Archive for September, 2010

E-mail marketing for small businesses

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

E-mail marketing is one of the best advertising means for smaller and medium-sized businesses.

Smaller businesses are often reluctant to invest money in advertising, simply because there’s not that much money they can spend.

Email Marketing Small Business

However, email marketing software is available for ridiculous prices and offers high-tier return tracking. You’ll know where every single penny went, and that is very important for a smaller advertising budget.

Furthermore, people are much more responsive when it comes to e-mail marketing, because subscribers have to  allow you to send them emails. The permission is actually a very important thing, and pretty confusing for those who are just starting.

E-mail marketing is permission-based, and usually requires the users to confirm their e-mail address when they sign up to an email newsletter. However, the permission to mail is what sets e-mail marketing apart from other direct marketing forms, because it allows you to actually build a relationship with your customers.

E-mail marketing creates brand awareness, which is useful for most, but especially local businesses. If a person knows you from your e-mails (but the person has to actually like you), that person is a lot more likely to choose your products if he or she has been given the opportunity.

E-mail marketing fits with the current marketing trends pretty well

It’s very easy to integrate Twitter, Facebook, and other social media into your campaigns. While it is questioned whether or not social media is effective at all, social sites do make it easier for the customer to communicate with you. Adding your social media streams to your emails will encourage the users to give you precious feedback–and a little buzz, too.

And lastly, most small businesses use e-mail marketing anyway. It helps them stay with a single customer for as long as possible, and is a very efficient method of marketing, not only because it’s so cheap.

So, to reiterate, this is why e-mail marketing rocks for smaller businesses:

  • E-mail marketing can track each and every penny you invest
  • E-mail marketing has the best response rates in advertising
  • It creates brand awareness (really useful for businesses that are just starting out)
  • E-mail marketing offers a chance to interact with customers and create dynamic marketing
  • Most small businesses already do it anyway

Furthermore, email lists are a great passive source of income you can count on in the long run. If you are loyal to your customers and don’t do anything too out of the line, they will respect you and choose your products for months, even years. It’s still important to acquire new subscribers though.

We aren’t saying that e-mail marketing is the holy grail we’ve all been looking for. We’re saying that e-mail marketing is pretty close to being one. You still have to do things on your own, you still have to do cutesy things with your campaigns, keep up with the developments in marketing, and actually work a lot to make your e-mail marketing campaigns successful.

Here are some quick tips if you’ve decided to try email marketing:

  1. Add a sign-up form at your website ASAP. You’ll acquire subscribers – even if you don’t send that much content yet.
  2. Add your company’s social media channels – this will help your e-mails become dynamic and offer a greater chance for the customer to interact with you
  3. Try and do some A/B split testing. Send different versions of your newsletter to different subscribers, and see which one generates better results.
  4. Know the difference between spam and permission-based email. You have to acquire permission to mail people. Don’t manually add people you don’t know to your mailing list; don’t buy e-mail lists you’ll later spam until infinity.
  5. Develop a strategy which clearly states your goals with e-mail marketing. Whether it’s simply selling more products or expanding your business globally, is entirely your call.

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What makes e-mail marketing better than other forms of direct marketing

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Email marketingRegular, well-written emails sent to the right people are cheap to send, and very effective if you take the time to send them correctly.

E-mail marketing is very powerful in general, because it enhances your brand and works by acquiring trust and attention over a longer term than a regular commercial does. E-mail marketing also enables sales through other channels. So, for example, a client could choose your products at a store in real life, just because the client knows you from somewhere.

To reiterate, these four reasons make e-mail marketing superior to other forms of direct marketing:

  • E-mail marketing is based on trust and long-term gains, thus, if played correctly, it skyrockets the buzz about your products or services.
  • E-mail marketing can achieve great results with scarce resources.
  • E-mail marketing gets better response rates.
  • Permission-based e-mail mostly reaches from 90-100% of your subscribers, as opposed to unsolicited e-mail, which gets deleted instantly by approximately 76% of its recipients. If spam filters don’t delete it.

Permission: the cornerstone of e-mail marketing.

Requesting a permission to e-mail anyone at all; this is what usually freaks people out about e-mail marketing. However, permission is the thing that makes this method of direct marketing different–and viable at all.

Hardcore marketing specialists who come directly from TV or radio advertising often do not really understand this, and resist the very idea of permission. This resistance is in fact quite understandable–that is, until you realize that e-mail is an individual’s private space. Permission makes sure that you only target interested customers, and cannot be offensive in any way unless you slip and make your e-mails offensive yourself.

