From Enterprise Ireland.

Email marketing (part 2): hitting the target

There are two essential parts of any email marketing campaign: high-quality content, and people to read it. One without the other will never lead to success. In part one, we looked at content issues. But now that you have a relevant, targeted email ready to send, what’s the next step?

Building a list

Before you begin your email marketing campaign, it is essential that you have a good quality database of customers or potential sales leads who will - hopefully - read your marketing material. There are several ways to entice people to sign up for email newsletters or other regular corporate communications:

1. Let people sign up through your company’s website (if you have one). Put a ’subscribe’ box on each page in a prominent location, but take care it doesn’t dominate or ruin the look of your site - the top corner or in a sidebar are good places to consider. Chances are that people who are visiting your website are already interested in what you have you say; they may just need that little extra push to hand over their email address.

2. Ask at the point of sale. If you’re selling goods and services online, you can ask your customers if they wish to sign up for further communications as they complete the check-out process, or in a follow-up invoice email. Customers may be interested in hearing about special offers, new products or the latest developments in your particular sector - all you have to do is ask.

3. Offer an incentive. Sometimes, a little encouragement can work wonders. Competitions, free gifts, and discount vouchers contained in an email can be enough to attract new sign-ups. They can also encourage repeat sales, thus building and cementing customer relationships.

4. Encourage them to forward on the newsletter. Viral marketing is a powerful tool. Consumers are more likely to read an email forwarded to them by a trusted contact. Make sure to include a ‘forward to a friend’ link, as well as a ’subscribe’ link, in each newsletter.

There are a few other key issues to keep in mind when building your subscriber list:

* Make the sign-up process as painless as possible. Don’t make it too complicated to sign up for the newsletter. Get the information you need, such as interests and demographics, without being overly intrusive - no one wants to go through pages of questions just to get marketing material.

* Make privacy a major issue. Privacy is a concern for many users. Your customers need to know that you won’t pass on their email address to a third party without permission. Have a clear privacy policy on your site that lets your subscribers know what you will and won’t do with their confidential information.

* Make it easy to unsubscribe. Should a customer decide they no longer wish to receive communications from you, unsubscribing should be as easy as the initial sign up process. Otherwise there is a chance of getting a bad reputation or of being labelled a spammer.

Sending it out

Once you have your list and you’ve decided on the content of the newsletter, you’re almost ready to send out your communication. While it’s possible to simply use your current email client to do a mailout, it’s recommended that you invest in some kind of software package to create and manage your newsletter.

There are plenty of email marketing software providers out there, but it’s worth looking for one with a decent reputation; ask existing marketers for recommendations, or check out the company’s testimonial page to see what other clients are saying, and research the companies who are backing the software provider.

Some providers offer a free trial before committing yourself - a good way to test the service to ensure it fits your needs. For example, will it allow automatic scheduled delivery? Will it personalise content to each reader? Will it track reader behaviour?

Tracking is an important part of email marketing. If users are not opening mails, marketers need to know so they can alter or target the content differently. Most email marketing software will include the ability to generate a report from the email shot, but it is worth double-checking how extensive this reporting is.

The other option is to hand over your newsletter over entirely to a professional, if you can afford to do so. They can manage your campaign from start to finish and track responses on your behalf.

Once your email marketing campaign is up and running, you must keep the standard of the content sufficiently high in order to keep subscribers interested. Then all you need to do is track your campaign to keep an eye on its success, and you’ll be well on your way to reaping the rewards of a well managed, well thought out email strategy.