Emedia gives effective e-mail marketing overview

Emedia has released a step-by-step guide featuring 10 ways of creating effective e-mail marketing campaigns that deliver optimum results.

Even with a maturing appreciation of how people use the internet, many companies continue to stick with an unstructured approach to using e-mail to communicate with their customers and sales prospects.

Whether it is for client retention or new business lead generation, e-mail marketing is only as effective as the process, messaging and strategy behind your campaigns.

So, here's our 10-step overview of how to create a more effective e-mail marketing strategy, starting with getting buy-in from your colleagues.

Technology demands that sales teams and marketing teams work together more if they are to achieve effective results.

But, while marketing is traditionally a much softer approach than sales, there is an argument for striking a balance, because: people do not like to be sold to - especially online; and many marketers go too far the other way and opt for a passive approach.

Unfortunately neither approach will work - there must be a balance of marketing and sales in your e-mail campaigns.

You need to not only offer an engaging message that offers value to the audience; you need to have a specific (sales) outcome you would like to get back.

Looking at this in reverse, you must use tempered sales messages.

By combining the knowledge and expertise of your marketing and sales teams, you should be able to determine what is actually sellable through each campaign, in other words, why the audience would want what you are talking about.

This then determines the specific messaging for the e-mail campaign and potential call to action for the sales team to follow up on.

This is especially important for business-to-business (B2B) complex sales where the thing someone ends up buying is at the end of a sales process.

In these instances it is essential to determine each step of this process so you can measure your approach.

Wherever you have collected (or bought) your data from, the chances are that there are a lot of different types of contacts in your database.

If you do not qualify and quantify why someone is in your database, you could be preaching to the wrong people entirely.

Even worse, you could be sending the right marketing messages but to the wrong people, or vice versa.

A clean database is essential, with up-to-date contact information and segmentation (if possible) of your database into groups of people with specific interests, or profiles.

This will also enable you to send more targeted messages to each group, improving levels of engagement.

If you have an IT department, it is imperative to use their experience of overcoming potential roadblocks for your e-mail marketing campaigns.

Many corporate organisations employ IT teams to protect their infrastructure with firewalls and other failsafe protection and whether you think your e-mail marketing campaign is spam or essential reading is open to interpretation, usually determined by someone charged with protecting such a network.

Understanding best practice regarding e-mail delivery within organisations (and this may include ISPs) could enhance your chances of successful delivery.

After all, if your e-mail does not make it to someone's inbox in the first place, all of your sales and marketing effort is for nothing.

Believe it or not, some organisations still broadcast e-mail campaigns via their desktop e-mail client.

This is potentially dangerous to your entire e-mail infrastructure as it could contravene best practice for sending e-mails and managing responses, resulting in the blacklisting of your domain.

You must have a recognised process or install specialist software to manage your e-mail campaigns, and whether you are entrusting this to a third-party agency or using your own system it is essential to understand your obligations regarding unsubscribing procedures and data management.

Also, with regards to opt-in data collection, e-mail bounce handling and ensuring your messages are white-listed to comply with spam regulations, you could be damaging your brand if your processes do not create an acceptable user experience.

So, assuming that your e-mail made it to the inbox of the recipient, you now face the challenge of getting them to open it.

This is arguably the most important step of getting your e-mail read - creating a snappy subject header to engage the person to open it.

There are two main factors that will determine whether your e-mail will be opened.

The name that appears as the 'from' address in your recipients inbox (the name or e-mail address that your e-mail has been sent from) will need to have enough credibility to give the recipient confidence that your e-mail is worth opening.

For instance, a generic info@yourcompany.com may flag the e-mail as spam to the end user.

If you are communicating on a personal level, use your own e-mail address to add authority.

The 'subject' line also plays a large part in whether someone opens your e-mail or if it finds its way directly to the trash, or, even worse, the junk mail folder.

The words that you use and the way that you use them act as a marketing message - not an advert headline - and it will have an impact on the recipient's decision to open or not.

Also, if your words are regarded as 'spammy', a junk filter or firewall may condemn your e-mail message as junk.

If you have the ability with your e-mail marketing software, it can pay to personalise the subject line to create higher levels of engagement.

Never assume that people you are sending e-mails to are eagerly awaiting them as the best thing to happen in their day - they are not.

In truth, your e-mail will probably be seen as an interruption.

As well as creating a relevant message, you also need to ensure that you do not burden the person at the other end with too much information, and that does not just mean words.

The time of day you send your e-mail, the frequency of your campaigns and the format you send them will play a large part in the decision of the recipient as whether to take affirmative action or simply unsubscribe from your e-mail list.

This includes the images you use and any attachments you add to your e-mail.

The less intrusive your e-mail is, the higher the chance that someone will open it and take action on the points that are pertinent to them.

Allow them the speed to dip into your message, take what they need, and then carry on their day.

Persuasive (but not overly) content can help to encourage someone to take the action that is the next step in your sales process.

The style of your writing and the things you are offering need to be engaging otherwise your e-mail message will get diluted.

If you are expecting someone to take the next step, put yourself in the shoes of the recipient.

Only by understanding the potential value you are offering, as seen by the recipient, can you tailor your message accordingly and create higher levels of engagement and action.

If your marketing messages include value content, set them to work across the web.

Publish your value content on your website and promote it through social networks and PR websites.

If your content is truly of value and relatively optimised for search engines (SEO) you could also boost the profile of your website and encourage enquiries.

This also allows you to tailor specific pieces for specific audiences.

Measuring response rates and the effectiveness of your individual e-mail campaigns can help you to greatly enhance future ones, especially if you approach each campaign with a view to testing its performance.

Split testing your e-mail campaign (if your database is large enough to make this valuable) can help you to determine smarter techniques for sending future campaigns and the most effective messages to use to enhance your response rates.

Sometimes, by tweaking a subject line, a sales message or call-to-action, or even the time of day you send your e-mail, you can improve the 'action' results you get.

Constant optimisation of this process over time will not only lead you to best practice techniques, but could also help you to further refine and segment your databases.

Ask your sales team about e-mail marketing and they will focus on the end game - the sale.

Sales are, after all, the lifeblood of any business.

Having an effective (best practice) sales follow-up process that is consistent throughout your business will make sure no prospects fall away from the results your e-mail marketing has delivered.

This also applies to slower-burn prospects that need additional nurturing.

It is imperative to strike a balance that keeps the conversation moving, but not so much that you scare off your prospect.

With so many companies looking to grab the attention of people in a world where there has never been so many marketing messages to contend with, creating an effective strategy for your e-mail marketing and sales lead generation programme has never been so important.

Like all good marketing, return on investment is the key - you must get back more than you put in.

Whether you keep this process in-house or outsource to an agency is a serious consideration when it comes to cost control and success rates.

Often agencies can deliver best-practice models (and advice) as a standard.

Back to top