Email Marketing - where to start
Do I need to give a fancy definition? Email Marketing is pretty self-explanatory, a company sends a commercial message to a group of people by use of electronic email. The message will entail advertising, requests for business or some form of communication that builds customer loyalty, trust in a product or company or brand recognition. All pretty straight forward for anyone that has even the slightest bit of knowledge of marketing.
So the real question here is how effective is email marketing? Let’s first look at direct marketing, if I told you how much the cost for sending a marketing letter to just over 1000 perspective customers was you would be horrified. Compare that with email marketing, we can target a considerably higher proportion of perspective customers, it is almost instantaneous and it is comparatively cheaper. Meaning no envelopes, no paper and no stamps required.
I did a bit of research into how email marketing has evolved. Back in the days of letter based marketing a company would spend around £1000 pounds to reach around 1000 perspective customers. Can you imagine the risk taking that would be for a smaller business owner? They had to ensure that they were contacting people with a potential need for their company. The content would have had to of been of a perfect size with a punch. Anyone on the mailing list that showed no sign of interaction was scrapped. Now if we compare that to today, one word springs to mind… JUNK MAIL. Personally, I hate Junk mail, I don’t bother even opening anything that I feel is not going to appeal to me.
Previously I mentioned email marketing being free, well strictly speaking that is not 100% true. The price you pay for an email that is poorly worded with no conviction is.. REPUTATION. Within email marketing there is a fine line. For example, if you include someone’s name into the contact list without their consent or if you are emailing people too often then your hard-earned reputation will disappear.
The approach you take is that you accept that email marketing is not easy it needs planning. Never attempt email marketing without the contacts’ consent. Most importantly make sure that the content is expertly written and includes relevant information.
Ultimately, the big question here is how do you increase the success of your email marketing? Firstly, you need to increase your email open rate. Look at emails in which you have opened from companies you didn’t know. Ask yourself what made you open up that email rather than delete it. The things you need to consider are.. Subject line, timing and the compelling words that motivated you to open up the email. Now the beauty of this is you can look for ways of adapting that strategy, to increase your email marketing open rate. Lastly, increasing your email conversions is pivotal. This is always one of those “it is easier to say then do” actions. It’s always important to find out how successful emails have been composed that have resulted in perspective customers taking action in the form of a purchase, clicking a link, or replying to the email. My best advice would be using your personal or business email account, look at emails you have replied to or that have motivated you to make a purchase. Then incorporate the strategy’s they used into your email marketing campaign.
Will’s Top Tips: Filters are a cruel mistress in the email marketing world. After all, imagine writing the world’s best content but failing to reach any of your perspective customers? So you need to do the following:
- Restrict your exclamation marks!!!!
- DON’T OVER USE UPPER CASE LETTERS IN THE SUBJECT LINE
- Avoid using terms such as “Click here” “find out more information”
- Look at your spam folder, look for come factors whereby blocked emails differ from those you have received, which were not blocked.
Realistically, if you are small business then the most effective way of improving your email marketing is to hire a proven professional.
If you have any email marketing tips you would like to share, or any questions, then below do so by commenting below.
