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Today business is looking to stretch tight budgets in every facet of business; this is no truer than with the marketing budget. Email marketing has emerged as the clearest opportunity to get more done for less budget. Prospecting is the life blood of any sales program for a business, if used correctly email has a clear ROI (Return On Investment) advantage over any other lead generation medium available. Email has shown, since its legitimate use in corporate marketing in 2005, to be responsive and highly effective in generating sales leads, internet traffic, and customer affinity programs.

AmeraScope Media has been conducting email broadcasting on our client’s behalf since the acceptance of the CAN-SPAM act signed into law in late 2003. This experience allows us to share with you our top ten tips for successful email broadcasting. Before we get started, let’s clarify some basic terminology that should help decide the correct selection (from our perspective) of the appropriate platform to work with. Three simple rules:

1.    Spam is a negative reference to email that is illegal, not all email is created equal, and SPAM has been, and remains, on the low end of the spectrum. Any time someone says they can deliver the email addresses to you, that data has been mined and is not opt-in, therefore not CAN-SPAM Compliant.

2.    The term “Broadcast” is OPT-IN and CAN-SPAM compliant, this is the only email you should be associated with. Don’t think you’re better off working from a $500 list of 1MM email records. In the long run you end up doing more damage to your brand.

3.    CAN-SPAM compliant data requires constant maintenance to remain compliant. For this reason you do not want to take possession of this data, the liabilities are simply just too high.

The ten-best tips for best practices for your next prospecting email campaign.

1. USE A GOOD LIST AND PROVIDER:
This is the foundation to any successful campaign; therefore your list provider must have demonstrated performance and reliability. Understand your list brokers experience in this area, how well they understand what you’re looking to accomplish. This will help make sure the correct list and the correct data selection criteria are used when selecting the email list. They will also evaluate your creative, passing it through spam grading software to evaluate your creative against industry hot buttons for spam email. They should also provide you with the reporting afterwords to demonstrate how well your broadcast performed.

2. DEVELOP A PLAN TO WORK BY:
Plan out your email from the creative process, broadcast, conversion, acquisition, and follow up. You need to understand what the final objective is first, and then work from the end to the beginning. Know what you’re going to do with the results, how will you support the results? How will you handle the acquisition process? Design the conversion process with the "path of least resistance" to increase the conversion rates. Make sure your Web site can handle the traffic directed to your Web site. Plan the broadcast around corporate and civic events in your targeted area to maximize the open rates. This may include selecting one deployment day of the week over another. The email message (creative) works best when you keep it simple. Your message really needs to be clean, clear, and concise, with simple and straight forward graphics. Flash and gimmickry do not really work. Leverage your brand and keep your message short and sweet, your purpose is to create interest and drive the sale through the Web site.

3.  PUT SERIOUS THOUGHT INTO YOUR SUBJECT LINE:
The first thing the recipient will see is the subject line of your email. Once they have glanced past that from address, if your subject line does not resonate with them, they will not give it the light of day. Poorly written subject lines can even cause your email to fall straight into the spam filters and never be seen. Leverage your brand and stress the benefits, forget the facts, people don’t buy facts.

4.  CLEAN, CRISP CREATIVE-GETTING TO THE POINT:
You have all heard the phrase, content is king, this is so true. Most creative is done in HTML because of the visual appeal. However, once people look past the wrapper, they get down to the meaning of the message. Your content will need to say what you want to say quickly. Your message should be read through in less than 30 seconds (that’s between 80-150 words), create the interest, enticing a response to click through to the landing page you have prepared for your campaign. Remember to design your email with all your disclaimers and opt-out language at the bottom of the page. If you have it in the preview area, you will lose the campaign all together. Strong content will also convert to a strong text message that should be delivered simultaneously with your HTML creative. HTML is rejected by some browsers, but the text message will be delivered instead, so the content is king.

5.  HAVE A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION:
Don’t put too much into your message, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Design your message with a clear call to action. There is no need to use email for branding when you have such a great channel to drive positive ROI. Keep your message strong and you can’t miss, this is the process of creating interest, leave the selling for the landing page.

6.  NOW THE MESSAGE:
Our research shows us that you have 3-5 seconds to set your hook and cause the reader to "read on". Don’t spend the white space talking facts, don’t sell them. People dislike the sales pitch. Describe the benefit that will mean the most to them. Remember, keep it brief. Tie in a picture to help present the benefit. Most people respond positively to visual aids, so choose your graphics very carefully.

7. YOUR LANDING PAGE:
First, your landing page should resemble your email creative that will capture the essence of your campaign. Make your offer compelling, clear. and meaningful to the reader. This is where you acquire brand new relationships, so don’t think that you have to close the sale. The object should be to first capture information; name, email and possibly a phone number. If you can, design your sales message into the landing page that would be a bonus. Your offer, in exchange for the contact information, may be a free offer, don’t be afraid to delay the sale in exchange for the data that can return its value time and time again.

8.  BUILD IN A TEST PHASE
There are often several variables that can affect your overall open rates. Sometimes the variables are not all that clear. Carve out a small portion and test a couple different versions of your creative design to see which one performs best. The larger your campaign the more this makes sense. Testing will require a clear understanding of the results so you can correctly evaluate the test. We recommend you set up a spreadsheet to enter the results so you can compare the results before you decide on the version you will use. Keep your testing rules consistent for accuracy; don’t allow personal preferences to enter into the final result.

9.  REMOVE THE EMOTION:
Too many times people allow emotion to override logic. They also fail to do the follow through, the campaign is not complete until the follow up and analysis has been completed. As with your test, develop a methodology that will deliver the actual results based on the facts. Far too many times people will over rule the results and change up the next campaign because they have a gut feeling. This can be very costly.

10. ANALYZE, REDESIGN, AND REDEPLOY:
Evaluate the data, cross match your conversion with demographic data to help develop a profile for those that convert but don’t buy, for example. This allows you to develop a stronger profile to market to for the next campaign. This will also help you to understand the profile better so you can tweak the creative because you have learned something about how they may respond better. Then finally, repeat the process. Studies have shown that brand strength has a significant impact on the conversion and acquisition rates. The basics of marketing repetition come into play by increasing the brand strength.

Planning, execution of that plan and repetition will build a sales and lead generation program that will deliver great results.
 


Comments

EDWARD
06/24/2010 1:49pm

GOOD POINTS

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