As a marketing tool, the e-mail newsletter might seem archaic compared with new media such as Twitter and Foursquare. Yet e-mail remains one of the most effective means of building relationships with customers and driving sales. Most people look at everything in their inbox, even if it’s just the subject line. In fact, e-mail newsletters have experienced a recent boom, with companies such as Thrillist and Groupon profiting largely on the strength of their mailing lists. Here’s how to make an e-mail newsletter work for your company.
Make a compelling offer
People need a good reason to add more e-mail to their overflowing inboxes. That makes the sign-up form almost as important as the newsletter itself. (Adding an e-mail address to your list without the owner’s permission is a no-no.) Clearly state what benefits subscribers can expect, such as exclusive discounts or insider industry tips. Just make sure the incentive to sign up is closely tied to your business. You shouldn’t raffle off an iPad, because the people who sign up will probably only care about the iPad, not your company.
Send often—but not too often
No business owner wants to gain a reputation as a spammer. But if you communicate too infrequently, customers may become less likely to remember your brand and less receptive to your sales pitches. A lot of companies make the mistake of not being in front of customers all year long, but then in November and December, they’ll start e-mailing every day. For most companies, sending newsletters once or twice a month is optimal.
That rule of thumb has worked well for The Girl & the Fig, which operates three restaurants and a catering business in Sonoma, California. The company publishes a monthly e-mail newsletter called Figbits, which typically includes recipes and information about upcoming events. The newsletter helped garner hundreds of reorders for her first cookbook as well as about 300 downloads of the company’s new iPhone app in two days.
Choose a clean design
Be sure to include enough white space so each element of your newsletter is easy to find, says Tornquist. Another design tip: If you include images in your newsletter, bear in mind that many people read e-mail with graphics turned off. If your e-mail consists of large graphics, readers will see blank space. E-mails in which the first thing you see is the ‘unsubscribe’ message, which isn’t good. Make sure there’s a mix of text and images.
get personal
To cater to subscribers’ interests, you will need to know more about them than their e-mail addresses. But take it one step at a time. If the newsletter signup form includes too many questions, visitors will be less likely to subscribe. Instead, send new subscribers a quick note a few days after they sign up.Send new subscribers an e-mail that asks about their careers and interests,surveying the entire subscriber list once a year to get feedback on the content.
If readers have divergent interests, divvy your mailing list into segments and send targeted variations of the newsletter to each group. Some companies also use customer data, such as recently viewed or purchased items, to create custom e-mail marketing missives. For instance, after a customer books a trip on Kayak, a travel site based in Norwalk, Connecticut, the company e-mails a roundup of deals on hotels, car rentals,and other services in the destination city.
encourage conversation
In addition to surveys, offer subscribers regular opportunities to interact. One way to do that is by including quick polls in newsletters. A site that sends users serialized versions of books by e-mail, regularly includes polls in the company’s newsletter, which has some 350,000 subscribers. In the December newsletter, asked subscribers to submit New Year’s literary resolutions— books they had always wanted to read— and linked to a forum on her website in which readers could post their answers. Included links to some of DailyLit’s classic titles, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Make the subject line count
Without an attention-grabbing subject line, subscribers may not open your e-mail. Choose a specific, succinct phrase that highlights the most crucial information in the newsletter. More subscribers will open an e-mail titled 20 Percent Off Spring Styles than one called March Newsletter.
Don’t oversell
Though the ultimate goal of an e-mail newsletter is to boost sales, be careful that your missives don’t become a relentless bombardment of pitches. The best newsletters provide expert information that benefits readers. A fashion boutique, for instance, could publish a seasonal style guide; an enterprise software company could offer productivity tips for the office.
One rich source of inspiration, is the questions customers regularly ask sales and customer service reps. A great way to do a newsletter is a question-and-answer format. It invites dialogue. Business-to-business companies, can often draw newsletter ideas from the guides and white papers they send to clients and prospects. Of course, newsletter subscribers love deals and discounts, but don’t cram a lot of promotions into one newsletter, or the deals might get lost in the shuffle. For maximum impact, focus on a single offer and highlight it at the top of the page, so that subscribers see it as soon as they open the e-mail.
tie in blogs and social media
If you already publish a blog, there is no need to create even more content for your newsletter. Having a separate newsletter, a separate blog—it’s almost overkill. In fact, a newsletter is a great way to drive traffic to your blog and your social media content.
