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Archive for the ‘Email Marketing’ Category
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
As email marketers, we are aware of the importance of organizing and analyzing email campaigns. We also know how important each lead received through email marketing can be. We further know that a campaign with an audience of 500,000 and 5,000 total clicks is much less desirable than one with an audience of 10,000 and 2,000 total clicks, although this campaign has a lower number of clicks.
Email marketing can serve as a strong lead generation tool, as long as it is done properly. One way of using email marketing to cultivate leads is through email sequencing. Much like an email series, sequencing sends out targeted messages in a specific order. For example, say your company is attempting to promote a particular product. Instead of sending out a message that is directly specific to the product, create an email series to send to your whole email list. The first email should be a general introduction that explains who you are and what your goals are as a company. The second email can be more in depth, talking about what your company does or your industry. The third email is the one that explains the product you are promoting and the deals you are offering.
By creating this series and sequencing, you are giving your readers the chance to get to know both you and your product. Once trust is established through email marketing, you can start analyzing the leads you are receiving!
Tags: email list, email lists, Email Marketing, email messages
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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
As email marketers, we know better than to take it personally when a subscriber chooses to opt-out of our emails. In many cases, readers are not unsubscribing to us because they want to reject our company. We should take the unsubscribe with a grain of salt and remember that these people can still be viewed as potential customers. Here are some tips on the best way to handle unsubscribes in email marketing:
Make It Short and Sweet
When it comes to opt-out clauses, the easier the better. The entire unsubscribe process should be swift and only take the reader a short time to complete. The CAN SPAM Act also requires that you follow through and comply with the unsubscribe immediately.
Don’t Overcomplicate It
Readers don’t want to go searching for your opt-out link. In fact, a hard-to-find unsubscribe link could turn your potential customers into people who would never choose to buy from you. The unsubscribe link should be visible and in a place where a reader can easily find it.
Verify Through a Webpage
When a reader opts-out, verify that he or she has done so by taking them to a webpage. This page can also include a quick note to the reader, thanking them for their time or reminding them the ways that they can opt back into the emails.
Tags: email lists, email marketers, Email Marketing, email messages, emails
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. One of the best ways to send out targeted emails to a relevant audience is to segment your database. A recent report by Forrester Research said that sixty percent of marketers are not using segmentation, and therefore, not making the most out of their email marketing campaigns.
The first step to properly segmenting your email messages is to grow your database. The larger your database is, the more chances you will have to segment your messages. Once you have your database in place, you should make sure that the data is clean and that all email addresses are subscribed, as it is a waste of both time and money to send unwanted emails to consumers.
Marketers should also not expect their segmentation to be completed within a day. It often takes time to analyze the best way to target customers and differentiate between sections. If you start with broad subjects and build from there, pretty soon you will have a highly targeted database.
What should you do after you have created and segmented your database? One word: maintain. It will get you nowhere if you do not utilize data hygiene on a regular basis. Also, as you continue to build your database, keep thinking of other ways to segment your data and attract customers.
Tags: data hygiene, Email Marketing, email marketing campaigns, email messages, List Hygiene
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Now that summer is officially over, it’s a good time to look over your email messages to see what could be “freshened up.” Here are five ways to improve the response rates and satisfaction of your email marketing messages:
1. Prepare Yourself for the Coming Months
As fall begins, it is time to start thinking not only about your holiday offers, but the offers of all your competition. Prepare for heavier traffic on the email transit way and check your sender reputation after you send messages.
2. Try a Different Template
Is your email template busy and full of information? Try a more simple, streamlined approach. Remove unnecessary links or replace them with social media links that your customers might be interested in.
3. Test the Unsubscribe Repeatedly
It’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to unsubscribes. For new and old campaigns, test to make sure that your unsubscribe is always working properly.
4. Learn More About Your Customers
Another great way to freshen up your email, and help you learn more about your customer, is to offer a study or poll that readers can take part in. This will help you learn what is working for your customers, as well as assist with segmentation.
Tags: email lists, Email Marketing, email marketing messages, email messages
Posted in Email Marketing, List Hygiene | No Comments »
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Opt-outs are a fact of life in the email marketing industry. With email campaigns, consumers control their destiny and choose whether to opt-in our opt-out. According to research, most people opt-out of emails because they feel that the content is irrelevant or that they receive emails too often. Still, there is one upside to unsubscribes. They allow you to learn what is working for your brand and what should be changed with your email messages. Here are some tips to help you optimize your opt-out process:
1. Make the unsubscribe links stand out in your emails. The links should be very visible to the reader and should be in an easy to read font and color.
2. Deploy a combination unsubscribe/preference page. A good branded page explains easily how to unsubscribe and thanks the user for his or her patronage.
3. Don’t add forms to the unsubscribe. Readers who wish to opt-out of your emails should be able to do so with ease and should not have to worry about a log in or form that you have to fill out.
