Exploding Your Profits
through Email Marketing
Off the Web, mail marketing is hated by customers. It’s
unwanted, uninvited and stuffs mail boxes. But it’s pretty clear
that it’s also incredibly popular with advertisers. Why? Because
while most potential customers toss away their junk letters with
barely a glance, enough take action to make it all worthwhile. They
do buy—and in high enough numbers to more than cover the cost of
those who don’t.
Email marketing is pretty similar, but with one important
difference: on the Web, you can only send marketing emails to people
who have already chosen to receive them. A bit tricky. On the other
hand, because those people have already chosen to receive your
emails, you can be confident that they’re going to buy.
In this chapter, we will read how to produce marketing
material that gets results!
Email is still the most popular and most used application on
the Internet. It’s also an efficient means of distributing your
message to large numbers of people who have requested that
information. As a form of marketing, it generates high response
rates—and gives you measurable results with instant feedback.
But because email marketing been so abused, it’s just not
accepted any more to send emails to people who haven’t chosen to
receive them. Bust that rule, and there’s a good chance you’ll be
out of business. That gives you the problem of building up a list of
willing subscribers.
When you’re first starting out, there’s often a temptation to
simply purchase an opt-in email list. Lots of people sell them and
you can easily pick up a million or so addresses for just a few
bucks. But while that may appear to be a fast, easy way to build up
customers, the names on the list may not be up to date, or even
opt-in contacts at all. You could well find yourself inadvertently
spamming.
Similarly, there are also programs that surf the Net,
recording every email address they find. These will let you quickly
build up a huge list of e-mail addresses—none of whose owners will
thank you when you stuff their inboxes with marketing material.
Forget about them; they’re not worth the effort. It’s much safer,
and much more effective, to take the time to build your own list.
Marketing by e-mail can attract new customers, keep existing ones,
upsell, cross-sell, and cut costs. E-merchant Wine.com, for example,
found e-mail campaigns drove twice as many "best prospects" to their
site compared to banner ads or other Internet marketing programs.
If executed improperly though, e-mail campaigns can backfire with
disastrous business consequences. How to minimize the risk and
maximize the return? Part of the answer is a common sense approach
called "permission" or "opt-in" marketing, in which customers or
prospects volunteer to receive e-mail.
The odds of users joining a list can be improved by providing three
opt-in opportunities, all with low entry barriers. First, there
should be minimal sign-up work. Many sites require only an e-mail
address; all other personal information is optional. Second, there
should be several sign-up opportunities on a site, including on the
inquiry, order, and feedback forms. These forms may use a checkbox
asking prospects if they would like to receive occasional special
offers/newsletters by e-mail. If so, it must be placed conspicuously
on the form. Third, a privacy policy that addresses what will be
done with user information should be posted in an obvious place.
Continuing on the lines of “opt-in” marketing, one of the most
successful methods is the double opt-in technique. In double opt-in
a
user elects to receive e-mail
newsletters or standalone commercial messages. A confirmation e-mail
is sent to that user, who is not required to take further action to
be included on the list. The confirmation e-mail includes an
opportunity to unsubscribe or opt out.
Although, the double opt-in techniques runs the risk of losing
subscribers during the confirmation process, it gives the
subscribers more control and thus, has proven to be more successful.
That said, here are some measures e-mailers who practice, or are
considering, double opt-in can take to reduce confirmation
drop-offs.
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When a user enters his address, mention an e-mail will be sent to
him and include its estimated arrival time. Indicate the user is
required to respond to that message to receive subsequent
mailings. With transactional customers, consider placing this
information on the page with order confirmation.
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Ideally, a confirmation message is sent immediately. It should be
sent while the subscription is fresh in subscribers' minds and
they're still engaged in an online session. If you notify them it
will be within a day or two, make sure you follow through on that
promise. If your systems are slower, then requirements related to
message content are even more relevant.
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If you need a confirmation, that's the only thing you should ask
for. Explain to users they will not be added to the list until
they take the necessary action. Most desirable is a one-click
confirmation link embedded in the message. Giving users a reply
option with subject line intact is another good approach.
Requiring them to write something in the subject line or body of
the message or asking them to forward the e-mail on to another
address is not as effective. Ensure the brand is clear, the list
subscription is identified, and contact information is included.
It's also a good idea to link to your privacy or e-mail policy.
As with any other marketing
campaign, careful planning and proven techniques are the best way to
deploy the most effective campaigns and to realize the highest
response rates. The key: putting the right offer in front of the
right person at the right time. Targeting your emails is crucial for
any Email marketing campaign. No product or service can be
all things to all people. Acknowledging this reality, targeting is
simply focusing your marketing onto a specific niche. The two
factors that you alter to target your email campaigns are targeting
the message, and targeting the list.
Targeting your message means tailoring your message to the expected
audience. For example, you may have two pitches for your product:
one that concentrates on the radical new features of the product,
and another that details the tremendous cost savings from using it.
You can also target the creative used for the email campaign. You
might have two versions, one that uses a clean list of bullet
points, and another that features highly stylized text that flies
across the screen.
You also need to target (i.e. subdivide) your email lists. Targeted
messages will be more effective when sent to an appropriate group of
recipients. Continuing the example above, you would send the product
feature pitch and technical information to technical people, and
send the cost savings information to finance people.
The primary rule of effective targeting is deceptively simple:
figure out what your target groups wants, and then offer it to them.
How do you go about doing that? Try asking some of your existing
customers. Another way to know what actually works is to send a test
campaign to a sample of your targeted group. Once you have the
attention of the recipient, for an all too brief moment, the biggest
factor in obtaining a positive response is usually how valuable the
offer is perceived to be. Providing something of actual value that
really speaks to the target is a requirement.
Tell a story to each targeted group over a series of messages.
This will help lead to increasing the permission level with each
recipient. As you learn more about each other you will be able to
utilize more sophisticated targeting. Once you begin to establish a
dialog with your target, eventually a true one to one marketing
relationship can develop.
