Lead Your Horse to Water with email Marketing
..and then make it drink!
Many big organisations see email marketing as an inexpensive alternative to online advertising. It is common to hear the expression "with one click and I can reach millions". The important word here is "reach". Being able to cut through the clutter, pass spam filters, not lie idle and unopened in an inbox, encourage clicks on embedded links and finally, initiate desired action: These are the real tests of email marketing success.
Whilst still very much the workhorse of Internet marketing, some organisations have plunged email into the muddy waters of ineffective "batch and blast", where millions of people may be sent a single email message lacking personalisation, customisation or effective targeting.
Experts now agree that the adoption of appropriate technologies to communicate focused email messages to specific audience niches is the best approach. Segmentation and behavioural targeting are the recommended best practice to yield optimum email results.
According to MarketingSherpa and Marketing Experiments, leading research firms specialising in Internet Marketing, the key principles of Email Optimisation are:
eme = rv (of + i) - (f + a)
Where:
eme = email messaging effectiveness index
rv = relevance to the consumer
of = offer
i = incentive to take action
f = friction elements of process
a = anxiety about entering information
Whether you agree with trying to put subjective analysis into a mathematical formula or not; their identification of the 3 primary factors in generating an effective email is important to all of us.
Relevance - The matching of an email's content to a reader's motivation.
Offer - The perceived value you promise in your email in exchange for a reader becoming a subscriber.
Incentive - The appeal of the reward element of your email capture process to achieve a desired subscription.
It is critical for you to understand the attitudes of the different customer groups that form your target audience: As these attitudes determine why the same email may be considered spam by some and legitimate by others. As Stefan Tornquist, Research Director, MarketingSherpa says, "Spam is in the eye of the beholder. So is reputation".
For example; results of a survey by Forrester Research show that only 30% of those aged 18 to 34 agree that "e-mail offers are a great way to find out about new products or promotions". By contrast, 48% of those 35 to 54 agree. Those comfortable with technology are most likely to welcome and be influenced by commercial e-mails. In their case, 72% often buy things advertised to them through e-mail.
Being relevant is often a question of timing; motivations, attitudes, needs and desires all change with time. Securing an ongoing relationship by gathering additional information about your contacts can help you remain relevant. The majority of successful, large email lists take the "getting to know you process" slowly; they start by simply collecting an e-mail address. Then, over time, they will collect additional information about their contacts and each time make the messages they send more and more relevant, so recipients are more likely to agree to keep receiving them and act upon them.
Are you leveraging email marketing to grow your business? We all know the saying that it is five times easier to sell to an existing customer than get a new one; email is a fantastic and simple way of asking your existing customers for repeat business, referrals and feedback; try it.
But, when it comes to marketing objectives the most important reason for e-mail marketing in 2007 was increased revenue.