Everyone with a computer and an e-mail account has been the recipient and/or victim of e-mail marketing. Yes, there’s a fine line between valuable e-mail marketing and annoying spam, and businesses need to make the distinction. However, when done right, e-mail marketing can greatly benefit any advertising campaign.
“E-mail marketing is one of the most effective tools in your bag for engaging and interacting with customers. It’s still the most cost effective and profitable way to reach customers today in a mass communication model,” states Steve Latham, CEO of online marketing consulting company, Spur Digital, in Houston. “If you have thousands of customers, it’s a great way to send them information that’s relevant, educational, and informative, that they find value in. It also lets you track and measure what people are interested in when it comes to e-mail correspondence.”
But like any other business activity, notes Latham, someone has to be responsible for it. “E-mails can be a great asset or a liability depending on how you use it. There are certain best practices you need to become familiar with and you have to understand the legal requirements according to the CAN-SPAM Act. Businesses need to learn how to use e-mail to enhance a brand and build that relationship versus becoming an annoyance to their customers,” he warned.
Cheap, Quick and Timely
The best reason to use e-mail marketing is its return on investment (ROI). “Compared to direct mail there’s no paper cost, no postage, and no printing,” states Jeanne Jennings, e-mail marketing consultant and author of The E-mail Marketing Kit: The Ultimate E-mail Marketer’s Bible. “It’s also very timely. For instance, let’s say the pollen count has been very high, a company that sells allergy medication can send out an e-mail noting this and remind people to make sure they have their medications on hand. You can’t do that with direct mail because you can’t time it.”
Mike Ferranti, CEO, Endai WorldWide, agrees and states, “Start-up costs are so small that any company, regardless of size, can integrate a smartly designed campaign into its marketing program in a short time. Using this marketing strategy won’t break the bank. In this day and age, with the ease of measuring your real-time ROI, you can’t afford not to. With a few well-established rules of engagement, chances are it will make a reasonable return on investment very quickly. In some cases, the results, like the Internet itself, are immediate. What’s more,” Ferranti states, “e-mail isn’t just a way to get your brand in front of people. It’s an opportunity to establish engagement and dialog with customers.”
However, cheap and fast can have its downside. Patrick Gray, President of Prevoyance Group, a Strategic IT consulting company, and author of Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value Through Technology, states, “The ubiquitous nature of e-mail—and its extremely low cost per message—has caused many marketers to throw convention out the window and assume that with enough ‘blasts’ customers are bound to respond to the message, regardless of its quality. The low-cost nature of e-mail has become its biggest Achilles’ heel,” Gray states, “as your message must compete with thousands of others that are also attempting to take advantage of its low cost and broad reach.
“Consumers who are apt to respond to a marketing e-mail are more likely to be technically adept; and marketing toward these people requires an equally sophisticated message. Trite offers and unfounded claims are likely to fail, while highly targeted messages that provide
value to the customer first—and seek to make the sale second—will rule the day,” concludes Gray.
Clever Marketing or Annoying Spam?
“Spam is in the eye of the beholder,” says Jennings, who notes that, unfortunately, not all mailers understand the distinction between a good marketing piece and spam. Consumers consider all extraneous messages to be spam, not just those that hawk Viagra or claim they just won the Canadian Lottery. Jennings notes one company she worked with that was getting a lot of complaints about spam. They felt because they were a legitimate business and people had a need for their product, that its e-mails could not be considered spam. However, it’s not about what the company thinks; it’s about what the recipient thinks.
Thanks to all this spam, it’s more difficult for legitimate e-mail marketers to get their message through. “One of the biggest technical obstacles is deliverability,” states Jennings. “What that entails is getting past spam filters,” she states. “As there are more and more unsolicited e-mails out there, stronger spam filters are implemented to combat them, making it more difficult for marketers to get their message through.
“Legitimate e-mail marketing is ‘opt in,’” continues Jennings. “What that means is the marketer has permission in advance to send customers e-mail. And that’s a very important distinction. There are some folks that use what is called an ‘opt out.’ Essentially, they send an e-mail that says, ‘Hi, you’ve never heard of me but I’d like to send you an e-mail and if I don’t hear back from you I’m going to assume that means you’re good with it.’ That’s not good e-mail marketing.”
Marketing Strategies
“For companies just starting out, it’s important to remember the basics first and go from there,” states Trynka Shineman, Vice President of North American Marketing, VistaPrint. “First and foremost, companies need to identify what their goals and objectives are for the e-mail campaigns they are going to implement. Are these campaigns designed to drive sales, build a brand, or drive product awareness? What is the contact strategy and how can the program most efficiently meet its goals? Companies need to identify their objectives and define the metrics ahead of time that will measure success. Otherwise, less is learned and other campaigns won’t be run as effectively. Learning from a campaign is almost as important as the results and revenue that it might generate.”
