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Smart E-mail marketing
Smart E-mail marketing
E-mail marketing has opened up a strong potential window for small and big businesses that undoubtedly will help them cut down on their unreasonable high marketing costs.Successful email marketing is capable of not just building an exhaustive distribution list in the outlook and send out broadcast emails to all contacts, but in fact a smart email marketing process helps
• Accelerate Sales
• Cut down marketing costs
• Increase Customer Royalty
• Cut down sales cycle
• Build more referrals
• Saves time
In a fast changing business environment, E-mail marketing has evolved into an instant, flexible and cost-efficient marketing tool. Little wonder, too many businesses have switched over to e-mail marketing in a major way. However, only a few businesses are employing the right strategies.
In fact there is no one ‘right way’ to do email marketing, in fact there are hundred better ways.
• Build your customer database
• Send out e-mail campaigns
• Keep a check on the results
The short guide will give you all essential inputs so as to get started with your eMarketing strategy.
1] Building Customer Database
On the basis of the information you seek and elicit from the customers you could tailor your promotions and customize your offers, which in turn could help arrive at the best possible returns for your eMarketing effort.
Some of the useful information that may prove useful to you includes
• Contact Information, particularly the email
• Lead Source like from where did the customer first learn about you
• Information on age and sex
• Personal Information like children’s name and hobbies
• Something on their Purchase history, like what they bought and when did they bring it
Now, how is this detailed information going to help you? Firstly you can sort out the database into different groups and then secondly it will help you tailor campaigns accordingly.
Study these few examples:
Contact Details
• Arrange according to zip codes and send offers in batches, area-wise.
• Apply more than one contact methods to increase the efficiency of the campaigns like Phone, mail and email.
Client Standing
• Campaigns designed for least profitable customers to gain more sales from them.
• Special rewards for profitable customers.
Lead Source
• Zero down on the best promotional plans.
• Good referrals
Demographic Details
• Campaigns especially designed for male and female audience.
• Family offers
• Campaigns reserved for various age groups.
Personal and Relationship Details
• Notes that’ll help you zero down the campaigns that appeal to a particular target audience.
• Notes that’ll stop you from excessive campaigning with no pertinent information involved.
• Research a little and learn more about long term sales and relationship building.
Purchase Record
• Zero down users of a specific product from your range
• Zero down users who’re yet to buy your product from your range
• Setting up reorder reminders
To sum it up: more and more information you seek from your customers, the more and more successful your e-marketing campaign will be.
Also develop your email marketing plan in such a way that your contact data keeps growing, however, ensure that it is in alignment with the current privacy and anti-spam legislation.
Keep building your list and you’ll see good results arising from your e-marketing campaigns.
Mentioned below are few tips that’ll help build your database significantly
1.1] Obtain Email addresses from your website
Your website can be a good source to collect email addresses from potential customers. You can do this in numerous ways, be it through email subscription forms, enquiries form, order forms and feedback forms.
1.2] Gather Email Addresses from Customers
Zero down on new customers to build your email address database. Also request your customer to give their email addresses. This could be done at the point of sale, or at the time of in store promotions.
1.3] Gather Email Addresses from Potential New Customers
If you are keen on building the list of customers, strategically plan out things and for that matter invest a little money to ‘build your list’. Moreover, people will be ready to give access to their inbox only if something is beneficial to them.
Say, an IT company has come up with special software for SME businesses, the customer may simply visit their site and sign-up for the special software newsletter.
1.4] Gather Email Addresses via Direct Approach
For small businesses, the most trusted way to build list is to go out and request for email addresses.
This strategy will be extremely useful for business-to-business markets. Here the significant aspect being: you seek permission to send information via email.
The mail ID could be assembled via phone by yourself, sales staff, or by a telemarketer etc.
Getting started is the most crucial thing and the best way to get started is by building up your database.