Unless you have an unlimited budget for your marketing
efforts, you need to make sure that every dollar invested counts.
You need to target your email campaigns, or else at best much of
your efforts are being wasted. Be careful to target accurately, or
your campaign might miss the target or even work against you.
Deliver the correct message to the correct group of recipients, and
the results from your campaigns will "hit the bull's-eye" and
deliver a great boost to your profits.
Many marketers peg acquisition-based e-mail response rates at
historically low levels, primarily due to the high volume of
messages in everyone's inboxes these days. Some believe that
allocating any percentage of a marketing budget to acquisition-based
e-mail is waste. However, this is not true. Although the true
response rates for acquisition are typically lower than those for
retention-based e-mail, renting lists to win over prospects and grow
a customer base can work wonders, if you do your homework.
Here are some guidelines that can help in buying or renting
lists for achieving high ROI.
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With email, just like direct mail, how precisely the list is
targeted to the marketer’s offer is critical to the success of the
email campaign. The marketer will need to test a variety of email
lists in order to find the most responsive names for their offer.
Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value are important within email
lists. Thus, where applicable, focus on lists of recent online
buyers or registered users.
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More importantly, when researching email lists, focus on the
origin of the list to ensure compatibility with your offer. Make
sure you obtain names from branded, well-recognized sites or
sources. Since an outbound email announces to the recipient, in
the form of a header, exactly where they gave permission, a well
recognized source would lend more credibility to the message.
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A frequency cap can ensure lists aren't over mailed. If a list
manager can't provide the details on mailing frequency, look
elsewhere. That organization probably lacks the control, technical
expertise, and reporting basics. Also ask about recency selects.
Newer names offer access to new subscribers.
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Frequent uploads of new names and instant suppression of
unsubscribes are a must. Your brand will be associated with spam
by those who unsubscribed but still receive mailings before their
request is processed. Lists that are housed and resold by multiple
managers are probably mailed more frequently. This negatively
impacts performance, brand equity, and deliverability.
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As filtering becomes increasingly dominant, you must make sure
list managers are up to speed on delivery techniques and
processes. ISP relations and white listing are critical. Check all
available blacklists for the list manager's IP addresses. List
managers should be able to monitor delivery of their campaigns and
ensure messages are delivered to the inbox, not a bulk mail
folder.
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Finally, the best-performing lists provide the most ability to
slice and dice the file to find the right people for your offer.
Leveraging selects based on demographics, psychographics, and even
specific stages of the buying cycle will almost always outperform
untargeted mailings.
Pop ups are mini windows that open when a user takes a
particular action. That action could be anything from reaching the
site, clicking onto a particular page, or even leaving the site.
Many businesses use pop ups in collaboration with joint
venture partners as a way of sharing traffic, but they’re also great
ways to trap users’ email addresses so that you can keep them
informed and send them marketing material. It’s very effective.
So how do you add pop ups to your site?
One of the best things about pop ups is that they’re dead easy
to produce. It takes just a few lines of script inserted into the
<HEAD> part of your website. You don’t need to hire a programmer to
do it for you. I’ll give you the script right here. All you have to
do is paste it into place and customize it to meet your needs:
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
function
popup(mylink, windowname)
{
if (! window.focus)return true;
var href;
if (typeof(mylink) == 'string')
href=mylink;
else
href=mylink.href;
window.open(href, windowname,
'width=400,height=200,scrollbars=yes');
return false;
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>
Don’t worry about how the code actually works; the important
thing is that it does. Simply swap the parts in bold for the name of
your link and the name of the pop up.
Of course, you’ll still need the trigger that gets the pop up
popping:
<A HREF="popupbasic.html" onClick="return
popup(this, ‘notes’)">The link</A>
Use that as the link, with the right URL and the word ‘notes’
replaced by the name of your page, and you’re in business.
Finally, when you build the pop up page itself, make sure you
include the following line of code:
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
<!--
window.focus();
//-->
</SCRIPT>
This just makes sure that your pop up stays in front of the
main window instead of disappearing behind the browser and getting
lost. Very important, otherwise your users won’t see it to sign up.
So pop ups are dead easy to make. Anyone can do it. But
there’s no point in having a working pop up if the pop up itself
doesn’t have persuasive enough text to close the deal. There are a
number of sales tactics that you can use on your pop up to make sure
the user actually fills in the form and sends you his details:
1. Give them a reason to play
If you really want to make sure your users hand over their
email addresses, offer them something in return. Free reports are
good, e-books are fine too. In fact, anything that’s free and
relevant is likely to get results. You don’t have to go overboard
here; if you can find a goody that won’t cost you anything,
fantastic. If you’re going to pay, make sure it pays overall.
2. Make the Title tell
The title tag of your pop up isn’t going to push it up the
search engine listings, but it’s still important. If you leave it
out, or worse, write something daft, like “mypopup”, no one’s going
to take you seriously. Be professional and you’ll achieve
professional results. Use a real title.
3. Use a hard-hitting headline
I talk about headlines in more detail later in this chapter. I
can’t stress how important these are. You’ve got about two seconds
to grab a reader’s attention and make them read. That’s the job of
your headline. It’s got to focus on the benefits the user can expect
by signing up:
“Increase Your Sales By 127%!”
“Learn How To Speak Swahili In Three Weeks Or Less!”
“FREE Marketing Newsletter! Sign up here!”
Use a duff headline and you’ll get a duff bottom line.
4. Keep it slim
If your users have to wait more than a few seconds for the pop
up to download, the chances are they’ll close the window before it’s
finished. Use minimal graphics and make sure everything’s optimized
before you put it on the server.
5. Make it sexy!
Slim doesn’t mean the same as dull. You can still use cool
colors and attractive fonts, but make sure the pop up looks
professional. The copy has to be easy to read, and the whole page
has to be good on the eye. Balance and simplicity are key when it
comes to pop up design.
