Email Marketing Strategy

We often underestimate the power of email. In a digital world where apps and social media seem to having the lion share of marketing, we tend to forget that email is the one constant – the one thing that has and needs to be checked. With the increase in tablet and smartphone uses, email is also now mobile and real time making it ones of the oldest standing and powerful methods of digital communication.

Sending out large volumes of mail however isn’t enough. You need the right strategy and the right email marketing solution that will deliver this strategy for best results. You may have the right message and the right database but that is where the story begins.

Here are a few tips on how to best use your next email marketing campaign to drive better results:

1.       Segment to Personalize:

Segment your email database into sections based on gender, designation, interests etc that you either know of or can source online and try and skew the content of your email campaign to suit these segments – basically send the same mail out in segmented batches to make you seem more personal

2.       Give it Away:

It’s always helpful to give away something that’s not high cost to you. Free downloadable wallpapers, e-books, widgets, discount coupons etc are a great way to connect with you audiences and stay with them. It’s also the best way to get them to read your content and follow up on your call to action.

3.       Optimize for Mobile:

Over 40% of email uses keep track of their emails with mobile devices or tablets and not once they reach their busy work stations. Ensure that your email formats are mobile friendly so that your message is read.

4.       Permission for Attention:

Getting your recipients to pay attention to your message means getting their permission to do so. Ideally you should use Maxmail or another email marketing solution to start off by sending permission mails that let them know what’s in it for them if they opt-in to receive your content.

5.       The Subject of the Matter:

The subject line is what really gets them wanting to read the rest of your email and you roughly have about 40 characters to do this. Avoid obvious words such as FREE and EXCITING and instead make your subject a relevant statement that piques their interest. Be brief and be real.

6.       Call to Action:

Any good email needs to end off with a good call to action; i.e what do you want your recipients to do after reading your content? Having a link or video attached to your email will create an immediate action.

7.       Branded Content:

Use an email marketing solution such as Maxmail HQ that comes with multiple customizable templates and a simple drag & drop feature, allowing you to input your content, logo, brand imagery, colours and other elements to ensure that your email content is truly yours, further strengthening your relationship with your recipients.

 Find the right solution when it comes to your email marketing software but also remember that you need to do some good groundwork to ensure that you kick things off with a bang. 

Permission Marketing – What’s It All About?

Permission Marketing is an age old marketing term that simply means you need to ask for permission to market something to a consumer unlike advertising that jarringly gives out a message whether people want the message or not. The term became popular recently thanks to a book titled Permission Marketing by Seth Godin and is now a buzzword in the online marketing sphere.

Forbes magazine paid tribute to Seth this year to mark the 15^th anniversary of the release of his book earlier this year, remembering his revolutionary and simple thought process that changed the way consumers look at brands today.

As a marketing principle Permission Marketing states that you need explicit permission from the prospective or existing customer before sending any promotional material or information about your brand. This approach has now become an essential part of online messaging, email and SMS marketing making email list cleaning a must to ensure smooth operations. 

Godin’s book goes on to define Permission Marketing as messaging that is anticipated by your customer as well as being a topic of interest that is relevant to them. He believed that a strong business-consumer relationship could only be possible through empowering your recipient – you only send them stuff they will want to read and know about further enabling the possibility of the communication resulting in an end sale or response. This makes your marketing efforts all the more effective as well, because your target audience is identifying themselves to you and allowing themselves to be recipients. When an inbox is overloaded with spam, permission based marketing on social media and other online platforms become a welcome change to consumers. This is also where email list cleaning can help you.

The concept of Permission Marketing has evolved over the years from merely asking permission via short codes and online subscriptions to really creating demand for your content. As with any relationship, the one you have with your consumer or reader should work on the principle that they look forward to your content and miss it when it’s gone. If they seek you out, then the permission is already granted because they are demanding for your content over you having to ask them for permission to do so.

Consumers today who engage with both traditional and online content are a smarter and more evolved species – they are aware of their power to ignore marketing and tend to exercise this right regularly. This is all the more reason to treat them with the respect they deserve in order to earn their attention. This choice to pay attention is a precious privilege that marketers should be aware of and treat with utmost care if they want to have long-standing relationships with their consumers. It requires marketers to have a more individualized focus to their marketing; if you want people to want you –you have to let them know, personally. This is the essence of Permission Marketing. 

How the Unsubscribe Feature helps your Campaigns

With statistics telling us that an SMS is read within 20 minutes of being sent, text marketing is probably one of the easiest and simplest ways to get a message across to a wide or selected audience. The only thing to take note of when sending out mass texts is that your recipients might not always want to receive messages from you and offering options that make things easier for them such as being able to unsubscribe from your overall texting database should be a must at the end of your message.

The usual format with text marketing for unsubscribing would be to offer a short code that each recipient can then text back to with a simple response such as NO or STOP. This does mean that they would have to incur a cost when they text you back, however. Imagine being able to offer this service, without making your audience incur a cost? This will help you be perceived as a responsible marketer and brand and even if they opt out of your messages, it will give them a positive, long-term view of who you are.

This is actually possible with text marketing platforms such as Texta HQ that has an add-on online unsubscribe feature for those who have smart phones. The process of doing this is also fairly simple; you just need to add a link at the end of your SMS that your recipients needs to click on which will take them to a webpage with an ‘Unscubscibe’ button. They will also be given the option of leaving you a message if you want to hear back from them as to why they don’t want to be receiving a certain type of message, helping you to further fine-tune your future SMS marketing campaigns. Once the recipient unsubscribes, the Texta software will then automatically unsubscribe that specific mobile number and add it to a suppression list, preventing them from being sent a text from you in future.

With research information such as emarketer telling us that there will be 1.75 bllion smartphone users by the end of 2014, it makes things it easier to reach audiences when their data is activated or they are connected to a wifi-network. This also makes it far more convenient to have a two-way dialogue with your customers instead of passive one-way messaging.