May 12, 2000
Article

First Tuesday, Collectpoint, ThinkNatural.com, Opt-In Email Lists

SUMMARY: No summary available
MarketingSherpa.co.uk
Practical News, Gossip & Tips for
Internet Marketers in the UK
May 12, 2000 - Vol. I, Issue 1

IN THIS ISSUE: First Tuesday, Collectpoint,
ThinkNatural.com, Opt-In Email Lists

Please forward to your friends & colleagues. We depend
on you to grow our circulation!

1. NEWS & GOSSIP: Marks and Spencer, Collectpoint, and
LineOne

2. CASE STUDY: Healthy start-up for ThinkNatural.com

3. PRACTICAL HOW-TO: Build Your Own Opt-In Email Lists!

4. JOBS: TexYard Marketing Director

** Note: Are you reading a pass-along copy? Get your own
subscription today by going to our Web site today:
http://www.marketingsherpa.co.uk

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NEWS & GOSSIP
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*Online Underwear Wars:
Marks and Spencer Comes Out Bottom

Underwear war broke out at this month’s First Tuesday
event (http://www.firsttuesday.com/), held at London’s
Vinopolis on May 2. During a lively discussion about
the future of E-tailing in Europe (with a bizarre
recurring theme of ladies’ smalls), the event revealed
that a certain leading high street retailer has its
knickers rather in a twist about selling online. Morris
Helsgott, MD of Marks and Spencer Ventures, got caught
with his pants down.

Trying hard to sound positive --as a prime mover in the
company’s Internet investment arm should-- he was
prepared to predict only a ‘very, very small’ future for
E-tail which, he believes, will remain unprofitable,
succeeding only where complemented --and funded-- by an
offline strategy. This rather gloomy view of the B2C
environment on the part of M&S won’t have gone unnoticed
by the majority of those present. Marks and Spencer’s
attitude towards online selling might have appeared a
little less negative (and, who knows, a sale or two may
have been clinched) had somebody thought to provide an
address for the M&S Web site, but it was not to be.
Just for you, however, the site’s URL is:
http://www.marks-and-spencer-gifts.co.uk/index.html


*Collectpoint Gives Online Shoppers a Place to Pick Up
Their Purchase Deliveries – During Off Hours.

Aware that many consumers decline to buy online only
because they can’t accept 9-to-5 deliveries,
Collectpoint (www.collectpoint.com) will set up a
nationwide chain of pick-up points in established retail
outlets, such as T&S Stores plc. 1,000 outlets will be
available by Collectpoint’s launch date, July 1st. 8,000
are planned by the end of the year. TV and Internet ad
campaigns will shortly debut. Company founder and CEO,
Jim Doyle, calls it an ‘all win’ situation: the busy
customer can still enjoy lower prices online without
waiting at home all day for that elusive delivery van,
while E-tailers will benefit from simplified despatch.
A directory of participating E-tailers has not published
yet, but you can sign up to see if your competitors are
amongst them at http://www.collectpoint.com/retail.htm

*LineOne Asks: Do You Find Malcolm MacDowell Attractive?

Do you find Malcolm MacDowell attractive? ISP LineOne
(www.lineone.net) certainly hopes so. They’re launching
a £6m ad campaign this week to boost their image – it
seems we don’t immediately think of LineOne when we’re
looking for an ISP, and they think that MacDowell is the
man to get them top of mind. His dominating presence
will grace TV, radio, online, and outdoor ads
nationwide, thanks to a campaign spearheaded by London
agency, Advertising Brasserie. Already attracting
20,000 new users each week, LineOne is now specifically
targeting people who are daunted by the size and scope
of the Net, and don’t know where to begin. The campaign
emphasises the personalised content available from the
service with the tagline ‘Define your own universe’.
You’ve never heard of Malcolm MacDowell? A Clockwork
Orange??? Well, Brad Pitt was busy...


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CASE STUDY: ThinkNatural.com
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*Healthy Start-Up Campaign for ThinkNatural.com

Founded by Carol Dukes (CEO) and Emma Crowe (Director),
ThinkNatural.com (www.thinknatural.com) was launched in
November 1999 only four months after inception. It is
now Europe’s leading E-tailer of natural health and
bodycare goods, and offers a vast amount of related
information, as well as a range of 5,000 products from
38 suppliers. A mail order service was launched earlier
this month from its established warehouse operation in
Berkhamsted, Herts.

Start-up campaign: Keen to avoid a ‘beards and sandals’
or ‘pot pourri and lavender bags’ image, the founders
engaged top creative team Fielding Gibson to produce a
‘bright, modern and intelligent’ brand identity via the
logo, colour palette, fonts, etc. Web design agency,
Tonic Designs, got to work on the look and feel of the
site, and BMP Interaction were set on the case for
online advertising, targeting most of the big search
engines and portals.

Online partners: Simultaneously, distribution deals were
put in place with major portals. Terms vary from deal
to deal, but often involve several of the following
elements: editorial input, exclusive promotions, revenue
splits, and preferred or exclusive positioning. Such
deals are currently in place with MSN, Freeserve,
iCircle, Zoom, BT, AOL, Netscape, and X-stream, amongst
others.

