How many email contacts does your business have? How is the list compiled? Is it segmented by category? Do you have a consistent email campaign going? What is its frequency? Is the content relevant to every recipient? Does your audience anticipate hearing from you regularly? Does your email program generate new business for your organization? If not, why not?
Email is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use. Here's why: It's personalized and direct. Recipients opt-in or opt-out - their choice. It supports dynamic text, pictures, animation, videos and links. It enables immediate response and calls to action. It has real-time reporting. It is completely traceable and actionable. It builds brand equity. It's very inexpensive.
Are there any drawbacks? Not really. The only one is the commitment and diligence required to make it work. You have to keep delivering valuable content to your audience. For some, that's a tall order but it shouldn't be. Think about how infinitely more you know about your own product or service than the average consumer. Could you produce a valuable, interesting article or case study every month? That should be easy and you don't have to do it all yourself. Customers, co-workers, vendors, and other industry associates can provide content and will be happy to help if you give them due credits. (They'll love you for it!)
Beware. The wrong approach and/or tone will fail to produce desired results but that is true of all media. The right approach and tone will touch your customers and prospects in ways they will appreciate and continue to expect from you. Some will even call you up, reply with a request to meet, or place an order!
Let's examine positive and negative guidelines for profitable email strategies:
Yes, do this!
- Collect business-contact email addresses from every possible source such as networking, trade shows, conferences, daily email correspondence, articles, blogs, social networks, trade association directories, etc. (Important! Make sure you have a relationship, even if only a casual one, with the recipient or get their permission to receive your emails. You must also provide an unsubscribe feature by law.)
- Have a highly visible sign-up button on your website and offer "free subscriptions" to receive important information.
- Treat the list like gold and keep growing it. Back up the data!
- Categorize your lists especially if you sell in vertical markets. Think relevance!
- Give value based content that helps your readers/customers.
- Be consistent in frequency. More than once a week is probably too much. Less than once a month is probably too little. Find the balance based on your market.
- Offer promotions sparingly unless your audience demands them. Your promotions should ideally relate to the topic of your free value content.
- Choose Subject Lines very carefully. They often make the difference between an opened email or a deleted one.
- Use a professional email service. They provide all the authentication and anti-spam protocols as well as easy content management and design features.
- Manage your list. Check your delivery reports and cull bad or undeliverable email addresses. Add quality contacts as soon as you get them!
- Understand that it is an earned privilege to have an email audience. They can opt-out any time for any reason. It's your responsibility to keep them interested and wanting more.
No, don't do this!
- Regarding lists, don't go for quantity over quality. Don't think that simply by virtue of a large contact list, you're better off. Concentrate on your target audience (decision makers) and avoid irrelevant or disinterested contacts.
- Do not spam! Don't just load up your list and blast out messages! That will harm your reputation and possibly blacklist your ISP. There may even be legal issues.
- Don't just self-promote! It gets old really fast and increases opt-out rates.
- Don't be unprepared for responses. Make sure your website links are supported and that you follow through on all inquiries. Be ready to serve!
- Don't let your emails look cheap and unprofessional. Avoid cheesy clip art and juvenile-looking fonts. Use a clean, easy-to-read template, crisp graphics and good photography whenever available.
Bottom Line
Email marketing is a privilege and a responsibility and that's exactly why it works! Virtually every organization and individual can successfully deploy email marketing when following that philosophy. If you aren't yet using this proven marketing tool, be aware that it is readily available to help your business starting tomorrow morning. Your competition may already be getting a head start. If you still have doubts, I have one more question: Why are you still reading this? Sorry, couldn't resist!