Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Email marketing works for a variety of reasons...
- It allows targeting
- It is data driven
- It drives direct sales
- It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
- It supports sales through other channels
Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.
And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.
Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.
All in all, a pretty good way of going about your marketing business.
Monday, November 28, 2011
By: Daniel Davis
Despite all of the buzz and excitement swirling around social media marketing — much of it driven by hype I might add — email remains the killer app for online marketers who demand an immediate and measurable return from their marketing efforts.
Given a choice between 100 visits driven by social media and 10 from email marketing I’ll take the 10 any day of the week.
My professional opinion is that traffic is only as valuable as the conversion (leads and sales) it brings you. “Buzz” should never be a primary aim, rather a by-product of generating leads and making sales. And in most markets, email driven traffic is 15 to 20 times more likely to convert than social media traffic.
So why are so many marketers struggling these days to make email marketing work?
One reason is because they’re wasting too much of their time with social media.
Here’s the pop theory…
Social networks are like backyard barbecues. You head on over and sit around the barby sippin’ a few proverbial wobbly pops, chatting up the locals, making friends, talking about the weather and the game and other idle gossip. And sooner or later somebody is sure to ask: So what do you do?
And that’s your chance to invite ‘em over to your place — your blog, I mean. And on your blog you’ve got plenty of hearty hospitality that proves you’re a swell guy or gal definitely worth knowing the next time your new-found friends ever need what you’re selling.
Now, even a hair-on-fire social media fanatic will tell you your next step in the long and winding road to revenue is to try and get these visitors to sign up to your email list. So you’ve got an email sign up box on your blog with a delicious free gift your new friends can take home with them. That way you can market to them on demand — well into the future.
Just one problem with all this awesomeness: Way too much work for too little return. You have to sift through far too many of these social media butterflies to find a serious prospect. I mean, why do people go on social media sites? To socialize! That’s why they’re called “Social” networks.
Why not start with quality traffic in the first place…
… People who are actively searching desperately for an answer to the problem you solve. Duh!
Beware the social media cool aid that says you can get all of the traffic you could ever want for free. Nothing’s free. You got into business to leverage yourself, not to become a $2 an hour social media slave.
Go out and buy yourself some decent traffic, or do some good old-fashioned joint ventures, or publicity. And build you list on a solid foundation.
Another reason marketers struggle with email these days — even those who understand that you need quality traffic to begin with — is what I call the curse of voluntary anonymity.
I see this all the time and it breaks my heart.
What am I talking about?
Simply this: Business owners hiding behind their “brand”… or their “product” instead of interacting personally with people.
There is an epidemic of distrust on the Internet…
Unless you’re a known brand like Apple or Amazon, the first thing a new prospect does when they come to your website or blog is try to figure out who the heck you are.
Before they engage with your promise and sign up to your email list, they want to know if you seem honest, competent, and sympathetic. And if they do decide to connect with you via email they want to be subtly reminded of these qualities each time you drop in to say “Hi”…
Yet you’ve seen it a thousand times before… flashy html emails from [insert catchy company or publication name here] waxing poetic about [insert product name or topic here] — the whole piece written in disembodied voice.
This kind of an approach might work fine in the offline world, but it’s just not how email works. Think about it: email is the most personal marketing medium on the planet. You trade emails with your friends and family. And you do it in plain text. You read those emails. You trust those emails.
If you send flashy looking html masterpieces, instantly you go in the spam folder of your prospect’s brain. Your email looks and feels like an intrusion.
Even if someone does open your email, they’re ten times more likely to trash it. You failed to make a human connection. Email is a one-to-one medium. Get personal, or go home.
One more reason email doesn’t work (the last one I’ve got time for today)…
It’s when marketers become extremists. Instead of walking the middle road between providing valuable information and asking for a purchase, they’re either all content or all pitch.
You need both. If you run your list like a soup kitchen you’re just training people not to buy from you. On the other hand, if you’re emails are just pitch, pitch, pitch — nobody’s going to open them.
