A study by Weber Shandwick found that while 73% of Fortune 100 manage a total of 540 Twitter accounts, 76% “tweet infrequently” while 52% were “not actively engaged.”

The statistics mentioned are not surprising to us – in the early days we personally dedicated a huge number of hours per day in managing our own profiles. Businesses know they can benefit from social media profiles and speedily set up their profiles then fail to ‘tweet regularly due to the time commitment. The 73% “Tweet infrequently” statistic is therefore not a surprise. Over the last few months we have worked hard on creating a solution that can actively assist Businesses with their profile management.

A New Mobilize Mail Service – Social Media Solution

Mobilize Mail has a new service now online. Our social media solution actively manages your business social networking profiles, via automated rules set up to push information to your profiles (twitter, facebook) from your blog or website. Our social media solution can also be integrated with your email marketing so your newsletters can also be generated and delivered automatically.

Our Social Media Solution is perfect for Businesses. They can now manage their Twitter and Facebook profiles efficiently without committing hours in manual management. We know the future of marketing is with social media and our solution enables all Businesses to participate effectively.

For more information on our Social Media Solution contact Donna – via our Quote page click here

Subject Line & Senders Detail
There is no simple template to follow to ensure higher response to your emails however we can offer you some wisdom below when looking at your subject line.

Bad examples of a subject line are:

“Monthly Newsletter”

This subject line doesn’t provide any information as to what the newsletter is about and whom it is from.

“Special Offer $10 Off – Buy Today!!!!!”

This subject line contains a dollar sign and exclamation marks. Both of these will cause the newsletter to have a high chance of being blocked by a spam filter.

Below we set out some factors that contribute to a winning subject line.

Length:
Shorter subject lines seemed to work better than long subject lines. It is often enough to communicate the value of opening an email.

“Have the best holiday in the World!”

A long subject line is better for information-based emails where the subscribers are expecting or “know” the sender well. There are reports that an email campaign with a long subject line written well can sometimes provide smaller open rates but a large percentage of click throughs to opens. The logic to that statement is due to subscribers using the subject line to decide whether to open the email or not. Those that do open the email have seen something in the subject line that they are interested in hence the high click throughs.

“Best-value holidays in Argentina; European accommodation cost-saving tips; and win a trip to Hawaii”

But subject line length should not be driven by some arbitrary word or character limit. Therefore, use as few characters as you can while still allowing the subject line to do its job.

A winning subject line is as short as it can be while still achieving its objective.

Objectives:
You cannot set about writing a subject line until you know what that subject line should achieve. The main objective is not only to get people to “open the email”, but to clearly set out the objective of the email (eg new event, special offer, etc).

Therefore your subject line is looking to generate Recognition, Interest and Action.

• Recognition: Your subscribers need to recognise that the email is coming from you and is something they have subscribed to receive. If they don’t recognise the sender the email is more than likely to get ignored, deleted or worst of all, reported as spam.If your subscribers recognise the email then all the positive expectations and experiences you built up through your brand will come into play and encourage the subscriber to explore further.The most important contributions to remember are the sender name, subject line and what will appear in the preview panels (the top of your
  content of your email).
• Interest: This deals with sparking interest within the subscriber to open the email. Most subscribers scan down the subject lines in their inbox and
  subconsciously ask the question “Is it worth looking at what’s in this email now”.Your subject line needs to give them a reason to answer that question with a “yes”.

  But remember, the interest you generate must be rewarded by the actual content of the email. You do not want to raise expectations that you
  cannot meet and leave the subscriber disappointed.

• Action: The subject line should encourage some sort of action, for example a click, a purchase, a reply, etc.The main aim of the subject line is to create recognition and interest. But it can also pave the way for the action that you are looking form. But be careful, you do not want to weaken the subject line’s other objectives by going for a hard sell right away.

Branding:
If your main aim of the subject line is to ensure your email is recognised. It has been proven that subject lines with company names in them were recognised and opened. Put in your brand name, the newsletter name, your business name, etc whatever is likely to trigger your recognition most easily.

