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Alex - Alexandros Poulos is Covisio's Managing Director and co-founder. He enjoys technology marketing, innovative thinking, and living by the sea.
Alex is the main contributor of the On the Scene marketing blog.
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Email Marketing – Still Friend or Foe? (Part II)
Following up to my discussion on the value (or lack thereof) of email marketing in today’s environment from an earlier blog posting, here are the six things you definitely need to have thought through before launching an email campaign.
1. Goal. “What is it in for ALL?” Don’t forget that email is a touch point for potential and existing customers. You are actually reaching people out there, who may actually take time out of their busy schedule to read what you wrote to them. Never bug these people without a clear goal in mind for you but also for them. So, make sure you are prepared to bring real and tangible value to your recipients to make it worth their time and interest. Having a goal is also key to being able to measure the performance of your campaign afterwards.
2. List. Send your email message to a list that is both opted-in and highly-targeted to what you are offering. Interrupting via email without having the recipient’s permission is one of the quickest ways to alienate prospects and customers, says email marketing consultant Simms Jenkins, author of The Truth about Email Marketing (FT Press, 2008) in a recent Marketing Profs article. Same applies when your message is not in line with the needs and profiles of your list members.
3. Content. You need to be able to convey value that makes an important and immediate difference to your recipients. And you need to do that in a clear and concise manner with actual proof points that what you are talking about is tangible and not marketing fluff. Also, make it easy for your recipients to engage with you via clear calls to action, specific landing pages, and options to interact online.
4. Tactics. There is a tremendous amount of empirical research and best practices on the web covering subject lines, “from” lines, optimal sizes of messages, message formats and layouts, availability of text versions of messages, best days/times to send emails, and detailed ways to test your email campaign to name a few. These do make a difference, so please follow them.
5. Metrics. Unless you measure it, you cannot improve on it. Marketing needs to be able to justify its ROI, so measuring the performance of email campaigns is not a nice-to-have, but a must-have. You should track bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and costs per conversion, and then optimize accordingly. And you should track these metrics for each target audience or emailing list you are going after.
6. Respect. Make sure you are honest and clear in your email message, you leave no room in the language you use to potentially trick or deceive your recipients, you support Sender Policy Framework (SPF) in your DNS, and you adhere to all types of compliance defined in the CAN-SPAM act. This is not a detail, it is as important as respect is for successful business relationships.