Email marketing

EMail marketing campaigns have a great ROI

Email marketing basics

EMail is popular and is now the primary means of business communication (ahead of telephone and postal mail). In fact:

42% of business users check their business EMail while on holiday.
53% check their EMail six or more times during the working day.
34% of internet users check their EMail continuously throughout the day.
96% of internet users’ main reason for being online is EMail.

(Source: Forrester Research and Jupiter Communications)

In marketing terms EMail marketing saves time and money as there are no need for printing nor for printing and postage costs so it takes less time to create and send. This means that a good EMail marketing campaign can have an ROI from about 10 - 30 times greater than direct mail. And it does not just have to be an acquisition campaign - brand building and education via EMail newsletters is also very effective.

This is not only due to the lower costs as there are increased sales from higher response rates to opt-in EMail generally. Moreover there are “instant results” as you can time your EMail campaigns exactly for maximum response and, minutes after sending out your EMail campaign, you can start seeing responses and orders that can be are instantly tracked in full.

There are some basics to any EMail campaign perhaps the most important of which is its legality. European law requires that you have opt in / prior consent or an existing customer / business relationship before you can send bulk EMail.

Once you have decided that EMail is for you then you have to decide whether you are going to deploy it via:

Your own EMail marketing software installed on your server(s).
A hosted / ASP EMail marketing solution where you login via the Internet to manage your campaigns. [N.B if the servers are based outside the EU you might be breaking the Data Protection Act by placing personal data on them and you also need to check whether they are blacklisted by Spamcop and others].
A bureau or a managed EMail marketing service, which can be the best solution if you do not have the appropriate skills or time to setup and manage EMail campaigns.

Whatever solution you choose - and we recommend 12All EMail software - you have to make sure that it can cover all the following points

A/B Split Testing
Adding data
Approval process
Bounce Management
Campaign scheduling
Customer data
De-duplication
Delivery & scalability
Exclude lists
MIME
Multiple lists
Multiple users
Personalisation
Proven solution
Reporting
Segmentation
Test & seed functionality
Unsubscribe management
White listing

Running an email marketing campaign

Once you have decided how to manage your EMail marketing campaign then you have to produce an effective EMail and to do that you have to think about some really importants things:

Just like all direct marketing the headline is the hook! A good headline communicates and encapsulates the EMail.

Personalizing the EMail is likely to make a difference - what a surprise!
Making the message clear - you have to test, test, test to see whether long copy or short copy works, whether graphics and photos make a difference but if the message is unclear then you stand no chance.
Attachments need to be very relevant and never something that is likely to cause an issue such as an executable (.exe).

Don't be afraid to make it a campaign with the same message - people sometimes need several EMails to respond; they are busy, EMails are easy to delete, so don't ruin a winning campaign by pulling it to soon, just tweak it.

Real-time tracking is now an industry standard. It allows you to see when a user opens your EMail, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Understanding recipients behaviour to make each campaign better than the last, really understanding those EMail campaign statistics is essential to effective EMail marketing.