Tips for effective e-mail marketing
How do you use e-mail for marketing?
Done well, e-mail marketing is very effective at bringing in new customers and keeping regulars informed and interested.
E-mail marketing is one of the most effective sales tools you can use in your business.
A well-crafted e-mail campaign can bring new customers into the fold, and for your current customers, it keeps your business name and your products front and center. Most importantly, since the e-mails are sent to a list of people who've subscribed to them, this makes them the opposite of unwanted spam; e-mail forms a targeted marketing effort that can pay off handsomely.
Here's how to get started and make your e-mail campaign as effective as possible:
What can you send people they'll actually be happy to see? What will an audience of interested consumers want to open when it arrives in their in-box? If you send a lot of info you want to push at them, but that they don't really want to see, you'll be assuring your e-mails stop being opened, and the image of your business will suffer.
Jerry Galloway is the eastern regional sales manager for Nostalgic Warehouse, a decorative door hardware company with 25 employees. He uses Constant Contact ($15/month and up) to send out a regular newsletter to more than 700 dealers, showrooms, and home builders that sell his product. Nostalgic has increased sales steadily over a three-year period (including 60 percent sales growth in 2004), due in large part to these e-mail campaigns, he said.
"If showroom dealers are not familiar with our product, its sales characteristics and how it's ordered, it just hangs on a wall," Galloway said. "They don't stock it. A customer says, 'How about that one?' If a dealer is not familiar or comfortable with selling our product, they'll just move them over to something else that they are comfortable selling." By sending out frequent newsletters and staying in close contact with his dealers, he effectively avoids this problem.
Once you've decided on the type of messages to send, you'll need a way to send them. An e-mail service is probably your best bet as a small business, because it can be practically a full-time job to manage an e-mail server and the associated lists.
Look for services that spell out their features and pricing in clear terms. Examples of services include Entrepreneur.com's SmallBizMailer ($12.95/month and up, depending on the number of e-mail messages you send), Microsoft List Builder ($19.95/month and up), and Campaigner ($10/month and up) by Yahoo Small Business. Starter templates (with HTML and text-only options), comprehensive statistics and monitoring, and managing lists are important features.
If you sell directly to customers, make sure your Web site includes a way to sign up for the mailing list. If you sell to a niche industry or sell business-to-business, use trade shows, performances, art exhibitions--whatever applies to your market--to build your list.
Galloway gathers addresses when his sales reps go to see dealers and at shows.
"We go to about four trade shows a year, mainly aimed at the dealer base and the builder market," he said. "We get e-mail addresses at those as well."
E-mail marketing campaigns are inexpensive and, with the right promotions, can be effective. So why run just one? Offer compelling discounts and upgrades for your products and services, particularly ones that coincide with an event or a holiday. Use deadlines--"Offer ends February 28!"--to give customers on the edge that extra push.
At the same time, use e-mail marketing tools judiciously. Go too far with your e-mail marketing campaign, and people will think of it as worthless spam. Depending on the business, an average of one message per month is sufficient in most cases, or one per week for really avid fans of your business.
Don't forget one of the most important marketing tips: How can your products and services help your customers? Your customers aren't necessarily interested in what you're selling (which is your perspective). Instead, they're interested in how it can help them (for example, they want to make more money, feel better, look good, whatever). E-mail marketing offers you repeated opportunities to drive this message home.
At the very least, make sure your copy is tightly written and there are no typos. If possible, use graphic templates that come with your service. For a custom, polished look (and if you have the capital), hire a graphic designer. A good designer can smoothly integrate your e-mail presentation with your Web site, letterhead, business cards and other promotional literature.
"[Customers] think I'm some huge company because the e-mails give me that appearance," Galloway said. "I'm a $3 million sales guy as of '05. I'm competing with $80 million and $150 million companies in this niche of the market. There's a certain confidence that comes with size, and we've got to look like that in this market if we want to win."
Many e-mail campaign services offer detailed statistics: What percentage of recipients are opening your messages, how many are clicking through to visit your Web site, and which links in your newsletters get the most click-throughs?
Galloway's bounce rate (for erroneous addresses) varies from about 5 percent to 8 percent, his open rate (where people open and read the message) is about 40 percent, and his click-through rate (where people click a link to his business Web site) is currently 8 percent to 10 percent. For an idea on how your numbers stack up to industry averages, check out this report by Bronto Software.
Design future campaigns that focus on what your customers seem to like the most and which promotions work best. It's priceless information about your customers that you'd never get with a Yellow Pages ad or a billboard.
If you've built up a sizable mailing list but half of it is useless, such as faulty or duplicate addresses and full mailboxes, you're wasting money. Periodically go through your database and prune the waste. E-mail marketing services such as Constant Contact have management tools explicitly for this purpose.
Because of CAN-SPAM legislation designed to protect everyone from unwanted e-mail messages, you'll need to have to have an opt-out clause, as well as a clearly defined physical address for your business. You'll find tools to manage opt-outs with most good services.
If your database is relatively small (say, 800 to 1,000 customers in a niche industry, as opposed to 150,000 retail customers), speak with specific customers you haven't heard from recently, either over the phone or at conferences and events. Determine whether they want to continue receiving your newsletters. Better yet, maybe they can recommend a friend or business associate that could use your products or services.
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