As we all know, e-mail marketing ranks as one of the best values in
business promotion. It’s hard to beat its cost which, in some cases, can
be free and it intrigues many as something with which to experiment.
Unfortunately, without knowledge of a few essential safeguards, the
whole effort can easily be an exercise in futility, not only wasting
precious time and resources, but possibly rankling a few choice members
of your market as well.
Why Your E-mail May Fail To Reach Its Target
The quality of your list probably tops the most usual reasons for
failure. If you have accrued a group of e-mail addresses as appropriate
targets for a business promotion, your success with this action will
depend on whether you have both sent and received e-mails from each
address you intend to use. Without this established conduit of
communication, various e-mail services may decide to route your message
into your recipients’ spam bin, which is the default of many e-mail
platforms such as Gmail, Yahoo mail, MSN mail and others. If this
happens, there is little chance your message will be read.
One of my clients without a list of his own rejected the purchase of a
list I could have provided through a well-established broker of e-mail
addresses. It was guaranteed to include the highly important permission
for use, on the basis of its high price.
Instead, he opted to purchase his own 30,000-name e-mail list at a
discounted price which he asked me to upload to an e-mail marketing
service his list company had recommended, also at a relatively low cost
(a prepaid $215 per 50,000 e-mails to be sent).
Originally he was planning to use the highly economical $15-per-month
Constant Contact service with my help, until we learned of their
stringent ban on the use of purchased lists that typically are not
permission-based and risk spam interception. When I consulted a rep for
this service, she explained Constant Contact was being extra careful to
avoid getting a reputation for spam-based e-mails, which would derail
the whole value of using them.
While I found my client’s recommended e-mail service to be very
user-friendly and eager to assist with high-quality tech support when
needed, his list presented a different outcome. Using my own
custom-created, graphically-attractive e-mail for which I had also
composed a sophisticated, comprehensive web page as a back-up to
accommodate offer participation, our first blast netted a total of about
28 responses, all of which were requests to opt-out of any future
e-mail activity.
His offer, ironically, was to register for free dinners at his
Japanese Steakhouse as a tribute to first responders in commemoration of
the Sept. 11 anniversary. Since I had no knowledge of what kind of
recipients comprised the list he bought, I have no way of knowing why
the response was so disappointing. The e-mail service confirmed our
document tests included no risks of poor delivery. I suspect, however,
that many of the e-mails were still identified as spam based on two
things: the trials we had sent to our own Gmail and other
highly-filtered e-mail services and the lack of pre-established
communication to each recipient.
Although he was given the option of doing a second blast to the
remaining 20,000 e-mails he had paid for, he ultimately decided not to
proceed, probably because it got to be too late in September for an
effective reaction. My initial advice to him, in addition to trying to
discourage him from using e-mail for this type of promotion, was that
this campaign should have been initiated in August or earlier, and was
too restrictive, targeting too specialized a market. He insisted he
wanted to try it anyway.
Are You Boring Your Recipients with a Dull Title?
The next issue you need to address is your e-mail title, also known
as the subject line. It is the single most important component of your
e-mail appeal. As the first thing recipients will see, it bears the
enormous responsibility of rousing their curiosity. Considered to be
possibly the biggest stumbling block to proper message delivery, the
title is limited to a maximum of approximately 80 characters to assure
full display on the inbox subject line. It must provide a strong reason
for recipient interest to encourage further exploration.
Having recently helped a real estate client prepare his monthly
e-mail newsletter within his Constant Contact account, the first thing I
did was to rewrite both his supplied textual content as well as his
title to reflect a more positive outlook on his industry assessment.
Rather than using his uninspired “October Company Newsletter” as its
title, I substituted the more titillating “Good News from ‘His Company’”
which would hopefully be a more compelling reason to click to open,
particularly with regard to real estate.
To maintain the many automatic e-mail reports Constant Contact has
set up, I chose to use a basic template that I extensively customized to
reflect the branding I had developed for his business.
Although I could have used my own design, the requirement for an
impeccably coded XML document posed enough intimidation that I decided
use of their template was safer, minimizing the risk of deficiencies in
printer document accuracy, website links, access to supplemental
information, social media endorsements and their complex report system.
