A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the Tickets.com Provenue Summit. This was an annual convention of Tickets.com customers who gathered to discuss best practices in ticketing commerce. Tickets.com is a WhatCounts customer and partner, and we are in the process of making our e-communications technology available to their thousands of customers around the world.

We discussed two major topics during the presentation:

• How to prioritize an online marketing budget with regard to the various types of e-communications methods (I mostly just reiterated the content of my blog posting from last October on the subject while fortifying it with some studies from the MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark and Jupiter Research email segmentation studies).
• How to leverage many of the lessons that the WhatCounts team has learned during the past twelve years of building and managing email marketing platforms. I listed some of the lessons that I shared with the group below.

1. It’s not worth trying to run an email marketing program without working with an email service provider. I asked everybody to raise their hands if they currently send email to recipients in the United States. Then, I asked them to leave their hands up in the air if they felt comfortable with grabbing the microphone and explaining the stipulations of the CAN-SPAM Act to everybody in the room. I didn’t have many takers. Legislation is not the only reason to work with a trusted email service partner…ISP relationships, ever-changing authentication and reputation programs, industry changes, best practices, segmentation and testing technology, and other items are better to buy than to build.
2. Viral marketing works. We covered the solution and results that the WhatCounts Professional Services team created for the Professional Bowlers Association in a case study that we highlighted in last week’s e-Communicator newsletter. Simply put, a well-conducted forward-to-a-friend contest created a 62% lift in subscribers, a 500% lift in open rates, and an increase in television ratings and merchandise sales. The viral campaign was something that almost any brand could replicate fairly easily.
3. Video messaging is not dead. I discussed the content of my blog posting from last month on this topic. Videos are popular, and so are spam filters. Learn to work with both technologies at the same time.
4. A blog doesn’t have to be a blog. I explained the market localization solution that WhatCounts built for outdoor retailer R.E.I. a few years ago that allows their store managers to invite local consumers to clinics and events held by their local store. The solution uses blogging technology to make it easy for store managers to post (upon workflow-managed approval from REI’s corporate marketing team) content to REI.com.
5. When it comes to segmentation, just do it. Citing a Jupiter Research study on email segmentation, I explained that too many marketers get hung up on designing the perfect segmentation strategy. Don’t overthink things. According to the study, any type of segmentation is better than simple “batch-n-blast” broadcast messaging. So, just implement one type of segmentation (I gave some examples) and the sophistication of your program snowball as you stack layers of segmentation on top.

Overall, I'm looking forward to helping these Tickets.com partners benefit from the expertise and technology that they now have access to. Don't be surprised if you suddenly start buying more tickets than you use to!