November 30, 2008
Why is it that some people get everything that they want? Is it that they have some special gift? Some have referred to this as having “MoJo”, and means you have something that gets you results and works. The other day I was watching a movie where the bad guy stole the good guys “MoJo” and he started having all kinds of problems. Before, things went his way, after, not so much. His job was perfect, and he had such great success with the ladies. Women just flocked towards him like no other and adored him to no end.
Top actors and business owners are thought to possess this “MoJo” because other people are attracted to them and listen to them. They have leadership skills and do things the right way. It makes us wonder if they were born with it or whether it was learned? I am yet to find a class about the subject and hopefully developments will be made in the future about this. We all want more of our friends and family to look up to us and want to be around us more, and if we could learn how to make this happen, we will be in much better shape. Keep your eyes and ears open because this class might be coming to a location near you
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You might think it’s a radical claim, but creating an email marketing program for your business can be a bit like installing your own cash machine! Marketing by email, if done properly, can produce instant results, generate sales within minutes, and over time builds customer loyalty, brand awareness and increased web site traffic.
Despite all the the Internet developments in the past decade, email still remains the single most important “killer app” online. Almost everybody reads their email (even when they may not look at web sites that often), and you can reach almost every decision maker in your target market within minutes, whenever you like.
It’s cheap, too. If you’ve ever done a traditional direct mail campaign, you’ll know that the cost can be between £1 and £5 per recipient. Yet email can cost just a few pence per prospect. Plus, an email campaign can be completed in a few hours, while with traditional Direct Mail it can be months before you can see results. With email, early responses can be measured in seconds, and within 3 days you’ll have 80% of your orders in and processed! And it’s measurable. With the resulting automatically-generated statistics you can work out who read your email and who responded. Live. Try that with traditional mail!
So What’s The Catch?
There are two, actually, but both are easily overcome. First, you can’t send out promotional emails randomly to people who’ve never heard of you (that’s called spamming!). Second, your campaign MUST be carefully planned, created and executed. You can’t just blast out any old “Buy this now” message and expect results. It must be carefully targeted, contain a truly great offer for the target audience, be relevant and interesting and of some value to the recipient, and the copy must be compelling. And just like any other marketing communications activity, it will only be truly successful if it forms part of your overall advertising and communications strategy, and is not just a one-off blast to raise some cash.
Where to Start
The golden rule for email success is to send out regular information that is of value to your audience. So your starting point must always be to think of what your potential market wants to receive from you. If you’re lucky enough to have a thriving demand for what you sell, then sending out new product announcements may be OK, but generally, you will need to be more creative that this.
Some good examples are:
- For a Lawyer’s or Accountant’s web site – a regular newsletter to clients updating them of the latest law, rules & regulation changes.
- For a hobby web site – new product announcements, tips and advice
- Clothing web site – fashion features and tips
- Software web site – Information on updates/upgrades. Case studies and “how-to” guides
Bad Examples:
- Isolated special offer announcements
- Uninvited invitations to join mailing list (spamming)
- “Visit our new web site” announcements
How To Get Email Addresses
This is the catch that most companies have difficulty with. But with patience and a little hard work, you can build a good opt-in mailing list that will grow in value over time.
Step 1. Make sure there is a real incentive for people to join your mailing list. If you are offering valuable information (see above) this should be enough. But you can add incentives such as a member’s discount scheme on a shopping web site or money-off coupons. You can also run competitions.
Step 2. Install a newsletter sign-up system on your web site. Make sure it is in a prominent position, and most importantly, make sure that the benefit to the user of signing up is clearly displayed. Make sure that the system is automatic, clear, sends a confirmation email to the customer, and comes with clear instructions on how to unsubscribe. And make sure it is very easy to unsubscribe – people get nervous when signing up for newsletters – they all hate spam – so if you make your unsubscribe system easy and clear, they’ll feel more in control and be more likely to subscribe (and ironically, much less likely to unsubscribe!)
Step 3. Make sure you promote your newsletter on all stationery and communications with potential and current customers. If selling or communicating on the phone, always ask if they would like to sign-up for the newsletter, again clearly selling the benefit. Also ensure that a link and sales message for your newsletter is included at the bottom of all emails you send out. Create a web page especially for your newsletter sign-up form (as well as the prominent box on the front page). Promote this page on search engines.
Step 4. Consider partnerships with other newsletter publishers that complement your business. For example, a firm of solicitors could approach a firm of accountants and each could promote the other’s newsletters to each other’s lists. If your partner’s list is significantly larger than yours, you may be forced to pay, but it’s worth it where there is a good fit.
