Email marketing is a key communication tool in marketing for small and medium enterprises. If you understand this correctly, it is cost effective, focused, personalized, measurable and good for attracting and retaining customers. In the 2008 e-mail correspondence, e-mail was rated the second best channel (after search engine optimization) for return on investment.
Your emails should help build strong relationships, build your experience and, ultimately, increase the number of repeat and new sales. The most successful emails combine valuable content with short advertising and marketing messages that have links to specific sites. pages on your site for more information. Regular contact with customers ensures that they find out about your offers, ready for future purchases. However, if you are mistaken in email marketing, this can be a terrible waste of time, damage to relationships and a limitation on the future use of this ideal marketing channel.
So how do you get the right email marketing?
1. Database
Before sending any letters, you need a database and current data collection activity. You must segment your database so that you can set up email addresses to the appropriate recipients. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reports that most companies segment 2 or 3 separate listings.
Start with your existing customer base and get new contacts through your website, all marketing forms and through sales staff at every possible opportunity.
Collect the data that you collect to a minimum — too many questions will cause people. Start with first name, last name, company name and email address. If necessary, add a tick for a tick or a tick for men and women to indicate the areas of interest and the frequency of e-mail messages.
Ideally, you should offer something in return to your email address and say that they sign up. For example, you can offer a useful article or voucher and state that they will receive a newsletter every month or will be the first to know about special offers about their preferred product.
Direct e-mail marketing is best for communicating with people you encounter, rather than cold prospects. However, in order to reach prospects, it’s nice to explore how you can link emails from another trusted partner or supplier.
It is necessary to regularly clean the database. After each email campaign, you must remove all those who unsubscribe and see how email replies can allow you to segment your list. For example, all those who clicked on a specific link can be grouped for future specific email content.
If you have under-received emails, make a phone call. Find out what the email address of the new person is and find out where the previous person went so you can get back in touch. Every name is valuable, especially in the Business in Business (B2B) markets, where there may be a limited number of potential customers. You may have a message in your email asking recipients to indicate if they want to change the email address that is used to receive this newsletter to try to avoid losing people.
2. Plan
You have an email marketing plan.
• What are your goals? These can range from repeat sales and sales / cross sales to recommendations for new sales and the acquisition of new customers.
• What messages are you sending? Email content may include some or all of the following: useful useful content (as a guide), sales reports, surveys, event invitations, news.
• How often? Once or twice a month is common, once a quarter will not be enough to achieve the goal of building relationships and keeping your brand in the mind of the reader. How often do you have something valuable? The frequency can be adapted based on purchasing habits, seasonality and responses received and customer segments. preferences. Do not forget to act immediately after receiving the first information about the contact. If you do not contact them within a few months after registering, they may not open your email address, unsubscribe, or ill report you about spam.
• What time is it? The only way to do this with more accurate science is to analyze the responses received and test different scenarios, as well as apply your understanding of peak sales periods and your customers. shopping cycles? For people working on the desk, it’s likely that they will have more time to browse the first email in the morning.
• Which application will you use? The most common solution is to have a web-based email application provided by an email service provider that allows you to manage all of your email marketing within a company. The alternatives are a fully managed external service or a package with a shelf. There are many web applications that are very accessible for small and medium businesses. Some providers will also create a newsletter template based on your corporate branding, ready for you. Smaller systems are often autonomous and allow you to load all existing contacts into an application and add new ones, as well as create your own data fields for segmentation and personalization. Other email applications allow web form data to directly enter the email contact database and integrate directly with CRM systems.
• How will it be associated with other sales and marketing activities? E-mail can be used after direct mail, which is then accompanied by a commercial call. Some companies use telesales to implement email to send a series of informational and relevant articles and subsequent discussion with another call and meeting request. Text messages can be sent to alert people of the email just sent. Recipients who have clicked on certain items in an email can get their data from sellers as potential customers. Email marketing should be one of the tactics you use along with other communication channels to reach your customers. For maximum effectiveness, marketing must be multifaceted.