6. Offer a close button
You might think it’s a good idea to keep the pop up open until
the user signs up. But if they’re not going to register to get the
benefits you’re offering, are they likely to opt in just to get rid
of the pop up box? And if they do, are they likely to buy from you?
Keep your users happy; let them close the box easily if they want it
out of the way. Maybe they’ll go ahead and buy something instead.
All right, so you’ve got the addresses. Now what are you going
to do with them? Obviously, what you’re going to do is send your
users marketing material in the mail so that they’ll know all about
the great stuff you’ve got on offer.
There are two ways you can do that: you can send them a
newsletter every couple of weeks or so; or you can send them a sales
letter. Newsletters are hugely important. In the next chapter I talk
about newsletters in detail.
In the rest of this chapter, I’m going to explain how to write
simple sales material that gets results. I’m going to do that by
concentrating on the two most important parts of any sales material:
the headline and the call to action. Get those two right, and any
piece of marketing material you produce—online or off—will get the
results you want.
Headlines are absolutely vital for all your marketing efforts.
Whether you plan to use them on your website, your emails, your
newsletters or anywhere else, they’re the hook that grabs your
readers, reels them in and turns them into customers. There are
dozens of different kinds of headlines that you can use and some of
them are better than others. These are the ones that I use, and that
I’ve found the most effective.
The No Nonsense Headline
The first type of headline you can use is the simplest. No frills,
no tricks, no hooks, just a straightforward description of the
contents of your message. You could produce something like:
Tips To Save Money On Your Weekly Shopping
The Best Way To Choose Your Next Car
Real Estate Agents That Shift Property Fast!
Notice that you can still use explanations and hard-hitting
adjectives to get your point across, but these headlines do little
more than tell the reader what to expect.
The advantages of these headlines is that they’re easy to write and
easy to read. You don’t have to try to come up with some
hard-hitting sales message and customers aren’t put off by a
document that looks a piece of promotional material. On the other
hand, they’re a bit weak and that makes them hard to turn into cash.
When to use it
You can use No Nonsense Headlines when you don’t need to work hard
to make the sale. If you’re sending information that you know your
customer will read, either because it’s free or because it makes no
obligation on them, these are the kind of headlines to use.
The Question Headline
Question headlines work by asking customers a question that plays on
their worries and promises a solution further on. These are great
devices when you really want to grab a customer and ram your message
home.
Want To Save Thousands On Your Home Insurance Bills? Learn How To
Cut Your Costs In Half!
Where Do You Look For Love? Discover The Best Places To Meet Your
Match!
Suffering From Termites? Drive Them Out With The Extermite-Ator!
To write these headlines, think first of what problem your product
is actually going to solve. (If it’s not going to solve a problem,
then you’re going to have a problem selling it!) In the first half
of the headline, you ask your customers if they’re suffering from
the problem. Just by asking, you’re suggesting that they do. In the
second half of the headline, you tell them that you have the
solution. Dead easy and dead effective.
This is a really simple formula to follow: all you have to do is
state the question and promise the answer. And it sells too; you’ve
put the problem in the reader’s mind, now you’re offering the
solution.
Of course, these kinds of headlines depend on the reader empathizing
with the problem. If they don’t, or if they decide that the
headlines looks too long to read, they’re not likely to buy.
When to use it
Question Headlines are most effective when your product is going to
clearly solve someone’s problem—and when you know your
customers are going to empathize with that problem. If they don’t
say yes to the question, they’re going to say no to the sale.
The How Headline
This is pretty similar to the Question Headline—but only offers the
solution. It makes for a shorter read than question headlines so you
get your point across faster, but you lose the empathy.
How To Fix Up Your Home Without Breaking The Bank!
How I Made $3,000,000 With One Phone Call!
How I Lost 33 Pounds On A High Fiber Diet And A Revolutionary
Light Exercise Plan!
These kinds of headlines cut straight to the problem-solving
aspect of your product. They’re short and to the point and can be
easily absorbed with just a glance.
When to use it
How Headlines are great when the rest of the document is going to
reveal information. That information might just be details about
your product, but the focus should always be on telling customers
how they can solve a problem. These work best when you’re selling
information products like books or newsletters.
The Numbered
Headline
There’s a good reason that magazines like
Cosmopolitan use headlines like “6 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild!”
They work. Most people are put off by the sight of a giant slab of
text. They want their information in bite-sized chunks. When you put
a number in your headline, you let your reader know that the
information you’re offering them is going to be easy to read:
7 Ways To Make Your Computer Run Faster
15 Top Tips To Turn Your Website Into A
Money spinner
23 Sales Tools That Guarantee A Sealed
Deal
The advantage of these headlines is that they promise easy reading,
increasing the chances that your text will actually be read. It’s
also easy to slip a call-to-action sales message into these kind of
documents: one of the tools, deals, or ways etc. will be “buy my
product”!
On the other hand, easy reading isn’t the same as interesting
reading. The headline still has to grab your readers to make them
want to read it.
When to use it
Numbered Headlines are most effective when you’re confident your
readers will find your message interesting and you don’t have to
fight to make them read on. They’re best used when you’re competing
against other articles or sales letters. I use them a lot in
newsletters, especially when I know it’s going to published in a
joint venture partner’s newsletter.
The Testimonial Headline
These are some of the toughest headlines to write. You take a chunk
of text from a letter written by a satisfied customer and use that
as the headline for a sales letter:
“Last Year, I Was Working 12 Hours A Day And Making Just $36,000.
Last Month, I Made $32,000 And Worked Three Days A Work—And It’s All
Down To Your Amazing Methods!”
“I’d Tried Every Weight Loss Program Ever. I’d Tried Dieting,
Exercise, High-Fiber, Low Fat, High-Carbs... You Name It, I’d Done
It And Nothing Worked. Then I Tried The Lose Fat Fast Program. I
Lost 33 Pounds In The First Two Months And I’ve Never Felt Better!”
“Within A Week Of Sending Out My Resume, I’d Got Three Interviews
And A Fantastic Job Offer. I Couldn’t Have Done It Without You!”
