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Email Marketing
Email marketing is a key channel for Internet marketing. Generally speaking, email marketing will generate more conversions than affiliate marketing, social media marketing, or mobile device marketing. Although email marketing is not as glamorous as more trendy social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, the numbers still suggest that email marketing is a solid channel for generating sales for your organization. According to MarketingSherpa, email marketing was one of only two marketing channels that received an increase in budget in 2009. (the other was social media) Indeed, when done properly, email marketing delivers high ROI.
Along with natural search and paid search, email marketing is a channel that has the potential to generate significant results (sales, inquiries, conversions, etc.) for organizations. For ecommerce websites, email marketing clearly drives sales. For traditional websites, email marketing is a powerful medium for staying in touch with past, current, and potential customers as well as passive website visitors who have previously registered on a website. Any comprehensive Internet marketing campaign should include email marketing.
How does email marketing work?
Like most marketing tactics, email marketing is essentially a numbers game. For example, the large amount of spam that circulates the Internet demonstrates the power of numbers in email marketing. If you send out a spam email to a million email addresses, there will be at least a few people who will respond to the proposition of a possible quick rich opportunity out of West Africa. In short, the more email addresses you have in your customer database, the more effective your email campaign is likely to be.
Why should I hire a consultant to manage an email campaign?
Email marketing sounds simple enough, but the more you dig into it, the more you realize that there are several moving parts that are best managed by an experienced online marketing consultant. Firstly, you should definitely send your email blast out thru an email service provider (ESP). An email service provider takes responsibility for delivering your email to your database of email addresses. Attempting to simply send out hundreds of emails from your Microsoft Outlook software is a bad idea for a number of reasons. You might be flagged as a spammer by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and Outlook offers you almost no ability to track your email in terms of knowing who opened it, who clicked on a link in the email, and who did not receive the email because it bounced. There are several email service providers that offer organizations a quality service, such as Constant Contact, MyEmma, and Vertical Response. These email service providers provide online tools for managing your database of email addresses. If someone unsubscribes from receiving your email, the email service provider removes them from your database so you are not emailing people who do not wish to receive email from you.
Key email marketing metrics – what defines success?
The key email marketing metrics are open rate, click-thru rate, and conversion rate. A 10-30% open rate is a pretty typical open rate for a business doing email marketing. Click thru rate will vary depending on a number of factors including the date/time of email as well as email offer and creative. Websults recommends that creative for email marketing complement the creative employed on your website and other marketing materials. This coordinated marketing effort leads to be better branding and helps your recipients more quickly recognize and recall your company. In addition, consistency should be pursued in the “from” and “reply-to” email addresses as well as “Sender Name.” For transactional websites, email marketing clearly drives sales and sales conversion rates will vary depending on a number of factors, such as the subject line, email offer, time of send, and segmentation of email database for businesses with larger customer databases.
Websults welcomes the opportunity to consult with you on your email marketing. If you are an organization that conducts natural search (SEO) and paid search marketing campaigns, then you owe it to your business to also be operating regular email marketing campaigns to achieve maximum value out of your online and offline marketing activities. To schedule a free consultation on your email marketing strategy, please contact us.
Websults has produced and managed email marketing campaigns for several clients including law firms, non-profits, and retailers. Below are few creative email marketing samples that Websults has developed for clients:
Install It Myself (Nashville, TN)
Covenant Life Church (Tampa, FL)
