Newsletters or SPAM? We all hate SPAM. Email is such an effective means of communication that it is surely unthinkable not to use email to communicate with our prospects and customers. But no-one wants to be labelled a spammer; so how can email be used effectively whilst avoiding the spammer tag? To illustrate the beautiful simplicity of e-mail marketing, it takes just five building blocks to make the difference between Spam and an excellent email marketing strategist. Let s face it: The whole point of communicating with customers and prospects by email is because, ultimately, we want the recipients to buy our products. You may send emails to nurture a prospect or keep in touch with a customer, but long-term the aim is to get the prospect to buy their first product, and the existing customer to place a repeat order. Now think about your own inbox. You probably don t mind getting an email with a message that conveys a useful fact or two. The email may promote something you are vaguely thinking of buying, or maybe some information about a product or service you use. At the other end of the scale, there are the emails that you receive but don t even think of reading. They simply get deleted. Getting your emails opened (AND read) Perhaps ask yourself this question before you click SEND to launch your next bulk email: Is this email relevant to each person in the distribution list? Look at it from the other side and imagine you are the recipient of your own emails. Compare your emails to the stuff that clogs up your own inbox. How does it compare? Would you open it and read it? Making emails relevant is a huge challenge. On the one hand the email should be written in such a way that it communicates directly with the recipient. On the other hand, sending the email to several people seems to sabotage this principle. This means, in many cases, the emails become too general and the content suffers as a result. We clearly cannot send each recipient an individually crafted email; this would take far too long, especially if you sell a low-value / high-volume product. Yet the message should be about benefits of a product or service the individual recipient is interested in. The solution is market segmentation: Finding a group of people who have similar needs and buying characteristics. If you want to send each individual a message that is relevant to them, it means you have to have many lists each list with a group of people who share the same interest. Big companies have the resources and marketing departments to segment their markets, and create lists of people who have the same characteristics. To survive, smaller businesses have to up their game. To implement this is easier than you d expect. By using the 5 building blocks revealed in this article, you can make a start at catching up with big business. Maybe you won t win a marketing award this year, but this will give you a platform to build on, while your business continues to grow.
5 Building Blocks to creating a successful email marketing strategy Building Block 1: People buy from people they know, like and trust. Building Block 2: Create a product stack one product block building on the other with a marketing plan for each product in the stack. Building Block 3: People who spend as little as 1 with you are 8 times more likely to buy from you again. Building Block 4: Be patient. Don t try to sell your most expensive product by email on day one. Building Block 5: Automate. Building block 1: People buy from people they know, like and trust How you apply the age-old sales mantra is what makes the difference. But surely you cannot get to know every customer? Using the internet, social media and PR you can easily address the know part. If your market is local, go to networking events and get to know people. Seek-out a marketing person who can help you with announcements in publications relevant to your industry. It may seem that that the like element is logically next in-line. But I d suggest that you can build trust first. And one of the easiest ways of doing this is by giving your prospects something for free. Not just a gimmicky trinket, but something of value. Make sure that the product you give away (physical goods or information) is in the product stack referred to in the next building block. Consider a PDF with information, a white paper, or if you sell physical goods, a low-cost item in your range. Rule 1 Make sure you get at least the prospect s email address when you give something away. Rule 2 Consider the friction factor when you ask them to part with details. Is the value so high that they will part with name, telephone, email and physical address? If not, revert to major principle 1, and build trust by getting the minimum perhaps a first name and email address. Once they know and trust you, they will eventually give you the other details. If you are not sure whether giving something away for free is a good idea, think about your cost per lead. How many leads do you need to create a new customer 10, 100, 1,000? Say your marketing spend per year (to generate 100 leads) is 1,000. That means that your cost per lead is 10. So NOW, are you prepared to give away something for 2 to obtain a lead? Building block 2: Create a product stack Design a series of products that start with something that is free. Then build on this with a series of steps, until you reach the top step, or your ultimate product. A general description of the stack may be:
