Using E-Mail to Achieve Objectives
Viral marketing is an integral part of a campaign strategy that is used to achieve objectives. It is not the objective itself. If the main objective of an e-mail campaign is branding, in order to achieve greater branding success exposure you craft your message or offer in a way that it encourages pass-along.
Producing a message with a quality offer or an incentive for pass-along is what viral marketing is all about.
Just suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and relatives is not viral marketing. A message at the bottom of your e-mail that reads Feel free to forward this message to a friend is nowhere close to viral marketing at its best.
On the other hand, if something worthy of sharing, such as a valuable discount, vital information, additional entries into a sweepstakes, an added discount or premium service, a joke/cartoon, or a hilarious video, is included in the e-mail, viral marketing happens naturally and quite successfully.
The bottom line is that your message must be perceived as having value. Relevant or timely information, research, or studies are all good examples of content that might be viewed as potential pass-along material. Interactive content like a quiz or text can inspire forwarding, especially if it is fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes, or compatibility questionnaires are all things that have been passed on by many people many times. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment has value.
A multimedia experience is always going to achieve some pass-along. Someone is always touting the benefits. It is a bit more of a time and money investment but the messages have a great appeal and rich media has the advantage of being new. The tech factor alone is often enough for the message to be perceived as valuable.
Methods Used For Market Research
There are many methods and ways to conduct market research. The methodology of business research can be categorized in the following five ways which are namely: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, observation, and field trials techniques chosen to conduct these depend upon the type of data needed and how much money is sanctioned to conduct the business research.
Surveys. Surveys involve straightforward and concise questionnaires. These questionnaires can be analyzed to study the sample group representing the target market. The larger your sample, the more representative is the survey of the existing market sentiment.
In-person surveys. In person surveys are interviews conducted one-on-one which are generally conducted in higher traffic areas like shopping malls, colleges, schools etc locations. They represent the peoples opinion about the product samples, advertising or packaging. In person survey guarantee on the spot feedback and can sometimes generate a response rate of greater than 90 percent, but they are expensive as they require hiring of people. The cost of in-person interviews can sometimes run as high as $100 or more per person interviewed.
Telephone surveys. Telephone surveys tend to be the expensive alternative to in-person surveys, but are costlier than the e-mail surveys. It has increasingly become difficult to conduct telephone survey due to increased resistance to telemarketing. Yield response rates of fifty to sixty percent are generally achieved in telephone surveys.
Mail surveys. Mail surveys represent a comparatively inexpensive and easier way to reach a broader audience. Although they are cheaper than the in-person and the phone surveys, their response rates can be as low as three percent to fifteen percent. But due to cost effectives despite lower return rates, mail surveys tend to remain popular as a means of marker research.
Online surveys. Online surveys generate response rates that are unpredictable and participant data that is unreliable. The results are so because the participants are random and not a true representative of the target population.
Focus groups. In focus groups, moderators target the audience with a series of scripted questions to involve them in a discussion. It is conducted at neutral location with video conferencing facility. It lasts for an hour or two.
Personal interviews. Personal interviews include open-ended and unstructured questions that last for an hour or more and are usually recorded.
Observation. Individual response to surveys and the focus groups are not true representative of people’s actual behavior. When an attempt is made to observe consumers, researchers start by videotaping the consumer in stores, at home or at work it gives a very accurate portrayal of consumer usage habits plus their shopping patterns.
Field trials. In field trials, new products are placed in a select number of stores to test consumer response in real-life selling environments. This can help businesses to adjust prices, improve packaging or make modifications to their products.
Importance of Good Questionnaires for Market Research
Printed questionnaire is nothing but hard copy of objective type questions whose answers have to be filled in by the respondent by shading the bubble or ticking against the choice they find most suitable. The technique is most accurate as it is precisely able to distinguish a mark from erasure .Apart from being user friendly it is also the fastest and the most efficient data collection technology
They are vastly used in market research to collect data about those aspects of business venture that are critical in nature. The result obtained through questionnaires is very important for the success of any business as the data collected is very specific. Of course, questionnaires gather and provide such information that cannot be availed from other sources like, books, newspapers and Internet resources. The information obtained from questionnaire is unique, fresh, crisp and too the point.
Businesses questionnaires are very important tools as they are representative of the opinions of the customers about the existing and/or proposed products or services which can be analyzed to estimate likely performance of a product/service pre-emptively.
The questionnaires are very successful in estimating the following points:
The buying behaviour of prospective consumers.
The attitude of consumer towards existing or proposed products
The awareness amongst consumers about the product/service/business
Owing to above reasons questionnaires can be called the cornerstone for market research. The quality as well as the structure of the questionnaire determines the effectiveness of the questions contained therein. If a questionnaire is improperly structured, the results so obtained may be irrelevant, inaccurate and even inconclusive.
Following points should be kept in mind while structuring a questionnaire.
The data in the questionnaires should be randomized.
The questions should not try to force out answers from the participants but should rather seek natural answers from them
Length of a questionnaire should not be more than ten questions, so that participants interest and enthusiasm lasts till the very last question.
The venue of conducting a questionnaire should be properly chosen. For example the survey for a washing powder should be conducted in a residential society and not in a football play ground.
In order to attract the participants and make them participate, it is important that they are approached nicely and feel comfortable about it. The participants should be thanked in the end and a proper explanation should be given to them regarding the outcome of the questionnaire.
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