E-mail: Long-term Leveraging

By: Maria A. DiSanto
Key Promotions, Inc.
www.keypromotions.com
maria@keypromotions.com

    You arrive at work Monday morning, feeling rested and ready for another challenging week at work, only to download 49 un-invited e-mails and you begin to wonder how on earth your e-mail address has seemingly landed on every e-mail list imaginable. And painfully, you begin the unsubscribe process to each list until you hit one that really grabs your attention: "Dear Sandy, Thank you again for being a loyal Cellware Customer. To reward you we are offering you 10% off of your next telephone bill. Please visit www.cellware.com to enter this pin number: 88998, and the discount will be enacted." Off you go to cellware.com, excited at the idea that someone does appreciate your business and you get 10% off of a cell phone bill that has your husband seeing red.

    What comes to mind when you think about your e-mail? Interoffice communication, a quick note to a loved one afar, and, probably JUNK. No one likes junk mail. Not postal junk mail and certainly not in our e-mail boxes. As an Internet marketer, it is your duty to ensure that no one on your lists ever gets or feels like they are getting junk e-mail from you - ever!

    The challenge: how do you effectively leverage your database of e-mail addresses without upsetting anyone, and, as importantly, maximize your return on your e-mail marketing efforts? E-mail should be a serious and critical part of your Internet marketing efforts. If you are not taking advantage of e-mail as a marketing tool, please don't call yourself an Internet marketer (it is offensive to the rest of us!).

    How to build an effective e-mail marketing campaign
So, you say you want to legitimately call yourself an Internet marketer? Learn how to use e-mail effectively and we might let you into our club ;).

    1. Collection Process: Your office
Some people might say it all begins at your Web site. It really begins in your office. You probably have the beginnings of a very good e-mail database right there in front of you and you don't even know it. Take a good look around your office and figure out if anyone there is actively collecting e-mail addresses. If you are a business-to-consumer organization, are you requesting e-mail addresses from patrons when they make a purchase in your brick and mortar stores? Are you asking for them when you send out direct mail pieces? Are you collecting them through your telemarketing efforts? If you are a business-to-business organization, the rules are the same but in this case you might incorporate them into sales tools you are already utilizing such as Goldmine, or Act. You may also find plenty of valid e-mail addresses just sitting around collecting dust on various workstations at your place of business.

    Now, even before you turn to your Web site, you have begun to compile a database of e-mail addresses. As you go through this collection process, consider your prospect and customer data. Are your customers segmented into particular categories? If so, which way makes the most sense to categorize them? By geography, by previous purchasing behavior, by age? Whatever makes the most sense for you, you need to categorize. (This will be critical later when we are forming targeted messages.) You might organize these e-mail addresses simply by dumping them into Excel for now and later we will discuss how to better manage them.

    2. The Web: Your site
Part of the beauty of e-mail marketing is that growing your database is easy to do from your site. Strong calls to action and the right message can entice visitors to leave valuable information about them with you.

    Notice I said "entice" and not "trick". Don't force your users to read the small print. (This goes for requests for e-mail addresses in the physical world as well.) Don't ask me to uncheck some sneaky little box at the bottom of the page if I DON'T want to receive information and don't tell me that you are going to send me information unless there is a way for me to opt-out of that process. Unwelcome e-mail, even one, will be more hassle than it will ever be worth to your company.

    Ideas for wooing visitors into your e-mail database include monthly free giveaways that are sent out via e-mail, grand prize sweepstakes and most importantly, valuable information. Now, there's a novelty - who would have thought that your customers would appreciate valuable information? Well, they would, more so than some e-mail that toots your company's horn.

    3. The Tools: An automated, preferably Web-based system
If you are going to get serious about e-mail marketing, you better think automation, and fast. Trying to manage an e-mail database of any magnitude that is not automated will simply be impossible and probably end-up causing you enough frustration to quit almost before you get started.

    We mean automated in every step of the process, from collection, to categorizing, to e-mailing, to removal from the database.