These headlines puts your reliability right at the top,
increasing the customers’ confidence to buy. They explain in detail
precisely what you’re offering and what you can do for the reader.
They also create massively
long headlines
that are difficult to absorb at a glance and can put a reader off.
When to use it
Testimonial headlines are best used in industries where
reliability is a bit of a problem. If you’re selling weight loss
products for example, or any other life-changing service, then a
headline like this goes some way towards proving to the buyer that
you’re on the level.
Those are just five kinds of headlines that I use in my
businesses every day. There are dozens more, but these are the ones
that I’ve found the most effective. There’s certainly enough here
for you to get started. Play around with them, figure out which ones
would work best for your business and try them out.
But even the best headline will only grab a reader’s eye and
get him reading. They won’t close the sale. After the headline
you’ll have to describe all the wonderful benefits of your
product—you’ve got to get the reader to actually take the action
that will seal the deal. That’s the call to action.
A key concern of most marketers is how to build their Email
lists without compromising on the subscribers that already exist.
After all, Email marketing is about building relationships with your
best customers without neglecting others. The process of growing
email lists can very easily turn into spam. This is something all
marketers need to steer clear of. Most companies are always looking
for ways to get their email marketing address lists together. Large
companies are trying to get email addresses for their existing
customers and prospects, while small or startup companies are just
trying to create any list at all.
With careful and meticulous planning, you can build strong
relationships with new subscribers. Here’s how:
Collect only relevant information
While requesting a visitor to sign up, collect information
that is relevant to your business. A recent study lamented that most
of the corporate probing was unnecessary, given that most companies
never act on the information they extract from their customers. It
is crucial that you know exactly what you intend to do with the
information you’re going to collect. Moreover, you should also be
able to prove to your visitors that information you would be
collecting from them is actually vital for your business.
Do not make your customers repeat information
Most customers don’t mind telling their banks the ages of
their children if they think the bank will use the information to
help them sort through the myriad college savings plans or make them
aware of estate planning issues. But nothing irritates customers
more than having to repeat the same information to each channel as
if it’s the first time they've ever heard the information. This is
especially true in the case of Email lists on web sites.
Focus your list
We have discussed the importance of focusing or targeting customers
earlier as well. Current customers are the most important e-mail
addresses to collect, much more so than prospects. They’ll be more
receptive to your communications and likely to respond, since
they’re familiar with your company and its products. Do not run
campaigns that attract a high number of visitors that have no
interest in your products or services.
Scrutinize and leverage all available data
Scrutinizing all data that is collected is vital. This is
particularly true for bigger companies. Let the rest of the company
know what you’re doing—they may know of a quick way they can help
you. There have been many cases when employees come and go, unknown
projects sprout up and wither before anyone discovers them and
multiple, redundant databases flourish.
Special Offers and Discounts
Special offers like coupons and discounts are classic direct
marketing techniques that translate extremely well to email. In
order for an offer to be effective, it must provide something of
real value to the recipient. Minimal discounts are not enough to get
the readers’ attention; you have to offer something of substance.
Don’t discount lower than your profit on the transaction, however.
Having a time limit on these types of offers is extremely important,
in order for the call to action to work.
Apart from using the Internet as a medium, there are also some
ways you can use your marketing efforts in the real-world to help
build your Email lists.
Networking Meetings
From your local chamber of commerce, to specialized industry groups,
the meetings of many organizations are great opportunities to make
contact with new people. You are exchanging business cards with
interested prospects or possible referral sources, so make sure that
you send appropriate email communications to these people. Start
with a personal email recapping your conversation with them, and
letting them know that you will be adding them to your monthly email
list. Don't just start sending a barrage of email to every person
that you come in contact with, however. Make sure that the person
indicated some interest in what you have to offer first, or your
contact will become quickly unwanted.
Trade Shows
Whether you have a booth, are one of the presenters, or are simply
attending a trade show, you have an excellent potential opportunity
similar to networking events, but at a much greater scale.
Organizing the follow-ups to people you actually spoke to yourself,
and then adding the person to your personal list is a given.
The general information requests gathered by associates at
your booth can be handled in a similar way. Lastly, you may have
organized a giveaway or contest to gather more leads at the show.
These people are frequently less interested in what you have to say,
and more interested in whatever they might be getting or winning. As
a result, it may require secondary contact to obtain the permission
to add them to your regular communications. In general, hitting
contest winners with a "hard sell" is not usually effective.
Seminars
Organizing informational seminars is a great way to build a healthy
relationship with prospects and potential referrers. One effective
technique is to have advance registration, and to ask permission to
send regular emails at that time. This way, even if the person is
not able to attend the seminar, you still have an opportunity to
stay in touch with them. After all, they were interested enough to
register for the seminar.
Events
Concerts, parties, art openings, or any other occasion that gathers
people together can provides an opportunity to build your email
address lists. Having a registration or check in location, or
associates with clipboards working the room are just two ways to
make contact. In the case of events, it is a good idea to offer some
kind of incentive to boost signups. However, make sure that the
person can only receive the incentive via email. This way, you will
improve the quality and accuracy of the lists you are collecting.
Post Cards/Direct Mail
When a company has an existing database of postal addresses,
direct mail may be the best way to get the email addresses for your
existing customers and prospects. Again, offering an incentive
always helps stimulate a greater response, and is particularly
effective when there is a pre-existing relationship. This helps
increase the typical response rate of converting postal address
recipients to email recipients. Publish a specific, but simple, web
site address on your mailing to direct people to a landing page with
the list signup on your site.
This is probably every Email marketer’s dilemma. More so, due
to the fact that there is no clear majority of people preferring one
format over the other. Some people will always prefer text to
graphics, and some email readers only support basic text. A
prominent Internet Marketing website recently carried out a survey
asking not only which format was preferred but why one format was
preferred over another. Over 600 people—mostly marketers and small
business operators—responded.