Mix it up for heaven’s sake.
Email may not be the idiot proof marketing money machine it once was, but make no mistake, it’s still the cornerstone of Internet marketing.
With a little ingenuity, it’ll work for you just fine.
Until next time, Good Selling!
Sunday, November 27, 2011
By: Dan Forootan, President of EZ Publishing
You have heard of email marketing repeatedly on the internet, at conferences and during marketing strategy meetings. They say email marketing enriches business communications, targets specific key markets, and is both cost-effective and environmentally friendly. But what exactly is email marketing and how does it work? How is an email more effective than a radio spot or television advertisement and why should a business spend the time to maintain an email list?
Email marketing occurs when a company sends a commercial message to a group of people by use of electronic email. Most commonly through advertisements, requests for business, or sales or donation solicitation, any email communication is considered email marketing if it helps to build customer loyalty, trust in a product or company or brand recognition. Email marketing is an efficient way to stay connected with your clients while also promoting your business.
With email marketing, you can easily and quickly reach target markets without the need for large quantities of print space, television or radio time or high production costs. Thanks to effective email marketing software, you can maintain an email list that has been segmented based on several factors including the length of time addresses have been on the list, customers’ likes and dislikes, spending habits and other important criteria. Emails are then created and sent out to specifically target members of your email list, providing them with a personalized email detailing information that they are interested in or have requested. This helps promote trust and loyalty to a company while also increasing sales.
There are several examples of email marketing campaigns, starting with a welcome email that thanks that new contact for opting in to your subscription. Welcome letters can not only give valuable information about your company, they can also request key information about your new client, helping you put the person in the correct categories for future marketing efforts. Additional email campaigns include sending out announcements on products or services, a newsletter regarding your company and/or products, coupons for future purchasing and much more. Every email you send out should have company information on the bottom, giving potential clients a chance to learn more about your company as well as ‘opt-in’ to get future emails. Incentive programs that give members a ‘promo code’ to collect discounts on purchases also allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your campaign as well as what your contacts are interested in.
With the help of email marketing software, email marketing is an effective way to not only reach your target markets but also to stay connected with your purchasing base. Through efficient use of email marketing, you can retain current clients while also targeting new markets. You can easily monitor how effective a marketing campaign is, and see that your return on investment is substantially higher than with other, more traditional, marketing campaigns. Let the internet help guide your customers to you again and again with an effective email marketing campaign.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Advantages of Email Marketing
- Low Cost: Accumulating email addresses and maintaining a mailing list is relatively inexpensive, as well as sending out a newsletter. The cost of sending thousands of pieces of direct mail would be much more expensive to reach the same number of customers.
- Tracability: Clickthroughs and positive or negative responses to newsletters by customers emails can be easily tracked by many numerous tracking metrics. This allows for a measurement of return on investment as well as the effective of a marketing campaign.
- Instant Delivery Time: Email is near instant and so provides the benefit of deploying a marketing campaign faster than traditional media. The 'quickness' of the internet also encourages immediate responses from potential customers.
- Personalisation and Campaign Testing. It is easier and cheaper to personalise emails, or a group of emails, than for physical print media and also than for the comapany's website. This allows a relatively easy and cost effective way to test different email creatives and messaging.
- Integration. Another level of market targeting allows email marketing combined with other direct media more of a chance to reinforce the marketing campaign message with an audience.
- Pushing the Message: Website based advertisingrelies on an individual to visit the website. Direct email communication allows an advertiser to 'push' it's message to the target audience.
- Numbers: It is far easier to collect email addresses of interested parties who can then opt-in to companies marketing emails and newsletters than it would be to collect physical addresses and send direct mail to the same interested parties.
- Green: E-mail marketing is paper-free.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
- Undelivered Email: It may be difficult to get email through a spam filter as many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail.
