Everyone wants to see a return on their e-mail marketing – but what’s the difference between those e-mails getting an ROI on e-mail marketing and those that don’t? Strategy.
Most businesses adopt e-mail marketing because it’s a low-cost, effective marketing tool. The problem is that often, they sign up thinking that they can send newsletters on a trial-and-error basis, trying different things until they find a winning formula for their e-mail campaigns. After all, with e-mail it’s possible to do just that – at no great expense. Unfortunately, most companies then get stuck in that mode – they keep sending random mailings, never finding the time to truly test and strategize their campaigns.
Devising a strategy for your campaign is the key to making the most out of your mailings.
Here are three questions to get you started:
What do you want to achieve with your e-mail campaign?
Back to basics: Set objectives for your e-mail campaign. Do you want to create brand awareness? Grow your mailing list? Improve on customer relationships? Boost sales? Promote a particular event? Generate more traffic to your website? How about “all of the above”?
How are you going to go about achieving this?
Whether you have one or two objectives, or a whole list, every send needs to have a purpose. (It will also help you define a clear call to action.) Just remember that one e-mail won’t miraculously fulfill all the above mentioned objectives. Stick to one or two objectives per send. The objective of each send can vary, as long as each send is focused.
One way of doing this is to create separate campaigns for each objective. After all, that’s one of the benefits of the low cost of e-mails. It also makes it easier to track how you’re progressing on reaching each of your objectives. Another way of going about it is to simply segment and target your mailing list according to which recipients are most likely to fulfill which objective. For instance, new subscribers might need more generalized brand or product information if you’re trying to create brand awareness, while subscribers with a history of purchasing your products might be more likely to purchase again, thereby boosting your sales.
How are you going to know when you’ve achieved your goal?
Your send reports already provide you with the statistics you need to keep track of your campaign, but having clear objectives will give you a clear indication of which stats to keep an eye on. For example, if your objective is to grow your list, you may want to keep track of the number of recipients who clicked on the “forward to a friend” link, or the number of social shares you had (if you’ve inserted social widgets in your footer). Of course, the subscribe statistics are not to be overlooked. Taking note of your reports will also enable you to set realistic objectives in terms of how much you can aim for your list to grow, sales to boost, traffic to be generated, etc.
So, whether you’re running a campaign to help the community with a “Tans for Cans” event, or focusing on boosting your EFT program, the principle remains: An e-mail marketing campaign without a plan is one that won’t survive in the long term. Take some time to devise your strategy and you’re likely to see a much better ROI.
Quattro Internet Solutions (Ltd) t/a GraphicMail’s hosted e-mail marketing solution is used by customers such as Cosmopolitan, SA Airlink, Europcar and the American Medical Association since 2002. It is available in eight languages and is represented by more than 16 offices globally. Follow GraphicMail on Twitter, Facebook and their e-mail marketing blog. For more information, contact Barbara Ulmi, GraphicMail’s marketing manager, at barbara@graphicmail.com.