Another trend is the use of transactional e-mails—e-mails consumers receive after making a purchase. Usually, transactional e-mails state that an item is being processed or has just been shipped, etc. “For a lot of companies,” states Jennings, “that’s the bulk of their e-mail. Most businesses’ marketing messages are completely dwarfed in quantity compared to the transactional messages sent.
“We know that transactional messages have much better open and click-through rates. Hence, businesses are looking at ways to add tasteful promotional messages to them and taking more care with the copy rather than having the IT person write it. It’s an important trend that makes a lot of sense,” says Jennings.
“Cross-channel integration is also a hot topic in e-mail marketing right now,” adds Shineman. “As more businesses use multiple channels to market to and make contact with customers—including direct mail and catalogs—using e-mail in conjunction with another marketing channel has become an efficient way to integrate marketing campaigns together. Direct Mail is a great example of this, and it can oftentimes be seamlessly combined with an e-mail campaign.”
One-to-one targeting is another effective technique. “With the use of cross-sell modeling,” states Shineman, “companies have the ability to identify products or product categories that the individual customer is most likely to purchase next, and then turn around and quickly market those products to the customer. VistaPrint has taken this concept to the next level. For example, if a customer purchases a business card with a floral theme, we’ve developed technology that enables us to show them a matching floral-themed stationery set in their next e-mail. We’ve found that more relevant content leads to a higher response.
“Another example is targeting content and offers in e-mails to specific customer segments. Depending on what segment a customer falls into will dictate the creative and offers those customers will see in their e-mail. For instance,” explains Shineman, “we have some customers who primarily purchase products to help them market their business; these customers will receive more e-mails with offers and tips on marketing products. As technology has progressed and companies get to know their customers better, this method has seen an up-tick in popularity.”
Testing and learning is another important subject to remember. “We are constantly testing new ideas and strategies before we roll out campaigns to our customer base,” says Shineman. “Companies should develop multiple campaigns to test different subject lines, creative, and offers.”
The smartest companies, with big enough lists, can test two campaigns against each other. “If your entire list is one million customers,” reiterates Jennings, “then send out ten thousand e-mails to two cells. Wait a day or two to see which one performs the best then send the best one to the bulk of the list—it’s instant feedback.”
Surveying customers to find out what they think the company is doing right and what it’s doing wrong, is another useful method. “One of a company’s most valuable assets is its customers and the feedback and information they can provide,” states Renee Miller, President/Creative Director, The Miller Group, Los Angeles. “There is no better, faster, or more efficient way of talking directly to your customers and getting feedback than via e-mail.”
Simple Do’s and Don’ts
There are various ways to begin an e-mail marketing program; if your budget allows, hire a good e-mail service provider as opposed to doing it in-house. Have a limited budget? No problem; you can still create an effective campaign. “A lot of smaller retailers don’t have budgets for an agency,” states Miller, who suggests they bring in a qualified graphic designer to put together a blast. It’s extremely cost effective and you can turn one around in a week (which includes time for writing, graphics, formatting and approval).
Miller notes the blast should be engaging and consistent with the image of the business. “And it’s extremely important that it’s proofed. The worst thing you can do is send a blast to thousands of customers with a type-o in it; you lose credibility with customers. Also, keep in mind people’s attention spans are limited and they don’t want to be bombarded. We’ve learned people are okay with getting regular blasts, but the tolerance level is once a month; they don’t want to be inundated. So we are very careful with how often we communicate and what we communicate with them.”
There are also technical considerations. According to Les Kollegian, owner of Jacob Tyler Creative Group, in San Diego, you need to make sure your e-mail file isn’t too large so it doesn’t take forever to download. Also, when creating a file, go to the lowest common denominator—don’t use Flash or other software programs that the majority of users don’t have; but do include text in an HTML format that’s “clickable”. “And don’t exclude Macs because you’ve heard they’re ‘only one percent’ of the market,” states Kollegian. “If it’s a billion dollar market, that 1% is a lot of money to write off.”
Future of E-Mail Marketing
Like the photo industry, advertising has changed immensely in the last decade. “I think everyone now realizes the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in marketing anymore,” states Latham, “especially in interactive marketing.” Today, as in the past, the importance of connecting with consumers multiple times before they take action still applies; only the media is much more fragmented. “There are so many ways to reach people—whether it’s print, TV, radio, outdoor, PR, Web, and/or direct mail—that you have to take a strategic approach. Businesses will need to touch people via four or five different types of media, which are all part of the engagement cycle that ultimately result in sales.” Latham believes people are realizing if consumers see a billboard, then hear a commercial, then do a search on Google and find a Web site, and then take action, that the credit for that sale can’t be given solely to Google, because the awareness for that image, that impression, came from multiple sources.
“E-mail is part of that,” states Latham, “and it’s how a lot of people would prefer to be engaged as opposed to receiving yet another piece of paper (snail mail) to sort through and recycle. I think it’s going to continue to be a core part of any marketer’s arsenal and it’s probably the most profitable tool in the bag.” yy
Los Angeles, California-based marketing company The Miller Group developed these e-mail blasts for a company called Sporteve, which reported extremely high response rates.
