1. Industry Insights
2. E-Learning Marketing Tips
3. E-mail Marketing Update

In this issue of the Hawthorne Newsletter we will cover how to market e-learning within your organization and provide you with a link to our just released white paper on this subject. We will also cover how to make your e-mail direct marketing even more effective. We've seen a number of changes in the impact of e-mail in the past month and want to share those observations with you. Please contact me at any time with questions or comments. We've moved, so our new contact information is chris@hawthornemedia.com or 978-745-4878; 978-745-2553 (fax) and our new address is 60 Washington St., Salem, MA 01970.

• Current Issue
• December 2003: Update on Federal Anti-Spam Legislation
• November 2003: Direct Mail Tips
• October 2003: Impact of Spam on Direct Email; Value of PR (Part III)
• July 2003: The Value of PR (Part II)
• March 2003: The Value of Public Relations (Part I)
• December 2002: Reader Feedback on Hawthorne's 50 Tips
• November 2002: Making Sales in a Tough Economy
• September 2002: The Secrets of Effective Communication with Customers, Employees and Partners
• June/July 2002: ROI & Distance Learning
• May 2002 Newsletter: Accelerating E-Learning Adoption Inside Organizations
• March 2002 Newsletter: Trends in the Training & E-learning Industries
• October 2001 Newsletter: Marketing Thoughts
• August 2001 Newsletter: E-Mail Direct Marketing Tips
• June 2001 Newsletter: Marketing E-Learning Inside Organizations
• May 2001 Newsletter: Sales & Marketing Tips for Tough Times
• March 2001 Newsletter: Search Engine Visibility Tips
• February 2001 Newsletter: Trade Show Tips
  
• January 2001 Newsletter: Marketing Tips

Accelerating E-Learning Adoption Inside Organizations

Getting managers and supervisors comfortable with e-learning and then encouraging employees to use e-learning is a challenge in many companies. For that reason several months ago we devoted a newsletter (June 2001 Issue) to helping organizations deal with the changes that e-learning generates. This newsletter we will outline how organizations can actually market e-learning to their employees once the change issues have been addressed.

Given the brevity of our newsletter we are also releasing our white paper titled Getting the Organization to Adopt e-Learning--From Challenge to Action. The full text of this white paper can be downloaded at no charge from our website.

Most corporate departments do not view marketing within the company as part of their role. After all, there are marketing departments. But e-learning presents a special challenge to HR, IT and other departments because marketing e-learning to employees may indeed be required. Coordinated communication is the key to a successful e-learning marketing campaign. A message or two won't do it. Employees need to know that management cares whether they take the courses and that e-learning is considered valuable and important within the organization.

The best place to begin is to identify all the different ways to communicate within the organization. Once the various vehicles are identified, messages need to be created to generate interest and for continuous use. Many companies have used one or all of the following to communicate successfully with employees.

• Initial memos explaining the e-learning program
  
• Newsletters with information about what's coming
  
• Press releases in the regular newsletter
  
• E-mail newsletters
  
• Posters and bulletin board announcements
  
• Small group gatherings such as coffees
  
• A large kickoff party that includes all those affected
  
• Videos playing in the company cafeteria or over an Intranet
  
• Incentives that reward success
  
• Live talks by senior management, group managers, or plant managers

The white paper at gives more detail about these suggestions.

We are living in difficult times. E-learning is vulnerable to this difficult business-to-business economy. This means working harder--and smarter--to ensure it's adoption. Internal marketing is smart and doable.

E-mail Marketing Update

We've been doing a lot of e-mail direct marketing campaigns this year and have talked about how to do effective e-mail in our August 2001 newsletter. As you know, e-mail is less costly than print mail and at this stage the yields are higher. A few observations on what we've learned recently:

• Avoid using the word "free" in the subject line even if you are indeed giving something away. Spam filtering software is programmed to delete e-mail with certain words like "free". Even if you provide the words to trigger a delete, you are likely to start with the word "free." So even when it would be legitimate to say "free"-- don't. And be careful even in the use of free inside the message. Use sparingly or find a synonym like "complementary" to express your offer.
• There are more lists coming onto the market, so stay alert for new lists or ask your list broker to pay particular attention for you.
  
• Some of the most effective older lists are losing members. Watch the size of your favorite lists to be sure you have enough names. People may be opting out because they are getting too much mail.
  
• Keep careful track of the leads generated by your e-mail campaign and even more careful track of sales generated. We know of little research at this point comparing sales results from print versus e-mail. While we know that e-mail generates a higher response rate than print, we do not know if e-mail generates more (or fewer) sales.
  
• Carefully track your response rate from e-mail. We believe that at some point in the next few months recipients may reach saturation with e-mail and responses may fall. This happened dramatically with web site banner advertising a couple of years ago. At that point the pendulum may swing back to print mail. Pay attention so you can be in front of the curve.