    Talk to your development team or your information systems staff about how you can automate this process. There are several "off-the-shelf" products that will allow you to automate facets of your e-mail marketing program. There are few pre-packaged Web-based solutions that we have seen that can "do it all" but they are coming. You can always have a custom Web-based mailer created for you. Include an automated unsubscribe feature. You don't want to spend precious time manually deleting people from your database. Other little nuances include having the ability to send an e-mail to "Dear John" vs. "Dear Entire Database" or "Dear Loyal Visitor", pre-scheduling e-mails, message preview capabilities, and line-breaking (you want to control where your lines break - this can be programmed into your Web-based e-mail tool.).

    We emphasize Web-based systems because while you may manage the Internet marketing for your company now, some day, someone at the offices in Timbuktu might do it, or you might want to give control to your franchisees across the country to do it for their locale and so on. If you go with a Web-based model from the start, it will make your life easier in the long-run.

    4. The Messaging: A people-serving activity
People, people, people, people. Warm blooded, glasses wearing, coffee drinking, white, black, brown, orange, and yellow skinned, red, brown, black, blonde and pink haired, skinny, fat, tall, short, people will get your messages. Um, did you get it? We are trying to think about people now, not your company, not your site, not your Web-based mailer, not an e-mail box, but people. If you don't get this, stop reading right here. You will never be a legitimate Internet marketer.

    What do your people want? Do they want to be sold something? Do they expect valuable information? Do they want to come back to your site?

    What do you want? Do you want them to call you? Do you want them back at your site? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to feel appreciated?

    Your e-mail efforts may be designed to do many things but certainly, one of the most important things it needs to do for you is prove itself as an effective marketing tool. The first goal with any e-mail campaign is to get your message read. This can usually be accomplished with a strong subject line. Take your time with the subject line. It is critical to get people to open your message. Once inside the message, personalize it. Don't say "HEY YOU, NUMBER 800,901 VALUED CUSTOMER". Say "Dear Suzy," and follow that with something that has immediate value to them. Either a call to action to save money, or gleaning valuable information should do it. For example, your letter might start off "Dear Suzy, Please visit www.cellware.com for 10% off your next cell phone bill." It immediately tells Suzy that she needs to do something to earn money off her next bill. She knows right away why this e-mail is of value to her. If you are offering information, you might try "Dear Suzy, Please visit www.cellware.com/newaccessories.html to read about new accessories that make driving and using a cell phone safer." Again, there is no guessing for Suzy. She knows why she is reading this message and clicking off to cellware.com for useful information. Now, of course, you will provide her with an insightful paragraph or two on how these accessories are beneficial to her and then offer her a discount on her purchase of them. Also, whenever possible, point people to exactly the place in the site you want them to visit. If you leave having to navigate the site up to them, they may never actually make it to the pages you intended.

    Keep the e-mail short. We all have enough to do without you droning on about your fabulous new company or product offerings that are of no importance. Tell me the important information at the top and save the rest of the information for the site. If I'm interested and your e-mail has a good call to action, I will check out the rest on my own. If you would be offended to receive a lengthy e-mail from some company, chances are, so will your audience. Do unto others……..

    And use your message to continue to build your database. Close out your messages with a great big "thank you" for reading and "by the way, if you like this, maybe one of your friends or colleagues would appreciate the same benefits you enjoy from working with our company. Please pass this on to them!"

    Always sign your messages personally (Sincerely, Customer Service. I can't imagine why someone would name his or her child "Customer Service" - what a funny name! Try "Sincerely, Kim Goodwin, VP of Customer Service) and provide an automated process for the recipient to unsubscribe if they desire to do so.

    Target your messages according to your database. Do you have your database segmented by people who like Corvettes vs. Escorts? Do you have it segmented by their geographic location? If so, utilize that segmentation to send more personalized and relevant information to those portions of your database.

    The bottom line:
Collect e-mail address responsibly.
Utilize a Web-based tool to manage your database.
Messages need to be targeted appropriately, personalized, have great subject-lines, be short, of value, provide an immediate call to action and act to build your database.

    In closing, if you want to call yourself an Internet marketer, you need to effectively maintain and utilize e-mail marketing databases to create long-term relationships with past clients and Web site visitors. Last but not least, ask what you can do for your customer, not to your customer. They will appreciate you for it in the long haul.