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By Ram Krishnamurthy and Brad Neelan, Quaero, a CSG Solution; featured in InsideCRM

In today's challenging economic environment, marketers and advertisers are looking at different ways to maximize the return on their marketing and advertising spend. Due to the emphasis on ROI, more companies will be using a direct response channel like email marketing and search marketing to drive measurable results in 2009 and beyond. In each channel there are key strategies and tactics that need to be employed for maximizing marketing investment, and a marketer can compound his or her success by leveraging each channel's insight to drive success within the other. Here are five key strategies for driving ROI in SEM (search and email marketing).

1. Use search marketing as a test bed for both channels. With the excess advertising inventory available to advertisers, there is an industry-wide movement to be more efficient with media allocation. A comprehensive search strategy begins by understanding customer targets and creating the most defined keyword matrix which customers use when "finding." With the abundance of data available, and the immediacy of the paid search market, a healthy testing process should be the first key step to understanding the optimal mix and creative strategy. Note that having access to media allocation, after the testing is completed, is also necessary to ensure that budget is available to execute campaigns.

Considering how quickly a paid search campaign can be implemented and measured, this becomes an excellent source for testing, both in terms of media performance as well as in measuring customer response.    

2. When using push messaging, be ready to capture the pull insights. Push marketing, as seen in display media campaigns, is the means wherein marketers promote the brand or product and influence consumers' desire. Through effective marketing in push media an advertiser influences interest and leads consumers to active search, whether for information, navigation or transaction. While consumers or conversions are not yet tracked with the concept of time and media consumption very efficiently, (Microsoft's Atlas Institute: The Long Road to Conversion) it is paramount to ensure that all media are viewed and measured in aggregate with the imperatives of each channel taken into consideration. Although optimization should be performed on individual tactics to maximize effectiveness, it's the aggregate level intelligence that drives holistic marketing insights. To inform the most efficient and effective search marketing strategy road map and tactical plan, the selection and optimization of keywords and positioning is crucial to not only success in the paid channel, but also to informing broader marketing insights. When specific language structures are performing on a search engine results page, this knowledge can be applied to drive results in other channels. Email is particularly well-suited due to its linguistic foundation, and the real-time nature of search offers an amazing laboratory to test language and calls to action.

To read the article in its entirety, visit InsideCRM.com