Recognition is not achieved through the subject line alone. Your subscribers viewing the email usually see a sender line, a subject line and a snippet of text or a preview pane.

The From/Subject/Preview Combination:
If your preview panel, pre-header text and from line are all set up to allow your subscribers to quickly recognise the email or sender, then you have more freedom to ignore the recognition issue in your subject line, you can leave out your company/brand name.

You can use a combination of brand recognition in the from line and the title to your newsletter in the subject line. For example:

Sender: Mobilizemail

Subject: Monthly News & Tips

If you are going to put your company name in the subject line, it is best practice to put it at the beginning so that it stands out and allows your subscribers to easily recognise you.

Personalisation:
Personalising the subject line potentially gets present subscribers attention and interest and can imply relevancy. But this also prevents a couple of problems.

Firstly a lot of spammers put first names in the subject line.

Secondly, you have to be sure that your data is accurate. There is nothing worse than addressing an email to the wrong person.

Surveys have shown that it is better to leave out personalisation in subject line in most case, apart from birthday greetings, reminders, surveys and similar messages (eg A special Birthday Wish for Marc from Company Name).

Copywriting and Inspiration:
There is no one single formula that guarantees success, but there are approaches and concepts that have proven useful in creating a good subject line.

Things to focus on are:

• A good subject line is driving interest first and action second
• Clearly state the offer
• Describe the subject of your email – the best subject lines tells what is inside
• A good clear concise, specific description of the emails contents

Remember if you use teasers in your subject line, and you do not deliver the reward or curiosity effectively, then it quickly turns to animosity.

You can also draw on insight from other parts of your business:

• What are the most popular Blog titles?
• In your Website, what are the calls to action that drives most clicks?
• What are your most successful headlines?

Another point to keep in mind is – what works in one campaign might bomb with the next, remember to find the right formula for each campaign.

Characters and words to avoid putting into your subject line:

• Avoid use of + and ?
• Avoid using exclamation points (!)
• Avoid using your email address again in the Subject Line
• Avoid using the same word twice in a Subject Line
• Avoid using similar words together (eg “offer” and “sale”)

Remember that it is past behaviour and receiving relevant and useful emails that drive future success, so think carefully about what you send.

HTML or Plain Text, or Both

Most email clients today have the ability to display HTML messages. We recommend that you still use the option to send your messages by both HTML and plain text.

We have discovered that some clients who have the ability to view emails in HTML have turned off this feature. Mobilize Mail has created an easy way for you to turn your HTML into a plain text version, by the push of a single button.

We have discovered that if clients have their HTML display turned off or cannot receive HTML emails, then the newsletter will either show up “blank” or as garbled HTML codes.

Point Emails to Landing Pages

If you have great animation, a movie or a flash file to show your subscribers, just send either a link or a clickable image to a “landing page” within your email content. A “landing page” works just like a normal web page so you can have all the fancy stuff like Flash, movies, ActiveX and JavaScript that will not work in the subscribers email application.

Location – Location – Location

Ensure the most compelling content should be at the top (and preferably the top left) of the email. A lot of people view emails in a preview pane without bothering to open the email message in full. That means you have about a couple of inches to entice your subscriber to open the entire message.

Below is a message viewed in Outlook 2007 with the right preview pane enabled – not much space eh!

And below is the same message viewed with the preview pane at the bottom.

And finally here is an email that used a big flash and expensive image at the top of their email to grab the subscribers attention.

Don’t forget up to 50% of your subscribers will view your message with images not displayed.

Test – Test – Test

We cannot talk enough about the need for testing before you send your subscribers an email. If you mess up too many times your subscribers will start unsubscribing.

Subscribers are now use to quality HTML emails with great content. To make sure your content looks good send test emails to yourself and even your workmates to get their feedback.

There are over 20 major email applications used by the bulk of people these days. Below are a few you would have heard about – note that each one will present your HTML email content differently.