55% favored HTML and 45% preferred Text. Given that well over
90% of email readers can view HTML, it is surprising that almost
half the people would prefer to receive Text. To investigate this
point further, the survey gave those who chose Text a list of
possible reasons to explain why. On average, people listed about two
and a half reasons each. They said:
§
Can't read HTML 6%
§
Just want the meat without the distractions 32%
§
Like to read offline 15%
§
Ads are more intrusive in HTML 22%
§
Slow to download 14%
The most popular reason for choosing Text over HTML was an
interesting one. People were clearly expressing a desire for email
layouts that focused on the message, and they often saw HTML emails
as containing elements that distract from the content—the content
being the reason they signed up for the email in the first place.
11% of the people who selected “Other” as their reason gave
their own reasons as:
§
Text takes up less storage space 28%
§
Security—fear of viruses 22%
§
Easier/faster to read/scan 13%
§
Text is easier to read on a PDA 9%
§
Text is more reliable, formatting/forwarding etc. 7%
§
Easier to save/file/copy text 6%
§
Like to read email in preview pane 4%
§
Text is more personal 4%
§
Fear of tracking/being spied on with HTML 4%
§
Text is more easily searched off line 1%
The fact still remains that readers are almost equally divided
on their preference. The best way to get around this is to give your
subscribers an option of receiving messages in Text or HTML.
People respond more favorably to marketing when they feel
special and unique. People respond differently to things when they
perceive themselves as part of a group. These are only some of the
psychological factors that come into play when using individual
message personalization as a part of your email marketing campaigns.
When done correctly, personalization can be a powerful way to
reinforce the bond between your brand and your customer. However,
poorly personalized messages can just as quickly sever that
connection that you have worked so hard to establish.
The Initial Greeting
The initial greeting has a tremendous impact on whether a recipient
will read the rest of a communication. The tone must match the type
of communication, and the type of relationship that exists between
the sender and recipient. For example, "Hi, John" is good for an
email from a business to consumer, but too casual for a message to a
business recipient. A "Dear Mr. Smith" or "Dear John Smith" is more
appropriate for a business to business communication in email just
as in a business letter.
Providing References
A very strong technique is including a reference to a specific
product or service that the recipient has either already purchased,
or that they have requested information about. Don't forget to link
directly to the page on the site that corresponds to the product or
service you are trying to up-sell.
Affiliation
When recipients are members of a known group or organization, you
can create a positive tie-in. When using this kind of
personalization, you must make sure that the relevancy will be
obvious for the recipient. This works particularly well for sending
partner offers, but again only as long as the offer tightly matches
the needs of the target group, and will be perceived as relevant.
The more reliance your email marketing campaign has on your
database, the more important that it is to have the correct data.
Errors in your data can lead to your mailing showing how poorly you
know the recipient, not how well.
Always have default information to substitute in case you are
missing data. You can write your copy so that substituting this
default text maintains the flow of the narrative. For example, let's
say you plan on merging the "Company Name" from your database into
your email, Using default text of "your company" works well as in
"We know that XYZ Corp. can benefit from our services" or "We know
that your company can benefit from our services".
Lastly, always respect the privacy of the recipient and avoid all
sensitive information. Anything that might make the recipient
uncomfortable such as financial status or health status, are best
left off limits when it comes to email personalization.
In conclusion, Leverage the full power of your database to
personalize email content to individual names, histories, likes and
dislikes. In the world of direct Email marketing, one size does not
fit all, so use available tools to make your email as personal and
as relevant to each person as possible.
If you look at the overall behavior of all of your web
visitors, you'll be inundated with a ton of information. Trying to
distinguish and identify patterns among such a large group is
extremely difficult, if not impossible.
If you segment or divide your users into logical groups and
then compare and contrast how they behave and what they do, you'll
have more accurate, actionable information that actually means
something.
Segmenting your site visitors allows you to develop a clearer
overall picture of your site's performance. If the metric you're
trying to measure is how many people buy a particular product, it
makes sense to measure that within the context of how many people
interacted with the site in a meaningful way.
Since prospects and customers are always more likely to
respond to messages that match their interest sets, it makes sense
to chop the database into smaller, segmented slices based on
preferences and past behaviors, making Email messages as relevant as
possible to each group. You may use historical data to apply what
you know about the likes and dislikes of your target market
segments, and develop your messages and offers to fit.
Email marketing is a powerful yet inexpensive way to make
contact with customers and prospects. Depending on whom you are
trying to touch, there may be certain times of day, or days of the
week, when the recipient may be more responsive to your message. In
addition to specific timing for your email marketing campaigns, the
frequency and the number of times to send can all play a big role in
helping improve your results.
When to Email?
For a mailing to business recipients, sending midday from 11 AM
through 3 PM is probably the best time. Sending a message earlier in
the day can result in a higher risk of the message getting lost in
the rush to prepare for morning meetings. Sending it too late in the
day and it may end up quickly deleted before the recipient leaves
for their commute home.
On the other hand, when mailing to consumers after work is probably
the best time. People tend to check their personal email when they
get home from work or after dinner. Most consumers are too busy
getting ready for work in the morning to read their email.
Like the time of the day, different days of the week can affect your
results as well. The best days to contact businesses are weekdays
barring Monday and Friday. Monday has proven to have too many
meeting to reach decision makers, and on Friday most people would
prefer to leave early before the rush hour than receive your email,
no matter how cool the email and offer may be.
Consumers are more likely to spend more time on the Internet on
weekends, and hence have more time to consider your offer. One
observation is that since many people tend to check their personal
email at various points throughout the day, selecting a specific
time to hit your target group while they are online is much more
difficult.
Avoid mailing during Holidays
During the holidays, people tend to be away from their
computers and not check their email regularly. This means they may
get your message when they return together with a ton of other mail
that has piled up during the holidays. Chances are all but the most
important messages will be deleted in a rush without a second look.
