Why do it? Because it works!
Email marketing is, as the name suggests, the use of email in marketing communications.
Research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association showed that email marketing generated an ROI of $51.58 for every dollar spent on it in 2006. The expected figure for last year is $48.56, and the prediction for 2008 is $45.65.
In other words, given those facts, low costs (relatively) and logistical efforts related, it goes past and beyond any other direct marketing channels.
Email marketing works for a variety of reasons;
- It is super targeted
- It drives actual sales
- It maintains customer relations and acts as a preservative to your client DB.
- It satellites sales with added values and up sales.
We know it works, but you have to do it right.
DYI
Types of email marketing:
Sales email - sending a promotional message in the form of an email.
Retention email – persuasive contents in order to retain your current client base
Legal and ethical email marketing is based on the idea of “permission”, the subject of intense debate in the email marketing community.
Permission is the user’s consent to receive promotional materials from your site/ firm.
In order to stay fully and clearly legitimate, you must always allow the customers to unsubscribe from your lists.
“Double opt” – a DB of users that have agreed and signed up to the mailing service yet have the option to unsubscribe from it.
Deliverability
Simpler said – “getting the mail to its destination” AKA “how successful your email marketing is”…
This is the holly grail of emailing. Writing the email is easy, designing it, even less a problem. BUT – passing through each and every provider’s protocol, not being stopped/blocked/tagged as spammer and so on all the way from your server to the client – that, that is good deliverability!
So now you know it is not an easy task; After all, you write the text, put in the recipient’s email address, you click “send”, and presumably it lands in that recipient’s inbox a moment or two later…
That is a nice fantasy… In real life, a large portion goes to waste along the way, as your mails get blocked for various reasons, over the net, in the user’s PC, and so on.
Naturally, if you don’t see it, you don’t click it… hence the worse your deliverability is, the less successful your email marketing is.
Collect emails /DYI
Collecting emails, sometimes referred to as “lead generation”, is an art. People often use incentivized campaigns in order to get the users to voluntarily give in their emails and other details, along with an “I agree to the terms” tick, which allows you to send them advertisements of any sort (yes yes, read the small print guys…).
Buy lists
As a so called “art”, webmasters that collect those lists will be more than happy to monetize them, thus sell you lists for a very expensive prize…
Warning – do not buy cheap mails – they are most probably either illegal (collected without permission) or non-targeted which will get you no-where…
Good leads are expensive – but should perform great if managed correctly.
Platforms
If you still think you want to do it yourself, you might want to consider using a designated platform, as normal mail software (outlook and such) will not hold that much activity successfully.
A few options are available to you, and they have a lot of advantages;
Automated management of your email list
People can add / remove their details from your list automatically. Dead addresses that no longer accept email are also removed automatically.
Automated emails
You can set a basic set of rules, such as a welcome email as soon as someone signs up to your list, a follow-up mail, and so on, all triggered by your preferences, automatically.
Tracking / reporting
Data as for how many emails were sent? How many reached their destination? How many were actually opened and clicked? How many unsubscribed from the list after getting this email? And more…
Optimized campaigns
Outsourced platforms should have the sending regulations and protocols all figured out – this is a major factor in choosing them anyway…
Outsource mailer
Last but not least, if you feel that all the above is too much – which sometimes it certainly is – do not feel bad using an outsourced service to do the work (and a lot of work it is).
Remember – eventually it is your face on that mail. Make sure the service you are using is legit and ethical. Use some “trappers” (put some dedicated mail address that will check how that mail arrives, and that your list is not used for any other mailing campaign that you did not agree to/ paid for.)