1. AOL email application. Not of major use in New Zealand and Aus
2. Microsoft Outlook 2000/2003 and the dreaded destroyer of HTML – Outlook 2007
3. Microsoft Outlook Express
4. Mozilla Thunderbird
5. Apple Mail
6. Apple’s Entourage (Microsoft Outlook for Apple)
7. Lotus Notes
8. Eudora
9. Yahoo!Mail
10. Hotmail
11. Gmail

If you have access to these email applications then it would be a good idea to send your email content to each one to see how the email content looks. If you don’t have access to a range of email applications then contact us and for a small fee we can run your email content through our test lab and send you a test result report with helpful information.

Things Not To Do

Below is a list of what we consider to be no-no’s for your email content:

1. Do not at all cost send out an email whereby the only content is an image. Not only are most versions of email clients blocking images by default now (which means 100% of your content is invisible) but also you are almost guaranteed that the SPAM filters will block your emails.
2. Avoid being creative with your spelling, because the spammers do that all the time (how many m0rtg4ge refinac3 messages are in your inbox right now?). Even a simple word such as “fr’ee” will get you into trouble.
3. Going crazy with font sizes and colours. I could count on one hand the number of subscribers I know that enjoy receiving email content that
   looks like a child’s coloring-in book. Keep to at most 3 different colours and only increase the font size if you are presenting a heading.
4. Trying to make your HTML email work like a web page. You cannot send HTML forms, JavaScript, Flash or other embed objects within an email. Full stop.
5. Don’t try and send attachments. There has been a heighted alert to attachments containing viruses so the SPAM filters are very aggressive
   towards bulk commercial emails containing attachments.
6. Send content which offers no benefit to the subscriber. Seriously, would you be interested in an email that talked about how wonderful the sender was?
7. Always – always think before you send! Put yourself in the mind of your subscribers and ask yourself if you would find the content of interest. If you say no then imagine what your subscribers would think.
8. Test – Test – Test – Test. Send your email to yourself at least once before you send it to your subscribers. It really is worth the effort and it takes only a few mistakes with your subscribers to have them click the unsubscribe button.

How we can help you

Mobilize Mail provides email marketing services to New Zealand businesses including promotional landing pages, surveys, integration with third party applications, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to name a few. If you like the idea of having a professional New Zealand based team that you can ring and talk to then check out their web site here: www.MobilizeMail.com

If you would like more hints and tips please sign up to our monthly Email Marketing Hints and Tips – click here to subscribe (you can unsubscribe at anytime).

image by Swami Stream

Now that we have covered your email marketing strategy, the frequency of emailing your subscribers and tips on the content lets take a look at how to style and present your content to the subscriber.

Have you ever visited a businesses premises and seen the staff looking tired and poorly dressed? Did this affect how you perceive the business?

Having shoddy looking staff would mean that they provide a shoddy service – right?

Sending emails to your subscribers that contains shoddy email content has the same effect.

Subscribers today expect and do get very professional looking email content from businesses. The bar has been raised very high for professional looking emails due to the ability for email applications to present all manner of styles and formatting.

Your commercial emails represent you and your business so its vital that you present your business in a professional manner through your email content.

How do you achieve a professional looking email?

Below are some hints and tips for creating professional looking emails.

Email Width

Try and keep the width of your email template to about 500-600 pixels. Most subscribers will look at your email through their “preview pane” which is usually a small potion of their available computer screen (see image below).

Simple Layouts and Tables Work Best

You wouldn’t believe it (but its true) that every email application in existence will present your email content differently!

What is even more amazing is that an email application can present your email content differently between versions! For example Outlook 2003 has far better support for CSS that Outlook 2007! In fact Outlook 2007 broke many a fancy email template that looked beautiful in Outlook 2003.

Our advice is to keep the layout real simple by using HTML tables to position your content.

CSS in HTML Email

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a beautiful thing for web sites, but don’t put too much faith in it with HTML email. For instance, don’t expect DIVs to work, and forget CSS positioning. Always use Inline CSS for formatting.

What about Flash, JavaScript, ActiveX, movies and other fancy stuff?

Basically forget it.