- Email Overload: Even when an email gets through to the consumer, there is so much email that needs to be looked at sometimes it is difficult for the individual to distinguish between solicited and unsolicited email, as well as have time to read through the email.
- Renderability:. Difficulty of displaying the creative as intended within the in-box of different email reading systems.
- Email response decay: Email recipients are most responsive when they first subscribe to an email. It is difficult to keep them engaged. Soon, the opted in for newsletter may be seen as an irritant.
- Communications preferences: Recipients will have different preferences for email offers, content and frequency which affect engagement and response. These have to be managed through communications preferences.
- Resources: Additional people and technology resources are required to deliver a sofisticated email newsletter that engages the consumer.
1. Create an aesthetically-pleasing visual design. Every time customers receive an email from you they should know right away that it’s from you because of the format and design. Always keep your design consistent so you don’t confuse your subscribers and your message is remembered long after they’re finished reading. Make sure your design is easy to read, consider colors, font sizes and offer plenty of white space and points of entry on the page so they can skim and read the full articles that they’re really interested in.
2. Provide interesting content for your readers. Make sure the point of the email is very clear and ensure that the content is valuable. Keep your email short and avoid long paragraphs; people generally like to skim online. Use catchy headlines that will drive email opens and clicks. Shorter headlines are best.
3. Share your social media. Encourage your readers to find you on social media for more information and updates. According to a study by GetResponse, newsletters that have a social media sharing option have a 30% higher click-through rate than those that don’t include sharing options.
4. Email your message at the right time. It’s important to test the time of day you send your message as well as the day of the week. Sometimes a letter sent at the beginning of the day might not be as effective as one sent in the afternoon. Plan a day of the week and time that you think will best work for your clients and stick to it for every email message in the future.
5. Conduct tests. Test subject lines, time/frequency of delivery, text format, images vs. no images, design/layout, etc. to figure out what gets the best response from your target audience. Most email marketing systems will be able to provide you with this information.
By: Ron Evans
Email marketing when used correctly, can be one of the most effective marketing techniques around. To get results, each emailing that you send has to be specific in terms of what you want each reader to get out of it. Without a clear understanding of what the purpose is for a mailing, you will not have any way of determining what impact each has on your business.
There are a number of different ways to use email marketing. The three most effective ones are:
- Special Offers
- Invitations
- Staying In Touch
Special offers like coupons and discounts are classic direct marketing techniques that translate extremely well to email. In order for an offer to be effective, it must provide something of real value to the recipient. Minimal discounts are not enough to get the readers’ attention; you have to offer something of substance. Don’t discount lower than your profit on the transaction, however. "Buying the business" rarely leads to a repeat sale, as this kind of customer will usually just go to the next such offer rather than build any loyalty. Lastly, having a time limit on these types of offers is extremely important, in order for the call to action to work. That’s why late night TV commercials always seem to end with "Offer ends midnight tonight. Call now!"
Invitations to events like seminars, conferences, and other special events are another type of highly effective email marketing. Seminars work particularly well for service industries like financial services, insurance, etc. These types of offers can be very effective when sent using email. Repetition is extremely important; sending two invitations spaced apart before the event will increase the number of attendees. Clicking thru from the email directly to a web page that permits online registration or RSVP can up to double the percentage of recipients that register. Sending an emailed reminder to people who have registered for the event is a good way to minimize on "no-shows".
Staying in touch with customers and prospects by providing useful information like newsletters or postcards is the third major email marketing technique covered here. As opposed to offers or invitations, where you are trying to get an immediate response from the recipient, the purpose of sending a newsletter is simply making contact. Keeping the information short, to the point, and most importantly useful is the main objective. The content can range from "how-to" tips to a digital photograph from a recent event. The point is to have something that the reader cannot see anywhere else, and that makes a meaningful connection because it is something that matters to them. The originality of the content is very important, as well. Your company’s individuality is your best weapon when it comes to standing out in the crowd against the competition.
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