Got Effective Email Marketing?

Even in this age of social media marketing, viral marketing and more, email is still a highly effective way to reach out to customers.

More than 70 people attended ThinkBusiness Media's Ready, Set ... Grow! breakfast event this morning -- the majority of whom have tried email marketing in the past.  “Once!” someone called out.

Moderator Greg Cangialosi, president and CEO of Blue Sky Factory, confirmed what many attendees had already heard: Email marketing delivers.

In fact, research from the Direct Marketing Association concluded that email marketing has an ROI of about $42 for every dollar spent.  There are very few online services customers can use (including social media) without an active email account.

The following are some of our tips from the panelists: Jeanne Jennings, principal of JeanneJennings.com; Raj Khere, CEO of MailerMailer; Jeffrey Lupisella, president and CEO of Vizual, Inc.; and Bill McKay, vice president of Direct Media Millard.

DELIVERABILITY

Go to senderscore.org to evaluate how well your messages are being delivered. If you create an account, you can see your acceptance rate and tips to increase your deliverability. In addition, remember that people change email addresses so work to keep your own internal list up to date by making it easy for people to update it.

OPEN RATES AND YOUR RESOURCES

Someone in your company should stay on top of open rates, deliverability and other metrics and work to improve them. If you don’t have people dedicated to manage your e-mail marketing, you may want to outsource your email marketing to an email service provider. However, don’t get discouraged by what you may think are low email rates. A 10 percent open rate may be much higher due to how different email clients block images or other tracking-focused elements. Some ESPs can track metrics other than your open rate, such as activity (who clicked on a link in your email, for example).

MANAGING YOUR LISTST

Your email list (obviously) is a very important element, and while you can purchase a list, renting may be a better way to go. Reputable list brokers will be able to work with you to target a specific group of recipients. Learn the difference between a “hard bounce” and a deliverability issue and work with your list broker, ESP or your internal email marketing manager on keeping your list “clean.”

LEGAL ISSUES

You have to have your physical address on your email, and you need to have an electronic option for recipients to unsubscribe to your emails. More on the CAN-SPAM act is available at www.ftc.gov/spam.

YOUR SUBJECT LINE AND CONTENT

KISS it (keep it simple, stupid). Your keywords should go at the start of your subject line. It should be short and to the point.  Try to avoid things that may trigger an email service’s spam filter, such as putting your subject line in ALL CAPS. Test your subject lines over time and track open rates to see which are most effective. Also test how your content renders on multiple email clients and devices.

Your content needs to be relevant to your target audience and includes a “call to action”. You need to know what your goals are for each email campaign and tailor your content to meet that goal. Educational content emails tend to be more successful than sales/promotional emails. In addition, emails with video tend to have higher open rates and interaction.

Attendees may download a free ebook about email marketing from Blue Sky Factory.

The event sponsors were Administaff and RCD & Associates. Special thanks to Inox restaurant and Falcon Print and Copy.

ThinkBusiness Media’s next Ready, Set … Grow event will be in April. Watch this blog for more details in the coming weeks.

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Are Your Blinders Still On?

For several months now I have been getting back into the “deal mode.” In the last four months I have visited more than 15 business owners scattered around the country and the theme is almost always the same. “My business was fine, I paid my bills on time…my customers disappeared.” Following that statement would come the notion that if the owner could “raise new money” or “find a new debt source” all would be well.

Rarely does adding debt save the day. I don’t mean small amounts over short periods of time. I mean big chunks of money where the idea is that next years’ performance will make it possible to pay back the big chunk.

The part I want you to focus on is not that out of desperation someone is willing to borrow more, even at higher costs, just to build that bridge to the future next year when the recovery will make everything all right. You see…the recovery people expect isn’t coming. THIS economy will actually get worse before it gets better.

GET YOUR BLINDERS OFF.

When you feel sick, maybe with the flu, deep down inside you know as you take your medicine that soon you will feel better. You have been sick before and you got better, so you comfort your aching body by having your mind think about that recovery just around the corner. It works for almost everyone for almost every illness. It gets a little rougher when it is a long term problem like getting a new hip or knee, or suffering a more serious ailment. When it turns out you have something really bad, something that could be terminal…you start acting differently…you realize you might not recover.

I am proponent of positive thinking. But it has to be reality based positive thinking. The economy did not catch a cold. America has a potentially terminal economic illness. And you better act accordingly. You can survive when you do everything you can, as fast as you can…to survive. That starts with taking your blinders off. If your child acts out you scold them…if you find drug paraphernalia you better step up the actions taken to correct the situation. Five pounds overweight, maybe you should skip dessert a few days. Fifty pounds overweight calls for quite a different action.

This is the new economy. People have less buying power. People are actually changing their philosophy about spending frivolously on “stuff.” The slower spending comes from less available credit and a new “less stuff” philosophy…get used to it. We will be here for several years before people will change again. We didn’t have a “scare” in this country, we woke up to the reality that we might have a terminal economic illness. Short term hope based on a short term recovery will most likely put you out of business.

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