2] Building Email Promotions
You are employing email as a marketing tool because you intend to push your sales employing low-cost, instant communication tool. Nonetheless, other businesses make use of this medium as well. So the major challenge is to stand out, or say, get out of clutter so that your emails are read by the targeted audience.
Your email content should incorporate:
• Pertinent information as per the requirements
• New offers and discounts
• News pertaining to the industry
• Insights into product development and services
• Relevant Information on the area of your expertise
• Case studies and work samples
Email marketing is good if you can offer something valuable to your customers, but does not hurt your profitability in the process.
Some examples include:
• Pertinent information
• % of Discount
• Free Reports
• Free/Discount upgrade
• Reward Points
• Free/Discount refills
Different types of email marketing campaigns you may wish to employ:
2.1] Limited Offers
• The offer is available this week only
• The offer is available today only
• Offer available for 5 days starting from today
• Respond in the next 30 minutes
All these messages create an immediacy that prompts customers respond quickly. By limiting the offer, one could speed up the response process.
One can make use of limiting period criteria to fill up off-peak times in businesses
• Offer available only after 2 pm
• Offer available only after 11 am
• Offer available only on weekdays and weekends
2.2 Last Minute Offers
Email is the best tool for disposing troubled inventory- stock that must be sold off right away before it comes under the ‘never to be sold’ category. You could opt to send an email campaign directly to a small group of your database with unique last minute offers to clear the undesired inventory. However, if you keep changing the target group, customers might fail to follow your offers, and as a result might not prefer to act when they come across your offer.
Service businesses are especially suited for this type of email strategy.
2.3 Email Newsletters
Email Newsletters are the perfect tool for initiating and sustaining long-term relationships with your clients. While special offers and promotions drive sales, email newsletters on the other hand probably help build long term customer loyalty and drive sales over a period of time.
Newsletter content could include:
• Hints & Tips
• Advice Columns
• Expert Analysis
• Case Studies
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Technical issues put in plain words
2.4 Product Updates & Information
Mulling over to launch a new product, or service to an interested audience, or you wish to update the existing users on the new features, then resort to email marketing.
• New Products
• New Services
• Product Updates
• New Features
However, all through the campaign, bear in mind that you need to stay focused on offering value to the customers and also give them the opportunity to respond.
• Freebies and discounts
• Opening Offers
• Free Test Drives
2.5 Employee Newsletters
Communicate with your staff and the best way to do this is to send email newsletters. This will keep all staff members in the loop, and everyone is kept well-informed on crucial matters like
• Company events and activities
• Achievements and Results
• Policies and procedures
• Notices and announcements
• Forthcoming Promotions
2.6 Invitations
Hosting an event? Summon customer via an email and get them registered through an online form. Made-from-India.com has devised an excellent way to keep costs low when hosting events such as:
• Product Lunches
• Information Sessions
• Seminars and Workshops
• Charity & fund-raising events
The biggest cost while hosting an event is printing and mailing the invitation. However via email, the cost never becomes an issue.
2.7 After Sales Emails
One can automate after sales emails. Your customers would like to stay in touch with you, and a simple email can bring about a real big difference.
Some examples on after Sales Email Include:
• Thank You for your business mails
• Frequently Asked Questions
• After sales satisfaction analysis
• Care and Preservation Tips
2.8 Personal Greetings
For a change, collect birthday details of your customers, so that you could send them a birthday e-card.
Some personal greetings you could send via email include:
• Birthday e-cards
• Reminder emails
• After sales satisfaction surveys
• We haven’t heard anything from your end messages
Advanced Step
You could learn what works for your business and what doesn’t by carrying out a few test campaigns:
• Zero down on 2 or 3 campaigns that you wish to test
• Send out test mails to a targeted group from your database
• Call up a few customers for feedback
Once you have finished with this, subsequently evaluate the results.
3. Guidelines for Crafting Quality Email Campaigns
In a fast changing business environment, inboxes seem to be inundated with all kinds of spam mails. As a result, getting you message (read: mail) to the targeted audience is an uphill task. The probability of your mail getting deleted at the first instance itself is very high. Cutting through the clutter and making you heard is the name of the game these days.
