02 Dec 08 Email Marketing in Practice
For the moment, most marketers still rely on email marketing as their number one direct marketing channel because it’s proven, cost-effective and easy to track. At Fishpond.com.au, we constructed some pretty elaborate emails as part of our Lifecycle Marketing Plan which delivered measurable gains in our sales. From this experience I can say that a sound email marketing campaign should have the following components:
- Personalization: A first time customer requires a different message than one that’s bought from you several times in the past. See Customer Lifecycle Marketing for more on this.
- Time sensitive offers: You’ll get the best return on investment from limited time offers like: 50% off Today Only” It’s generally ok to do a loss-leading promotion in your email, because your customer will probably end up buying more than one product anyway and you make up the margin.
- Time of Day: The best open rates tend to occur just after lunch time, when people have food-coma and are less likely to be wanting to work and more likely to be looking for a distraction. The next best time is before the end of the work day, when they are just looking for something to get them through to 5pm. (This assumes your targeting your average office worker) Furthermore, you want to give people enough time to make use of your time-sensitive offer, so time your send-outs carefully.
- Frequency: Too much and they will ignore you. Too little and they will forget you. Repeating the same message or offer too many times makes it less valuable to the recipient. You can only cry wolf so many times before everyone just ignores you. Godaddy.com are guilty here. I get a domain registration discount offer every second day. The offer is further devalued because its easy to find a Godaddy promo code on coupon websites anyway. But criticisms aside, Godaddy.com is the first place I think of when I want to buy a new domain name. So while i get a little annoyed with their over-promotion, they have gained front-of-mind value – A tactic Amazon.com also employs.
- Keep it short and to the point. Have a unique and compelling value proposition in your subject line. Add alt text to all your images. Furthermore, any text should be in small and easily consumable chunks. Virgin America do this really well. Sign up to Elevate for an example.
- Make it easy for people to sign up. Include receipt of promotional emails as one of your terms and conditions of using the site. That way, everyone who makes a purchase is automatically opted-in.
- Make it easy for people to unsubscribe. If you annoy someone, it’s best you both have some breathing space before your next interaction. A simple ‘click here to unsibscribe’ should be all it takes to be removed from a mailing list. Making the person sign in to their account, the (password to which they have probably forgotten) is too long a process and will simply result in your future emails being marked as SPAM.
- Email Design: Get a designer to make you one good HTML, Spam-compliant email template, then stick to it. People are more interested in the value that your email offers them rather than the design of it.
- Track everything: Every business is different. Your target audience and where they live determines how you design your email marketing campaign. You can track anything on the internet, so make sure you track everything. Use this data to optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI.
