Email Marketing
Email doesn’t work anymore… right?
Most businesses don’t utilize email in their marketing mix. Too bad. It’s probably because of all the bad actors that fill up our emails with junk, spam, and worse (would someone please tell the Russian ladies to stop?). Besides, everyone knows it doesn’t work anymore.
Except it does. Email is by far the most effective way of staying in front of your most important people. It’s the constant push on the “flywheel” that gets things moving almost on their own.
The trick is coming up with an excuse (a good one) to send people periodic (monthly, weekly, or even daily) emails. Don’t send spam (unsolicited). Don’t send junk (useless). What is it that your “customers” need? Tips are great, especially if you are the expert (or want to be perceived as one). Special offers are fantastic to drive sales. Give them something they can use; they will thank you with more of what you want (sales, votes, etc).
Weekly Offer Email
Special offers emails are sent to customers and prospects for a wholesale watch supply business (B2B). This was a fairly labor-intensive operation, but the rewards were worth it– web sales grew from about 30% of overall sales to well over 60%, with annual sales of over $3Million. Email “blasts” were sent on Mondays at 1:30am; traditionally, Mondays and Tuesdays were biggest sales days as a leading indicator of the effectiveness of the emails. (After about a year, additional automation was put in to reduce the amount of time it took to generate the emails, basically slicing the time in half).
Email marketing engine is GroupMail. GroupMail’s advantage is ease of use, with lots of customization and scheduling options, without a monthly fee. All emails are pre-screened with GroupMail’s built-in email verifier. CanSpam built-in, as well as opt-outs and bounces.
The list of customers and prospects is segmented by location (international/Continental US), sales, and other factors. The messaging would show offers (such as free shipping) to customers and prospects that were eligible. The call to action is variable based on sales numbers and how recently they’ve purchased. Additional segmentation (based on specific purchases) was tested over a 4 month period, but was determined not to affect overall sales numbers.
Started with a list of approximately 1000. When the list exceeded 2500, the amount of emails was swamping our service provider, so we began to use an SMTP service (ElasticEmail). The list has grown to over 6000, with well over 500K emails sent.
Lead Generation “Tip of the Week” Email Campaign
When sign-ups from SEO and PPC ads were received, the leads were put into the “tip of the week” campaign. Over the course of the next year, 52 email blasts were sent. Conversion rates were phenomenal, and in the first year, nearly $1Million in sales for primarily post cards were generated from a little less than $40,000 in Google advertising (2500% ROI). Email campaign sent from CRM system.
Email marketing questions and checklist
Checklist
- List is opt-in customer list, not purchased or borrowed
- All emails are can-spam compliant (run thru can-spam test before sending, have opt-out in every email)
- Process is in place for managing opt-ins and opt-outs
- Process in place for managing list for each mailing
- All emails are approved by client in writing before sending, and client determines Schedule (date and approximate time emails are sent, frequency, etc)
- Client will receive a summary of email metrics usually 3-5 working days after email is sent (it usually takes about 2 days for all emails to arrive)
- Pricing is based on initial set-up, plus periodic (weekly/monthly) email creative plus per email “click” charge
Questions
- How is opt-in customer list provided? Database? Excel? Text file?
- How will changes in list be provided? Client to provide? Updated Database?
- Who will manage opt-ins and opt-outs?
- Where will the email be directed to? Landing page? email?
- What tracking (if any) is needed? Highly recommended, especially if you’re using Google Analytics
- Who will provide copy for email? Will you need copy writing?
- Is there a clear call to action on each email? Is the call to action consistent with the destination of the email links?
- Is there one person (or persons) who is authorized to make approvals?
- Are there any special requirements, such as if/then programming?
- Are there any attachments? are the graphics linked to web content (preferred)?
Overview
Email marketing is done with sophisticated software and a dedicated email-sending service. Based on information in the list, variables can be introduced to provide truly one-to-one communication. Each email is sent by itself, not in a batch, or with multiple other addresses. Emails are tested to insure compliance with Can-Spam rules.
If you are capturing opt-ins on your website in a database (MySQL, MSAccess, etc.) it’s preferable to set up a connection to your database. This ensures the data is as up-to-date as you can keep it– vendor would need to set up the initial access with information provided by your IT department.
Once the list and an initial design are determined (initial set-up), there is a periodic (monthly/weekly) creative charge for changes to the email, and a click charge.
Ideas for content to promote/link to with emails: Sales/Specials, videos, white papers, blog posts or other informational content, contests, polls, etc. What you want is an “excuse” to send an email, and to send them often. A good way to tell if you’re sending too often is if your opt-outs are outpacing your opt-ins (unless you don’t have an active process to generate opt-ins– that’s a whole ‘nother story!).
There’s basically two ways you can do emails: graphic or text only. Text only is preferred by content providers (those who deal in ideas and concepts), while graphic emails are preferred for for it’s aesthetic visual appeal, and are suited for selling products/services. The advantage of text only emails is it’s universal acceptance– everybody sees exactly what you send. With graphic emails, the user experience is determined by the user and/or his email software (programs like Outlook block graphics by default) and are more complex in their set-ups (graphics must be linked to a web source, more testing is involved, care must be taken to ensure widest viewing acceptance, etc.).
Once you have approved the budget, full payment for first email project is required. After first project, payment terms may be approved at the discretion of of the vendor.
How's business?
Do you want more?
BronstadDesign exists to help small- to medium-sized companies grow (even in a down economy)... if you've got decent products/services, I can help you!