Email Marketing
Leave It To Us
WE CREATE AND DELIVER EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR CLIENTS. THIS IS STILL A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TOOL IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING ARMOURY.
ESTABLISHING KEY OBJECTIVES
Like all strategies, it is important to clarify the key objectives you wish to deliver through email marketing campaigns before doing anything else. It might be that you wish to generate sales or create leads, or build relationships by demonstrating thought leadership credentials.
If a client wishes to generate leads, then we need to find and/or purchase data. How we go about doing this is dependent upon their type of business and the channels through which they sell their products and services.
Sometimes, the best bet is to go datamining on the internet. This involves desk-based activities such as researching contact details on websites, directories, membership bodies and social media. Although this type of activity is not necessarily best practice, on a small scale where you are looking for relevant leads in the B2B arena, it is acceptable.
Alternatively, it might be preferable to purchase data from a reputable source, such as Marketing File. They are the UK’s largest online source of business and consumer data. There are also specialist providers if you wish to target specific industry sectors – for instance, Binley’s is the UK’s leading provider of B2B healthcare data. And there are many other ways to find good quality up-to-date data too – such as from industry magazines or exhibition organisers. Be warned. There are lots of bad data sources too.
EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM
You need an email marketing platform for setting up, running and managing email campaigns, such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, both of which deliver robust, scalable, cost-effective solutions.
The basic premise with all marketing activities is to make the content as personal as possible. Customised, timely and relevant messages are always likely to increase impact. But sending too many emails can be counterproductive too, so finding the right balance is an important goal.
The next consideration is to maximise the likelihood that emails will be received by recipients. Just about all of us receive unsolicited emails, some of which can be potential harmful. There are various safeguards that companies have in place to identify high risk email to prevent it from entering into their systems. They automatically place medium-risk emails in a junk email folder. There are a number of ways to set up an email campaign to minimise its spam rating, and these rules should always be strictly adhered to.
DESIGN AND CONTENT
After this, one needs to look at the design and content of the email. Most emails are built in HTML and include logos, images, video, photographs, headlines, calls to action, social media links, and content.
It is extremely unlikely that any graphic devices will automatically display on receipt because of the security settings set by the company or individual. Users have to complete a manual process to display these graphics, so it is important that they trust the company who is sending them the email, especially if they have not directly signed up to receive communications from them, so above-the-fold is especially important to find a way to deliver a credible first impression, such as the subject title and the ‘From’ email address you use.
These emails should be designed in such a way as to support the brand proposition, to ensure a consistent and professional image that delivers a credible first impression. That being said, it is worth testing a more minimalistic approach, and we have seen great success with simple text emails featuring a URL link to the client’s website that have almost no branding or imagery whatsoever, other than perhaps a company logo and social media icons in the email signature.
TESTING IMPROVES PERFORMANCE
As with all marketing activities, testing is crucial.
You can test just about anything when it comes to email marketing. Designs and content, promotional offers, times of the day, data segments, and so on. Testing is the cornerstone of improvement, continually identifying ways to enhance strategies and tactics.
Performance can be measured in terms of open rates, click through rates and call to action conversions. As always, the measurement criteria need to be relevant to the objectives of the campaign.