Recently in Email Marketing Category

It may not be a Wii game but I found myself intrigued by an MP3 player novelty called “Live Jam Band” where 3 little aliens with instruments play to the music coming from your iPod (obviously, I’m easily amused). I clicked on the ad to view a pop up window with the information about the product.   The price, the button to add to your cart, the button to buy now online – all normal items that have been on the online shopping scene for years now.  

 

In Facebook, I was automatically taken to a page where it posts the link and I can put a comment…

 

I hit post and went to my profile and voila! Listed on my profile for everyone to see was a link to the product that I’m interested in buying and my comment that “I might buy this”.

For those who doubt the strength and length of social networking, this tool just goes to show you how powerful it can be.  Standard marketing techniques (ie newspaper flyers) may still be around for years to come, however, with tools like this in the making, viral marketing may very well completely overtake traditional ways of advertising.  Learning to harness social networks for sales and advertising will be key to catch the eye of the of the mobile and Internet-savvy generation.

 For the record, while I did share the project with others in my social networks, I decided not to get the product.  Perhaps someone who follows me on Twitter or is friends with me on Facebook will!

In the spirit of the season, this simple list has been devised for those who are beginners in the field of email marketing and also fans of the sport that brings Americans together - and could tear them apart - in the Fall: football.

1. Rules govern football. CAN Spam Laws govern proper email marketing. - Football has its first downs, holdings, pass interferences, etc.  The correct (and legal!) way of Email marketing requires an opt-out, physical address, and an accurate identification of the sender.  If you're "borrowing" someone else's list and you don't put their logo or name anywhere on the email, that's a major penalty!

2. Football has touchdowns. Email marketing has ROI. - While email marketers may not do a dance when we get a high return on our work, we do take satisfaction in seeing great results for something that we designed and implemented.

3. Football players wear pads.  Email marketers proof their work before sending it out. - Safety first!  A receiver would never go up against a linebacker without pads on.  When an email marketer exposes their work to hundreds of thousands of people, they would never simply hit the send button without reading over it completely at least twice.  Proofing is by far one of the most important steps to take before a send out. 

4.Football has a play book.  Email marketing has analytics. - A coach spends a very good majority of his time coming up with the ultimate plays that will eventually lead to a great victory.  When an email marketer receives the stats from an email that was sent out, they analyze its performance, note the items that worked well, and revise the items that did not perform well.  Continually changing the email and building on the strengths will lead to an ultimate victory for the client.

5.Football has positions.  Email marketing has segments. - The players in football are placed strategically on the field and each one knows his role in the game.  In email marketing, it's important to know who your list members are and what they're interested in.  The more information you find out from your members on the list, the better you'll be able to position your emails.  For example, if I am a corporate sponsor for a festival that's happening in California, would I want to send out a promotion for this festival to all of my subscribers across the country?  Probably not. 

It's important to remember that a good team of email marketers steps out on the field, plays by the rules, and while they may win a few games, they will never win the National Championship.  A great team knows that time, dedication, and practice goes into great work that will bring results.  Following consumer trends, updating templates, and finding new and better ways to improve your client's or company's ROI in your email campaigns will help you dominate on the field.

  As a recent college graduate and someone who is brand new to the world of email marketing, I found out quickly that simply “sending out a few emails” can be a little demanding.  Why?  Every day is a deadline.  Every email that gets sent out is different and every client has their own revisions and input as to how they would like it to look.  The goal is to get the proof done perfect and on time.  Depending on the design, amount of text, and whether or not a template is available, this can take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours (or more!).

Keeping the “creative-building” time down to a minimum is a key part of keeping clients satisfied with the work being done which, in turn, keeps your business growing strong.  However, it’s important to note the old saying from mom…“Haste makes waste”.  How do you keep your emails rolling in and out in a timely fashion, without sacrificing simple mistakes (ie spelling errors, missing links, etc).

The answer is obvious and simple – put a system in order, and stick to it.  If you are new to email marketing, using the system pictured here may be a step in the right direction for you.  If you are a veteran, using this general idea may help you to install a working system that will allow you to double-check your work before sending the proof onto the client.  Whatever the case, installing a system in your every-day email tasks will allow you to pick up better on mistakes, both minor and disastrous.
 
