DorisRon
Member
Three Pillars of successful e-mail marketing
Quality e-mail marketing can get much greater return on investment than any traditional banner advertising and even advertising with pay per click. Therefore, marketers with good skills in e-mail marketing can get more sales and thus profits for their companies.
On some level, even bad e-mail marketing can be effective. Ask the millions of spammers endlessly sending out billions of messages, about it. About five years ago, the International Institute of Computer Science with the guys from the University of California in San Diego have estimated that spammers can earn about $ 7000 a day.
It becomes clear that e-mail marketing is powerful. It is able to drive traffic to your site, keep the customers involved and help businesses sell more. But there are three fundamental things that will make your e-mail marketing the most effective:
a clear purpose;
informative and useful content;
careful measurement and testing.
E-mail marketing should have the goal
About 100 years ago, the legendary ad man John Wanamaker said, "Half of the advertising costs I waste. The problem is that I do not know which half." It is interesting that this quote is usually pops up when it comes to marketing, e-commerce or web design. And often owners of small businesses remember it, saying that advertising is a mystery. Therefore, it is impossible to measure, and hence improve, make it more effective and simply properly controlled. As if this is only a sleight of hand, and no science.
But this is nonsense. With very few exceptions, any advertising activity can be measured. The problem of those who love this quote by Wanamaker, is that they start measurement of marketing campaigns without understanding their goals. Before you write an e-mail to the buyer, or even create a form to subscribe to the newsletter mailing on the website, you should clearly understand all the problems of your e-mail marketing.
Obviously, there are several main reasons for sending the letter: to share the news and educational content, to achieve loyalty, to invite people to the event, to attract traffic to a website, to sell a product or service, etc. But what is your specific goal? Before you create a letter, think about the result that you want.
Always ask yourself this question, working on a separate letter and a strategy of e-mail marketing in general. Here are a few examples of potential problems:
to increase profits;
to increase the number of repeat purchases;
to increase the number of loyal customers;
to help customers solve a particular problem.
Your goal should define your content
Once you have set the task to your e-mail marketing, begin planning the content. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of repeat customers, use the content that will attract repeat purchases. This problem dictates the use of content personalization. If you sell frequently used products, you can write your buyers reminder letters. Perhaps they just have a lack of socks, shampoo or toothpaste.
Help in solving a specific problem - this is another task that requires a completely different content. If the problem of your e-mail marketing is to increase the number of new customers, then it is best to offer products in combination with useful, entertaining content. Thus, buyers will get a regular dose of useful information, getting acquainted with the products of your brand.
First, determine what the content for distribution will be, and then increase the list
Before you build a mailing list, you already have to decide on your marketing goals and relevant content to these goals. If you do it in that order, you can make it clear to potential subscribers, what to expect from your letters.
For example, in the form on a cosmetics online-shop there is the promice to send useful information to e-mail after subscription. This subscription form gives the visitor an approximate understanding of what he will receive in the newsletter. So, obviously, the guys in the online shop already know what kind of content they are going to send out to your subscribers.
Content of e-mailing should meet your promises
By subscribing to a newsletter, people expect to receive information about products, promotions and special offers. But imagine that they begin to receive emails with political content, for example, in support of a candidate. It can not just surprise, but also frustrates subscribers very much.
But it happens. A similar case happened with an American manufacturer of shoes in 2015. Promising to send a newsletter with news and information about their products, the company once sent to subscribers a letter of supporting contradictory positions on environmental issues in one of the American states. Not all the recipients of the letter agreed with this position. Some people even began to call with discontent about this to retail stores where they bought the shoes of the company. As a result, one of the retailers involved in the sale of shoes from this manufacturer, withdrew all goods of the brand from the sale, what reduced its annual sales to nearly half a million dollars.
Moral of the story is simple: provide in the mailing the content that you promised to the subscribed customers.
Measuring and testing
So, the quotation of John Wanamaker, referred to above, should be safely ignored. Measuring of e-mail marketing is not just possible, but necessary for an understanding of how well it works. Here we return to the goals that you had set at the beginning. If your goal was to increase the number of repeat purchases, did you manage to do this? How are the subscribers of your mailing list predisposed for the second purchase, and do they become regular customers?
Test the individual elements of efficiency of your letter. How well is the theme of your letters, fonts and multimedia content? Answers to these questions can help you to improve your e-mail marketing.
Understanding of the basic components of a successful e-mail marketing can open up to you the full potential of this valuable channel of marketing communications on the way to achieving your business goals.