Also, my client had asked me to do this job just as Hurricane Sandy was
hitting our area so I had very little time to spare.
Don’t Be Victimized by Common Spam Triggers
Another vital concern you must recognize is the use of spam triggers within your title or textual content.
With a constantly growing list of hundreds of terms that include such
frequently needed words as “sale,” “free,” and “special,” as well as
adjectival enhancements such as the word “amazing,” terms of urgency
like the word “Now,” or anything in all caps, it is a major challenge to
compose a valid title of the appropriate length along with inoffensive
content that will assure delivery to the desired inbox.
Should your e-mail contain custom-created graphics of a certain size,
it is required that you include enough text to proportionately balance
that artwork, also making sure to provide alternate text in case your
graphics are hidden from display. Yet, it is recommended that e-mail
marketing be short and sweet with just enough information to whet the
recipient’s appetite for further details to which he would click to read
on a back-up web page.
Your lack of attention to any of these issues could result in e-mail
delivery failure, or problematic display, possibly serving to annoy your
recipient and leave him or her with a negative impression of your
company.
E-mail Marketing Can Work Well If Managed Properly
On the other hand, I have found great success with e-mail marketing
in the past few years in selling advertising to prospects trying to
reach the military market at the United States Military Academy at West
Point. Although I have been handling this job for some 15 years or more,
which originally required that I pay personal visits to potential
advertisers, my e-mail marketing efforts have paid off handsomely with
very little effort beyond the complex setup to manage the entire process
online.
From sales pitch to payment of ads, from submission of finished
artwork to instructions for our ad creation, the e-mail campaign has
been a total success.
In addition to saying the right thing in the title, I developed an
animated gif in my Flash software, which is compatible with all e-mail
html displays. What this means is that when recipients click to open the
e-mail, they are dazzled by colorful movement of impressive visuals of
West Point cadets, U.S. flags, the historic architecture on the Hudson
River and just the right thoughts to instill pride in America.
Anyone who admires the upper echelon of the U.S. military is inspired
to purchase an ad in their 100-year-old annual book called the West
Point Bugle Notes.
While I had few expectations when I first tried e-mailing as a sales
strategy for this campaign, I am convinced its time has come. I created
my own list by searching for appropriate candidates out on the Internet,
finding e-mail addresses hidden in code on websites if not readily
available on contact pages.
Even such generic e-mail addresses as info@ or customerservice@
proved to be valuable because those addresses are usually forwarded to
other addresses which reach key people within an organization.
I limited my e-mail “blasts” to about 25 or 30 at a time from my own
e-mail address through Yahoo Mail, which allowed me to do so as long as I
kept the number of emails down to a minimum.
Some people paid for the ad of their desired size immediately, using
their credit card on PayPal. Others called me to discuss the proposition
first and then proceeded to use PayPal to pay. The first year I sold
out the number of ad pages West Point allows. The second year, I had
both renewals and new advertisers, again as a sell-out.
Since I am not using the heavily-coded e-mails which bear the logo of
Constant Contact or other well-known services, I do not receive the
benefits of their report systems which tally how many were opened,
click-through rate, opt-out requests, etc.
Instead, my e-mails bear only my own company logo and are unique in
presentation and appeal. Yahoo Mail tells me which e-mails could not be
delivered and through Google Analytics I can see who visited the related
pages on my website along with the source of their visit. Besides, the
bottom line is determined not by how many people opened the e-mail, but
by how many sales I make.
If the targets of your e-mail campaign are busy people, you run the
risk of being ignored even if you manage to do everything right. I must
admit that when I receive one of these e-mailed “newsletters” from
familiar sources in my own inbox, unless the title says something
riveting, I have gotten to the point where I simply hit the delete
button without even looking at it. Too many disappointments with
amateurish or hackneyed presentations, unimaginative text, irrelevant
offers or overwhelming volume have me, for one, on e-mail newsletter
burnout.
Marilyn Bontempo, Post from:
SiteProNews
