A Single Email Is Never Enough
"Repetition is the key to advertising (marketing)". Those words were said by a friend of mine, Jason Olson, back in his days of selling radio and direct mail ads. Jason, now the owner of Ultimate Web Designing (http://www.ultimatewebdesigning.com), said that a particular business owner was willing to buy a single month of advertising to see if it would be cost effective to do a full ad campaign. Jason told him that the consumer needs to be "hit" with the marketing message repeatedly in order for them to take in the message, understand it, and take action. This also applies to email marketing. A very small percentage of people will respond immediately while others need to see your message a number of times before they even think about responding to your offer. It has been said that nearly 70% of the market is made up of those people who take their time, shop around, and need to see offers more than a few times before giving them any consideration. Therefore, your goal is to effectively reach, persuade, and motivate this large segment?which is nearly impossible to do with a single mailing. Repeating your marketing message is essential to attract this all important group. Statistics have shown that the majority of sales occur in the follow-up process. However, you'll need to do so in a timely, consistent, and convincing manner. Repetition helps the consumer comprehend your offer, emphasizes how it would benefit them, and reinforces the urgency. Try revamping your next email marketing campaign into a string of messages and you will likely see a major improvement over individual mailings. By creating a sense of "NOW" with your email recipients, and reinforcing that urgency in subsequent mailings, you influence and guide your unresponsive prospects into action. Also, try adding an extra incentive with each mailing and your offer will become more valuable and more difficult to pass-up. Email marketing campaigns can be entirely automated with autoresponders. Your series of pre-written follow-up email messages can be automatically delivered to someone who responds to your offer or requests more information. Keep in mind that your email marketing campaign is only for your opt-in subscribers. Just as repeating your offer can increase the response rate, unsolicited email (spam) can increase your chances of earning a bad reputation. Conclusion?In order for any marketing campaign to work, the majority of your market needs to see your offer more than once. When your offer is seen over and over, people will start to remember it and realize the importance of it. About The Author Visit JD Burson's web site to learn how to make money from home (http://makemoney.ultimatewebdesigning.com) and pick up your copy of his e-books on writing email messages (http://email.ultimatewebdesigning.com) and autoresponder messages (http://autoresponder.ultimatewebdesigning.com). info@ultimatewebdesigning.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
DoubleClicks Q3 2004 Report Shows Bulk Email Marketing Eficiency Increase
Internet marketing company DoubleClick published its final report over the bulk email marketing evolution this year. The figures show year-over-year increase in delivery rates (cleaner emailing lists), and a decrease in open rates and click-through rates. The variations are light, proving a steady and maturing environment.
DoubleClick's metrics
Free Email Accounts ? Pros and Cons
Free email accounts are great if you want to hide your identity. They are great to sign up for free stuff. They are also very popular for SPAM emails and due to this they also filter too many non-spam emails as well. Ever wondered why you haven't heard from a friend lately. All a sudden no more emails, not even the forwarded jokes. Your friend just disappeared and you scratching your head what you have done to tick him/her off.
How to Build Your List
Your list is your life. If you do not have a list of customers and prospects, you may do okay in your business but you won't be great. The one and only thing that separates great marketers from okay marketers is the effort great marketers put into building their list of prospects and customers.
Just Write an Email
How did you sell your last product? Imagine that I am a newbie writing you an e-mail after reading your ebook. How would you answer the question? I bet you could send me a 300 word reply in no time. Words would flow from your keyboard as fast as you can type. You have just written your next article. Don't think so? Too easy? Read the next paragraph.
Internet Tip of the Week: Mistakes Count Against You
Before the advent of email most of us, other than sending out cards for special occasions, would write very few letters. If we did write a letter, it was carefully prepared, and considerable thought went into it. Today, with computer access available to most people, we have tremendously increased our amount of written communication, and sometimes fall into a trap. There are seven words that will serve as our guide and help us to communicate more effectively.
Autoresponders - One Simple Trick That Will Improve Your Results
Autoresponders, or responders, are simply programs that allow you to send out pre-written emails which have been pre-loaded into the responder. Prospective customers or recruits either input their email addresses into a signup form on a website or send a blank email to a trigger address. They are then entered into a database and receive your emails at the intervals you specify when you set up the responder.
Essential Rules For Effective Email Marketing
If you want an email campaign to succeed, you don`t want to
offend anyone when sending your messages. Turn off a
consumer with your email and you can be sure they`ll
tune out your message. Don`t let this happen to you!
The #1 Thing You Must Have Before Even Thinking About Building An Opt In Email List
It's not a website.
How To Create Gold With Email Promotions - Part 1
First make sure that the people you are sending your offer to are actually interested in what you are offering.
Wise Ways To Build Your Email List
Just about every successful Internet Marketer will tell you that, "The money is in the list". But, how do you go about building a good-sized email list? Here are several wise ways that you can use to start building your own large list of email addresses.
You Must Build A Customer List
If you run (or plan to run) an online business, it's especially important that you maintain and add to a customer/prospect list. Unlike a store-front business, which can draw on pedestrian traffic, you're only location is cyberspace.
