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for July, 2009.
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Archive for July, 2009
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Due to the failing economy, businesses are forced to cut back on their marketing budgets. These shrinking budgets are affecting all aspects of marketing, from direct to email. In order to ensure that your budget is being used effectively, it is important to recognize all the ways of stretching it. ConsumerBase offers several tips that can help you stretch your budget in the poor economy:
1. Focus on Your Existing Database
The power of your in-house database should never be underestimated. Your database, most often, consists of people that have previously used or considered using your product or service. Instead of signing new clients, try reconnecting with the old ones in your database.
2. Don’t Use One-Size-Fits-All Messages
If you are sending out one marketing message to everyone in your database, don’t expect the best results. A simple email marketing technique that can help to increase business is segmentation. By segmenting your database and, ultimately, emails, by industry, company size, or personal preferences, you are able to reach a more targeted audience.
3. Try Out Social Media
If you haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon yet, try setting up an account on a few of the popular sites like Facebook or Twitter. Let customers know there is another way of connecting with them by adding profile links into your emails. If done properly, this can be an excellent and cheap marketing tool.
Posted in Email Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Once you have acquired a customer database for email marketing, the next step is to keep that list clean and fresh. Email data has an extremely high decay rate, which makes it even more important to keep on top of your list. If you are trying to send an email marketing message out to an incorrect email address, it will have a negative impact on your campaign. But the problem does not end there. If you have several incorrect email addresses and your ISP notices, they could label you as a spammer, even if you are working with a legitimate opt-in database.
List hygiene is the process of updating your database to ensure that all email addresses are accurate and working. In most cases, a list hygiene company like ConsumerBase will sort through your data and check the accuracy of your list. They will check for duplicate email addresses and common spelling errors. They will also check that your list conforms to international email standards.
Successful email marketers know and understand that it is not important to only clean your data once. List hygiene should be performed on a regular basis so that your email marketing messages are being delivered to their proper address.
Want to learn more about list hygiene? Contact a list broker at ConsumerBase today.
Tags: data hygiene, Email Appends, email list hygiene, Email Marketing, List Hygiene
Posted in List Hygiene | 3 Comments »
Monday, July 20th, 2009
Having a problem with people opting out of your email messages? Marketers are often confused as to why those on their email lists are unsubscribing. If your email marketing campaign is failing, it may be time to reconsider your strategy. According to a recent study by Epsilon and ROI Research, 55% of email subscribers in the U.S. and Canada unsubscribe from emails occasionally. The study also found that 14% of subscribers unsubscribe frequently.
Unsure how to keep your email recipients from unsubscribing? In order to stop them from unsubscribing, you should first understand why they are doing so. Here are the top five reasons that email readers unsubscribe, according to the Epsilon and ROI Research study:
1. 67% of readers felt that the email contained too much irrelevant content
2. 64% of readers felt that they received the company’s emails too frequently
3. 50% of readers felt that their email address was being sold or shared with other companies
4. 48% of readers did not remember signing up
5. 32% of readers were concerned about privacy
Taking a look at these statistics, do your emails fall under any of these categories? If so, you may want to change one or more aspects of your email marketing campaigns. Vary the content, change the date or time you send the email and always make your email opt-in. By listening to your audience, you may be able to create a successful campaign that will entice recipients to read your message or buy your product!
Tags: Email Appends, Email Marketing, email subscribers, opt-in email marketing, opt-in emails
Posted in Email Marketing | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
As email marketers, it is important for us to gain our customers’ trust with email messages. When first creating your email marketing campaign, you should keep in mind various factors that may inspire your readers to subscribe or unsubscribe from your emails. Rather than annoying customers with persistent and intrusive email messages, your company should plan from the start to engage readers and meet their expectations.
The first step to gaining the trust of your customer is by being honest. You should always ask for permission, be clear about your privacy policy and ensure customers that you will not do anything inappropriate with their data. Allowing your customers to easily opt-in and opt-out will make your company seem more professional and unobtrusive.