Step 5. If you are offering free, valuable information in your newsletter, offer articles based on your newsletter with sign-up links for more free-of-charge to web sites your audience frequently visit. For example, if you offer small business services (eg, Accountant, Solicitor etc), offer free advice articles and columns to small business editorial web sites and portals. This also applies to printed trade media and can be integrated into your current PR campaigns.
Step 6. If you’re desperate, in a hurry, and have a decent promotional budget, you can buy advertising space on other people’s well-established newsletters. You can also rent or buy email lists from established sources but be very careful to buy lists that have requested your type of material from the list provider. Never, ever buy cheap email lists you see advertised across the internet (eg: “1 million emails for your business for $9.99!). You’ll get your 1 million emails alright, but they’ll be harvested spam lists.
Finally, be persistent, consistent, and offer good quality information that your audience is pleased to get. In the early days it will be hard to motivate yourself to write something every week/month to your first 10 signups, but if you offer good value your list will grow quickly. And remember the viral effect of emails. If the information, offer or entertainment value is good, emails are passed on or forwarded to lots of other people who will sign up or at least visit your web site!
David Campbell is Managing Director/CEO of European web development and online marketing consultancy Weborama, http://www.weborama.co.uk
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The key concerns facing email marketing practitioners
Email is used heavily in both B2B and B2C markets. The medium has
obvious advantages- immediate, cost effective, real-time tracking and quick feedback loops for testing. The benefits are well documented, but this only tells half the story. UK email practitioners are facing difficult challenges when trying to manage an email program.
Adestra have conducted a survey of 65 UK based email practitioners to discover what the main challenges are that are facing them today. The results make interesting reading, with participants readily recognising that they could improve their email program.
In this article we provide a detailed summary of the main findings and Adestra’s suggestions of how you can address them.
We also look to the US. A more advanced email market than the UK, a recent Marketing Sherpa study has provided insight into the challenges
facing US marketers. Despite a more advanced email market, the
challenges described are similar to those facing UK experiences showing
that all email practitioners across the globe are facing similar
challenges
Survey reveals challenges facing UK email marketing practitioners
Published in June 2005 as part of the preparation for the Adestra email marketing clinc at the Online Marketing Show, Adestra have just conducted a survey of UK marketers to understand their challenges:
Methodology of the email marketing survey
The survey canvassed 65 UK based marketers to investigate what they
believe are the main challenges facing them within their email
marketing.
Both B2B and B2C companies participated including companies such as
Ford Motor Company, Coors Brewers, Prudential, Investec Asset
Management, RAC, Future Publishing Ltd, Cotton Traders and Reed
Business Information.
Findings of the email marketing survey
- 34% of B2B and 29% of B2C
marketers in the sample agree that the growing, cleaning and management
of their email contact database is the aspect of their email marketing
program that they could improve most
- When considering what ‘hot topics’ marketers wanted to learn
more about to improve their email marketing, both B2B and B2C marketers
voted for the same aspects:
- B2B marketers want to learn more about best practice lead generation email programs whereas B2C marketers prefer to discover more about eZine newsletters.
- 4 out of 5 respondents in the sample plan to use email marketing more in 2006.
Conclusions of the email marketing survey
Interestingly, both B2B and B2C marketers are facing similar
challenges despite using email marketing in different ways. They want
to learn more about issues such as deliverability and spam and most
recognise that there are faults within their existing programs,
especially in the way they manage their email contact database
With 80% of the UK marketers in the sample planning to use email
marketing more in 2006, and the willingness of the sample to accept
that there are numerous ways in which they could improve their email
marketing program, marketers should consider working with email
marketing specialists such as Adestra to use their expertise when
developing their email programs
Adestra recommendations for addressing challenges
Adestra recommend reviewing your entire data management strategy:
- Acquisition: make data capture vehicles work- see our 5 ways to get better data quality at point of collection for your email marketing program article for suggestions how
- Segmentation: Ensure you have enough information
about each records to select only relevant names for your
communications. Badly targeted messages mean more unsubscribes. Within
Adestra’s Message Focus, you are able to segment by demographic and
behaviour.
- ‘Update my details’: Adestra recommend that every email you send links back to a form for recipients to “updating my details”.
Even with no incentive, our experience across a number of clients
reveals that for every campaign, a small number of people always update
their details. When multiplied over all your communications, this
becomes a cost effective method of cleaning your database- much cheaper
than using the telephone! Adestra have worked with individual clients
to set these up, often pre-filling the form to increase response.
