We tried it once and it was a failure is the epitaph of many email campaigns. The reason for the failure is right there, as clear as a bell. They only tried it ONCE! So there wasn t any long-term expectation of success in the first place, there wasn t any phased mailing schedule that could be measured in a realistic manner, but the main failing was that they simply gave up. So lets describe the component parts of a successful emailing strategy so that you can replicate its success for yourself. Tip #1 Plan For Success A one-time mail blast is doomed to failure. You must plan a long-term strategy that will engage your prospects in a continuous conversation over the months ahead. One mailing per month is an ideal interval because you don t want to overwhelm your prospect with information, yet you want to keep them involved. You need to decide on the overall theme of the mailing plan... 1. Choose the products that have the highest number of unique selling points (USP) and generate the highest return on investment (ROI) for the buyer. 2. Detail all the reasons why your customers bought these products and what problems these products solved for the customer. 3. Request case studies and commendations from your customers. Now you will be able to write to your prospects with a range of stories and reasons that will truly motivate them to buy from you. Now the hard bit, sorry! You need to determine the typical annual revenue ($AnnualRevenue) that a new customer will generate in their first year for your selected product range. Then estimate the prospect to customer conversion rate (Conversion%). If you are clueless on what percentage to expect, start with a 1% conversion rate and see how Mark Mogridge - bizmarketing 2010 - www.dotbizmarketing.biz Page 1 of 5
that works out. Now to forecast your return on your investment (ROI%) for this strategy calculate as follows... #Prospects x Conversion% = #Customers #Customers x $AnnualRevenue =$GrossRevenue $GrossRevenue - $CostOfSales = $GrossProfit $GrossRevenue $CostOfSales x 100 = ROI% Now you have something to measure against and you can adjust the expectations to match reality as you go along. Tip #2 Enhance Other Marketing Activities If you can afford it, email should be just part of the marketing mix. Use email to support and enhance your Social Media campaigns, as well as your offline media campaigns such as press advertising and PR. And you can also use the offline media to support and add weight to your online activities. Tip #3 Only Target Those Who Are Most Likely To Buy From You With regards to target data selection, there are two myths that need to be debunked. The first is that you have to email 1,000,000 s of contacts to be successful. The other myth is that you should be highly selective and target only a few 100 people using incredibly complicated selection criteria. Ridiculous! The real world solution is to profile your ideal customers and to find as many prospects as you can that match that profile. The reasoning being that your best customers earn the highest revenue and give you the least hassle, so why not get more customers just like that? Tip #4 Use Gentle Repetition This is the secret key to successful email marketing. You may never have thought of it like this before but here is why gentle repetition works... 1. Emailing is a respectful one-2-one relationship building exercise that builds trust between the parties. Mark Mogridge - bizmarketing 2010 - www.dotbizmarketing.biz Page 2 of 5
2. You have the opportunity to put forward different reasons for buying your solution each time you email them. 3. Each time you contact the prospect you actually increase the chances of them showing an interest in your offering. In the right hands, emailing is a sophisticated sales medium. Tip #5 Get It Read First you have to get the email through to the recipient! Spam filters pretend that you got the email ID wrong but they are lying! Just avoid scoring spam points with words like free and offer. The annoying thing is that the nature of my business means that every email I write is littered with spam words like email and guarantee! Anyway try and avoid and these 200+ spam words too... http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm You can also have your email scored for spam attributes at Lyris... http://www.lyris.com/resources/index/ One other thing is to check the email ID before you hit the send button. Have a look at this excellent site http://www.serviceobjects.com/hot-topics/email-validation and use their 15-day free trial. The next thing is to keep the size of the email under 40K, so don t attach files and images. Also make sure there is a physical address and an opt-out link in the email. Finally, the subject line will make a big difference to the response rates so keep it honest and make it personally beneficial for the recipient. For example if you are emailing car rental companies use How car rental companies are benefiting from our services... Mark Mogridge - bizmarketing 2010 - www.dotbizmarketing.biz Page 3 of 5
Tip #6 Keep It Simple The plan is to get to the point right away, tell them... Why you are writing Why they will benefit from the solutions you are offering Where they can find out more How they can reach you Above all, avoid heavy HTML emails, just stick to stylized text and use the minimum number of images. Keep the paragraphs short and conversational. Nobody wants a heavy sales pitch; you are just getting to know each other, so keep it friendly! Tip #7 Encourage Feedback Provide a download of something educational, such as a whitepaper. Mmm this seems familiar! Encourage the recipient to download the whitepaper and in return ask them to fill in a survey which tells you how they feel about your products and when they are looking to buy. Ask them to view your website, connect to you at LinkedIn, join your Facebook and follow your Twits. Nowadays you can track all these activities and log them in your marketing database. So encourage them to click click click! Tip #8 Measure and Adjust Track every single mouse click. This is possible with today s technology. We can track their email reads, their whitepaper deliveries, their registrations, their profile answers, their website click-thros and which pages they viewed, which of your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter broadcasts they were interested in, even which GoogleAdWords they clicked thro on. All this will tell you how interested each prospect is in buying from you. Mark Mogridge - bizmarketing 2010 - www.dotbizmarketing.biz Page 4 of 5
Now re-calculate the formulas in Tip #1 with the actual figures and see how successful you were. Except you will work out the conversion rate as follows... 3 #Customers #Prospects x 100 = Conversion% There will be areas for improvement, there always are. So when you are talking to your prospects ask them what inspired them to contact you and what they didn t like about your offer and emails. And if more than a couple of people mention the same thing, act upon it. Bonus Tip... Re-read Tip #4 and repeat Tips #5 thro #8... ad infinitum... Mark Mogridge - bizmarketing 2010 - www.dotbizmarketing.biz Page 5 of 5