E-mail marketers must understand their audience

Emedia has given an overview on how marketers can improve their e-mail campaigns by understanding their audience and creating the appropriate sales message.

Because the cost of entry is now so low, many companies see e-mail marketing as the perfect way to send their messages to existing customers and to use as a lead generation tool.

But, rather than take a step back to fully understand the medium of e-mail - including user habits, technical restrictions and potential spam pitfalls - they head off with a generic scatter-gun approach, potentially damaging their brand and online integrity.

But, as all savvy marketers know, the initial effort is in really understanding how a marketing method works is what yields the real rewards.

Industry figures estimate that anywhere between 90-97 per cent of all e-mail is spam, defined as unsolicited bulk e-mail.

Arguably, different organisations will suggest different levels of compliance to avoid being labelled spam, or indeed how they classify spam in the first place.

What is clear, however, is that there is far more to lose than gain by taking a renegade approach to your e-mail marketing.

In the same way that the reputation of your brand is essential, so is your reputation in the world of e-mail.

A big difference being that all you need to do is be complained about enough times by people you are e-mailing and then all trust is lost, often never to return.

Getting blacklisted by internet gateways - meaning your e-mails will get blocked - is only half the story.

In the social space, people could become very vocal against your brand online.

Even worse, your customers or prospects will lose trust in your company because of the way you are communicating.

Ultimately, effective e-mail marketing is about making your message stand out in someone's inbox and getting a result - in other words they take an action that benefits your business.

So first, look at who you are talking to in the first place.

Having a quality database is central to e-mail marketing - not just for ongoing campaigns from your customer relationship management (CRM) system, but also for new business acquisition and lead generation.

What's more, in terms of marketing, it is important that the people in your database actually want what you have in the first place.

When it comes to new business acquisition by e-mail, there are many companies that will sell you a database of names, many offering quality e-mail opt-in lists.

This is somewhat of a gamble, not just for the return on investment on your outlay but also for the relevancy and quality of the contact names.

Always use a trusted source for your data or outsource your e-mail marketing campaigns through a reputed agency.

There are also lead generation companies that publish industry titles to opted-in databases.

This has the double benefit of extending your reach to a new audience with no potential damage to your brand and the opportunity to build your own quality e-mail database.

A quality CRM system will help you break down your audiences and allow you to send targeted messaging to your customer database.

The more information you have about your customers, the more refined your messaging can become.

More refined equals more relevant and more effective.

How you send your e-mail marketing campaigns is just as important as what you say and how you say it.

Your e-mail message will need to jump through a lot of hoops after you press the send button just to make it to the inbox of the recipient.

Each of the people in your database will potentially have a different set-up with regards to the way they accept e-mail.

For instance, different corporations will have different policies in place for their e-mail firewalls and ISPs will have policies on recognising e-mails as spam and what they do to combat it.

You could find yourself on the wrong end of one of these policies if you do not follow proper procedures.

Many marketers make the mistake that because it is they who are sending the e-mail, it cannot possibly be spam - after all, aren't their intentions honourable and their product amazing? Ultimately, spam is what one of these hurdles says is spam, be it the corporate firewall or ISP.

If just one link in the chain bounces your campaign, it's all been for nothing.

Use reputable e-mail delivery software online (software-as-a-service) or a desktop application that will guide you through the process of sending your campaign.

Do not assume that you can e-mail blast your Outlook address book and hope for the best - you could be damaging your reputation forever.

If in doubt, use a recognised e-mail marketing agency.

Many companies prefer to send html e-mails that can be stylised, but this isn't always the right thing to do, both in terms of deliverability and also of the action you would like the recipient to take.

Perhaps text is a better option for your audience.

At the very least, a text back-up option should be sent as an option and this can be automated using a multi-part e-mail, which will determine the best way to send the e-mail for each recipient based on their own network preferences.

When it comes to improving the deliverability of your e-mail campaign, design plays a large role if you are using html (graphics and stylised text).

There are three main points to bear in mind; first, how it will look when it gets to the recipient.

If you design a leaflet and get it printed to hand out to your clients, you know exactly what it looks like when you hand it over.

E-mail works in a much more flexible way (and that isn't necessarily a good thing).

Because the people you are sending your campaign to will no doubt be using an array of different e-mail clients to manage their e-mail, your campaign may end up looking very different for each recipient.

Your design will need to be implemented to work across a number of e-mail clients, such as Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo, Gmail and so on.

This often takes someone with a real understanding of html compliance to adapt your design to be flexible across multiple platforms.

If your customers or prospects use a mail client you have not taken into consideration, the e-mail you spent quite some time designing to look great may end up being a mess of code at the other end that does not render properly on screen.

The other aspect of designing an e-mail for effective delivery is how it looks from an aesthetic point of view.

You may have brand guidelines to implement and imagery you need to use but you need to bear in mind what you want someone to do when they open the e-mail.

If the aim of your e-mail is to get someone to click on a call-to-action that drives them to your website, then the design needs to be driven towards that goal.

A final design point that is very relevant to e-mail users (and IT departments) is file size, in other words, how big the files that make up your e-mail message are.

If you have multiple large images or do not try to optimise your design, you could find that it will not reach the end user and will get quarantined at a firewall along the way.

Many marketers still make the mistake of including large images or PDF attachments that either clog up the recipient's e-mail or encourage the IT department to block all your e-mails.

The words you use and the way you use them in your e-mail campaigns are essential on two fronts.

First, you need to be persuasive to get the reaction you are looking for.

Good copywriters know that by tweaking the wording of headlines and calls-to-action (or any of your copy) you can significantly improve the level of engagement you create with the reader.

The more persuasive, the more likely they will take the action you are looking for from your campaign, which is the main point of sending the e-mail.

But the flipside is that you need to ensure that the words you use are not caught by spam filters.

There are certain words that will flag your e-mail as potential spam and by making some checks you can avoid this potential roadblock.] There are a number of checks you can run on your campaign before you send it to get a spam quality score or highlight warnings against specific words in your e-mail.

This will enable you to change them before you send your campaign.

Remember, computers do not read e-mails, people read e-mails.

It is a person you are trying to engage with in a marketing sales process.

What is it fair for you to ask them to do? What would they be willing to do next after receiving your e-mail message? What would it be like if the boot was on the other foot and you were receiving this e-mail from a potential supplier? This is where segmentation proves itself to be a key aspect of marketing by e-mail.

Your message can be targeted according to the person at the other end.

For example, are they an existing customer or prospect; if they are already a customer, what have they bought from you and is there a specific cross-sell or up-sell opportunity; and can you segment into vertical or horizontal markets with tailored messaging? Ask many people in business about e-mail and they will no doubt tell you that they are inundated on a daily basis.

If you are serious about marketing to these people, it is not just a nicety that you send your message in a non-intrusive way - it is essential.

Complying to the technical aspects of deliverability while managing to make your e-mail stand out is a challenge but a worthwhile one.

Creating relevant messages to a relevant audience in an appropriate manner will vastly improve the end result - namely improving your conversion rates.

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