) Xiaosu template + big button
The body of Groupon emails is very unique. I first recommend the "Xiaosu template". "Small" means that the template is small, with less text and a moderate proportion of pictures and text, which makes it easier to adapt to the anti-spam strategies of various ESPs (email service providers); "prime" means that the color of the background should not be too gorgeous and dilute the interior of the email. Display of benefits. There are generally two customer benefit points within the email. The first one should be an explanatory picture and text that echoes the title, but be careful not to explain it completely. The most important thing is to leave a little doubt, and to whet your appetite is the master; the second customer benefit point should be a color that matches the color of the surrounding background. For buttons with particularly high contrast, the button itself should also have creative text and graphics to stimulate customers to click on the host site. This is the original intention of the "big button".
To sum up, Groupon's "three customer benefit points" strategy is consistent. Figuratively speaking, a customer benefit point in the title can be called an inspiration point, a customer benefit point in the upper left part of the email body should be called an appetizing point, and a customer benefit point in the lower right part of the email body should be called a stimulation point.
I have been doing email marketing planning for many years and have witnessed many impetuous customers losing confidence in email marketing because they are not satisfied with the ROI. I am also pleased that more customers who are thoughtful, adventurous and calm are getting better and better ROI. . Although it is not convenient to name names, there are already many customers like Groupon in Web Power. This is my greatest honor. Here, I will summarize several factors that affect email marketing ROI:
The factors that affect ROI generally include three categories: the stickiness of the sender's brand, the quality of the email address list, and the level of email creativity. These three factors do not exist independently but influence each other, so there are 8 combinations. For example, the trust relationship between the sender brand and the mailing list is one combination. What’s even more difficult is that these eight combinations are mutually causal, so I won’t go into details here. What I want to emphasize here is: there is a sequence in which the sender's brand stickiness, the quality of the email address list, and the level of email creativity are improved. When the sender's brand stickiness is poor and the quality of the email address list is poor, if the level of email creativity is "too high" "High", the recipients will feel very suspicious of spam or even fraudulent emails, and the unsubscribe/report/complaint rate will suddenly increase. In the eyes of responsible email marketing professionals, this is a serious problem with the service. The customer's brand is overdrawn or even destroyed. Here are two typical situations:
a. If the sender’s brand stickiness, email address list quality, and email creativity level are relatively low, the resulting typical ROI: Assuming a 100% reach rate, the letter open rate may be only 0.1%, and the click rate may be only 0.01%. For customers, it is a disaster. Even if it costs 1 cent to send a letter, the cost of one click is 10 yuan, which is much higher than the SEM field, which is about 0.2~0.3 yuan per CPC. Considering the cumbersomeness of email marketing, it is absolutely There is no value at all.
b. On the contrary, if the sender's brand stickiness, email address list quality, and email creativity level are relatively high, the resulting typical ROI: Assuming the arrival rate is 100%, the maximum open rate can reach 90%, and the maximum click-through rate can reach 60 %, ROI can reach 1200%~1800%.
The organic combination of these three factors is a subject that requires in-depth consideration for enterprises to improve ROI, and it is also the direction that we at Web Power have been working towards.
Article source: http://www.webpower.asia/page/cn/