 | | | |  | October 1, 2005 | | By: Louise Rijk - Bio - Blog |
|
| | | | |
| | | | | E-mail Marketing in the Age of Spam: | |
How Improvements to 5 Key Areas Can Increase Your Response Rates
 Despite spam filters, new legislation, technology, consumer attitudes, and a whole new set of best practices, e-mail is alive and kicking. Not only is it inexpensive, but e-mail is quite effective for establishing and maintaining relationships with both customers and prospects.
Granted, the value of e-mail marketing as an acquisition tool has diminished somewhat due to spam control and the success of paid search advertising and search engine optimization, but as a customer retention tool it is still very powerful.
 Conversion rates of more than 10 percent are still possible with a well-maintained opt-in in-house email list. In order to push your response rates into this range, you need to focus on these key areas:
- In-house E-mail List
- E-mail List Building and List Management
- Customer Relationships
- Message Content
- Delivery
The following rules of thumb for each of the 5 areas will increase your chance of success:
- E-mail List
Successful e-mail marketing requires a well-maintained in-house e-mail list that needs to be "cleaned" from bounce-backs and un-subscribes after each e-mail broadcast.
To avoid a high percentage of unsubscribes, you'll want to limit frequency to once or twice a month. If you do email frequently you need to offer high customer value either through high quality content or a high value customer offer.
- E-mail List Building and List Management
Don't ask for too much and/or unnecessary information in your e-mail sign-up form. Instead, limit sign-up information to 5 to 7 items. Avoid intrusive questions such as street address, phone number, house income, or business budget. Too many information fields tend to make people abandon the sign-up form.
You should be able to convert 5 percent of your visitors to your Web site to e-mail list subscribers.
Since the best time to get people to subscribe to your email list is at the time they make a purchase, you should set up your web site backend accordingly.
- Customer Relationships
In order to be sure that your messages are targeted correctly, focus on building a relationship and developing trust with the customer. Discovering customer "hot buttons" is part of this process. Once you know what they are, you can tailor the content of your emails so that it's relevant to their interests. Rather than treating e-mail as a single event, your goal should be regular distribution - at least once a month - to build the relationship and trust with the customer.
- E-mail Message Content
People typically decide within 3 seconds whether to open the e-mail message, so make sure that the company or domain name is placed in the from field along with a compelling offer in the subject line. The message content must include a high value offer relevant to the recipients' interest, a compelling call to action, high quality design and appropriate timing. Before broadcasting be sure to review the email message for keywords that could trigger a spam filter, e.g. repeated use of FREE.
Remember to keep your messaging consistent by eliminating any disconnects between the e-mail message and the landing page. The visual identity of the e-mail message should match the Web site or landing page and the content should extend the message to the landing page.
- E-mail Message Delivery
One of the biggest challenges facing email marketers today is getting the message delivered in the e-mail box of the recipient. Select an email service provider that has a close relationship with the major ISPs (AOL, Earthlink, Comcast) and email networks (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and others) and frequent testing of the e-mail delivery to those entities is crucial to achieving a high delivery rate.
Also make sure your e-mail service provider is whitelisted. Some major ISPs (notably AOL) and most other large, managed e-mail networks, such as Earthlink and Comcast, provide whitelisting. Whitelisting ensures that selected e-mail is allowed through with a minimum of filtering and image blocking. In the business-to-consumer environment, whitelisting usually happens at the user level. If a user added the sender's address to her address book or "safe list," your mail is untouched by most ISP and personal filters.
E-mail marketing has become more complex and challenging than ever before, but with some extra work and creativity it can still be an effective technique in the hands of a savvy online marketer.
| | | | |  | | If you would like more information about Search Engine Marketing & Email Marketing, please fill out the form below: |  |
| |
|
 |
|
| | Copyright © 1999-2005. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Natick, MA 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com | | | | |
|
|