Email marketing is one of the most powerful and cost-efficient prospecting and CRM tools for companies of all sizes. More cost-effective than direct mail, paid search and a whole host of other marketing tactics, email marketing is a unique proposition.
But the days of firing unveiled sales massages out far and wide and hoping for a quick win are long gone. That doesn’t mean the day of the email is over and Social Media has taken it’s place, it just means you need to work much harder for it to be successful. Here are the 4 most important things to consider:
Data
Data is the most important element of making email work for you. Obviously data needs to be kept current and keeping up to date with changes in job titles, decision maker names, industry and even the number of employees can become a full time job but it is all important in increasing subscriber engagement followed by further improving segmentation and targeting.
Content
Unfortunately, the actual content of marketing emails is often overlooked. You need to ask yourself the question ‘is this useful or interesting?’. We’re all familiar with the annoying experience of receiving pointless emails, so don’t send them out. With the right systems you can now add rich media (video/audio clips/podcasts) and multiple file attachments to your emails for further interaction with your contact base to offer them a better customer experience.
Personalisation
Personalisation is one of the best ways to create an immediate connection. Research shows that the use of the consumer’s name in the email greeting or subject line can produce results. A recent report from Eloqua found that the use of the recipient’s name and one other data point – for example, the recipient’s location – in the subject line had nearly double the impact and led to open rates that were on average roughly 10% higher.
Analysis
Once you’ve pressed ‘send,’ the work is far from over. In fact it is really just beginning. The days immediately after the email is sent is when you should be analysing how well the email worked. Factors such as how many emails mailed successfully, to whom, what happened to them, how many people opened them, how many unsubscribed, what happened after someone clicked on your email links etc. are very important signals of your email marketing effectiveness.
Learning what works and what doesn’t, such as if emails with pictures get a higher click thru rate and what subject lines work best, and then putting this knowledge into practice will be a big step towards you becoming a successful email marketer.
If you need help with email marketing find out about Protean’s ‘Subscribe’ email marketing resource which includes features that allow you to fully engage your customers and prospects to achieve high inbox success rate, even to hotmail and Yahoo addresses.