Most email applications will not run these and most will be blocked by your subscriber’s anti-virus software applications even before the subscribers email application has a chance to reject it.

Fonts and Colours

Try and avoid at all costs USING CAPS and excessive punctuation with loads of different colours and fonts.

Unless you want to have your email content look like a children’s colouring-in book then avoid using excessive use of different colours. It looks unprofessional and spammy. Try and stick with 2-3 different colours within your content and use the colours to represent section/article headings or important information.

In regards to font styles and font sizes most email applications only support a limited amount of fonts. We recommend sticking with Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif and verdana and keep the font size between 8pts and 14pts.

Using Images within Email

Below are some interesting facts about using images within your email. The end result is to not rely anymore on the bulk of your subscribers viewing the images within your email content.

“Study Finds Emails of 23% of Retailers Are Completely Unintelligible When Images Are Blocked” Source

“A recent survey we ran to over 2,000 of our 300,000 strong customer base revealed 59% of regular e-newsletter readers had images blocked by default in their email program. A further 9% didn’t know whether they had them blocked or not.” Source

Make sure when you are creating your email content that the subscriber will be able to fully understand your message without images being displayed.

And a final tip of images is use “alt” text for all images and always includes the width and height so blank placeholder images don’t throw your design out when images are disabled.

Below is an image of an email application that has blocked images from being viewed. Notice the text in place of where the image should be – that’s the ALT text.

Some people are quite creative with their ALT text – for example:

“So you don’t want to see our great deal we have for you?”

Now for some people that might be enough reason to view the images!

Below is the same email content with image blocking turned off.

Amount of Content

Watch how much content you have within your email. Providing too much content can turn your subscribers off. It may remind them of the boring long-winded textbooks they had at school.

We recommend no more than an A4 page of content within your emails. If you have more content then use landing pages (see section below on landing pages for more information) or link to a web page on your web site that provides the full content.

You should only provide the first 1-2 paragraphs of each topic within your email content then provide a link to either a landing page, web page or a downloadable file that contains the whole content.

There are a few benefits to this approach:

1. The email content is compact and doesn’t scare the subscribers off from reading it.
2. All the “read more” links are tracked by our system so you can see what your subscribers are interested in via the email campaigns click statistics. This allows you to concentrate on providing content that is read by your subscribers.
3. If the entire content is provided on your web site then you have already moved them from the email to your web site where you can offer them more options and content.

Whats Next?

Next week we will continue with Part 4 of Email Marketing Best Practices. We will cover the science of email subject lines, sender address and personalisation.

Mobilize Mail provides email marketing services to New Zealand businesses including promotional landing pages, surveys, integration with third party applications, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to name a few. If you like the idea of having a professional New Zealand based team that you can ring and talk to then check out their web site here: www.MobilizeMail.com

If you would like more hints and tips please sign up to our monthly Email Marketing Hints and Tips – click here to subscribe (you can unsubscribe at anytime).

Now its time to work out what type of content you will be sending them that will not only stop them from unsubscribing but create a perception that encourages the subscriber to react the way you want them to.

The best approach we can recommend in order to provide great content to your subscribers is ask yourself the following two questions:

“What would I be interested in receiving?” and “What would I not be interested in receiving?”

Common sense in this area is fundamental to success. For example would your subscribers be really interested in an email that only contained the following:

1. How fantastic your product/service is.
2. How many awards your product has won.
3. How fantastic you are.
4. How bad your competitors are.
5. How fantastic you and your products/services are together.

Would you like to receive an email from a business that just contained sales talk?

We wouldn’t and we know most of your subscribers wouldn’t either.

What they would like however is:

1. Interesting and helpful information about the product/service they are interested in hearing about.
2. Great deals on your products/services.
3. Other news or information covering the topic of interest. For example if you are providing information about computers then a good idea is to supply information about topics that would be of interest such as the latest virus or the latest gadget.

A Word on Personalisation

Personalisation can be very powerful when used within email content. For example using “Hello Marc” instead of just plain “Hello” gives a perception of intimacy with the subscriber and makes the subscriber feel that the message is purely for them.