Frequency of the Email
Sending email too often can be annoying, resulting in recipients
asking to be removed. Not sending often enough and you may have been
forgotten when the recipient is finally ready to buy. As for most
communication, once a month is best. A few exceptions are a daily
newspaper, or a time-dependant offer like a seminar invitation.
Sending three variations of the same offer to the same recipient is
a good way to improve response rates. You should never send the
exact same offer more than once. Otherwise you risk the recipient
thinking that it’s just another copy of the same email and deleting
it. If a recipient has not responded by the third attempt, they are
not going to, either because it’s the right offer/wrong person, or
the wrong offer/right person.
Following Up
It is important to follow up at least once after an initial
offer. Many times it has been seen that a number of recipients who
click-through on the first mailing after receiving a second mailing.
You cannot wait too long to send a follow-up message or they may
have forgotten about the original offer. Follow-up contact is
recommended one to two weeks after the original offer is sent.
The proliferation of abusive email marketing has dramatically
changed the landscape for anyone with an email address. Legitimate
marketers now not only have to work harder to obtain a positive
response for a campaign, but they also have to avoid a negative
response and all this while trying to avoid getting filtered right
out of the in box before recipients even see your message.
Make sure you have permission to communicate with every person
on your lists. Many spam emails are now claiming "you signed up for
the XYZ list" when in reality there is no existing relationship. If
someone has indeed opted-in to your list, make sure they understand
when and where this took place. If their relationship is with a
third-party that you are partnered with, make sure to spell that out
instead. You may well be better off with a partner sending on your
behalf, so as to avoid any confusion about exactly why the recipient
is being emailed.
Once you've crossed the line with a recipient by spamming,
there is usually no going back. The same ability of email marketing
to directly reach recipients, can inadvertently offend them. Like
the difference between using a chainsaw to cut up a fallen tree
versus accidentally severing your own limb, email marketing requires
both care and knowledge to use correctly. Make sure you stay on the
correct side of the line, and you can put that power to work to
improve your bottom line results.
Tracking and analyzing the actions of your customers and
prospects is critical to your success. After deploying several
campaigns you will have generated a mountain of response information
- invaluable data enabling you to create new and more effective
approaches and offers. There are many software tools easily
available that track, record and analyze all data pertaining to your
Email marketing campaign. Many sophisticated analysis tools predict
future actions based on past behavior. Such tools are crucial for
your campaign as Response data is meaningless unless it can be
analyzed and turned into valuable customer knowledge.
Once you have the capability to track the vital statistics of
your email marketing campaigns, the inevitable question becomes: how
well are my mailings doing? Here are some guidelines on what
information to gather and how to measure the performance of your
campaign from the gathered information.
There are a number of different pieces of information that can
be gathered when using any reasonably good email broadcasting
service. The five primary measurements are: the totals each of
messages sent, message opens, click-throughs, bounces, and opt-out
requests.
Total number of items sent must be accurately counted, based on
reaching each individual email address only once. Opens measure the
number of people who actually view the message using their email
program.
We prefer to use “unique” opens, so that if a recipient views
a message in their preview window, then opens it into a full size
window, that this only counts as a single open instead of two opens.
Click-throughs are recipients that respond to your offer by clicking
on a link in the email. Bounces are messages that are undeliverable
to the recipient. They could be “soft bounces” due to temporary
issues such as a full mailbox, or “hard bounces” from an invalid
email account, but for our purposes here it means “people on your
list who did not receive your message”. And last, opt-out requests
are recipients who request to no longer receive email.
There are a wide range of results that can be measured for Email
campaigns, such as:
-
How accurate is the list (how many bounces out of total sent)
-
How active is the list (how many opens out of total sent)
-
How positive was the reaction to the offer itself (number of
click-thrus out of total opens)
-
How negative was the reaction to the offer itself (number of
opt-outs out of total opens)
The actual number of responses on any particular campaign can
vary quite a bit. A newsletter whose primary job is to inform, will
not achieve the same click-through rate as a promotion, which is
intended to get a specific response. The differing levels of
permission within your list of recipients will also affect results.
Until a list has been "cleaned" of bad addresses and those who are
not interested, you may see far different data. Pruning these from
your lists will help you improve your results considerably.
In order to account for these wide variations in factors, we suggest
some general "baseline" ratios that should be achieved on any
particular mailing. There should be more opens than bounces, or else
the list is probably out of date. Also, there should be more click-throughs
than opt-outs, otherwise the offer is poorly targeted or the list is
of questionable origin.
In order to get the optimum response you will need to send two or
three multiples of your email marketing campaign, each time using a
variation of the original offer. If they haven't responded by 3
attempts, it’s time to change your approach.
The typical response pattern is that mailings 1 and 2 will
have a similar response, with number 2 often slightly fewer click-throughs
than number 1. Number 3 picks up the stragglers and undecided
recipients, so the response will be much lower, but usually
significant enough to justify the mailing. Please note that you
shouldn’t necessarily just blast out three mailings one after
another. For example, you might piggyback your first offer onto a
monthly newsletter, send the second offer separately as a special
promotional mailing two weeks later, then finish the series with the
final offer in the next month’s newsletter.
It is useful to understand how the size of your lists is changing
over time. By viewing how many people sign up for your lists each
day, you can attempt to correlate list growth with other marketing
activities that you may be conducting. It is also important to
consider how many people are signing up for your lists versus how
many are opting off of them. If your lists have been cleaned, and
the overall list size is still shrinking, you need to reevaluate
both your list acquisition strategy and the content relevancy of
your mailings.
Testing is critical to optimizing your email marketing campaigns.
But in order to test, you have to measure first. Make sure you have
a way to collect detailed information about your mailings,
preferably in an automatic way. Careful analysis of the actual
metrics will help give you the information you need to take your
email campaigns to the next level.
The process of Email marketing may not always bear the kind of
results that you expect. In fact, even after doing all the basics
right the response rates may fall way short of expectations. The
good news is that Email responses can be enhanced with a little bit
of analysis and research.
