Archive

  • Full Service Marketing
  • Brand Development
  • Website Design
  • Online Marketing

Generating results from your email marketing campaigns

September 2008

Email marketing has seen massive growth over the last few years and is still top of the pops so to speak for communicating with existing and potential customers. UK research is yet to take place, but figures from the US Direct Marketing Association show a return of $57.25 per dollar spent on email marketing.

Email marketing enables you to send highly targeted messages, quickly and cost effectively and track the results.

Although email marketing can be used very successfully for new business generation, the medium comes into its own when generating more business from your existing prospect and customer base.

Summarised below are the five main areas that help to create a results generating email campaign.

Step 1 - Planning

Planning is essential to any successful email campaign. Before you start you must decide what message you are communicating, who you are communicating to, when you are sending the email, will there be any follow up emails, what response targets/sales you expect to make from the campaign.

All of this will determine the path you take in the design and content steps. Timing is also important. Consider the nature of your business. If you are selling to other businesses, send the email mid week as this is when you will get the best response. If you are selling direct to customers, consider when they will be most responsive.

For example, a leisure centre promoting children's holiday activities would send an email perhaps a month prior to the school holiday to allow time for parents to book, and then a follow up email the week before the holiday, as a reminder of what is happening the next week.

Step 2 - Design

A good email design will grab the attention of readers, instantly convey your brand image and motivate them to react. But the look is only the start of the design process, the bit most people forget about is the coding behind the design.

People often find that what leaves their screen is not what arrives with their customers. This is usually because of poor coding. Different email providers interpret the code in different ways, leading to alignment and image display problems, and worst of all, an unprofessional look.

So how do you prevent this from happening? Well firstly, choose a designer who is experienced in XHTML coding. They will know all the pitfalls where coding can fall down, and will adhere to the most up to date coding standards. They will also rigorously check the most popular email providers to make sure that emails are appearing as you would expect.

Step 3 - Content

Good content should be clear, concise and tell your customers exactly what they have to do - the purpose of the email should be immediately clear. Although obvious, take time to check your spelling and grammar as mistakes are easy to make and often laughed at by the recipient. Write in small chunks and divide large bits of text with images and clear headings.

The most important thing to remember is to avoid using words that are likely to get your email blocked by Spam filters. These include words like Sale, Free, Special offer, Earn, Winner and Discounts. Get creative with alternatives, if you're struggling invest in a thesaurus. Other Spam no go's are excessive punctuation, £ and $ symbols.

Copywriting for email campaigns is tricky and can be time consuming. If you are unsure or just don't have the time to dedicate to it, get the professionals in.

Step 4 - Data

You can have a truly professional design and excellent content, but if the data isn't up to scratch, your efforts will be wasted.

When buying data, ensure it is higly targeted. Most good data providers will enable you to segment your data so that you have an end list of people that fit your target market. Ensure the data is regularly cleaned so that you minimise the number of incorrect email addresses.

For your own data, consider asking recipients to opt-in so that you know they want to receive your emails. Ensure your customer information is current, remove any opt-outs and duplicate entries.

Step 5 - Tracking Results

It is important to track the results of each email you send out. There are many ways to do this. You can ask your customers how they heard about you or the offer. This is very basic and requires manually making note of the figures or setting up additional areas on your online order forms.

Alternatively there are now a large number of sophisticated tracking email tools available on the market. These tools will track everything from how many people opened it, when they opened it, what links within the email they clicked on and if they revisited the email at a later date.

From this you can measure the success of different emails you send to see which works best for you. But more importantly you can focus your sales team with qualified leads. For example, if customer x clicks on a link to find out more about product A, they have shown an interest. This can be followed up with further emails targeted at customer x with more information about product A or a phone call to push for a sale.

The Results!

In conclusion, email marketing offers great potential to improve customer communications, sell more of your products and/or services and track the results to provide qualified leads and use the data to improve future campaigns.

However, email marketing should not be used as a substitute for other marketing methods. For the best results, emarketing needs to integrate with other mediums such as dedicated website landing pages, telemarketing, etc, as well as being in sync with specific campaigns that are taking place.

Smart Monkey Marketing's team of qualified and experienced marketers and designers can take care of all your email marketing needs. We will plan your email marketing strategy in line with your marketing objectives, organise specific campaigns, design and copy write the content for your email and implement the campaign, providing you with tracked email results.

To find out how your business can reap the rewards of email marketing please get in touch.