Hot List-Building Tips
Here are some hot list-building tips for you to grow your list and your business.
Guidelines For A New Sending Paradigm - Part 1 of 5 - Treat Email as a True Risk and Cost Center
Sustainable email sending programs in an inherently hostile environment now require great care and planning. Before considering the technical complexities and the marketing tactics, email senders must adopt a basic paradigm shift.
The five guidelines included in this series should become watchwords for ezine emailers as they incur the risk and responsibility of sending newsletters or any other repetitive type of email.
Part 1 of 5: Treat Email as a True Risk and Cost Center
Part 2 of 5: Avoid Collateral Damage
Part 3 of 5: Plan to Use Every Legitimate Tool and Tactic Available (M2M)
Part 4 of 5: Build strong relationships (H2H)
Part 5 of 5: Continuously evaluate messages, lists, and recipient populations
Part 1 of 5
Treat Email as a True Risk and Cost Center
not as just an Internet infrastructure tagalong
Because it was "free", easy, and universally accessable online, email became the breeding ground for a vast number of experiments in communication and commerce. Ezines, newsletters, CRM programs and many other online publications are the product of some of those experiments. More pathological forms of information transfer also evolved in the same space, such as Spam and viruses. Today the Internet is trying to develop an immune system to fight those pathogens. Unfortunately, non-pathogen marketers and online communicators of all types have become the victims of this primitive new immune system's stumbling efforts.
Many online publishers moved to email back when the costs were essentially limited to a computer, some bandwidth, and a lot of work. Well, email has changed since then in many ways, almost beyond recognition. As this guideline points out, the cost of email risk avoidance and email delivery assurance have now become significant, even when they are not direct out-of-pocket expenses.
Senders need to catalog and understand the risks they face, and the costs to overcome these risks, as they adapt to the new hostile email environment.
New Potential Legal Risks From Email Programs:
Despite the prevailing opinion amoung newletter and ezine publishers that the recently enacted email legislation is directed only toward "Spammers", there is good reason to take these regulations rather seriously.
Even if we assume that you only send permission-based email (that all of your recipients subscribed to your ezine), so by definition you are not a "Spammer", there are many other aspects of the email process that have now become regulated. Examples include email transmission practices, list records, operational control over complaints and unsubscribe requests, claims of false or misleading Subject Lines, and several other issues. Mistakes in these areas, even with clearly permission-based mail, can have legal implications. And in fact, precisely what constitutes "permission" is still being worked out in some cases.
Online publishers should also be concerned about the motives and circumstances of some actions under the new laws. Targets may be chosen more for their ease of accessibility than for any serious infractions. It is much easier to find and go after a target you can see (such as an stable ezine) than it is to hunt down an elusive Spammer.
Finally, there is a common assumption that the email laws of other countries are similar to those in the US, however in many important respects this is not true. The differences in these laws compels (at the least) strict controls be maintained for any lists that are not fully geographically targeted.
See the Email PhD "Compliance" section to research the email regulatory environment further.
New Service Access Risks From Email Programs:
Impact on Your Personal Communications
Some online publishers assume that higher risk email programs, such as newsletters or promotional campaigns, are somehow naturally distinct or compartmentalized away from other types of personal email channels. Unless specifically designed as such, this is usually not true. It has come as an unpleasant surprise to many that blocking caused by, for example, an email marketing campaign can also cause the blocking of your email to friends and family. Blocking caused by a simple auto-response program at a minor Web site can disrupt your ability to communicate with anyone at a particular ISP.
One basic response to this type of risk is to segment and isolate different types of sending streams so that a shut down in one area does not push your entire e-communications system offline.
Recipient ISP Disruption
It is usually easy to determine when communications are cut with a major ISP, potentially denying access to a large number of customers or subscribers. But blocking at any one of hundreds or thousands of smaller corporate and local networks can be robbing you of revenue, customer satisfaction, and name recognition without your even knowing it. Testing for these blocks can be a difficult and involved process.
Direct blocking is not the only way in which email communication is disrupted at recipient ISPs. Having messages land in the Junk-bin rather than the In-box effectively eliminates that message for many recipients who automatically delete those messages without looking at them.
Every recipient ISP has the right to interfere with communications it judges to be inappropriate for its network. Unfortunately, a small number of Spam complaints, an appearance on a Blacklist, or just the perception of that system's administrator may cause breakdowns that can be very difficult to detect and resolve.
Unless you are an email wizard yourself, one of the most effective ways to begin to track down your delivery profile is through a delivery testing company. See the Email PhD "Data and Tracking" section for more information on this type of resource. Unfortunately, this type of service also represents a new cost for online publishers.
Hosting ISP Disruption
Even more directly, publishers are sometimes surprised to find that their own ISPs or NSPs can, and will, kick them off the service based upon email sending history.
It is amazing to realize that despite the sales cost and effort of acquiring new customers, and the service and support cost of retaining satisfied customers, most ISPs have placed the decision as to whether you can keep your service into the hands of a small group of "abuse" administrators. By declaring a violation of the contractual Acceptable Use Policies or similar provisions, these administrators have suspended many email and Internet accounts. Sometimes this can occur without notice, and often without recourse. Even very low levels or ratios of complaints can force you to scramble for new sources of Internet service.
