Web Marketing Secrets Part 4

Email Marketing 

To recap: so far we have got your site looking great, with features to attract and retain potential customers. We have got your site to be strong at sell your products and services. Using search engines we have found one method of attracting customers to the site, and the links from other site will also pull in visitors. 

Email marketing is the next main method that we will use to draw potential buyers to your site. Before you use email marketing, you need to familiarise yourself with your legal obligations in this are by visiting the site of the Data Protection Commissioner.

My business comment on spam is that it is never a good idea to annoy customers or potential customers, so you should always ask their permission before mailing them and you should email to inform and educate them and draw them to your site, rather than attempting to do too much selling in your emails. There are exceptions to this and there are many B2B categories where frequent “latest offers” emails are the norm. 

The three key ingredients in an email campaign are: 

1 The database. You can buy your initial data from a broker and combine it with your existing customer list. Buy from a reputable source and if possible seek advice from an expert in this area as experience is the best way of selecting a vendor in this case. Be aware that email data goes out of date very quickly. You should have a space on your website where people can opt into your mailing list. An incentive will dramatically improve the number of people who volunteer their data. Make sure to also that you make them aware of your privacy policy and how you will protect their data. 

2 The offer/topic. What are the subjects that you can mail your customers and prospects about. Do you have information or expertise that could be useful to them on a regular basis. If you do, you should design a regular newsletter that you can send to your database. Find ways of bringing people to your site. You can sell to customers in you emails, but get the balance between selling and informing right for your market.

If you are lucky to be in a sector where outright selling is acceptable it is best to create landing pages for your customers that are customised to receive these customers. These are pages which are on your site but are not reachable unless responding to your email. As you know that the customer is coming to buy something you can be more aggressive than normal with your selling messages on the page and you can dedicate all the space on the page to closing the sale. I always recommend having different landing pages for new and existing customers. New customers need to know more about you and how you do business while existing customers are already familiar with your business and they just need a swift transaction. 

3 The email. There are many forms of email template around. I recommend that you select one which is close in design to your actual website but different enough to stand apart from it. Ask your web designer or internet manager to recommend a software that can load the emails, manage you customer database, perform the sending tasks in the volumes that you require, and will track and measure the responses that you get from the campaigns. 

This is Direct Marketing in its most instant form and that gives you two advantages. Firstly, you can have data almost immediately which will tell you the success of the campaign. Secondly, the ability to test the important details of your campaigns gives  you a tool to optimise this technique. For example, you may be uncertain whether to add a product special offer to your email newsletter or not. Split your mailing the next time and send the newsletter to one set and the newsletter and product offer to the other set. Within hours you should see the effect that the change has on your customers. More complex tests may require some expertise in statistics, but it is possible to learn a lot in a short time by using this type of simple test.

Go to Part 5