In looking at this chart, you’ll notice that I follow a system of putting text in before adding images.  I find that this is easier because it allows you to see the space that is left once the text has been added.  This will tell you what you should resize your images to, and will keep your email looking clean and in order.  Also, make sure that all of the links to the images are correct and if possible, link all of the images.  The more links you have in an email, the more click-throughs and hopefully, the better the return.
 

We get this one a lot; you've got a great widget and want more people to know all about it.  Problem is your database is not that big and you want to get new people to your site.  How do you do it?  Many times we recommend using a qualified third-party list that has subscribers that meet the criteria of people who want your widgets. But it's not just as simple as renting a list and firing off a few hundred thousand emails.

Step 1: Define Your Goals
Here's where it all starts, we work with our clients to determine exactly what the goals for the campaign are and write them down.  Why do you write them down?  So you can measure each of the following steps to the goals.  Some of the goals we look at may be data collection, sales, inquiries, sales value, etc.

Notice that I didn't say open rate and click through rate.  Yes, they are very important, but they're not your goals.  To put it in perspective, if you spend $1,000 on an email list and get just ten people to open the message and one to click through it's a failure right?  Wrong, if that one person that clicked through bought a $10,000 widget your ROI is 10:1, pretty good huh.

It's important to have the analytical system behind the message to accurately track conversions as well as the other traditional metrics.  You want to be able to come up with an actual ROI to base your decisions.  Once we've determined the goals we move on to step 2.

Step 2: Define Your Success
Great, our goal is to increase widget sales; we're heading in the right direction.  Now we need to determine how we are going to measure that goal and this is where most people stumble.  We're about to start testing a lot of different lists and if we don't come up with a good measuring stick, how will we know how well we did?  If our goal is to increase widget sales, we need to define how many we want to sell or what cost per sale we want to achieve.  In this example, let's say we want to sell at least one widget for every $10 we spend.

Step 3: Research Lists
All lists are not created equal.  So find a bunch that you feel will do a good job and negotiate a sample test.  Typically you can send to 50,000 or so through each list and then base the larger purchase on the list that performs the best.

Step 4: Create the Message
Once you've got a few, we'll say five, lists to test we need to develop a compelling email message that is designed around our goal.  This means if the goal is to sell widgets, we don't want to use half of the email talking about the company history.  Moral of the story is, get in, deliver the message and get out.  Every link and bit of copy that does not lead toward the success of your goal, only waters down your chances.

Step 5: Test and Choose a list
Good job, you've got a compelling message, great subject line (you did a subject line, right) and are ready to test.  This is where we deploy the tests and see which ones perform.  Let's say list #1 had an average cost per sale of $20, list #2 was at $8, list #3 was $13, list #4 came in at $80 and list #5 was $7.

You have a decision, you've got two lists, #2 and #5, that exceeded your sales goals.  Do you just choose the one that preformed better?  In this case, I would recommend finding some more marketing dollars to hit both lists.

Step 6: Segment & Target
Now we have our lists, our message and are ready to go.  Depending on the market you may wish to segment your offering to maximize performance.  Do widgets with snowshoes perform better in the northeast? Target that area with a unique version of the message.  Perhaps just swapping out the product image to show the winter widget versus the hula widget will do the trick.

Step 7: Send
Now you're ready to send the message.  Check with your list provider and see what you need to provide.  You're likely to need to send an HTML version, text version, unsubscribe list, suppression list and possibly some signed agreements and disclaimers.  Once you've submitted all the materials, the vendor will handle delivery.

Step 8: Report
You will get a report from the email vendors in somewhere between five and 10 days after delivery with message performance.  This will typically include open rate, click through rate, delivery rate and a few other stats.  These reports are great, but are NOT the ones to watch.  I mentioned analytics earlier and the email message should be coded to allow you to track site visitors from the message through your site using your existing analytics system.  Based on this you know exactly how many widgets were sold, how many people didn't buy a widget but signed up for a newsletter, etc.  Most importantly, you know how you measured up to your goal.  Congratulations, the email to both lists in this example resulted in a cost per sale of just $7.35. 

In summary, define your goals at the outset of the project before you do anything else.  Test multiple lists and creative to ensure the best possible success.  And finally track results through your analytics system so that you can determine if you've met your goals.  If you want more information about email tactics, contact us.