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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
There is no correct approach to frequency in email marketing. Each company has to determine what is best for them and their campaigns. If you are interested in creating a campaign, do not only stop to think about your subject line or your offer. When it comes to engagement and value, the timing and frequency of your message is just as important.
In order to determine the correct frequency for your email marketing campaigns, you must first decide on the type of message you are sending. You should not have a “one frequency fits all” attitude. The technology and data you need to better target your audience are readily available to you. Most email marketers will choose one of the following two approaches:
Lifecycle Approach
Is your offer seasonal? Does your message target a specific behavior? In this case, you will want to choose a frequency that works with the specific message you are sending. For instance, some marketers choose to only send out emails before specific holidays.
Broadcast Approach
Depending on the message, some marketers choose to send their emails more frequently. This is known as the broadcast approach. For example, if you are offering advice in your email, it can be beneficial to send the message a few times a week and change the topic each time. Just remember – this can be time consuming if you don’t have a large amount of content at your fingertips!
Tags: email frequency, email lists, Email Marketing, email messages
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
So, your company has spent a large amount of time collecting data that you use for your email marketing campaigns. This data is essential to the success of your campaigns. In fact, without this collected data, your marketing messages would probably not be reaching the correct audience or markets.
Is your company using best practices when it comes to data collection? If not, it is important to follow these data collection tips:
• Keep a record of how someone opts in. To do this, simply add a timestamp and IP stamp to the data you collect. This information can be useful for data restoration and CAN-SPAM requests. It can help in the future if there are ever any problems with the data.
• Clean your data. Remember the old saying: clean data is responsive data. It is important to perform data hygiene frequently to make sure that your data is as fresh and clean as possible. If there are non-responders on your list, you should do your best to reengage them.
• Leverage your welcome emails to build relationships. According to statistics, 90 percent of all email responses will end after the 3rd response. If you do not have a strong welcome message in place, you could be abusing your opt-in quality.
Tags: Data Collection, data hygiene, data management, Email Marketing
Posted in Data Collection, Email Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Spending for email marketing campaigns will expand at double-digit rates over the next five years, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm. In its annual Communications Industry Forecast, the firm outlined the probability of email marketing spending growing 18.5%.
According to the report, email is growing the fastest of any direct marketing medium. This year, VSS calculated the total spend for email marketing at $11.9 billion. In five years, the estimated total spend for email marketing will be close to $27.8 billion.
VSS has predicted a small drop in email marketing expenses for 2009, a statistic that could be the result of the poor economy since direct mail and telesales numbers had also decreased this year. After this year the total amount spent on email marketing just continues to rise annually.
The VSS report also says that the bright spot in the advertising industry over the next five years will be digital and targeted advertising. Along with email marketing, VSS also predicts that direct marketing, Internet media and B-to-B electronic media will all grow over the next five years.
Tags: direct mail, direct marketing, email marketers, Email Marketing
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
In order to have a very successful email marketing campaign, it is important to first understand two factors: measurability and accountability. The measurability aspect only applies if you know what is worth measuring and continue to measure on a regular basis. By having a particular tracking system in place, it is easy to make sense of your results and show the progress you are making.
Email tracking should begin before the email goes out, not after. The starting point for most deliverability measurement is the number of emails that were delivered. It is impossible to track open rates if you are not first sure about the number of emails that were sent. It is also dangerous to assume that all of the emails you have sent out will reach the intended inboxes. Since ISPs are now extremely aggressive towards anything that looks like spam, email marketers have to be much more careful. These days, it is not only spam emails that are blocked. Due to poor design or copywriting, opt-in emails could also look like spam to ISPs.
So now, more than ever, it is important to ensure that all emails that are sent out are designed properly and tracked from the very start!
Tags: email marketers, Email Marketing, opt-in emails
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
You have spent hours worrying about your subject line and your email message, but have you ever stopped to think about where your email links are taking your readers? It is important to make sure that these links are taking your email recipients to relevant places, otherwise they may not move forward with your offer or promotion. Let’s take a look at 4 possible places where your links may be going and what you can do to improve those pages:
1. Landing Page
Many email marketers like to have readers click to a specific landing page that promotes a certain offer. The benefit of doing this is that you can easily perform tests to see what is working and what is not. If your page doesn’t seem to be working, try switching the placement of your images and copy and see if results improve.
2. Home Page
Customers only want to be brought to your home page so many times, especially if nothing new has been changed. To improve this, add new content or images on your home page, or simply send them to a different page on your site that is more focused.
3. Your Blog
Say you put a portion of your latest blog entry in your email and added a link to read more. It is always important to make sure that the link is going to the specific blog entry page, not the blog itself. Why? If you have added new entries since your emails were sent out, your readers may have to scroll down before they can find the story they were reading.
4. Your E-Commerce Site
This is another instance where you do not want to just send readers to your home page. If you have an e-commerce site, send them to a very focused page that relates to your email message.
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