Quality e-mail marketing can get much greater return on investment than any traditional banner advertising and even advertising with pay per click. Therefore, marketers with good skills in e-mail marketing can get more sales and thus profits for their companies.
On some level, even bad e-mail marketing can be effective. Ask the millions of spammers endlessly sending out billions of messages, about it. About five years ago, the International Institute of Computer Science with the guys from the University of California in San Diego have estimated that spammers can earn about $ 7000 a day.
It becomes clear that e-mail marketing is powerful. It is able to drive traffic to your site, keep the customers involved and help businesses sell more. But there are three fundamental things that will make your e-mail marketing the most effective:
a clear purpose;
informative and useful content;
careful measurement and testing.
E-mail marketing should have the goal
About 100 years ago, the legendary ad man John Wanamaker said, "Half of the advertising costs I waste. The problem is that I do not know which half." It is interesting that this quote is usually pops up when it comes to marketing, e-commerce or web design. And often owners of small businesses remember it, saying that advertising is a mystery. Therefore, it is impossible to measure, and hence improve, make it more effective and simply properly controlled. As if this is only a sleight of hand, and no science.
But this is nonsense. With very few exceptions, any advertising activity can be measured. The problem of those who love this quote by Wanamaker, is that they start measurement of marketing campaigns without understanding their goals. Before you write an e-mail to the buyer, or even create a form to subscribe to the newsletter mailing on the website, you should clearly understand all the problems of your e-mail marketing.
Obviously, there are several main reasons for sending the letter: to share the news and educational content, to achieve loyalty, to invite people to the event, to attract traffic to a website, to sell a product or service, etc. But what is your specific goal? Before you create a letter, think about the result that you want.
Always ask yourself this question, working on a separate letter and a strategy of e-mail marketing in general. Here are a few examples of potential problems:
to increase profits;
to increase the number of repeat purchases;
to increase the number of loyal customers;
to help customers solve a particular problem.
Your goal should define your content
Once you have set the task to your e-mail marketing, begin planning the content. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of repeat customers, use the content that will attract repeat purchases. This problem dictates the use of content personalization. If you sell frequently used products, you can write your buyers reminder letters. Perhaps they just have a lack of socks, shampoo or toothpaste.
Help in solving a specific problem - this is another task that requires a completely different content. If the problem of your e-mail marketing is to increase the number of new customers, then it is best to offer products in combination with useful, entertaining content. Thus, buyers will get a regular dose of useful information, getting acquainted with the products of your brand.
First, determine what the content for distribution will be, and then increase the list
Before you build a mailing list, you already have to decide on your marketing goals and relevant content to these goals. If you do it in that order, you can make it clear to potential subscribers, what to expect from your letters.
For example, in the form on a cosmetics online-shop there is the promice to send useful information to e-mail after subscription. This subscription form gives the visitor an approximate understanding of what he will receive in the newsletter. So, obviously, the guys in the online shop already know what kind of content they are going to send out to your subscribers.
Content of e-mailing should meet your promises
By subscribing to a newsletter, people expect to receive information about products, promotions and special offers. But imagine that they begin to receive emails with political content, for example, in support of a candidate. It can not just surprise, but also frustrates subscribers very much.
But it happens. A similar case happened with an American manufacturer of shoes in 2015. Promising to send a newsletter with news and information about their products, the company once sent to subscribers a letter of supporting contradictory positions on environmental issues in one of the American states. Not all the recipients of the letter agreed with this position. Some people even began to call with discontent about this to retail stores where they bought the shoes of the company. As a result, one of the retailers involved in the sale of shoes from this manufacturer, withdrew all goods of the brand from the sale, what reduced its annual sales to nearly half a million dollars.
Moral of the story is simple: provide in the mailing the content that you promised to the subscribed customers.
Measuring and testing
So, the quotation of John Wanamaker, referred to above, should be safely ignored. Measuring of e-mail marketing is not just possible, but necessary for an understanding of how well it works. Here we return to the goals that you had set at the beginning. If your goal was to increase the number of repeat purchases, did you manage to do this? How are the subscribers of your mailing list predisposed for the second purchase, and do they become regular customers?
Test the individual elements of efficiency of your letter. How well is the theme of your letters, fonts and multimedia content? Answers to these questions can help you to improve your e-mail marketing.
Understanding of the basic components of a successful e-mail marketing can open up to you the full potential of this valuable channel of marketing communications on the way to achieving your business goals.