• How complex and automatic will it be? It will depend on the functionality of your solution. Most systems have the ability to set up triggers that send automatic, time-delayed, tracked pre-prepared letters based on the recipient's response to the email you sent them. It can be reliably simple automatic thanks for emails or successive emails related to the content that the user clicked in the first email. For example, after downloading a free report, an email can be sent with information about things to consider when purchasing, and then about the product and offers. If email is integrated with web and CRM solutions, it may include advising customers that their credit card should expire for the one-hour service they pay (for example, video rentals) and send vouchers to website users e-commerce who abandoned their shopping carts before payment. (Be sure to regularly check the contents of your trigger letters to make sure they are still out of date).
3. Email subject line
You need a subject line with a winner, because there are more and more letters in your client's mailbox competing for their attention. The first two or three words will be the most important. Use 50 characters or less to increase your open rates and to be honest and clear about what is in the email.
Make the storylines tempting so the participants want to know more about how they can benefit today. Successful methods include using numbers to draw attention and words such as “find” & # 39; and & # 39; Asking a question can also work well. Make it relevant now or with time-limited phrases, such as “3 places left at a customer service seminar”; or order golf by the end of June for discounts. Use personalization with words such as you and yours.
Avoid spamming emails such as “Free”, “Special Offer”, “Increased Sales”, “Urgent”, “Lowest Price”, “Tariff Compare”, “Click here”, “Save up to "," Warranty "," Exclusive "," No "(for example," No obligation "). It is also best to avoid using these phrases more than once in your email too. You should avoid capitalization, a lot of punctuation and symbols.
Most email applications have a spam rating system, so you can check if you have problems with spam before sending it.
4. Email Content
There are several key points to consider. We all receive a lot of emails now and only briefly review the email before deciding whether to read or delete.
• The content should be of interest to the reader. Use various sources, such as customer information from sales representatives, research and web analytics to develop content. E-mail news topics include problem-solving and ways to avoid catastrophes, recommendations, tips on choosing from more than 5 tips for getting more out of your product or improving what they are doing, news and opinions / analysis, future forecasts, thematic studies with hard facts and numbers that provide practical information.
• Text content should be visible in the preview area of the email application, and the content headers and your company name should be at the top of your message. Headings, which are links, most often receive clicks. Studies show that people concentrate on the first two words of headlines. A two-column e-mail format can help display more text headers at the top of the letter.
• Most mailboxes automatically block images in emails, and the reader initially sees red crosses or a series of text boxes. Right-click here to upload photos ... ". The recipient can quickly find out who the mail and headers are from before they right-click. Avoid having images as headers — make sure they are in text format — and avoid having background images for the entire email, because this will stop it from displaying correctly on many email clients. Provide a link to the web version of your email for those who simply cannot see your email correctly.
• Use short text and bullet points to help the reader. Use the right tone for your audience and use friendly language to build relationships. Personalize your content and avoid spamming as much as possible. Personalize using your name, recent events, mutual contacts, purchase history information, etc. Have some element of urgency or action, such as a deadline for offers, a limited amount or what your performance can improve today with these tips .
• Be very clear and precise about what you want the reader to do (call to action), for example, phone, click on the website, answer by e-mail. In some cases, it may be a good idea to repeat your main call to action in an email.
• It is best to store emails securely and use links to landing pages to download an article, register / register, apply for a quote, view a video clip, view photos, or complete a survey. (Landing pages may be existing pages on a website or a newly created page that is installed separately on your website.) Strengthen your key message and the action you want the person to take to the landing page and offer a phone number, for example, if they don’t want to use the form. You must specify how long the survey will take (best for a couple of minutes). It may be necessary to suggest incentives to complete the survey.
• You may have a link to alternative content just in case your email address is not in the direct interest of the recipient (it is especially important when you study the segmentation of your list).
• The general rule is that emails should not exceed 60 thousand. In file size.
• Have a clear unsubscribe button - this is a legal requirement. Avoid using the phrase “here to unsubscribe”, use an alternative phrase to avoid classification as spam. Suggest that the reader adds your email address to his address book / list of safe senders.
• Direct referrals from friends and collections - the best marketing, so send to each other; in your letter.