Secondly, permission efficiently eliminates a huge marketing problem: the lack of attention from the customer. If a user subscribes, you simply know you have his attention, as opposed to direct mail (which costs a lot more), and advertising on television or the radio.

Other direct marketing forms, more often than not, leave you blindfolded.

You can’t really know how many users went to your site or bought your products after a telemarketing campaign. Or your direct mail campaign. Or anything else for that matter.

Although you can try and measure the statistics based on the location of the customers, as well as selling trends, such statistics are unreliable and inefficient. They also lack the depth one could expect from marketing in the 21st century.

Furthermore, it is a lot cheaper to send e-mail surveys if you aren’t quite sure about the direction you want to head in.

E-mail marketing platforms, on the other hand, offer tracking numerous things:

  • Was an individual email was opened? When?
  • Did the user click a link?
  • Which user clicked the link?
  • How many e-mails were undelivered? Which ones?
  • What is the general efficiency of the current campaign?

And lastly, permission-based email feels a lot better. You can actually see for yourself if the clients like your e-mails and products. A permission does protect you against the seller’s remorse.

It’s cheap, too.

Bandwidth was a problem until… 2002? Because the internet has evolved, sending e-mail costs virtually nothing in comparison to direct mail and phone calls. Yes, you get bargain deals with post companies and phone operators, but nothing can compare to how little sending an e-mail costs.

There is a catch though.

You still have to work hard and find subscribers. It’s a pretty slow process, slower than phone calls, and even direct mail. But it does bring huge results; that’s why more and more businesses slowly catch up with the trend that has been here for a good few years.

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E-mail marketing is permission based marketing

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Spam, by definition, is unwanted e-mail (usually of a commercial nature) sent out in bulk.

Is e-mail marketing commercial? Check. Sent out in bulk? Definitely. Unwanted? That’s usually not the case.

We can see that e-mail marketing – more or less – differs from spam in one key point, and that aspect is permission to send emails to the recipient. That’s why you should only send e-mails to people who’ve subscribed to your list. Also, spam is illegal, too.

However, permission is a subject specialists argue about. Seth Godin states that “permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went”. And what Seth Godin says is ultimately the general consensus of what is what in email marketing.

How does the permission work?

A permission is what it is, and a permission works like a bond between you and the customer.

The customer has agreed to receive* e-mails from you, but you have agreed to actually send e-mails. On the surface, that’s pretty much everything. However, there is mch more to permissions than that.

The client’s agreement to receive e-mail is simply a statement of initial trust – that you’ll send things that you should send. And you better do what you can to keep the trust, or you’ll lose the customer.

* Note that receiving doesn’t mean reading, or taking action, or anything in particular. The client’s side of the agreement is much lighter, so you should do your best to actually turn the client’s thoughts into the right direction.

How do I acquire permission?

Permission Email MarketingIt’s pretty easy. You ask for it. For example, you can place a “I want to receive XYZ’s weekly newsletter with articles and information about new products” checkbox at the site’s registration. The user then confirms his/her willingness to receive e-mails by clicking an URL in his e-mail.

This ensures that it is the client – not someone else – who subscribed to e-mails. Double opt-in also eliminates invalid e-mail addresses, so you won’t see @gmial.com addresses in your mailing list.

Please keep in mind that the clients should be able to revoke the permission to mail them. And you have to respect this. Placing the unsubscribe link in a clearly visible place will build trust, and won’t cause problems (read:spam complaints) if the user decides to unsubscribe.

Also note that you should use the permission only to do what you said you’ll do. For example, you shouldn’t “lend” a permission to someone else; neither should you send irrelevant e-mails. It will destroy the trust you worked hard to earn.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Yes. Always remember that each of your clients is different. Which means that they’ll think of e-mails you send differently. For example, if your site focuses on fishing equipment, you advertising a fish grill kit will be deemed legitimate by most of your subscribers. But a fraction will think: “Damn, I thought [your company] focuses on fishing, not cooking. Spam!”.

These cases are where good practices of e-mail marketing kick in. Although you got all clients to subscribe to the same list with the same terms, it doesn’t mean that you have to send everyone the same stuff. Segmenting (splitting clients into groups based on their activity, location, products bought, etc) is a good practice, and will ensure that the clients won’t become frustrated when you send them e-mails.

Lastly, be patient with your clients, and they’ll be patient with you. Before introducing something new, never put the client below the “profit” you expect, because the client ultimately is the profit.

Although you can get “cute” from time to time with e-mailing special promotions and all that jazz, sending merely the content that clients subscribed to… is a very solid marketing practice.

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