Email Marketing Strategies
One of the most important ways you can make sure your email marketing campaigns are as successful as possible is to understand what you are trying to achieve from your campaign (increased sales, brand awareness etc), set yourself clear goals and then sit down and plan out the exact strategy you are going to use to meet those goals. By setting out a strategy for your email marketing campaign you will be not only be more likely to achieve what you are setting out to do, but you will also able to compare different campaigns after they have run and analyze how successful each one has been and this will help you make improvements for the future.
Depending on your goals there are a number of strategies you can employ when you are setting up your email marketing campaigns. These will have varying results, so it is a good idea to try a few different types of email campaigns and see which ones suit your products and services best by analyzing the results and feedback.
Right Frequency Strategy
Before you start sending out bulk emails it is important you find out how often your contacts want to hear from you. It can actually be detrimental to your overall goals for you to send out too many emails, as they can be considered a ‘nuisance’ and your contacts will end up deleting them without even opening them up. There are several methods which you can use to help you work out the right frequency for your bulk emailing, and you will have to check what options are provided by your email marketing service. Methods include adding an option into the subscription set up process so your new contacts can let you know how often they want to hear from you, or sending out a research email to a small selection of your focus groups (12 or so members) and requesting them to let you know how often they would most like to receive emails from you, which you can then apply to the whole group. It is much more effective to expand the size of your contact list rather than the frequency of your emails, so make sure you focus your time and attention on building up a range of quality contacts, rather than just sending out lots of campaigns to those contacts you already have.
Refer a Friend Strategy
You can save a lot of time and effort attracting new customers and building relationships by getting your existing customers and subscribers to recommend your products or services to their friends and family. This is one of the most efficient ways of increasing your brand name exposure and the best part is that it requires little or no cost to you. It can be difficult to manage ‘word of mouth’ advertising but there are some key ways you can encourage your existing members to refer you on to their friends, such as by adding incentives to them if they get a friend to sign up to your services (coupons, discounts or cash back) or by adding a automated ‘send-to-a-friend’ link in your bulk emails to encourage them to forward them on to their own contacts.
Opt In Only Strategies
You should never send out email campaigns to recipients that have not subscribed or ‘opted in’ to your contact list. This is type of unsolicited email is considered as spam and is illegal in many countries including the US and EU. If a number of complaints are made against you for sending out unsolicited emails then you could be prosecuted, and there have been several high profile cases in America recently where spammers have been given prison sentences of up to 5 years and fines of up to $150,000 for carrying out mass spam email campaigns. To build up a good list of contact names make sure you include a subscription page on your website and also build one into in your payment processing, and offer your subscribers something worthwhile to encourage them to sign up such as a useful newsletters and special email offers.
Unsubscribe Strategy
There is no point wasting your time sending out emails to people who are no longer interested in hearing from you, so it is important that you remember to add in an ‘opt out’ clause to all your email campaigns, so that if people change their minds they can remove their details from your contact list. It is much more effective for you to have a smaller contact list which is filled with people interested in your products or services, rather than a vast list of names where only a small percentage of the people will actually bother to open and read your emails. When you add in the unsubscribe link to your emails you could also try including some other options for your contacts that may suit them better, such as less frequent mailings, links to other resources they may find interesting or the choice or receiving different email campaigns (if you are a multivendor and have other marketing schemes currently running).
Survey Participation Strategy
Not only can email marketing campaigns be used to increase sales and boost website traffic and brand name awareness, but they are also a useful tool to help you gather meaningful feedback on your products and services. By sending out small customer surveys to your subscribers you can identify key strengths and weaknesses for your online business, such as if you are providing a fast, efficient check out and ordering service, if you are offering the right payment and shipping options and also if you are targeting the right market. To help increase survey participation you can send out follow up emails to those contacts that did not open your email or get back to you the first time around.
Affiliate Strategies
Third party offers and affiliate programs can also be a good way to attract new customers and visitors to your website, and you should try to only use those which are relevant to your business stream. Using offers and programs from third party users can support and benefit your business but you must also make sure they don’t overshadow your own offers, products and services, so you will need to consider the layout of your website and emails carefully so that you don’t detract all the attention away from your main goals.