In short, you wish that your contacts respond to your mail.
3.1 Give your Newsletter a nice look
Step 1
The design of your email template matters, given that it has a major impact on the way in which your campaign is looked at and the rate at which your audience will visit your website. Some key factors to be considered in your template design include:
• Quality images and graphics
• Build a brand image with quality email templates and stick to it
• Don’t overload it with content and graphics
• Keep in mind that only a small part of your email will be noticeable in the Preview Pane of many people’s email browser- employ this space for branding and putting the message across.
Quality graphic design is an expert skill and a professionally designed template is worth the money spent.
3. 2 Make it practical and functional
Step 2
Keep your focus on customers while building email campaigns given that emails are easy and cheap to use. However, many businesses have developed a habit of sending old mail and then expecting it to work for you. Always keep in mind that email is a very handy, but its widely used and something that could be easily done away with. Some things to consider comprise:
• Content should be relevant and valuable
• Use short paragraphs and numerous subheadings
• Give specific offers, avoid generalizations
• Proof read: it should be free from typo errors, or misinformation
• Test all web links and see that they are connected to the correct page. Broken links are considered highly unprofessional.
3.3 Make it pertinent
Step: 3
The most crucial part of email marketing is to pass on the relevant information to the relevant people.
Do keep questioning yourself each time you come across a new campaign: Would I be pleased to receive this email?
Making your campaign relevant is crucial for two reasons:
• To enhance the response rate
• To enhance the life-span of email i.e. reduce unsubscribe.
Some points to be considered when charting out campaigns:
• What does it hold for the customers?
• Is this helpful for every customer, or for a particular customer?
• Is there anything new on the horizon?
• Has this strategy worked for you in the past?
3.4 Personalize it
Step: 4
Your mail may look like junk mail, or it can look like a personalized message to your customer.
Few tips on how to personalize your email campaigns:
• Greet them on first-name basis
• Customize offers as per the requirements of the groups
• Seek Feedback
Sending emails on first-name basis and offering information that customers will be grateful for might help campaigns in becoming an instant hit among the customers.
3. 5 Make it Sell
Step 5
All that you undertake in a business world is from the sales point of view. Certainly, you don’t want to harass your customers with gimmicks, but you should never hesitate when asking them to do business with you.
Here are some ways to increase sales in your emails:
The From Line matters:
The first thing most people notice while checking their email is the ‘From’ column. And in case the customer doesn’t know you then he may end up hitting the delete button. So opt for any one of the given three options:
1] Include the name of the person the customers knows
2] A group they have associated with (Flyers club, rewards club)
3] A company they believe in
Once you have zeroed down on your approach, stick to it as it will be easier for customers to identify with your emails, so you’d have fair chance of avoiding spam filters.
The Subject Line matters:
After the ‘From Line” the next crucial thing the customer should target is the subject line. If the subject is of disinterest then it could be ignored or deleted completely. And if the subject is appealing, then the chances of your mail being read is more.
• Always keep the subject line short
• Keep the spotlight on the recipient
• In case it is a newsletter, focus on the benefits of reading the article (use headlines like Solve, Discover, and Learn)
• Ensure that you stick to the same subject line for every issue or at least keep the same title.
• Opt for open-ended questions like “What’s your favorite type of fruit” with no question mark symbols
Text
• Headline should be powerful enough to generate curiosity in the reader.
• The content should be written with customer on mind
• Offers should be made time and again
• Call of action should be strong
• Landing pages coupled with database forms should be used
• Open and close mails with contact information
3.6 Check out Before you send
• Errors can be discomforting. So testing mails should be made mandatory prior to sending it out.
• Sneak Peak into some best ways to avoid embarrassing mistakes
• Include Key Staff
• Send email to the test group first
• Check text for typos
• Check whether all links are working
• Check out whether all images are appearing properly
• Test once more
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