We’ve been working with a great client, Next Controls, to help them develop new business and one of the tools we have been using is e-mail marketing as part of an integrated marketing strategy spanning re-branding, website design, advertising direct mail, exhibitions and PR to support his revolutionary energy management system which launches at the NEC at the end of this month.
Email marketing is a key part of the business development strategy for this product and we thought it would be useful to revisit some of the basic principles of using this valuable marketing tool.
Email marketing does sometimes get bad press, but with the correct strategy it can be highly effective. Here are some tips from our recent experiences, to get the maximum result commercially AND to avoid being blacklisted by ISPs.
In the US, unsolicited email is illegal and the majority of large ISPs (Internet Service Providers) because of the international nature of the internet, use very powerful spam protection mechanisms. These filter out unsolicited email before it gets into their customer’s in-boxes.
Spam filters “rank” each email according to a list of criteria, and, when they scan an email that scores rates above a pre-set threshold, it is flagged as spam and deleted. Too many from the same IP address and you will be blacklisted.
You need a list of prospects, ideally a list of email addresses who have opted in at your website, but recognising that everyone has to start somewhere, then you may have to buy this. Make sure you get your list from a reputable supplier and the emails are “opted-in” – in other words the people on the list have agreed that there email can be used for marketing purposes. Also be aware that, email lists go out of date very quickly and that on top of the spam filters, if too many emails bounce (in other words, don’t exist) – your ISP will be flagged.
Your objectives are clear, you need to maximise open rates, click-through, and conversion.
Choosing the right headline
Make sure you use non-spammy headline – avoid “FREE, NOW, $$$, BIG DISCOUNTS, CASHBACK” or indeed little blue pills and body parts. This applies to the content of the email as well.
What works best to get opens is either a non-threatening headline “Latest news from Your Company” or think about customer pain and work your headline around that.
Look at our product positioning guidelines for help with this – but something like “Introducing Your Company – solution to customer pain” – fill in the gaps with your solution, will work well. The more salesy you make it, the less opens you’ll get.
You have about a second to grab someone’s attention before they move onto the next email in their inbox – or even worse, click the spam button.
Email Content
You need to provide very obvious clues and messaging. Less is more and try and avoid lots of competing messages. Inform and then try and get the reader to do one of 2 things max – for example click on a video demo of your new product or to sign up for a 30 day trial.
Work out precisely what actions you want to reader to take and then devise the best copy and supporting graphics to achieve this. Make the copy really efficient and support any claims with shirt punchy customer testimonials.
Never link to your home page as a call to action. To maximise conversion, the pages that the reader land on must relate to where they have come from – the email – and again these ‘landing pages’ must have very specific content and calls to action, again related to the email content.
Your home page, however lovely, will allow the reader to go off on a journey he is in control of. You need to create a series of landing pages where you control the journey. These pages will have specific content that reflects the email content and reflect the calls to action in the email and your intended outcome.
Timing
Timing your emails should coincide with the time that the recipients are most likely to open and read an email that is not crucial to the business.
So avoid times where the reader is likely to be trawling through business-specific emails – like Mondays, mornings and Friday afternoon.
Tuesday and Wednesday are best, according to most online research studies, and we’ve found that between 10 and 11.30 work well. We’ve also found that Wednesdays at about 3.30 has produced high open rates.
Check out the next level of email marketing – 5 great ways to increase email marketing effectiveness.
Written by Debbi Young
