Effective E-mail Marketing
How to make the most of your online newsletter
By Art Arellano
| Quick Tip |
| Lead prospects to choose your company in the future with informative topics like “Top Five Questions to Ask a Potential Vendor.” This helps to increase conversion and get their next business transaction. |
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If your company is looking for a low-cost way to deliver its message to the masses, e-mail marketing can be one of the most effective avenues to explore. According to research by the E-mail Stat Center, e-mail marketing can bring in $15.50 per dollar spent and has an ROI of 15 percent more than direct-mail campaigns, 25 percent more than banner ads and 73 percent more than telemarketing campaigns.
The right kind of regular e-mail to customers is the next best thing to a face-to-face conversation. It’s a me-to-you contact that can convert customer satisfaction to customer loyalty, and elevate customer service to a customer experience. The three rules of a good e-mail newsletter campaign are: engage, entice and elicit.
Rules of Engagement
- Segment customers to ensure they receive only relevant content. One size does not fit all for best-response e-mails. Categorize your lists (and your content) to:
- Reach and acquire potential customers of all types
- Convert potential customers of competitors
- Grow and retain current customers whose loyalty you wish to build
- Reactivate past customers who have moved to other distributors.
- Educate before you sell. Give value beyond price by being consultative and informative. Use the 80/20 rule: Send 80 percent content that helps customers do business smarter or informs on industry trends, and 20 percent about you and your company.
- Get feedback. Add a poll question in your newsletter on relevant topics and link the poll to a fresh landing page on your Web site. Give results of last month’s poll in each issue. Make it short, sweet, simple and informative, thought-provoking or fun.
| Quick Tip |
| Tell readers what you’re going to tell them. Use the subject line, headlines and subheads to tell readers what they’ll learn if they read your newsletter. |
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Rules of Enticement
- Offer time-sensitive incentives such as sales, discounts, webcasts or seminars as often as possible. Your readers will look forward to these offers in future newsletters.
- Add links in your newsletter to specific topic areas of your Web site or to other sites that interest your readers.
Rules for Elicitation
- Ask for a response and position the primary call-to-action “above the fold”—the area the subscriber sees in the browser window before scrolling.
- Offer opportunities to sign up for other types of e-mail, enter contests, take surveys or get the newsletter through optional delivery methods (such as a mobile phone or Facebook).
- Always sign off with a person’s name, position, contact information and an invitation to call or e-mail for more information.
Building your List
Build your e-mail list by consolidating all customer information from sales, marketing, customer service and prospective customer lists into a central data repository.
| Quick Tip |
| Research shows that quick judgments are made in the predominantly left quadrant view. Fill that area with carefully selected background colors, borders, bulleted lists and calls to action that appeal to your readers. |
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- Place a “Sign Up for E-mail Updates” widget on all pages of your Web site.
- Offer a PDF link to a sample newsletter or an archive of past newsletters.
- Collect e-mail addresses at every juncture including phone calls, trade shows, direct mail business response cards (BRC) and during networking opportunities.
- Add a “Send to a friend” link in all of your e-mails so your customers can spread the word for you. Make sure that every e-mail has a link to a page on your Web site with a “Register for E-mail Updates” widget that is clearly visible. You’ll be building your list by the best old-fashioned marketing tool in the book—word of mouth.
- If you don’t have a way to build a list or want to reach more potential customers, find another company with a similar customer base and sponsor its e-mail newsletter. This gives you the opportunity to link to your Web site, where you can create a special landing page for those click-throughs to directly track results and give targeted messaging.
Privacy, Trust and List Management
Your e-mail newsletter must ensure readers of their privacy and give them the option to unsubscribe to the newsletter at any time. Simple rules to follow include:
- Send only to customers who have given you permission or registered for e-mail contact.
- Give prompt attention to “unsubscribe” requests.
- Have clear, identifiable Sender and Subject lines.
- Include a privacy disclaimer in all communications.
- Delete duplicate e-mail addresses quickly.
- Maintain the regularity of e-mails, and don’t send subscribers more than they signed up for.
Measure Results
Your best ROI is going to come from tracking and measuring results, so make sure you have good reporting functions. Brand recognition and customer loyalty are often just as strong a measuring stick as a direct sale, so consider all benefits when determining e-mail success rates. Being top-of-mind and considered as an expert in your field may not close a deal today, but could well influence future decisions.
Getting Started
Keep these points in mind as you begin your e-mail marketing campaign:
| Quick Tip |
The sender line drives 65 percent of open rates, whereas the subject line drives only 35 percent. If the reader recognizes the person’s name (i.e. a familiar sales or customer rep), that name gets the e-mail open faster than the company name. |
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- Any successful marketing campaign begins with a strategic plan: What do you want to achieve? What’s the best creative approach for your target audience? What are your key messages and how will you measure success? Don’t skip this important step if you want the best ROI possible.
- Create your schedule, editorial calendar and preferably a six-month advance library of content.
- Build feedback into early newsletters such as polls or ways for readers to evaluate and make suggestions.
- Consider partnering with other companies if the value to the customer can be increased.
- Involve a professional marketing company if necessary. Remember that you need expertise in both conceptual and creative development as well as technical areas for best ROI.
New Trends to Explore
- Desktop e-mail isn’t the only popular interface today. Let your customers tell you which platform they prefer, whether it’s a mobile network or Facebook.
- Integrate RSS feeds and e-mails.
- Provide high-touch service for customers such as presentations, demos and remote support with webinars and webcasts.
- Link to informative videos in your e-mails: short, light and relevant clips with customer testimonials, product demos, messages from the sales team, quick tips, etc. Use co-op marketing and cross selling with an aligned business partner who is interested in the same customer base.
- Gain sponsorship of your newsletter by a reputable company who is interested in reaching your customer base.
E-mail newsletters give you the opportunity to get to know your customers’ needs and wants better. Relevant, professional-looking, content-rich e-mails make customers feel good about doing business with you and allow you to sell to them on their own terms. Sending these e-mails to people who have requested to be on your list will increase both customer conversion rates and customer loyalty at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.
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