Publish excerpts of your blog posts, with links to the full content. Some e-mail
marketing services, including Constant Contact, offer tools that let subscribers share the newsletter with their Facebook and Twitter followers.
Keep tweaking
Open rates and clicks are the primary metrics used to determine a newsletter’s effectiveness. The open rate, the percentage of recipients who view the body of an e-mail, primarily gauges the quality of the subject line. The links clicked within the body of the e-mail are a direct indicator of what content subscribers find most compelling. Target numbers vary by company.
After establishing a baseline, many companies conduct A/B tests, in which portions of the mailing list receive slight variations of a newsletter, to see which version is most effective. IDES, a Laramie,Wyoming–based company that provides information about plastics to engineering and manufacturing companies, regularly tests the subject lines and content of its newsletter, which is sent twice a month to 340,000 subscribers. In November, IDES tested two versions of a newsletter promoting the company’s new search tool. Half of its subscribers saw an image-based ad with a blue button inviting them to click for more information. The others saw a text ad with a basic link. The text ad received 33 percent more clicks.
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Social and Mobile Marketing
Social media and mobile may be the glamorous new darlings of retail marketing, but e-mail remains the tried and true marketing tool in retailers’ arsenal. The reason is simple: E-mail is deeply ingrained in the daily lives of consumers as a one-to-one communications tool.
Unlike the one-to-many nature of social media, where public comments are posted on a Facebook wall or Twitter page for all to see, e-mail allows retail marketers to convey their marketing messages in a personalized way. This enables retailers to tell a story in a way they can’t through other marketing channels.
Even though retail marketers are using social media and mobile to do many of the activities they used to do through e-mail, such as send coupons or post notices of sales, they are not replacing e-mail. E-mail is firmly entrenched in consumers’ daily lives. As new marketing channels emerge, e-mail is evolving to another level as a personalized communications tool that integrates with social, mobile and other marketing channels.
Personalized e-mail based on consumer data from social networking sites is the next frontier for e-mail marketing. By tapping into information consumers post about themselves on Facebook, retailers can create e-mail messages that promote brands consumers have positively commented on, offer accessories to recent purchases mentioned or pitch products their friends like or have purchased from the retailer’s web site or Facebook shopping page.
Retailers can also use that data to avoid pitching products or brands for which the consumer has expressed dislike. Knowing what a consumer dislikes reduces the chance of e-mailing promotions about products and brands that are unlikely to appeal to that customer.
Integrating social media data into e-mail is a very powerful and personal marketing tool.
Getting at a consumer’s personal information on Facebook can be tricky, because not all Facebook users make their profiles public, or they may choose to significantly limit the data available for public consumption. To gather the necessary information it is recommended that retailers encourage consumers to connect with them through Facebook.
Facebook Connect allows Facebook users to privately share their profile and friends with retailers or any entity. Sending an e-mail that requests a Facebook connection allows consumers to opt in to the program, and affords a retailer the opportunity to reassure consumers about how their information will be used.
By electing to connect with a retailer through Facebook, consumers aren’t just saying they like the retailer, they are saying they are willing to share information with the retailer, and that can take e-mail marketing to a whole other level.
Consumers that connect with a retailer through a social network can be encouraged to tell stories about their shopping experiences with the retailer or write product reviews on the retailer’s Facebook page. Those consumer stories can be excerpted and included in e-mail campaigns.
Consumer-generated content plays well with other consumers because it tells an authentic story about a situation consumers can see themselves in or an experience they can relate to. Once the stories are shared, they build on themselves, because consumers want to be a part of the community and tell their own story. This generates a steady flow of fresh content that can be used by the marketing team in e-mail and social marketing promotional offers.
Retailers can also use e-mail in conjunction with social media. They can promote exclusive sales on their Facebook page through e-mail, often requiring the subscriber to “Like” them in order to gain access to the special promotion. Some retailers up the ante and run a series of promotions to sway subscribers, such as “5 Days of Deals” in an effort to drive revenue and grow social followers.
Conversely, retailers can include sign-up forms on their Facebook pages or link to sign-up forms via Twitter to encourage social followers to receive more exclusive e-mail offers in the future.
Social and e-mail can work together to extend a retailer’s marketing reach. Retailers can gather additional information about people based on social profiles in order to e-mail to them in more relevant ways. Social platforms enable retailers to include more engagement points in e-mail; providing opportunities for subscribers to click through and speak with other customers, share stories and feedback and participate in fun events like photo or video sharing.
