Effective Email Marketing

You send out email marketing bulletin to your audience. But do they open up your piece? If so, when? How often? Tracking is necessary.

Email marketing remains one of the cheapest marketing medium any businesses can rely on. The best part of all, your promotions can reach into the person’s inbox which is as good as getting into the person’s premises and be able to introduce your product. However, you must agree that no matter how cheap it is, it doesn’t mean you can throw your money anyhow and not care about the outcome. It may not turn out as cheap after all.

But why is most businesses still reports of poor response to their emailers? And what can be done to address this issue?
There are several guidelines one need to observe. And when you deploy tracking mechanism, poor responses will be just history.

1. Match your products or services to the audience
2. Avoid “junk mail” label
3. Provide more info

1. Match your products or services to the audience
Suppose you’re interested in promoting your die-cut tool making machine, certainly reaching out to the people in the beauty industry is definitely out of the question.
But that also doesn’t mean you can promote to any manufacturing companies. Be specific. Shortlist the industries or companies that will be served best by your product.
Give them a call to find out.

2. Avoid “junk mail” label
The other advantage of finding out about your target audience is that you’ll be directed to the appropriate personnel. He may not be interested in your product but may do so in the future, so seek his permission to keep him updated of your promotions. Obtain his full name and email address.

Any emailer that is directed to a general inbox will receive less attention. And worst still, your email address and emailers might be labelled as junk mail and have no access to their inbox for future promotional emailers. So the next time you send an emailer, avoid the following:

To: admin@abc.com
Dear Sir/ Madam, we have a product you might be interested in.

Do this instead:

To: david@abc.com
Hi David, I have a great product that will serve you well in the future.

Tracking
Deploy an open-rate tracking in your emailer. Chances for David to open your emailer rate is very high. However if it’s otherwise, most likely he might not be interested in your offerings and as such should be omitted from your database. But before you do so, it’ll be better if you can call to ask David if there’s anyone else you can reach out to. That’s better than a junk emailer that will register a ZERO opening rate.

3. Provide more info
Considering the little time David has everyday, make sure your emailer is concise and sharp. Don’t overload with heavy graphics and contents. Avoid attachments. Place all your messages on html. Have a back-up link in case he can’t view on his inbox.

Give just enough information and benefits. Attract him with “click here to find out more” or ” see what others are saying about our product”.  These links to your website is to give him further endorsement on your product.

Tracking
Deploy tracking on such buttons will give you an indication that David has some interest in your product. You may alert your sales team to give him a follow-up call.

Conclusion
Tracking results does not provide any indication that a buying process will take place. But you will gain insights if David is the right person to reach out to and have some interest in your product. With such capability the rate of closure is will be higher than ever imagined.

Case Study:
View our recent success with email marketing for a client.

Further readings:
1. Best Practises For Bulletproof E-Mail delivery
2. Stop E-Mail Marketing from Resembling Spam

DezignQuest (DQ), a creative design agency in Singapore that assist clients in all their marketing effort on print and online. The agency also supports all email marketing effort from consultation to planning, creative development to email blast and tracking reports. Visit www.dezignq.com for more info.