However you can quickly go over the top with personalisation and in fact scare the subscriber off! For example if you are a mortgage broker and through legitimate means you knew if your subscribers had mortgages with the top banks:

“Hello Marc,
Since you live in Wellington, New Zealand and have a mortgage with BNZ we would like to offer…”

Now as a subscriber would you be worried about what the mortgage broker is doing with your private data?

Research conducted by the College of Business at the University of Illinois on the subject of personalisation within emails further enforces our recommendation.

1. Displaying a recipient’s personal information just for the sake of it can backfire: recipients may feel threatened.
2. If you do display personal data, only do so where there is an explicit connection between this data and the email’s content. Like this:
   “As a resident of Wellington, we’d like to invite you to the opening of our new store in town.”
3. The more useful your emails, the more recipients tolerate sub-optimal practices.
4. Most important:Personalisation is more about tailoring your email’s content based on what you know about the recipient (demographics, past clickthrough behavior, purchase records etc.) and less about showing off to recipients how much you know about them.

Placement of Important Information within Your Email

When thinking about the content for your email campaign we suggest you prioritise the different topics in order of their importance. The more important the topic the closer to the top of the email it should be.

Research has found that information “above the fold” will have higher clickthrough rate than information at the bottom of the email. It makes sense but not many people put it into practice.

“Above the Fold” is a term used to define the part of the email that appears in the preview pane of an email client (see image above for an example).

Subscribe for more great information!

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We recommend for commercial emails not to have a weekly mail-out frequency. If you do then be prepared to see your mailing list quickly dry up. Ask yourself if you would like to hear from a business every week.

A fortnightly mail-out frequency is risky but if you have great content that your subscribers love more than their family pet then go for it.

However based on our experience a monthly mail-out frequency is standard and generally the expected norm. This does not let you off the hook in terms of providing great content – that is still very much expected from your subscribers.

When you setup a mailing list within your account make sure you add in the “List Description” field the mail-out frequency so your subscribers know what they are letting themselves in for. The “List Description” field is mentioned in the confirmation emails the subscriber receives.

Subscribe for more great information!

To receive email marketing hints and tips direct to your inbox each month click here to subscribe (you can unsubscribe at anytime).

When you send an email from your business to your subscribers you are in fact presenting your business officially to each subscriber. How the subscriber views your email will decide how the subscriber also views your business. An email that contains sloppy formatting, poor or irrelevant content could set a negative perception in the subscribers mind about your business.

Subscribers now expect a well designed email message with informative content that adds value to them. Competition is fierce these days especially with globalization. The subscriber knows they are in control of the relationship. So it is vital to your business to only send well formatted and informative emails.

In this series we will cover the basics of good ethical email marketing.

Step 1: The Reason

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

“What do I want to achieve from emailing my clients and prospects?”

This may sound very Zen but in order to build a solid house one must first have a solid plan.

We asked some of our clients this very question and here are some of their replies:

“I want to be able to alert my customers to new products and services as soon as they come online.”

“I want to provide fantastic educational content to my subscribers so they have a great feeling about my business and end up wanting to buy my products!”

“We see email as providing a quick and efficient way of staying in touch with our seminar attendees after the event. By creating a mailing list of attendees we will not lose touch with them but in fact continue our relationship with them through email. This will enable our company to alert people to new events without having to do too much cold calling!”

“I want to be able to create autoresponders that automatically email them each month so I stay in touch with my subscribers without much effort.”

If you define a reason or two as to why you are emailing your clients and prospects then the rest of the work in creating your email marketing strategy becomes far easier and more enjoyable.

Another point to remember is subscribers are very smart and it won’t take them long to ignore your emails and your business if they learn you have a motive similar to:

“I want to bombard my subscribers with endless emails about how fantastic and vital my business is to their lives. I also want to sell my list to my mates so they can send information about their businesses as well!”

The next step in our series will focus on the frequency of sending emails to your subscribers. Click here to read …

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To help I have provided some tips below:

Get to know your subscribers.

The most important tip I can give you is to apply common sense to your email marketing strategy.