• Currently, a legal requirement is also required for emails to include the company's registration number, country of registration, and registered office address.
5. Test
Check your emails in the following ways to improve success:
• Subject lines — check whether emails are sent in small batches with different topics to see how open rates may differ.
• Content - check that all links (to your site, unsubscribe, etc.) work before you send an email, as well as personalization and dates, and perform a spell check. Always check that you are sending an email to the correct database list.
• Design - send a test email to various email accounts to see what they look like, for example, Hotmail, Outlook, Blackberry. Most emails use HTML format. Unfortunately, BlackBerry and some mobile devices will not display your HTML emails correctly. You may need to investigate the creation of text versions of your emails only for dedicated BlackBerry / mobile users. You will also need to consider what they will see when they are directed to landing pages.
6. Shipping
Delivery rate of 90% is good. However, even if your email recipients are chosen and the email address is correct, your email is not guaranteed. This may be due to the fact that the network is busy, the target server classifies your email as spam, your ISP has entered a blacklist or a mailbox is full. Studies show that 15–20% of emails usually bounce off or are blocked by spam. You can increase productivity:
• keep your data clean and updated by removing signatures from the lists and removing invalid addresses
• double options (i.e. Recipient places his email address twice)
• avoiding spam phrases (as stated above, most email applications have a spam rating system in place so you can check if you have spam risks before sending)
• Avoid spam complaints by sending only those who have subscribed to receive e-mail. Recipients can click the automatic spam buttons on your emails to directly notify the provider. Too many of them, and you can be black listed provider
• tracking complaints - investigating and resolving problems causing them. Get reviews from your ISP
• according to the email address / sender you use - your brand / company name must be clear
• Avoid changing your IP address, as new addresses without a history have stricter thresholds.
Посмотрите, какие электронные письма попали прямо в папку нежелательной почты в вашем почтовом приложении - что было не так с этими письмами?
Посмотрите на ответы в офисе # 39; и посмотреть, дают ли они вам больше информации, например, название должности, которое может отсутствовать в вашей базе данных.
7. Мера
Маркетинг электронной почты - самая измеримая маркетинговая тактика. Измерение обычно разделяется на следующие категории:
• Отправить: номер отправлен, номер доставлен, номер отскок.
• Производительность: открытые и щелевые ставки, количество отписавшихся и переадресация. (Вы также можете проверить свою веб-аналитику, чтобы узнать, добавили ли электронные письма больше посещений вашего сайта и посмотреть, что еще искали посетители, чтобы помочь понять их интересы).
• Конверсия: предпринятые действия и продажи.
Записывайте результаты и продолжайте тестировать и анализировать каждую кампанию электронной почты. Прямая продажа не часто ожидается на рынке B2B, что часто требует последующей обработки по телефону или лицом к лицу.
В Национальном отчете по маркетингу электронной почты Direct Direct Association говорится, что средние открытые ставки в 2008/9 году составляли 19% для хранения электронных писем и 14% для получения электронных писем. Ставки за клик варьируются от 6% до 8,8%.
Есть несколько отличных примеров успеха, когда методы маркетинга электронной почты увеличивают конверсию онлайн-котировок на более чем 70%.
Тем не менее, это хорошая идея, чтобы попытаться найти метрики для вашей собственной отрасли и установить свои внутренние критерии для маркетинга электронной почты, тщательно записывая и анализируя результаты. Благодаря тонкой настройке вашей базы данных и сюжетных линий, открытые ставки будут увеличиваться. Альтернативными мерами могут быть количество полученных запросов, количество загруженных статей или количество запрошенных демок, например.
Удачи вам в вашей кампании
Успех электронного маркетинга электронной почты будет зависеть от того, как все эти факторы будут правы - если одна часть не удастся, вся ваша напряженная работа в других областях будет потрачена впустую. Постоянно строя свое понимание ваших клиентов / потенциальных клиентов, вы можете адаптировать все будущие маркетинговые мероприятия для увеличения успеха и рентабельности инвестиций.
За дополнительной информацией обращайтесь к Эмме Пирс, Pearce Marketing Consultants