Knowing the behavior patterns of a consumer that is a Facebook user helps retailers understand how to better engage them through both channels. Retailers want to avoid sending e-mail promoting the same value proposition that is on their Facebook page. If the customer primarily interacts through Facebook, then the goal of the e-mail should be to entice them back to Facebook, especially if they have not been there in a while.
Retailers can use their Facebook pages to encourage consumers to comment on their purchases, and include in their e-mail messages quotes from Facebook users who do offer such comments. This kind of content is also effective for retargeting to consumers that have not responded to a prior e-mail promotion as a way to spark their interest in joining the conversation on Facebook.
Unlike the one-to-many nature of social media, where public comments are posted on a Facebook wall or Twitter page for all to see, e-mail allows retail marketers to convey their marketing messages in a personalized way. This enables retailers to tell a story in a way they can’t through other marketing channels.
Even though retail marketers are using social media and mobile to do many of the activities they used to do through e-mail, such as send coupons or post notices of sales, they are not replacing e-mail. E-mail is firmly entrenched in consumers’ daily lives. As new marketing channels emerge, e-mail is evolving to another level as a personalized communications tool that integrates with social, mobile and other marketing channels.
Personalized e-mail based on consumer data from social networking sites is the next frontier for e-mail marketing. By tapping into information consumers post about themselves on Facebook, retailers can create e-mail messages that promote brands consumers have positively commented on, offer accessories to recent purchases mentioned or pitch products their friends like or have purchased from the retailer’s web site or Facebook shopping page.
Retailers can also use that data to avoid pitching products or brands for which the consumer has expressed dislike. Knowing what a consumer dislikes reduces the chance of e-mailing promotions about products and brands that are unlikely to appeal to that customer.
Integrating social media data into e-mail is a very powerful and personal marketing tool.
Getting at a consumer’s personal information on Facebook can be tricky, because not all Facebook users make their profiles public, or they may choose to significantly limit the data available for public consumption. To gather the necessary information it is recommended that retailers encourage consumers to connect with them through Facebook.
Facebook Connect allows Facebook users to privately share their profile and friends with retailers or any entity. Sending an e-mail that requests a Facebook connection allows consumers to opt in to the program, and affords a retailer the opportunity to reassure consumers about how their information will be used.
By electing to connect with a retailer through Facebook, consumers aren’t just saying they like the retailer, they are saying they are willing to share information with the retailer, and that can take e-mail marketing to a whole other level.
Consumers that connect with a retailer through a social network can be encouraged to tell stories about their shopping experiences with the retailer or write product reviews on the retailer’s Facebook page. Those consumer stories can be excerpted and included in e-mail campaigns.
Consumer-generated content plays well with other consumers because it tells an authentic story about a situation consumers can see themselves in or an experience they can relate to. Once the stories are shared, they build on themselves, because consumers want to be a part of the community and tell their own story. This generates a steady flow of fresh content that can be used by the marketing team in e-mail and social marketing promotional offers.
Retailers can also use e-mail in conjunction with social media. They can promote exclusive sales on their Facebook page through e-mail, often requiring the subscriber to “Like” them in order to gain access to the special promotion. Some retailers up the ante and run a series of promotions to sway subscribers, such as “5 Days of Deals” in an effort to drive revenue and grow social followers.
Conversely, retailers can include sign-up forms on their Facebook pages or link to sign-up forms via Twitter to encourage social followers to receive more exclusive e-mail offers in the future.
Social and e-mail can work together to extend a retailer’s marketing reach. Retailers can gather additional information about people based on social profiles in order to e-mail to them in more relevant ways. Social platforms enable retailers to include more engagement points in e-mail; providing opportunities for subscribers to click through and speak with other customers, share stories and feedback and participate in fun events like photo or video sharing.
Knowing the behavior patterns of a consumer that is a Facebook user helps retailers understand how to better engage them through both channels. Retailers want to avoid sending e-mail promoting the same value proposition that is on their Facebook page. If the customer primarily interacts through Facebook, then the goal of the e-mail should be to entice them back to Facebook, especially if they have not been there in a while.
Retailers can use their Facebook pages to encourage consumers to comment on their purchases, and include in their e-mail messages quotes from Facebook users who do offer such comments. This kind of content is also effective for retargeting to consumers that have not responded to a prior e-mail promotion as a way to spark their interest in joining the conversation on Facebook.
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