When writing the content of your emails, your company should try to keep the same tone and quality throughout the entire email campaign. Subscribers want to feel that your message is just as strong today as it was the first day they signed up. This will help ensure readers that you are trustworthy and in tune with the customers’ needs.
Also, if your customers tell you that they prefer a particular format or style of email, it is important to try your best and stick with it. This is just another way that the customer knows that you appreciate them. When they see this, it is just another reason they will have to keep your trust and continue to subscribe to your emails.
Posted in Email Marketing | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
These days, it’s hard to go anywhere without hearing about Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media is all the rage and it is now being used as both a major source of online communication and a business tool. Due to its popularity, companies are now trying to integrate social media into their marketing budgets. Smart marketers are aware that creating a profile on the popular social media sites is not the only way to get your message or brand out there. With that being said, it is important for companies to now consider integrating social media into their email marketing campaigns.
To this day, email remains the #1 form of online communication. In fact, according to a new article on Examiner.com, 95% of money made online is via email. If you are trying to expand your email marketing list, one great way is to increase your “friends,” “followers” or “connections” on social media sites. By doing this, you may be able to attract users that might not have previously known about your company.
Another way of integrating social media into your email marketing campaigns is by adding links to your profiles into the body of your emails. Besides the standard phone number and website link, these links give the reader other ways to connect directly with your company.
Posted in Phone Appends | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Trying to find the perfect subject line for your latest email? Subject lines can make or break any email marketing campaign. It has even been said that viewers will decide within one second whether or not they will open an email. If that is the case, it is very important to consistently create good subject lines for your email marketing campaigns. It is also important to note what elements make up a bad subject line so you can avoid them in the future. Here are just a few elements of good and bad subject lines:
Good subject lines:
• Send a straightforward, clear message
• Sound simple and friendly
• Have an understated tone
• Are not crammed with information
Bad subject lines:
• Sound similar to a pitch by a high-pressured salesman
• Use all capital letters
• Overuse the exclamation mark!
• Do not normally sound good when read out loud
For your next email, take some time to go over your subject line. Does it have mostly good elements or bad? Stick to the good elements and you will be sure to see more successful results from your campaigns!
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Thinking of renting an email list? Before choosing a list provider, there are several important questions that should be answered. At ConsumerBase, we understand that many companies will choose a list provider by cost. Before you do this, make sure to make the following checks first:
How reliable is the list?
Before renting any list, you should find out where it comes from and decide if it is a valuable source.
How many names and email addresses do they have?
A good email list provider should have a large list of quality names and addresses. The list provider should also be able to easily profile the people on the list. The more selections that are available to you, the more likely you will be to segment and target your customers.
Has the list been used too often?
Studies have shown that companies should avoid lists that have been mailed-to too frequently. The prospects are normally less responsive and you could be in danger of damaging your brand or reputation.
How clean is the list?
Good list providers will add and suppress data on a regular basis.
How old is the data?
Since email data decays at a much faster rate than postal data, it is important to make sure that the data is both fresh and clean.
Posted in Email Appends | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
As email marketers, we consistently attempt to follow standard rules for our email marketing campaigns: write half-second subject lines, use one-click unsubscription and avoid spam filters. Along with these best practices, there are several other tactics that email marketers should not neglect. Here are just a few of the email marketing practices that you should be using with every campaign:
Use a Call to Action
It is very important, when sending out messages to your email lists, to have a clear and precise call to action. This informs the reader of the goal of your email.
Perform Data Hygiene
Before sending out any emails, make sure your email list is cleaned and scrubbed. Your marketing efforts will be much more successful if all of your data is up-to-date and accurate.
Use Different Types of Media
Whenever possible, add different types of media to your emails to engage the viewers. Since your competitors are probably sending messages that are similar to yours, various types of media can provide a creative approach to your strategy.
Make Follow Up Calls
In order to ensure that your business opportunities are not passing you by, follow up your email with a live sales call.
Posted in Email Appends, Email Marketing | 4 Comments »
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