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Comprehensive Marketing Details Not Found in Beginner Books
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Learn Successful E-mail Marketing Tips
E-mail marketing campaigns can be integral parts of any
organization's marketing strategy. That's because e-mail
marketing can be a powerful tool for differentiating a brand,
driving targeted traffic to a Web site, and increasing sales. In
addition, one of the greatest benefits of an e-mail marketing
campaign is that online reporting tools make measuring results
easy and data is available nearly instantaneously after
launching a campaign.
The keys to success are the relevancy of the content provided to
the target audience as well as the quality and segmentation of
the sender's e-mail list. Organizations that pay attention to
these critical points will increase the probability of
accomplishing their goals.
This article contains practical tips that you can use to develop
and implement an e-mail marketing strategy.
Developing your e-mail marketing strategy
Who is your audience? What is your message? How often will you
launch a campaign? Develop a clear strategy that answers these
questions while remaining consistent with your overall marketing
strategy. Consider the following four components when developing
your e-mail marketing strategy:
Set realistic goals. What specific, tangible benefits do
you want your e-mail marketing campaign to help your
organization achieve? Some examples might include:
1. Increase sales leads from A to B.
2. Increase product or service sales from A to B.
3. Enhance customer relationships by increasing the number of
times that your organization connects with customers from A to B.
4. Differentiate your brand by providing customers with expert
advice they can apply to their business.
5. Drive traffic to a specific content section within your Web
site.
Analyze and segment your e-mail list. Get to know your
customers and determine what topics grab their attention. Then
segment your e-mail list into smaller lists based on the
identified commonalities. Remember to update e-mail addresses
that have changed.
Develop relevant content based on your segmentation. A
segmented e-mail list gives you the freedom to develop
customized content, increasing the odds that your audience will
respond. Provide your audience with content that is interesting
to them. Highlight product and service features that are highly
relevant to your audience and unique from your competitors.
These types of features are called drivers.
Providing relevant content also reduces the risk that your
audience would consider your e-mail marketing campaigns to be
distractions, or even worse, spam.
Measure your results. Most leading e-mail marketing
distribution tools provide real-time data as part of their
package. The AVS Group uses Constant Contact for our campaigns.
For a broader view of your Web site's performance, Webtrends is
a leading Web analytics tool that generates detailed traffic
statistics.
Differentiating your brand Can e-mail marketing be useful
in differentiating a brand? Absolutely, and here's how.
Focus on drivers. Earlier we recommended highlighting the
features of your products and services that are highly relevant
to customers and unique from competitors. These features are
called drivers. Drivers are any organization's true points of
differentiation. Drivers are so powerful, they actual drive
customer choice toward one brand versus another. Your e-mail
marketing campaign should communicate your drivers.
Share your expertise. Share your organization's knowledge
with your e-mail list. Offer recommendations based on your
experience. Write papers based on your organization's research.
Comment on industry or marketplace trends. Sharing your
expertise makes your brand different - you are not communicating
the same message as competitors.
Brand consistency. Your team has invested time and effort
toward developing your organization's logo, tagline, graphic
standards, and overall brand identity. To protect this
investment, create an e-mail
template that can be used for all
of your e-mail marketing campaigns. Your audience will receive a
professional looking message that is consistent with the
positive attributes that your brand identity represents. For
each issue, you simply update the content.
Timing consistency. Set specific intervals to distribute
your e-mail marketing: weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. and
stick to them. It takes a commitment to consistently develop and
distribute relevant e-mail marketing campaigns. Remaining
consistent will provide your organization with differentiation
from all of the organizations marketing themselves
inconsistently.
Driving targeted traffic to a Web site
E-mail marketing is a proven method for driving site traffic. In
fact, experiencing traffic increases of 100 percent or more on
days that an e-mail marketing campaign is launched is realistic.
Targeted e-mail marketing campaigns can also deliver impressive
open and click-through rates. For example, 50 percent of the
recipients of an e-newsletter may open the e-mail and 30 percent
of those people may click into the Web site to learn more.
Why are these numbers so high? The sender provided relevant
content to people who already knew of the organization. The
recipients may not have been very familiar with the
organization, or even current customers. However, they at least
gave the organization their e-mail address.
Use teaser content to trigger interest. Do not provide
all of the information within your e-mail marketing message.
Support the content in your e-mail marketing campaign with more
content on your Web site. Encourage people to click and learn
more.
Intuitive design. Drive traffic by using a layout and
design for your e-mails that is intuitive. Are the links easy to
locate? Is the navigation and overall layout and design simple?
Is the content easy to read?
Use references to build credibility. People generally do
business with organizations they trust. Highlight your work,
press releases, or case studies to serve as evidence of your
achievements. Your audience may be more apt to click into your
Web site if they perceive your message to be credible.
Increase sales
We have witnessed e-mail marketing campaigns that have generated
online sales within minutes after being sent. These campaigns
created a sense of urgency and promoted relevant products.
However, if online transactions are not a good fit for your
organization, consider using e-mail marketing to generate sales
leads.
Create a sense of urgency. With a segmented list, you
will be able to create special offers based on what will appeal
to each segment. For one segment, you might offer free shipping.
For another segment, you might offer a discount. Get it right,
and you could experience sales increases of 100 percent on the
days that e-mail marketing was used.
Promote relevant products. Because your list is
segmented, you have the opportunity to feature the most relevant
products. Create multiple campaigns based on the product
preferences of each segment within your overall list.
Generate leads. Encourage your audience to go online and
fill out a contact form or upload a request for proposal to you.
For example, we receive requests for proposal from customers and
prospects visiting AVSGroup.com. To help facilitate this
process, we added a Discuss Project form making it easier to
connect with our team.
In closing, any organization can be successful with e-mail
marketing campaigns by implementing the right strategy.
Developing an e-mail marketing strategy will lay the groundwork
to reach your goals. E-mail marketing can be a powerful
marketing and brand-building tool for your organization.
About the author:
The AVS Group is a
marketing, training, and communications company. AVS is in La
Crosse, Wisconsin. AVS helps clients communicate and market
effectively. AVS can be found online at
http://www.avsgroup.com
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KnowThis: For Marketing, Market Research, Internet Marketing ... |
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Marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Find the latest Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR news from Brand Republic, the online resource for up to the minute advertising and marketing news and ... |
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Sales Jobs / Marketing Jobs / Advertising Jobs - MarketingJobs.com |
Employment site for marketing and sales professionals. |
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The Chartered Institute of Marketing |
The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world's largest international marketing professional body and helps with career support and information ... |
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Marketing knowhow from professionals. Newsletter, articles and how-to's. |
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Guerrilla Marketing Online - The Official Site |
Guerrilla Marketing Online is anonline magazine for small business, entrepreneurs, sales people and marketers of all kinds. |
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Business Marketing - Small Business Marketing |
Business marketing - Read everything your need to know about small business marketing. |
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Adapted from Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation ... Inbound Marketing Includes Market Research to Find Out: ... |
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Pages tagged with "marketing" on del.icio.us |
USA Network Announces a NASHVILLE STAR Marketing Partnership With ... - Yahoo! ... Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing ... |
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ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers |
Includes columns with commentary and analysis on a wide variety of internet marketing subjects ranging from B2B marketing to search engine marketing. |
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Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing |
Trade association for users and suppliers in the direct, database and interactive marketing fields, offering seminars and resources, and lobbying for ... |
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