Remember all the work you did to launch a list building campaign on your site. You created a giveaway or coupon or newsletter or some kind of information of value that you offered a visitor in exchange for their email address. The idea was to build a list of interested visitors that you could market to over and over again through email.
But somewhere along the line that “over and over” became once every blue moon. Creating engaging content for a newsletter or email campaign takes talent and time and sometimes in a small business there isn’t enough of either to get the job done on a regular basis. When your emails start going out on a hit or miss basis your open rate plummets and your clickthroughs are nonexistent. Your audience, your list, has forgotten who you are.
The old adage “The money is in the list” has never been truer. Let’s briefly review why you started a list in the first place:
- Email is a ton cheaper than offline direct mail campaigns. Just as important, email is in real time. Direct mail requires a production cycle to prepare the print piece, print addresses and the physical act of putting it in the mail. With email if you have a message or offer that you want to put out now, today, it’s a simple matter of crafting the piece and sending it out.
- Superior customer intelligence. The backend of most email systems will identify who opened on what topic, which link they clicked on and your analytics will tell you what they did on your site. It’s like going on a ride along with your prospective customer. Gathering this info allows you to segment the list by interest allowing even more targeted messages.
- Viral Marketing. When’s the last time you saw someone give a friend a direct mail piece they had received and told them “You need to check this out.” Now think about how many times you’ve forwarded an email to a friend because it had a link or content that would be of interest to them. Email is the ultimate in convenient communication.
So those are a few of the reasons you want a list. If you’ve slipped up on consistently communicating with your list here are a few things you can do to get back in their good graces:
- Set up an editorial calendar. Make a decision how often you want to communicate to the entire list. This might be once or twice a week but no longer than once every other week. Test the best time and day to send. You can review your past history for clues. Once you have a day and time that gets results, stick to it. Your email will be received better if it is expected. On the schedule, slot in the “special messages” that you want to send to specific segments. Try not to overlap with the “regular” mailing.
- Mobile optimization. By the end of 2012 more people will access their email on mobile devices than desktop or web based email clients. You want to be certain that your message “fits” the mobile user’s mindset of “read/delete.” Keep subject lines short. Shorter subject lines perform better than longer titles. Make your message scannable and keep the content concise and on message. Make sure any links you have in the message are not bunched up in text (particularly important for touch screen devices). Before you send a message you should test it and open it with a mobile device to ensure it’s easy to read and the link is easy to click.
- The apology. What do you do if you miss someone’s birthday? You send a happy belated birthday card and apologize for forgetting that person’s important date. The same thing applies to your first email designed to reintroduce your list to the company. If it’s been a while since your last message the reader may not recognize your address so you’re going to have to come up with an eye catching subject. “We’re Sorry” might be a good title. In the body explain what happened and then promise to never let it happen again…and then keep that promise.
Email campaigns can be the backbone of a company’s conversion rate but they do take time to create and manage. If you’d like to pass all or part of your email marketing tasks off to an experienced professional firm we’d be glad to share our ideas with you.
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