How to launch a successful email marketing campaign?
Q:
Email marketing -
What is email marketing? Why should I use that? How can I benefit from that with
limited marketing budget?
Q: Subscription -
How to switch your website visitors to your customers?
Q: Email Campaign Content -
Good subject lines, higher email open rates
Q: Delivery -
When to send your email campaign in order to have a high click
rate?
Email marketing:
What is email marketing? Why should I use that? How can I benefit from that with
limited marketing budget?
Email marketing uses
the Internet to communicate information about company news, promotions, product
updates and more. It can strengthen the connection between a company and a potential
or existing customer.
No matter you are from
a large corporation or one-man business, email marketing brings you sales opportunities
and benefits.
For business users,
you can send product updates and discount offers to your customers subscribed on
newsletter on your web site or imported from existing customer database. Your marketing
campaign can be effectively held for increasing sales with a low cost! It is ideal
for anyone looking for increasing revenue, boosting sales, generating leads, building
brand awareness or shortening sales cycles.
You can also send newsletter
to different interest group, alumni, association members etc. Some newsletter management
system can be applied to recruitment. By importing existing applicants or asking
web visitors to subscribe your job post newsletter, you can send related job opening
in the future.
Even for home users,
you can send personalized invitations, announcements, etc. to all your friends and
relatives easily.
Some web-based newsletter
management or email marketing systems, e.g. Reasonable Spread, do not require installation
or download. Thus, you can save costs in setting up or managing the system.
Also, by using these
kinds of systems, much time and money can be saved. This is due to no creating,
printing and postage cost of marketing materials. They can save your time by instantly
delivering the newsletter or promotional materials.
Besides, these kinds
of systems would flexibly allow users to create email campaign without any technical
skills. Sending your promotion to targeted customer groups would even trigger sales.
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Subscription:
How to switch your
website visitors to your customers?
Visitors that come
to your website from a search engine are most likely to be actively looking for
your product. They will probably purchase it immediately. However, some visitors
may not want to buy it at once. How to retain your visitors and buy from you later?
There are several methods to do so.
- Web page collection
Many companies collect
email addresses via the web. E.g. if you are selling software online, you can collect
more visitors?email address by requesting them to leave an email before downloading
your software. To improve the sign-up rates, it is recommended to add text informing
the visitors what benefits they would have upon registering. Like they would receive
e-newsletter, product updates, etc. Besides, the subscription box which collects
visitors?email addresses should be available on your home page. Don’t make your
visitors look for it.
- Existing email database collection
It is wisely to provide
“tell your friends?or “mail to others?button. You could ask your existing customers
to provide additional addresses or simply passing the newsletter, promotion, specific
offers, or other information to their friends, family or associates who have similar
interests.
Many newsletter management
systems include the function of helping you to build your email list. E.g. Reasonable
Spread allows you to generate HTML codes and embed into your website. So when visitors
visit your website, they can place the email addresses and you can contact them
later.
Lastly, to be an ethical
email marketer, un-subscription options should be included. So gather email addresses
and follow up regularly, then you will find your website profits grow with the same
rate as your email list.
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Email Campaign Content:
Good subject lines,
higher email open rates
The subject line of
your email marketing campaign is the key which opens the door to your message. Without
the right key, the door will never be opened. The best subject lines include a powerful
phrase with an action and an incentive. Here are some tips for drafting a good subject
line.
- Identify yourself
Another form of identification
for your email is the subject line. Thus, use your company or brand name in the
subject line to grab a receiver’s eye.
- Brief subject lines
Some email clients
cut off the subject lines beyond 50 characters. So keep it short, say, 6-7 words
including spaces is ideal.
- Inform but with incentive
If your subject line
is too vague, your receivers may not feel any urgency to open the email. However,
if it is too descriptive, they may not feel the need to open and read more. E.g.
“ABC company offers 20% off discount to premium members?may change to “ABC premium
members: 20% off discount on…”
- Avoid using words that cause your email to be filtered
When composing the
subject line, it is recommended to avoid words or phases like: free, order now,
advertisement, money back, etc. This is because these words are too promotional.
Even if they cannot be filtered by technology, they can be filtered by human brain.
Receivers may filter based on the words or the tone used. Also, avoid using all
capital letters or wildcards like $, or excessive exclamation marks (!!) in your
subject line. These unusual practices would certainly be filtered as spam.
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Delivery:
When to send your
email campaign in order to have a high click rate?
There is no universal
rule for determining when to deliver your email. E-mail providers such as e-Dialog
and Responsys recommend sending once a week. A recent ExactTarget study found that
emails sent on Wednesday to Friday get the most opens, while users click most on
weekend emails. Marketers should test different days and frequencies to see what
generates the best response with their customers.
Generally, Tuesdays
through Thursdays are the most effective days of the week for email marketing offers.
Mondays tend to have poor click rates because busy consumers often deleting accumulated
marketing emails sent at weekends. Fridays are also not ideal because people tend
to plan for the upcoming weekend via email and are ordinarily less receptive to
advertisers. If you are sure your customers database consists only of personal email
addresses, weekends and holidays are generally good times to target your campaign.
What are good rules
of thumb then? Actually the best way to decide when to send your email is by testing
different days and times.
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