You may assume that email is so overused that there is no way it can make a positive impact on your business. Everyone ignores marketing emails and newsletters so why bother sending them? To some extent you are correct; a lot of emails are ignored and only a small percentage is opened.
You may also be reluctant to do something that might be perceived as negative. You don’t want customers or prospective customers to be annoyed with you or to think you are a spammer. There is some truth to all of the negatives, but you need to realize that there is good reason sophisticated companies continue to invest in email communications and marketing. It works, and it has a very high return on investment (ROI).
In fact, email marketing has the highest ROI of any form of marketing and that’s why you should at least give it a try. Here is a quick primer on email marketing.
The three main components of email marketing:
• The List – Ideally you have the email addresses of your customers, prospects that have contacted your company, leads from tradeshows, and contacts your company has accumulated over years of doing business. Without a list of some kind, you can’t do email marketing.
• Email Service Provider (ESP) – This is the system or software that you use to send your email communications, offers, newsletters, and marketing messages. These are companies like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Campaigner. This software will track open rates, click through rates and handle un-subscribes.
• Email Content – You will need to write good email content. This could be articles, newsletters, a sales letter or overview of a product or service.
So what does it take to make big returns on email? Here are some of the keys to email marketing success:
1. A good list that keeps growing – Ask all customers and prospects if it’s ok to email them; collect leads at trade shows and networking events; and offer something on your website to get people to register. Email marketing works better the bigger your list is and that means a certain portion of your marketing budget should go toward growing your list.
2. Good subject lines – Getting someone to open your email is the first hurdle to success. The reason so many emails are never opened is because most subject lines are terrible and not compelling. You need to learn to write a subject line that is interesting enough to get people to open your emails.
3. Compelling “call to action” – Give the person that opened the email a good reason to take the next step to becoming a customer. After the person has read your message, what do you want them to do? Usually you will want them to click and go to your website to learn more about your products or services. Your “call to action” could be a case study, article or video content. You can also offer something else like a discount or freebie of some kind.
Once you begin email marketing a question that quickly comes to mind is: How often should you send something to your email list? There is plenty of research that indicates sending something to your list once a week is very safe. But we recommend 1-2 times per month to keep your name in front of customers and to avoid becoming a nuisance. If the people on your list know you well and like your company, you can send more frequently.
Your email marketing program should be viewed as a long-term tool to educate your audience and to increase awareness. Many companies use email as a “lead nurturing” or “drip marketing” tool that will carve out a bit of mindshare so potential customers will remember you when they are ready to buy your product or service. The longer you do it, the better your results will be.
