Stevens Design Studio Attends NEMOA Conference
We recently attended the Spring 2004 Conference for NEMOA (New England Mail Order Association) and wanted to share a review of e-mail marketing. E-commerce was the major topic at this conference.
Essential Components of Effective E-mail Marketing
E-mail is a flexible, measurable and cost efficient marketing tool. E-mail can be a very effective way to introduce new products, build customer relationships or make a special offer. The challenge today, with so much junk e-mail showing up in everyone's inbox, is to have a relevant message that has value for your recipient. If you "trick" your recipient into opening your e-mail with a false promise, they may never open your e-mails again.
Strategy and Objectives
Creative and Content
Essential Components of Effective E-mail Marketing
E-mail is a flexible, measurable and cost efficient marketing tool. E-mail can be a very effective way to introduce new products, build customer relationships or make a special offer. The challenge today, with so much junk e-mail showing up in everyone's inbox, is to have a relevant message that has value for your recipient. If you "trick" your recipient into opening your e-mail with a false promise, they may never open your e-mails again.
Strategy and Objectives
- Set the objectives and define your goals for each e-mail campaign.
- Determine if this will be an independent effort or will it be in conjunction with a print campaign or store promotion.
- Dedicate and coordinate the resources necessary to manage the e-mail campaign.
- Create every opportunity to collect e-mail addresses (permission is key).
- call centers
- website orders
- online registration
- retail stores
- Review and revise data collection processes to produce the highest quality results.
- Vigilantly maintain your unsubscribe list.
Creative and Content
- Focus on the subject line and keep it short.
- Build your e-mail for quick downloading many people are still using dial-up.
- Include a call to action.
- Prepare landing pages that bring the reader to relevant information.
- Include a call center phone number (one third of e-mail recipients use the phone)
- Keep the e-mail short, sweet and concise.
- Test concepts and offers to see what works best with your audience.
- Test internally before executing carefully proof content and test links.
- Test on the major browsers and on a dial-up account.
- Consider the best day and time of day to broadcast your e-mail.
- Include Refer-A-Friend for viral marketing.
- Understand the challenges of filters and ISP blocks.
- Resend bounce backs but be careful not to get blacklisted.
- Always include a clear unsubscribe link (it¹s now the law to have one).
- Review bounces, delivered, unsubscribes.
- Review opens, clicks, unique clickers.
- Review clicks by URL and by domain (AOL, MSN, etc).
- Analyze Campaign Response
- total delivered
- number of orders or replies
- average order
- cost per e-mail including creation and delivery
- Review contribution to profit and overhead.
- Look at cost savings of generating this activity from e-mail versus other methods.