Seven Tips For Email Marketing
With SPAM creating so much bad press for marketers, the way NOT to do email marketing has been made very obvious. But it is not a dead channel. Not yet anyway!
Here are seven tips on how to do email marketing better. There is more to this media than 'seven tips' but if you follow these, it's a really good start.
- Permission is everything
Ask your customers or prospects for their permission from the outset and even with their permission, only send them further emails that are relevant to their information needs. With such an approach you give yourself a reasonable chance to begin a dialogue and develop a relationship that can turn prospects into leads and leads into sales, sign-ups and enrolments - probably at a lower cost than any other channel.
- Build your own database
Capture email addresses and information about your prospects and customers at every offline or online touch point you have with them: web inquiry forms, customer sign-up sheets, change or upgrade-in-service calls, customer service centres, business reply cards. And don't forget to email only information that is interesting, relevant and actionable.
- Make it easy to opt-out
Make sure every message you send includes an easy opt-out option. Giving recipients this obvious control shows them a level of respect that they deserve. And be sure to honour all opt-outs.
- Be a cynic (like your customers)
All consumers are sceptical today but online consumers are probably even more sceptical than most. Keep away from over-the-top words that prompt them to reach for the delete key as soon as they read the subject line. Words like "free" and "save" and almost anything in all caps may mean your message looks too much like SPAM.
- "From" is as important as "To"
Most recipients want to know who the sender is before opening an email. Like the subject line, the return address name can instantly communicate quality. So make sure the "From" line is clear.
- De-dupe first
Cleaning your list of duplicate email addresses is essential if you don't want to annoy recipients. If you're sending the same email to several different lists or list segments, make sure you don't have the same recipient's email in several places.
- Test, test and test
Test different elements of your message, such as subject line and offer, to samples of your database. Since, in most cases, about 90 percent of responses occur in the first 48 hours, you can modify your message to build the most effective offer before rolling out to the main bulk of your list. With email you can know what's working (and what's not) very quickly.
Author Credits
Frank Chamberlin is a copywriter and Masters Lecturer in direct marketing at Monash University. His company, Action Words, provides all sorts of copy for large and small clients. He’s well known as the Melbourne lecturer for the Australian Direct Marketing Association Certificate Course. Phone 03 9481 1410; www.actionwords.com.au; enquiries@actionwords.com.au