We discussed, earlier, the importance of gathering statistical
data during Email campaigns. With this ton of information available
and a few creative segmentation strategies, email response can be
enhanced by a great deal. Your Emails may reach three sets of
readers:
-
Those who deleted the Email without even opening it
-
Those who opened the Email but did not read it or click on the
offer made
-
Those who read the Email, clicked on the link provided but did not
accept your offer
The set which represents readers who never opened your Email
is probably the biggest. It is very much possible that at least 50%
of readers discarded your Email as junk. To boost response rates of
such readers, you should segment these as a group and change the
subject line of the Email, and the sender’s name and address.
Chances are good that you’ll find some of the changes work better
than others, and that some of the non-openers to the first message
have opened up the new message based on a single and possibly simple
change.
Perhaps this change lies in a new
appeal in the subject line, or perhaps it's due to the message
coming from a living person instead of an impersonal company. Record
and save those variables and continue to test and fine-tune them
with each subsequent campaign.
The next segment comprises of readers who read the Email but
were not interested enough to click on the offer and land on your
website. This segment may be pretty huge as well. It is very likely
that most of these readers may have read a couple of lines at the
beginning of the mail and deleted it. The best possible remedy in
such cases is to analyze the section of your promotion—does it say
enough to make people want to read further? If not, reformatting
and/or reworking the introductory copy and headline may be all it
takes to increase your clicks.
Finally, we have the last segment comprising of readers who
actually read the Email and were interested enough to click through
and reach your website. However, once they got there their interest
disappeared and they chose not to go through with the transaction.
Such a segment would be much smaller when compared with the above
two segments.
In such cases it may be best to take a hard, objective look at
the landing page. Something is clearly missing or is not being
communicated properly. Does the offer remain clear? Is the form too
cumbersome or too long? Can you revise the form, and perhaps also
revise some of the required form fields within it, for purposes of
having these potential customers complete their first transaction?
Some times it may pay to instill a tad of humor in your Email.
There have been many instances when potential clients were so taken
by a humorous gesture in mails that immediately decided to do some
business with the marketer. Make some assumptions and apply them to
your next campaign. It's all about getting potential customers over
that hurdle and making that first commitment.
Considerable time and effort may be required to enhance Email
responses. That said, the fruits such a process may bear over a
period of time can be well worth it.
Often, companies try to trick people into opening an Email to
start a relationship with a prospective customer. From the
customer’s point of view, this is certainly not the most brilliant
idea. Almost all potential customers would not prefer to do business
with someone who deceives them, not matter how good a product or
service they offer.
As a
marketer you must approach your direct mail and email marketing
messages with the attitude that this may be the one and only
opportunity to start a relationship with a new customer. For that
matter:
§
Messages should be honest and reflect the company’s
credibility - Take the high road with your creative. Tell people who
you really are and what you really do.
§
Be clear and concise with the offer - Don’t make it
difficult for the reader of your message to figure out what you are
promoting.
§
Test your message - Try your message out and ask for
feedback. This will be the best way to assure you are not
misleading.
§
Know your audience - The shotgun approach to marketing
does not work with direct mail or email. Sending your message to the
wrong audience is wasteful spending of your advertising dollars.
Remember your message is a reflection of your brand, product
or service and employees. Make sure your message is something you
can stand behind with pride no matter how it is delivered.
Automation of your Email marketing process is crucial for the
success of your business. An automated system enables you to reply
immediately solicited information, send follow ups to your
prospects, and save lots of time. Automation can be achieved with
tools known as Autoresponders.
The auto-responder is a program that automatically sends a
reply with a pre-designed response to any email address that sends
email to it. It is also often called infobot, autobot, auto-mailer,
or responder. Auto-responders are great for confirmation messages as
well.
Advantages of using an Autoresponder
The auto-responder allows you to capture the email addresses
of your visitors, so you can build your own opt-in targeted mailing
list. This is a great tool to use for an Email or Newsletter. You
can offer via auto-responder a free article that pertains to the
subject of the newsletter to all of your new subscribers.
The auto-responder will automatically extract the prospects
name and use this information in your follow-up messages. With this
marketing tool you can send personalized follow-up messages. If you
personalize an email message, your prospect is twice as likely to
buy from you.
You can sell your products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with
the help of an auto-responder. Auto-responder is a handy tool that
automatically follows-up with a series of email messages at preset
time intervals and works for you 24 hours a day. You will be able to
develop your follow up messages and set reliable time intervals.
Following up with your prospects could mean a 50% increase in
your sales. Your potential customers may simply forget about your
initial message or they simply may have a bad day; for that reason,
it is so important follow up with your prospects at preset time
intervals at least five times after sending your initial message.
Autoresponders are great for sales letters. Suppose you posted
to a couple of forums and newsgroups you can offer a free report
about your industry and included in that you could have a sales
letter. You then post the email address of your autoresponder and
within seconds the user could be reading the free report and your
sales letter. You don't have to do anything. Apart from these,
autoresponders also allow you set up predefined answers to the most
likely questions. This can cut up to 70% of your customer service
requirements.
Given below are some of the other key benefits of
Autoresponders:
-
They introduce your business to the prospective customer
-
List out special offers for members
-
List out benefits of joining your website
-
Compare your product or service with your competitors
-
Give testimonials of existing customers
-
Welcome letters for new members
-
Thank you messages for new orders
-
Order confirmation
-
Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your
customer
-
A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about
to expire.
It is a good idea to have a copy of the original email sent to
the autoresponder forwarded to you. Some people don't understand
exactly what to expect from the autoresponder and they put a message
inside the body of the email. If you don't at least take a peek at
these emails, you may accidentally ignore a question from a
prospective customer.
Autoresponders can handle many more emails than you could ever
process manually. Also, you can send a ten-page email just as fast
and easily as sending a two paragraph email.
