E-Mail Marketing

On an average day, fifty-eight percent of all adult Internet users in the United States send or read email (Pew Research Center, 2009). A Direct Marketing Association study found email marketing return on investment outshined other marketing channels with a incredible $43.62 for every dollar spent (Magill, 2009). Now that is a major bang for your buck!

For companies whose main intention is lead generation, email produces the highest response rate, 4.09 percent (Direct Marketing Association, 2007).

The first thing you are going to need to start your email campaign is a mailing list. You can build your own list from existing customers and prospects. Ask their permission before you put them on the list. Keep the opt-in process short, and then validate the email address with a small welcome message. Make sure you keep your email list up to date. Give recipients a preference center where they can update their email addresses, opt-out, note change in interests, changes in format preference, and frequency. Put a link to your preference center on the bottom of every email you send out, even on you traditional emails. Give confirmation that subscription changes are received. Delete bounce-backs from your email list as soon as you get them. Correct misspelled names and invalid email addresses. Whatever you do, honor unsubscribe requests.

Some companies send out “Email Blasts.” The name sounds intrusive and it is. Blasting an email on a one-to-all basis may be cheap and easy, but for many, the email will not be relevant and will lead to attrition. It is better to target and segment your subscribers. This will give you a much higher conversion rate than sending out email blasts.

Less than fifty percent of marketers create email suitably. One fifth of all email campaigns are indistinguishable or unsuccessful due to blocked images (Email Experience Council, 2009). HTML emails are more successful than regular text emails, if they are constructed properly. However, mobile phones are often used by businesses to receive email. When sending email B2B, text messages can be more successful. To cover both bases, send a multipart MIME email. Like I said before, your preference center should let subscribers choose format options. Even if a majority of your subscribers choose HTML, don’t get overly reliant on images, since 50% of the time recipients block them. Display text as text, not images. Make sure to use image tags describing the images accurately and keep the images small. All image and hyperlinks should be absolute links (the complete URL) rather than relative links. CSS does not work in emails. Keep the width of your email at 600 pixels so it’s easy to read. Your call-to-action needs to be in the first 300 pixels of the email. Ensure that the call-to-action has a relevant landing page. Send a test to a trusted group before you send it out. The more eyeballs to proof and test usability, the better.

If you don’t know what a call-to-action, absolute link, relative link or CSS is, you’ll do better to hire a service like Constant Contact, Listrak and Mail Chimp. If you have less than 500 subscribers, Mail Chimp is free, my favorite price (MailChimp).

Finally, don’t go crazy sending email. There is too much of a good thing. Sending an email once a week is enough. Sending once every couple of weeks or once a month is better. On the other hand, you can send emails out too infrequently creating the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” scenario. Emails sent out on Monday or Friday are less likely to be read. Stick with the middle of the week.

If you need help contact me or check out my web site at http://www.denisedriggers.com/.