See the Email PhD "Sending Signature Management" section for more information on avoiding basic disruptions within your email service chain.
Customer Affinity Risks From Email Programs:
Changing Consumer Perceptions
It is not unusual for a recipient to sign up for an email list on one day, and to report that email as Spam the next. The reasons why this happens are numerous, but unless a companies' email program is well managed and controlled there is a risk that a few recipients can do a lot of harm.
"Everyone knows" that Spam is a potentially dangerous pervasive evil online, and that any email they don't immediately recognize or want to receive at that moment is Spam (as incorrect as that definition is). The news media, recipient ISPs, and companies selling anti-Spam products are also training recipients that they need to actively suspect every email they get.
Online publishers have to adapt rapidly to provide assurance and reminders to recipients that they actively requested to receive that email, and to embed relevant and high interest content in all of their sends.
Negative Brand Impacts
Beyond the risk of turning off individual recipients with ineffective email programs is the broader risk of reputation loss within the general online community. Highly compliant, carefully managed email programs are their own reward when it comes to avoiding uncomplimentary PR outbreaks or having your name posted on the anti-Spam activist boards.
See the Email PhD "Content Controls" section to further research customer perception management issues.
Increasing Costs Within the New Email Environment
By all accounts commercial email can no longer be treated as if it were free. Whether for increasing internal control time and costs, or external service costs, you need to allocate the resources necessary to operate a sustainable and effective email program.
Increasing need for technical and strategic expertise
More than ever before, email has become a domain requiring a broad mix of different types of expertise. Because this knowledge can be highly specialized, or require access to proprietary data, this expertise often needs to be acquired from outside the sending organization.
Costs of outside service providers
It is frequently the case that an external Email Service Provider can better handle certain types of email sending. And there are obvious advantages to off-loading infrastructure risks and to increasing the embedded expertise (such as in ISP relations) by using ESPs. The trouble is that they cost money. The range of pricing among ESPs is extreme, as are the levels and types of services offered. Check out potential service providers carefully, and comparison shop - it is well worth the trouble.
Additional costs for administration and controls
Compliance elements and rising recipient expectations require more time and better records, and the need to track and respond to all complaints from numerous sources has added new manpower requirements. Of course, the costs of defensive records and permission audit trails are also growing. While these costs pale beside potential costs of non-compliance or customer erosion, in many cases they represent new and unfamiliar budget items.
Costs from distributed bandwidth and sending system architecture
The need to segment and distribute outbound email streams can increase both bandwidth and technical administration costs. The need to capture and retain more extensive records, or to access sending, delivery, response, unsubscribe, and complaint information in a timely fashion may require additional investment in computing hardware. Updated sending and tracking software purchases may also be needed.
Performance Benefits That Offset Costs
Simply put, you may have to absorb many of these costs to maintain effective, deliverable, and sustainable email programs. It is very likely that without this investment the efficiency of your email program will continue to slide, at the same time that the risks of uncontrolled programs are increasing.
Conclusions:
Over all, email sending programs have moved significantly away from the simple question of what "can" be done to a much heavier emphasis on what "should" be done, based upon increasing legal and recipient perception risks. The cost of sustaining effective programs is growing. Fortunately, so is the differential advantage of maintaining a working email communications channel.
Copyright © by Email Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
Building Relationships Takes Time: Overcoming the Overnight Surge Urge
Whenever we talk to a new or a "we hope to land soon" client, we are careful to stress the relational aspect of newsletter marketing. In fact, we go lengths to tell people that it takes time to build a list, time to develop trust, and time for people to feel comfortable enough to make the contact to initiate a purchase.
Harnessing the Power of Email Marketing
Given the inherent problems with traditional marketing
techniques, it`s important to master the BASIC STRATEGIES
FOR INTEGRATING EMAIL into your overall campaign.
Is the IronPort Whitelist Actually An Extortion Tactic?
It appears that Mr. Gates' prophetic prediction that charging marketers to send email across the Microsoft email networks (MSN and Hotmail) to cut down on Sp*m is about to come true.
Grab Those Emails! ? 11 Key Ways to Get Your Visitors to Hand Over Their Email Address
If you are trying to get an opt-in email list going for you website, you might be wondering where to start. The most important rule to understand is that you must persuade your website visitors to let you have their, oftentimes guarded and protected, email addresses.
Masterful E-mail Marketing
There are more than 100 million e-mail users in the United States. Imagine how many of them might need YOUR services or products. Dozens? Hundreds?
Thousands? Millions? (Go ahead... dream big!)
Youve Got Mail
It seems that Google is revolutionizing the Net in more than one way. Recently they announced that they will be offering a free email service called Gmail. It will offer its users 1GB of memory space. Now that is a lot of space for anybody to have.
Paradigm Shift for the New World
In the business world, the primary focus is on selling products and generating sustainable and profitable income. In any organization, the results are dependent on the activity of the organization sales, the quality of the product and service as well as the approach to advertising and marketing. The competition is fierce and every avenue to promote and sell must be maximized.
|