Email Marketing : Highly Targeted. Cost Effective. Measurable
In essence, one of the reasons why e-mail has proven to be so successful is that not only is it extremely cost-effective, but also it’ a short production cycle means we can respond quickly to market demands and it is also extremely measurable.
Many of the clients that we work with are new to the e-mail space. However whether we are marketing to small lists or databases of hundreds of thousands at a time, the same underlying, best practice principles remain the same.
In our experience a ‘cookie cutter’ approach to clients' e-mail campaigns requirements rarely achieve the required results. We must first have a clear understanding of unique objectives and agree what is realistically achievable.
6 Step Guide to Achieving Results
1. Objectives
2. Planning
3. Design
4. Data
5. Broadcast
6. Results
Let’s look at each in a little detail;
Objectives
This is the first stage in your e-mail campaign, and as with any, you need to be 100% clear on your objectives, as these form the foundations of your campaign. What would you like to achieve? Is the purpose of your campaign to increase brand awareness or is it direct-response? How will you measure success?
Typically a client will say to us something along the lines of “our objective is to increase sales”, which is fine. However we would advise setting more specific and achievable objectives such as a 5% increase in sales from existing customers. Being as specific as possible will help ensure you can measure against this at a later stage. In our experience poorly defined objectives result in poor campaign results.
Planning
With your objectives clearly defined, you need to think carefully about how you are going to realise them. The key things you must consider here are audience, message, resources and budget.
Research is critical; build a profile including key demographics and geographics which you can later match to specific products and services. Also in order to communicate with the decision maker, you need to speak their language, so think carefully about both subject and tone – this will be especially helpful to your designers.
In terms of resources, carefully consider what you may already have available at your disposal in terms of content and promotions already running. Even if you have never considered e-mail marketing before, obviously you will need to establish what sort of a budget you can allocate to this and this should account for design, coding, testing, broadcast and purchasing data if you don't already have this (more on this later).
Design
Now that you have agreed your objective and planned your campaign, it’s time to come up with that killer creative idea. As all good designers will tell you, good creative is all about keeping it simple, but at the same time making it compelling. Email like all online media, is often scanned rather than read, so it’s imperative to catch the prospect’s attention before they loose interest. Whilst this short guide obviously can’t teach you how to be a good designer, here are some key points to consider when constructing your e-mail.
Consistency is key; ensure that your e-mail is on-brand and stays true to your brand values both in terms of the creative and tone of voice. If a prospect clicks on your e-mail, they must be taken to a landing page that has a consistent look and feel to that of the e-mail, otherwise they might get confused and navigate away. Your landing page should include content that is relevant to the e-mail and a clear call to action, but avoid spam filters by not including terms like ‘free’ or ‘offer’ which will often trigger alerts and potentially block your e-mail.
Personalise your e-mail; include at least the recipient’s name and don’t over-complicate. Keeping it short and snappy is the best way to encourage interaction. Include a clear call to action for interested, but time poor recipients. Open rates of 60%+ whilst rare, are achievable, however be under no illusions; people respond best to a fantastic offer – but remember; if it seems too good to be true, it probably is and your web savvy recipients will see straight through any misleading offers, so it pays to be open and honest.In terms of size, between 250-450 words is ideal, though ensure it’s written for your reader and test this on your target demographic wherever possible. Lastly, try to keep the HTML file to 25kb or less.
Data
Without a shadow of doubt, using an in-house list will always reap the best rewards. If you don’t own your own data however, the best way to build a list is through asking your users to sign-up for newsletters, competitions and exclusive/useful downloads such as whitepapers. Just ensure you use a clear opt-in/opt-out policy and privacy statement.
If you don’t have data on hand or time to wait in acquiring data, another option is to rent or purchase a data list from a reputable (preferably DMA approved) supplier. These lists should be opt-in, permission based and up-to-date. We would always advise asking for a set of sample data and testing this for accuracy.
We always advise that you follow best-practice guidelines, which whilst often going beyond regulations, will go some way to treating recipients with the respect they deserve and by ensuring you delete all people that have indicated a preference to opt-out, you will maintain your organisations integrity.
Broadcast
This is a critical stage in your campaign; get this wrong and all the planning, great ideas and hard work simply go out the window. Firstly, test, test again and then re-test. Admittedly this can be time consuming expensive in the short-term, however in long term it will deliver greater return on investment.
There are a couple of options in terms of actually sending your e-mails to recipients. You can of course attempt this yourself using an e-mail client, you may decide to use an application service provider, or you can also outsource this to an experienced e-mail service provider. Whatever you decide, insist on full reports. Campaigns that we manage for clients will always include; delivery rates (after bounces), open rates and click through rates – all of these are essential in order to understand the success (and any pitfalls) of your campaign. Also, carefully consider the best time to send your e-mail to your given target audience. For B2B for example, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons work well, however for B2C in our experience Fridays work better. There are no hard and fast rules and it obviously depends highly on the product/service and target audience, so experiment and document, which leads on quite nicely to our last section...
Results
So all the hard work might be over, but don’t get too comfortable. Now is the time to measure the success of your e-mail marketing campaign. Everyone’s criteria will differ, however the criteria on which all will depend are;
- Emails Sent
- Emails Successfully Delivered
- Open Rate
- Click-through Rate
Above an beyond this, you may also like to consider (where applicable);
- Time and day of responses
- Number/Value of Sales
- Campaign ROI
- Number of un-subscribes
If you are using web analytics (and you should be!) then it is imperative that you use this to monitor the on-going success of the campaign. For example if your campaign delivers a 50% open-rate, 25% click-through rate, but users are navigating away less that 3-seconds after they arrive at our landing page, one could argue that actually the campaign was a success, however the landing page needs looking at immediately.
It’s important to always have a designated person within your team to monitor results and follow- up accordingly, as whilst this might be your first campaign, lessons learnt will prove invaluable next time around. Which obviously, there will be right!?!
We hope the above short guide was useful, if however the thought of designing and managing your own e-mail campaign makes you break out into a cold sweat, then why not contact us for some free, friendly advice. Our clients tell us that we are rather helpful souls, so we look forward to the opportunity to prove it to you!
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Published by FV, 30 March 2009