For example before you hit the “send” button ask yourself this question: “if I was to receive this email from a business would I find the content of benefit to me?”. If you answered “hmm…” or “no” then imagine what your subscribers would think!

Don’t send your subscribers pure sales content. In order to gain a foothold in the minds of people you need to make them feel like they are getting value from reading your emails.

Respect your subscribers.

If your subscribers signed up to your mailing list because you told them they would receive interesting information about your products, services or a topic they are interested in then I suggest you do not send them content that is different from what they are expecting.

Ask yourself this: “would you be happy if you signed up to receive information on camera’s only to receive emails on their business partners new car yard?” What would you do in response? This will be the action that most subscribers will take as well.

Set a frequency of emailing your subscribers and stick to it.

One of the worst things you can do is promise to send out a monthly email and then change to send out fortnightly or weekly. This again comes down to respecting your subscribers. They signed up in good faith to what you initially stated so it would not be a great idea to break that promise. If you want to increase the frequency then create a new email campaign stream and invite the subscriber to join in your next regular email campaign.

Help your subscribers spread the word about your emails.

Your email service provider should allow you to add in links such as “Forward to a Friend” and “Web Version” to your email templates. This enables your subscribers to send your emails in a controlled and professional way to other people who they think might be interested in your content.

Segment your subscribers to provide more targeted content.

In today’s world people want targeted content sent to them because most don’t have the time to read through the irrelevant stuff to get to what they want.

I recommend you look at the click statistics of your email campaigns to see what subscribers are interested in then create new mailing lists based on the statistics. Then create targeted email content.

For example if your business provides legal services to the business community and you had the following 3 topics:

1) Legal advice for unfair dismissal submissions,

2) How a business can protect themselves from defamation cases,

3) How to reduce your legal costs.

The click statistics should tell you which subscribers are interested in which topics. You should then be able to create a new mailing list for each topic and add all the subscribers that clicked the relevant link into the new mailing lists in one click of the mouse button.

You now can really target your content to the right subscribers!

Partner with an email service provider.

There are many other smart ways to increase the success of your email campaigns. The most important consideration is partnering with an email service provider that not only has the advanced tools but the knowledge to customize an email marketing strategy that suits your requirements.

Subscribe for more great information!

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From The Act:

22. Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

The process of recording the delivery of the DS can be a cost and time burden on your business. You may also find yourself often asking the question: “Did I send that person my DS?”

The Act states that delivery of the DS can include electronic delivery and this provides you with an opportunity to deliver, track and record the event automatically and by doing so reduce the time and cost to your business in complying with this requirement.

Clause from the Financial Advisors Act 2008:

24. How disclosure must be made by authorised financial adviser

(1) Disclosure by an authorised financial adviser must be made in a disclosure statement.

(2) The disclosure statement must—

(a) be in writing; and

(b) state when it was prepared; and

(c) state the name, address, and business telephone number of the financial adviser; and

(d) be either received by the client, or delivered or sent to the client, at the client’s last known address or an address (including an electronic address)

Mobilize Mail has an automated solution for you. Our solution will enable you to deliver, track, and record the delivery of your Disclosure Statement. Every Mobilize Mail account has a document library facility where you can store your documents e.g. pdf. There is no fee for uploading and storing your documents in the document library in your account. For compliance with The Act we currently have clients that are using their document library facility to store their Disclosure Statement and delivering it automatically via an auto responder message.

To deliver the DS to a client a standard auto responder (auto email message) is created. The email message can be plain text or HTML utilizing your email template to show your business brand, links to your website etc. The email message can also be personalized e.g. Hello [first name].

Within the email message content is a clickable link to the DS. The link is tracked so a click on the link produces a measurement of the event and you now have a historical record of delivering the DS email message and your client’s click on the document itself.

Do You Need to Deliver a Disclosure Statement?