- Free - Nearly Free - Bronze - Silver - Gold - Platinum Examples of products in this range will differ in each business. Even two businesses in the exact same market will come up with a different stack. You can of course have fewer (or more) products in the stack. A simple real-life example of this is to think of cars, and how they are sold. The free give-away is to allow you to drive a car for a weekend. A dealership may then offer you a car service for 150, even if you didn t buy the car from them. When you are ready to buy a new car, you can choose from a 1- litre carbon conscious car, right up to a monster 4-litre gas guzzler, all with various levels of trim and accessories. Car dealers would not get very far if they simply sold the high-end vehicles, yet as SME business owners, we often say to our customers: This is what we sell do you want it or not? Building block 3: It s 8 times easier to sell to an active customer than it is to get a new customer Research conducted by Internet marketing gurus Andy Jenkins and Paul Lemberg found that even if someone spends just 1, they are 8 times more likely to buy from you. Building block 3 alone is good reasoning to have a nearly free product: Something that is cheap enough that it does not even warrant a second thought (think how easy it is to spend 1.79 for an iphone app). Instantly this customer has become 8 times more likely to buy another product from you. On a psychological level, what happens is that the customer crosses a trust threshold by buying something from you. One way you can create a sale is by partnering with a charity. Then, on your free download page, prompt the web visitor to part with 1, and a promise to donate 1 of your own money as well. This creates trust, and you have also instantly made it several times more likely that they will buy from you again. A note of caution: There are laws governing charity donations, so make sure you are up to speed with this. Building block 4: Be patient. Don t try to sell your most expensive product via email on day one. Work out your product stack, and consider how long it will take to move a customer from the bottom to the top. Each product in the stack will have its own lead time, and only a certain number of low-cost customers will convert to the next product in the stack the so-called conversion rate. Maybe a customer gets stuck at the bronze stage; this is fine. Just recognise that they are in a different market segment, and promote suitable products to them.
I often see marketing emails with multiple ideas, for multiple target customers with the hope that the very diligent reader picks out the message meant for them. The reality is that after the first nontargeted message, the reader has already switched off. Work out the benefits of each product in your stack, and communicate the benefits clearly to an audience who would like to know more about it. You can always up-sell later, as your customers show increasing levels of trust and like. (Remember, people buy from people they know, like, and trust). Monitor your unsubscribe rates. If unsubscribe rates get too high, you stand the chance of being blacklisted as a spammer, or blocked by your email provider. It is a clear indication that your email content is not relevant (to the target group), or that the frequency is too high. There is no right or wrong in terms of frequency. A stock market product will probably send an email on a daily basis, maybe even multiple times per day. Anywhere from one to three months is probably average but it depends entirely on your market, and the relevance of the email landing in your customer s inbox. Building block 5: Automate Once you have worked out your product stack, it is time to start writing. Writing may not be your thing, so this is possibly the time to enlist the help of a marketing person or a copywriter. They will also have ideas about the language to use to engage the reader. You should have a page for each product in the stack, explaining the benefits of each. This may seem obvious, but I ll hazard a guess that if you have not thought about your product stack before, some re-design may be in order. Finally, most importantly, you need a page that promotes your free product, with a sign-up box where you can capture name, telephone and email address (and additional details, depending on the friction factor referred to earlier). Let s say you have your first subscriber. How do you make sure they don t fall between the cracks? The answer is to have a series of pre-written emails in an auto-responder. The emails are then automatically sent at pre-determined intervals, from the date when the subscriber signed up. These emails should be relevant, and share engaging stories, rather than being simply an advert for your latest product. Perhaps a testimonial about how your product helped a customer. Once you have built up some trust, you may then be comfortable enough to include a special offer. Create this type of automation for every product in your product stack, and watch your profits grow. Conclusion Continual communication is the key to building the kind of customer loyalty that translates into repeat, and increasing, business. Once a web visitor signs up for a free download, they have confirmed to you that they are interested in your business and what you have to offer. Using carefully crafted email campaigns, you can find
out which products they are interested in, and separate the intellectually curious from the commercially serious. Want to know more? I am hosting an email marketing workshop in March that will give you a 10-point action plan to go and implement the concepts talked about in this article. Is it for you? You can view feedback from previous sessions and see where and when the next workshop is taking place.