Five Tips for Building a Strong E-mail Marketing Strategy
If starting an e-mail marketing campaign is on your to-do list for
2009, Adams offers five tips that can help small businesses to create,
launch and enhance successful e-mail marketing campaigns.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
When you
first start with e-mail marketing, think through what you’re trying to
accomplish. Ask yourself what type of information would attract
attention and get people to open, read and act on your e-mail. Do
customers want coupons and special offers or would they respond better
to practical tips? Often the best e-newsletters include a mix of sales
with advice.
Make a 2009 e-mail-marketing plan
Establish
objectives and build a plan for the year. Start by mapping out
promotions, topics and campaigns that will help you reach out to your
customers at the right time with the right information. Roughing out a
flexible plan for the year shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.
Start building your e-mail list
Now you’re ready to start building your opt-in e-mail list—opt-in means that your customers understand that by signing up they are giving you permission to send them e-mail.
In addition to name and e-mail address, ask for information that can
help you target your campaigns. For example, if your business is a
restaurant or retailer, gather birthdates. Also, take every opportunity
to gather customer e-mail addresses. You can add a quick sign-up on
your Web site, place paper sign-up forms at cash registers or even
provide a jar for customers to drop in their business cards. You are reading this article on How Email marketing Chapter - 3(II)
Create a template that reflects your brand
image
E-mail marketing services provide templates to help you get
started. Choose a look and that reflects your business and brand
image. You can also have a custom template created for you that matches
your Web site and marketing collateral. When deciding on the
formatting, be sure to leave room for images and make the text concise
and easy to read.
Begin the conversation with your inaugural
campaign
Kick things off by introducing yourself and setting
expectations. Let your audience know the type of information they’ll be
receiving and how frequently you will be sending e-mails. In your
first campaign, don’t just sell, but also offer valuable information or
tips your audience can use. Encourage feedback so you can begin an
ongoing dialogue with your customers—this allows you to continually
gather more detailed information to improve targeting of future
campaigns.
Reference: - Steve Adams, vice president of marketing for Campaigner, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
You are reading this article on How Email marketing Chapter - 3(II)
Some Other Tips:-
Your business plan
The first step, of course, is to determine who your target market is
and exactly what you will be offering them. There a full sections of
library devoted to the topic of how to write a business plan, but the basic are simple:
Market Analysis
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| How Email Marketing Steps |
- Who will your customers be and what are their needs?
- What is your competition like? What opportunities exist and what
barriers exist to realizing those opportunities? How do your particular
strengths and weakness affect your chances of success?
Product Development
- In this case you know you intend to provide email marketing service.
What does that include? Will you be building up your clients’ email
lists for them? Writing advertising copy? Or will you simply be
providing access to a web-based email marketing system that you will maintain?
- You will also want to evaluate your costs, including man-hours, and
develop a pricing scheme based on consideration of these figures, how
much profit you need to justify your efforts, and what price you think
your market will bear for the services you’re offering.
Sales & Marketing
- How do you intend to go about promoting your new service? Do you
have an existing customer or subscriber base that you can leverage to
get the service going?
- Ordering & fulfillment logistics
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