Here are the clauses from The Act that identify what services and products require the delivery of the
DS:

What is financial adviser service

A person (A) performs a financial adviser service if, in the course of business, A—

(a) gives financial advice; or

(b) makes an investment transaction; or

(c) provides a financial planning service.

category 1 product means—

(a) a security (other than a security that is a category 2 product); or
(b) any estate or interest in land; or
(c) a futures contract; or
(d) any other product specified by the regulations

category 2 product means—

(a) a call debt security; or
(b) a bank term deposit; or
(c) an insurance product excluding a life insurance policy issued after 31 December 2008; or
(d) a consumer credit contract as defined in section 11 of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003; or
(e) any other product specified by the regulations

22 Financial adviser must make disclosure before performing financial adviser service

* Subject to section 26, a financial adviser who performs a financial adviser service must make disclosure, in accordance with this Act and the regulations, to the person for whom the financial adviser service is performed before (or, if not practicable before, as soon as practicable after) performing the financial adviser service.

Remove the stress, added time and cost to your business for compliance by setting up this automated solution for your business. Complete our Quote Form – or contact Donna directly.

Source: Go to Financial Advisors Act 2008

Easy low-cost entry

Email marketing is something businesses have done without breaking the bank, starting off with a simple approach and ‘testing the waters’ before committing more resources to it. The cost of sending email through an email marketing service, like Mobilizemail, is very low these days.

Great ROI – if it’s done right…

It’s been well established that email marketing – done appropriately – brings in the money. Its ROI performance gets a lot of good PR, even though it may decrease in times of recession, it has still ‘blown all other direct response methods out of the water’. But… poor results have been experienced by businesses who don’t know how best to use email marketing to further their business success. ROI doesn’t even count the value of email as a long-term relationship builder…

Valuable potential business grown from existing customers

Many small businesses rely on the personal touch and great customer service to build relationships and sustain business… commonly a differentiator over bigger companies. Regular contact with customers and clients through email newsletters and campaigns has effectively enabled this.

It has been well established that the cost of finding new customers is up to five times higher than up-selling or cross-selling to existing customers. Email marketing has been found to be a solid business marketing tactic for this as it is extremely low-cost to market to contacts already in a business database. Email marketing trends emerging in 2009 show a focus on improving relationships with current customers to build sales.

Quickly measurable results enable adjustment for improvement

There’s an old saying in marketing – “I know I wasted half my advertising budget, I just don’t know which half.” With the measurability of email marketing, businesses don’t have to live with this hit-and-miss syndrome any more. Depressed economies have encouraged more careful use of scarce dollars so businesses can zero-in on why their advertising worked (or didn’t) faster. As businesses learn more about their audience, they can adjust their marketing pitch accordingly to increase sales.

Getting ahead in recession

Recession has been shown to be a great opportunity for smart businesses who know how to capitalise on the situation to do really well and out-do those who are retreating…

Add a promotion of a product or service in your regular email campaigns (newsletters, tips etc) and the net results can be astounding – however due to the compulsion to compare the success of email marketing with your other advertising initiatives e.g. print media (magazines, newspapers etc) the evidence of success with email marketing is not easily identified . We can be forgiven for assessing the statistics produced for an email campaign without including the projected sales and cost of the campaign.

The most effective way to assess the success of your email marketing however is by looking at the whole picture by comparing the statistics per email campaign per month and the projected sales minus the cost of the marketing initiative. Here are the results from an advert ran in a email newsletter. (This is an American example – easy to note given the huge number of emails).

In this example the client ran one Advert in a business newsletter that was delivered to half a million email addresses (NZ mailing lists are typically 1 percent or less in size). Only 25 leads were generated from half a million emails and the click through rate below the industry average at 0.06 percent. On the face of it this campaign looks like it was highly unsuccessful – until the projected revenue statistic and the cost of the campaign statistic are applied. By tying the leads to projected sales the success of this campaign looks fantastic and is the wake up call required.

Here are a couple tips for gauging the success of email marketing:

1. Ensure your email campaigns are tracked and the statistics presented. Why waste time creating an email campaign if you can not measure its success!
2. Put links to relevant web pages in your email campaign and assess the success in tracking conversions from leads to sales so you can assess the real ROI for email marketing

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