June 18th, 2009 | Jessica Elliott
While the use of print ads, radio/TV ads and event marketing has been down recently, e-mail marketing is one form of communication businesses are really clicking with. A recent Marketing Sherpa survey found that e-mailing to house lists was up 48%. A Forrester Research survey predicts that in five years, clients will be deluged with more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages annually. That’s about 25 messages every day. With more businesses utilizing this marketing method how can you ensure your e-mails aren’t deleted faster than you can say “junk mail?”
To answer this question, let’s first look at the reasons e-mail marketing is so popular.
It’s cost-effective. You can run a valuable, effective e-mail campaign with a minimal investment to create and manage. And forget about postage or envelopes. With e-mail marketing, you can get your message out to hundreds, even thousands of contacts in a matter of seconds, by clicking a few buttons.
It’s simple. Whether you manage your campaign in-house or use a third party, the tools to send it are very intuitive and easy to use, and the results are easy to measure.
It’s accessible. Nearly everyone has an e-mail address and can be reached via this medium.
It can be as frequent as you’d like (just don’t go overboard). With a plan and some discipline, e-mail marketing allows you to regularly stay in front of your clients and prospects.
While these characteristics make e-mail marketing popular, the popularity brings consequences, including a decrease in industry-wide response metrics and in subscriber tolerance. Dozens of e-mail marketing messages every day means recipients may not have the time or interest to even open a message, let alone click through it. And while someone may have signed up to receive your messages, too many will cause them to put you on the top of their blocked senders list.
What You Need to Avoid the Blocked Senders List
A plan, discipline and the following tips will help you stay in front of your clients and prospects, providing them with perfectly timed, high-quality e-mail marketing messages.
• Thoughtful, valuable content. Whether you send your message in the form of a newsletter, Keep-in-Touch (KIT) program or e-card, content is king. Your message must be clear, concise and appealing, so that people will read it, gain interest, and ideally, reach out to you. But you can’t just have great content. It needs to be appealing and appropriate for each segment of your target audience. While you may not have the resources to craft a different message for each group, you can create different subject lines that are relevant for each.
• Branded template. Your e-mail template doesn’t have to be elaborate, but you want readers to know it’s from you. A simple, generic design that includes your company logo and reflects your brand can be reused time and again.
• Discipline and consistency. Just as two trips to the gym each year will not prepare you for a triathlon, your e-mail marketing campaign will not gain client interest if you only send it twice a year. To increase open rates, you must be consistent. If your campaign is monthly, it’s important to send your message around the same time month-over-month (e.g. the third week of the month). A little discipline will go a long way in your effort to stay top-of-mind with those on your list, and the more familiar your list members are with your company, the more likely they are to open your message.
• Consider a third-party service. While you can use a personal e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, programs like Vertical Response and Constant Contact allow you to upload your e-mail template, test it, send it to a large (or small) list and track the results of your campaign. Both programs are relatively inexpensive and are easy to use.
Measuring Your Results
Once you’ve blasted your message to your list, programs like Vertical Response and Constant Contact allow you to see results on things like who opened it, clicked on any link within your e-mail, as well as which e-mails bounced, and who unsubscribed from your campaign. MailChimp provides an “apples to apples” benchmark comparison for small businesses in several industries, so you can see how your numbers compare.
If your open rate is low (under 25%) on your first few campaigns, don’t be disappointed. It can take several months for people to become familiar with your company and gain interest in your messages. But there are several things you can try to boost your open rate over time. Play around with subject lines, always keeping them simple and short. Experiment with launch times as well. You may be more likely to open a message on Thursday or Friday afternoon when the week is winding down, as opposed to Monday morning when your inbox is filled with requests. Another method is to identify the recipients who haven’t opened the message and have your sales team and recruiters forward the original to them with a personal note. This helps them see your subject line as relevant to them individually.
While it may take a while to perfect your timing and subject line formula, one thing is certain. A list filled with incorrect or old e-mail addresses will not reap positive results. It’s better to have a shorter, accurate list, than a long one filled with addresses that aren’t in use anymore. So take the time to clean your list! Before you blast your message, check for typos, broken links and missing graphics. And remember: you can never send too many tests.
Jessica Elliott
Marketing Director
ClearEdge Marketing