- Feedback: Every campaign broadcast through
Adestra’s Message Focus automatically suppresses unsubscribe requests
and hard bounces (for more information on bounces, please see our “How clean is your email marketing contact database?” article). This allows you to understand how many active records you have in real-time.
- Monitor: Use reporting to constantly understand
how many records on your database have all the fields you require- some
may be missing job titles etc. Consider running extra campaigns to
encourage people to provide you with the extra fields you are missing
- Learning more about deliverability, spam and the future for email
To keep up to date with the latest ‘hot topics’ within email marketing,
Adestra recommend you subscribe to many email marketing newsletters
including:
Alternatively, you could save time by working with an email
marketing agency such as Adestra. These companies specialise within
email marketing ensuring they stay up to date with email developments,
so you don’t have to- you can just pick their brains!
- Learning from eZine Newsletters and Lead Generation campaigns
To get informative case studies, you need to regularly attend
meetings of associations such as the DMA and the IDM, attend all
leading industry shows and subscribe to a host of email newsletters.
Amongst this wealth of information, there may be a case study that is
relevant to your role and organisation. Adestra recommend you work with
an email marketing agency who can draw from their experience of working
with many different email players to provide best practice and ideas
from improvement continuusly. Often, the best ideas come from places
you’d never expect and using an agency such as Adestra allows you to
find them!
- Use of email will increase in 2006
Adestra recognise that the email channel will become more important
throughout 2006 for many companies, both B2B and B2C. Addressing the
challenges today will allow your email marketing program to continue
successfully within the future.
For more information about the survey, please contact Paul Crabtree
The view from across the pond
A recent Marketing Sherpa
study revealed that most US marketers perceive that they are faced with
significant challenges when managing their email program. Surprisingly,
these challenges are not entirely in the planning and management of
devising and managing an email marketing program.
Instead, it is problems born out of office politics a result of the
importance to the organisation of the email channel. Major battles
include:
- Frequency caps on sending: How often is too often?
- Management education: The challenges ensuring
senior management do not perceive email programs as a ‘cheap’
alternative. Allocating appropriate resource rather than re-using
people and content is essential to ensure optimisation. Adding to this
the need for a mindset shift from a “its cheap so lets just keep doing
it” to a “direct marketing” paradigm where testing, measurement and
improvement techniques are used is a considerable challenge.
- Multiple database managers: Ensuring both
compliance and the collation of email names from across the business to
support a coherent and legal email program
Adestra believe that all these challenges can be addressed by
implementing a measurable email marketing program which is continuously
tested to improve it. Questions such as “how often is too often?” can
be answered by analysing the contact history of your unsubscribe
suppression file.
Educating senior management can be a tough job, unless you have real empirical data to back up your assertions.
By demonstrating the ROI associated with your email marketing
program and getting senior management buy-in will help you overcome the
difficulties getting data from varying sources within the business.
When senior management are behind the program, the rest of the business
tends to fall in line.
On a more practical level, Adestra’s Message Focus includes a form
manager which allows you to create data capture forms to be used when
acquiring contact information. This information can be exported from
Adestra’s Message Focus at any point. Adestra recommend considering
using Adestra forms to manage your data capture- this ensures your
email database is deduped at the point of collection, you have the most
up to date email list you could possibly have and that you can provide
other parts of the business with access to their own Adestra’s Message
Focus account to download their own lists.
More information about our email marketing broadcast services
Adestra provide welcome tactical advice and input on our client’s
email marketing program.
Adestras Message Focus
Adestra have a proven track record in providing email marketing
tools, technology, strategy and support for a number of large corporate
players.
From product delivery for large publishers through to tactical
direct response promotions for travel providers, all clients always
benefit from the shared best practice and knowledge our team have
gained working within email marketing since 2000.
Free email marketing white paper
Adestra have produced a white paper on the challenges that today’s
UK email marketers are facing when trying to implement their email
marketing program
The research is based upon a survey of 65 marketers before the
show, discussions with over 170 contacts during the show and our
ongoing dialogues with our clients. It includes Adestra’s suggestions
on how you can overcome challenges including:
-
Improving data management: email contacts and feedback loops
-
Find relevant case studies to learn from
-
Sifting all the data from your email campaigns to find actionable information
- Overcoming the office politics associated with email marketing
To receive a free copy of this white paper, please contact us and state Email Marketing Whitepaper within the Further Information section of the Adestra web site (www.adestra.co.uk).
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