Did you know over 95 percent of the broadcast emails and autoresponder emails are written in haste.
It??™s a known fact that email marketing is cost-effective yet very few take the time to truly learn and leverage this powerful communication tool.
While there is a ton of published material on email marketing and related best practices very few people take the time and implement what it really takes to succeed. Zero planning and Hurried Execution results in frustrating conversions.
Here are some of my own learning??™s over the years. There could be more to this and please do feel free to post your observations in the comments sections.
Plan it well
Don??™t hurry??¦planning is very critical. While a campaign or launch could be a big one, every message you send out has to be relevant and has to glue e very aspect of the other communication you plan for the campaign. While your first email could be an incentive-zed offer email to test the pulse of the market, your third or fourth email could be a highly targeted email that measures the response of your subscriber such as a small survey, or an exchange offer(asking them to do something in exchange of a benefit)
The key to success is targeting with relevancy. This is the fundamental reason why every top class 3rd party email service provides multiple autorepsonders, all to effectively segment your subscribers and profile them.
Very few marketers take time to de-list their subscribers from one autoresponder and enlist them on to the second upon a significant call to action response. For example if a subscriber to a special report is getting email from the special report autoresponder with messages that are …………………………..targeted to make him buy the big product that you are selling. Once he buys the product after being on the list for 10 days. He should be unsubscribed from this list and be instantly be added to the customer autoresponder from where he will start getting consumption emails of this newly bought product
Take enough time and analyze your database. Profile your customers and do take time to analyze the past email results, including the spam percentages, deliverability percentages and bounces.
The end game is an action that you want them to take. While the offer could be a great offer the conversion will always be an outcome of the profiling and analysis that you did to build the relevancy.
Get Into Their Mind Incrementally With Every Message
The key is to establish the motivation of your buyer. Why they buy, when they buy, who influences them to buy? Are all critical insights that you leverage to refine and rinse your target markets. Not only selling but this information can effectively be used in other aspects of your business such as product creation, customer service etc.
Be Consistent With Your Communication
It??™s possible that you are doing two or three promotions in a calendar month. If that??™s the case make sure they all are consistent in their looks. If you standardize the structure of the body, that??™s even better. In my experience most marketers are scared of sending long emails. They only way you can overcome this problem is to create an effective structure and condition your readers to read long emails upfront.
Color, Font, Carriage returns play an important role too. Don??™t ignore them.
Integration and Conflicts with autoresponders
Numerous times I have been accused of spamming in the past. This is a reality of e-mail marketing. I now have double opt-ins for all my email correspondence.
Still occasionally I get the blame of spamming. A little research on my end showed that people are getting too many emails from on a give day. The reason?
My autoresponder is scheduled with messages at least a year in advance, and I keep sending broadcast emails once in a while. The day on which my broadcast and autoresponder emails arrive in the inbox of my subscribers. It??™s natural for them to think I am spamming or over communicating with them.
Over the years I have started to fix this problem. I wish the top email companies provided a graphical view of what email is scheduled for a given date upfront and an option to delay or disable them…
Smart Subscribe: Smart Unsubscribe
Smart marketers capture email addresses and other info at every interaction. As I discussed earlier, unsubscribing users and subscribing users upon a major call to action. Remember the value of your list based on its relevancy and the insights it can provide. Keep refreshing your subscriber data, qualify them occasionally
Easy Opt Out from all autoresponders
If they unsubscribe do not get agitated. Unsubscribing is very insightful than subscribing. I learnt more about my marketing when someone unsubscribed versus when someone subscribed to anything I had to offer.
Once someone decides to opt out, Make sure you unsubscribe him from all the autoresponders. This is becoming more of a best practice now.
Only one click opt-out please! Don??™t complicate the process.
Personalization Beyond Firstname,
The days of personalization just with first name are long over. Collect as much information as you can upfront. You can collect phone, fax, address, Date-of-birth information upfront and create highly relevant/targeted offers based on this data.
If you get this one thing right you can encourage dialogue with your customers and convert your email campaigns into social media marketing campaigns. Personalization is a huge subject in itself; I will talk on this more on a different day.
Track The Response and Dollars
Remember Response and Responsiveness are two different things and the internet marketing world has not differentiated this much.
At What level you track your emails campaigns? Can effectively decide your success or failure on internet. While the end game for you is a response, you would like to know if ever you got any response to 1000 emails you sent to this one subscriber who is actively there on your list but is not responsive to you.
Think smart and track everything! Not at an operational level but at an intellectual level.
After all set and done it??™s all about customer experience.
Be Transparent and Agile
They blame you??¦try to listen to them and agree with them. Let them interact with you as often as possible. Promote feedback and participation. Remember every email message represents you. Conduct yourself as if you are in-front of them in person talking to them
Hand Hold Your Subscribers To Take Action
Once you have the attention. In clear terms explain what they have to do next?
Where they should click. What is the URL, What is the Offer, What is deadline.
Make the whole thing simple and intuitive.
Interaction in Email
Explore the possibility of integrating chat functions with your email. Let every message have a link to discuss the subject with you directly. If not, a FORUM link will also work. More and more marketers are driving clicks to their blogs.
Privacy Is important
Disclose your privacy policy. Respect your subscriber??™s information. They will respect you.