I think your math is bad

"Your text advertisement will be placed near the top of five WebWord Addiction newsletter mailings. There are currently over 2,100 subscribers. Therefore, if you win this auction, you will reach over 10,000 WebWord Addiction readers in the next week or two. "

Actually you are reaching roughly two thousand subscribers five times, not ten thousand readers. You might want to look into whether multiple impresions results in better reach or not.

Posted by: christina on May 31, 2002 10:47 AM

 

Christina, I think I am correct but I think that you are more correct. I am correct because the advertisement will indeed lead to 10,000 reader impressions. I admit that I sometimes think of impressions as being equivalent to readers. Perhaps that is silly and I should not equate the two. You are more correct because, let's face it, I am only reaching 2,100+ readers five times (which I am upfront about).

Given your constructive feedback, I now have a question for the marketing types out there. Is it better to reach 10,000 people one time or is it better to reach 2,000 people five times? My knowledge of marketing makes me think that reaching 2,000 people five times is superior. If I remember correctly it takes 5-7 impressions of an advertisement before it sticks. (Can someone verify this with research? My netcheck didn't reveal any good references.)

Are you thinking of placing an advertisement for Carbon IQ? ;-)

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on May 31, 2002 11:10 AM

 

Christina doesn't work at CarbonIQ any more, it seems.

As for your assertion that impressions *sometimes* equal to readers, you *know* that's not true. And as for how many impressions it takes to stick, well... that just depends on how well the ad is written.

Posted by: MadMan on May 31, 2002 04:22 PM

 

Ooops. MadMan, you are right. I missed this.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on May 31, 2002 04:27 PM

 

RE advert frequency: my recollection from grad school readings is that there is memory decay following each exposure, and that it is better to -space- five exposures than to have them follow quickly...

As for the actual count of readers, this is difficult to estimate from the information provided. On the downside, do you know what your open rate is? And on the upside, you may have people who forward your email newsletter on to others.

Posted by: Frank on May 31, 2002 10:31 PM

 

Hmmm... don't seem to be too many bidders for this auction. ;)

Posted by: MadMan on June 1, 2002 06:25 AM

 

Frank, I had never heard of the open rate before. Thanks for pointing that out to me. Unfortunately, I do not know what the open rate is for the WebWord Addiction.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on June 1, 2002 08:56 AM

 

Open rates are difficult to know accurately, but they are important conceptually. To start, let's set the upper and lower limits. The upper limit is obviously 100%, and I assure you your open rate is not that high. The lower limit would be the click-throughs on an embedded link, divided by the number of emails you send out (assuming no one forwards your email). I assure you, your open rate is higher than that, because practically no link achieves 100% click through among those who see it. And unfortunately, these two bounds probably leave you with a wide (practically useless) range.

What can you do to measure it? Well, you might try sending the email out return receipt requested (I don't know if that works on all systems). You might also consider just including a friendly note with a link in one of your regular mailings and say you just want to estimate how many people actually open the email, just please harmlessly click.

Ways you can -influence- (improve) your open-rate might be:
1. Decrease the frequency (5 times a week might be too much!)
2. Make sure that every email includes something valuable that's not up on your web site
3. Make sure you -communicate- that the content is different from the web site. Point it out on the web site, and perhaps also in the subject header of your email (I know, not a lot of characters there...)
4. Make sure that special content is towards the top of the email, so that the reader is immediately reinforced for having opened the email

As an example of human behavior (I know, let's all generalize from me!) I unlisted myself from Tomalak when I realized I was going to the web site daily -anyway-.

Posted by: Frank on June 2, 2002 09:05 AM

 

Good information, Frank. Thanks.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on June 2, 2002 11:12 PM