Offline partners: Initiative Media were appointed to
spearhead offline advertising. Aiming to be as targeted
as possible, they are adopting the usual broadcast media
(outdoor, tube, national press, and Internet portals),
but this is being integrated with much more ‘narrowcast’
media, such as specialist magazines, posters in health
clubs, and online targeting through keywords or health-
specific sections of sites in order to maximise impact.

New campaign: ThinkNatural.com are now aiming, with
their new mail order catalogue, to give the brand
further reach. Mailing to approximately 200,000 homes,
the catalogue is also being distributed in the high
street through Superdrug stores. Kingfisher (parent
company of Superdrug, B&Q, Comet, Woolworths, and many
others) has recently invested in ThinkNatural.com as a
minority shareholder.

Marketing Budget: ThinkNatural.com will not provide
figures, but spending in the first phase (to end March
2000) has been split roughly 50:50 between on- and
offline marketing. A shift toward offline strategies is
envisaged for the future. As far as results go, Carol
Dukes feels that time will tell: ‘We know we’re in for
the long haul here – brands are not built overnight.’
The best results will be gained by working with media
companies seeking long-term partnerships that include
some creative opportunities as well as straightforward
media exposure, she says.

Related URLs:
http://www.thinknatural.com
http://www.fielding-gibson.com
http://www.tonicdesigns.co.uk
http://www.bmpinteraction.com


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PRACTICAL KNOW-HOW: Build Your Own Opt-In Email Lists!
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*Spam, Opt-Out and Opt-In: Part One of Our Special
Report on Making Email Marketing Work for Your Company

You have no doubt heard that email marketing can be
enormously profitable with campaigns, which cost under
25p per name mailed, yielding double-digit response
results. But only if it’s not spam! We feel very
strongly about spam here at MarketingSherpa.co.uk, so
we’ll discuss it right now in our first issue.

By now, most people know that spam is bad. Then why
does spam still account for 10 - 40% of all email sent
in the world today? According to Shawn O'Connor,
President of Msgto.com, a free email service that
guarantees its members safety from spam, "Spammers
generally fall into two categories:

1. Legitimate businesses who make the mistake of sending
out bulk email because they can't resist what appears to
be a low cost method of reaching people.

2. Completely bogus enterprises taking advantage of the
low cost and little authentication of email. These are
the porn spammers, ponzi schemes, and crackpots that
send out millions of email in the hopes of winnowing the
suckers out.

*If I Send an Email to My Customer List, Is It Spam?

Spam is any mass or bulk email that you send to people
who didn't specifically request it, even if they are
already your customers! And even if they said it was ok
to email them about something else.

Remember, spam is in the eye of the beholder. So if you
email someone for the first time in months after they
have you permission to do so, chances are they will have
forgotten they gave you permission in the first place.
Even if they only think you are spamming them, they
aren't likely to pay attention to your marketing
message, much less react positively to it. If that
person is a current customer of yours, you could easily
lose their account. There goes lifetime value out the
window!

*What's the Difference Between Opt-In and Opt-Out?

"Opt out" doesn't sound as bad as "spam" does it? But
opt-out lists are, in fact, spam. Marketers using opt-
out lists assume that if they include a "how to
unsubscribe" or opt-out option in the email they send,
it's OK to send the message … even if nobody on their
list asked to get email from them. (That sounds like
spam to us).

As you can imagine, opt-out lists don't respond nearly
as well as opt-in ones do. In terms of dollars and
cents, an opt-out campaign doesn't work nearly as well
as an opt-in one.

If you do an opt-out campaign and only a few people
complain, is it successful? No. Remember, for every
person who complains, there are 10 more who were equally
annoyed but didn't bother to contact you. And each
time you email them again because they didn't opt-out,
they get a little more annoyed, until the mere sight of
your name in their email in-box (and elsewhere) makes
them angry. Is that really the way you want to enhance
your branding?

*The Opposite of spam: Opt-in lists

Opt-in lists are so named because people "opted in" to
get onto them. In other words, everyone on that list
voluntarily (and eagerly) requested that his or her name
be added. These are the best lists because recipients
are looking forward to getting mail from them.
So, opt-in lists are kind of the Holy Grail of email
marketing.

There are a growing number of opt-in lists available on
the rental market, but they don't have the true highly
targeted selections that many marketing campaigns
require.

So how can you get your hands on great opt-in, targeted
lists? The best way is to grow your own. And every
company in the UK today, from flower shops to large
ecommerce concerns should have a plan in place to grow
one. Next week in Part II of this special report, we’ll
discuss cost-efficient tactics you can use to grow an
opt-in email list for your business. So if you haven’t
already, now is the time to pop over to our Web site to
subscribe so you’ll get your copy of our next issue.
http://www.marketingsherpa.co.uk

Note: Yes, we have a privacy policy to ensure you won’t
be spammed when you sign up with us. We are opt-in
only! See the Privacy Policy details at our site:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/about/policy.cfm

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JOBS: Internet Marketing in London
----------
TexYard, a new B-to-B Internet start-up in the textiles
industry is looking for a London-based Director of
Marketing to promote our business across Europe. You
will develop our ad campaign, represent us at trade
shows, and leverage both on- and offline marketing
tools. Candidates must have direct marketing background
with management experience. Knowledge of the textile
industry beneficial. Contact kristinh@texyard.com


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