Email Management

Email management is a key factor in the success of market research projects. To make it better, you need to measure your email campaigns. But how to do that?

In our last blog post, we discussed two of the four components that comprise promotional messaging:  the medium through which the messages are conveyed, and the overarching message theme.  In this post, we’ll focus on the remaining two components of messaging:  message content and target audience.  

Message Content:  Should positively affect behavior

Using market research to help build message content is, at once, a simple and a complex process. The task itself is, typically, a simple one: Respondents are asked to react to various statements that, together, comprise the total marketing message that will be disseminated. However, a degree of complexity is introduced when we try to determine not only the individual statements that are most effective, but to determine the specific combination of those statements – and, frequently, also the exact order in which those statements should be placed – that will yield what those within the target audience consider to be the most effective message.

Promotional messaging is a complex science that, ideally, synthesizes elements from divergent disciplines, including sociology, psychology, and complex statistical analysis. Essentially, however, “messaging” may be considered to have four basic components:

• The medium (or multiple media) through which the promotional message is conveyed;
• The theme of the message, or its main idea;
• The content of the message, or how the content is expressed; and
• The behavior and demographics of the target audience receiving the message.
• All four of these components should be considered when conducting “messaging research” for your clients; the omission of any of the four from your research can result in misleading or erroneous research findings that needlessly deplete your client’s marketing ROI and negatively impact bottom-line revenue.

Medium: “The Medium is the Message”

The way email communication is handled, with regard to respondents, is a key factor in the success of market research projects: It is as important to ensure that emails are received by respondents, are read and acted upon, as it is to select the correct respondents. But, how do you ensure your invite is delivered and read?