Choosing and Setting up Autoresponders
It can be simple to set up and use an autoresponder, but
choosing which one from the dozens of autoresponders that are
available can be difficult. Most web hosts
offer a simple autoresponder that gives one email message in
response to an email to a specific email address. The problem with
this type of responder is that one message is often not enough to
keep the continued contact or deliver the content that you want to
offer your visitor.
There are two main types of
autoresponders. They each have their pros and cons.
Autoresponder services
Autoresponder services are web based services that allow you
to send a series of emails to a visitor who has either requested the
email through a web-based form on you site (the service provides the
html code for your site to use) or who has sent an email to a
specific address the service has provided you to use.
The primary advantage of such services is that they are very
easy to set up, and are very reliable. In addition, they are host
independent. This means that your web host doesn't have to allow
you to run any particular services on your site to have access to
all that an e-mail autoresponder can provide.
Email autoresponder services have two main drawbacks -- they
can be costly, especially if you need to use an autoresponder on
more than one web site, and they lack a certain amount of
flexibility -- whatever the service provides is what you get. There
is a limited amount of customization that you can do with such a
service. GetResponse is recommended for most people. It has good
customization, and the price is quite reasonable.
Autoresponder programs (or scripts)
The other choice for an autoresponder is to purchase (or
lease) a program or a script (usually written in perl, requiring CGI
access on your server.) Several of these are available. They offer
the potential for lower cost, especially if you have multiple web
sites to support. (But be careful to check the license agreement.
Some license agreements require an additional fee if you are going
to use the program or script on more than one site at the same time.
These types of autoresponders also allow, potentially at
least, for increased flexibility. Some are quite powerful in their
own right, while perl scripts can generally be modified to suit your
needs for a fee. A good example of a script based Autoresponder
that you can install on your site and never have to pay monthly fees
to use is Autoresponse Plus.
Autoresponse Plus offers the advantages of a system you can
own along with all of the flexibility. It is available at a very
reasonable price, and a multi-domain license is also available for
only modestly more. Finally, most of the complexity often
associated with such programs can be almost completely eliminated
because professional installation is available for a small
incremental increase in cost.
At the end of the day, everything you do on the Web is geared
towards one thing: driving your users to take an action that will
result in you getting money. That might be buying something from
you, subscribing to a newsletter, clicking an affiliate link, or any
other move that brings you cash.
When you begin preparing your email copy, you have to know
exactly what you want the user to do as soon as he finishes reading.
You can have the most amazing headline and the greatest product
described in the finest email ever written, but if the reader
doesn’t know what to do at the end of the email, you’ve wasted your
time.
You’ve got to get them to take action.
There are a number of points to bear in mind when you’re
trying to turn your reader into a customer.
Stand out
You want to be sure that your reader doesn’t miss your call to
action. It’s got to absolutely stand out from the rest of the page.
You can do that by playing with font color, font size, underline,
bold etc., but make sure it’s seen and acted upon!
Be clear
Orders rarely come in the form of long sentences. In general,
marketing material should take the form of short paragraphs, punchy
phrases, and bulleted points that spell out the benefits as clearly
and quickly as possible. Potential customers tend to scan rather
than read. The easier you make it for them, the more chance they’ll
buy.
Compel
The words you use to persuade someone to take action are
crucial. You want your call to action to include real action-packed
verbs that are simple to obey. Use phrases like “Click here!”, for
example, or “Press Submit”. The more precise the verb, the easier it
will be for the reader to take real action.
Play it straight
Once you’ve got them doing what you want, you don’t want to
waste time. If you’ve told them to click on a link so that they can
fill in an order form, make sure that the link leads right to the
form. Don’t give them a chance to change their mind. Even the best
call to action copy only works for a short time.
Create a sense of urgency
Many people like to put off making a decision as long as
possible—especially if that decision means spending money. The fact
is though, if they don’t take action as soon as they finish reading
the email, they probably won’t take action at all.
You have to create a real sense of urgency, an idea that if
they don’t buy, click, order, whatever... right now, they’re
going to lose the opportunity of a lifetime. This isn’t too
difficult to do. Here are some options:
·
Offer a time limited prize: “Order now and receive a
FREE copy of ‘Build Your Own Bicycle!”
·
Offer a quantity limited prize: “The first 50 people
to register will be entered into our FREE prize draw!”
·
Create a penalty for not acting immediately: “Every
day that you don’t use the amazing ideas in this book, you’re
throwing away thousands of dollars! Download your copy and start
earning now!”
Bear in mind that the kind of action you want people to take
will depend on the kind of product you’re selling—and the kind of
person you’re pitching to. If you’re trying to sell cars online for
example, “Place your order here” isn’t likely to get many results.
People don’t usually like to buy cars so quickly. You might want to
say something like: “Click here for a picture of the interior” or
something that's less committal than inviting them to part with lots
of cash. Similarly, if your marketing material doesn’t contain all
the information necessary for someone to buy, your call to action
will only be to invite them to find out more.
On the next page, I’ve put all that advice together in a
sample marketing email. I’ve also added my notes to explain how I
built it up. Feel free to use this email as template for your own.
Subject: Discover How To Make Your Users Pay You!
(The subject line is unique to
emails. It’s like a mini-headline, but it’s got to stay short.)
Want Your
Users To Give You More Money?
Give Them
More Value!
(There’s the headline. I’ve used a
Question Headline here. I’ve stated the problem and followed with
the solution.)
Dear Friend,
As the webmaster of a dating site, you know how important it
is to keep your users coming back day after day, week after week.
You know that the more your users see your site, the more likely
they are to buy a subscription – and the more they’ll keep
sending you cash!
(The first paragraph explains what
the email is all about: making money.)
And you also know that the only way to keep those users
logging in is to renew your content on a regular basis.
GoDating.com is now making its dating magazine available to
the webmasters of dating sites.
GoDatingMagazine will give your users:
(And here I explain how to do it:
by adding value. Note the link so that they can see what I’m
offering.)
·
Amazing, insightful articles on subjects
ranging from matchmakers and soul mates to swingers and foreign
brides.
·
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