There’s a lot of talk these days about email dying a slow death in much the same ways as traditional advertising and direct mail. But in our opinion, email remains one of the most effective and efficient direct communication and marketing channels available for businesses.
For a lot of us, the ebb and flow of our workday is largely determined by what lands in our inboxes. Sound familiar? With that comes an opportunity for people or organizations to deliver messages and communicate with us directly regarding topics that are important to us. This is really an ideal scenario for marketers, but so many businesses get it wrong by skipping the two most important steps:
1. Asking customers/prospects what types of content they would like to receive, and
2. Getting their permission to send it.
The result is yet another mass marketing vehicle for delivering spam/junk mail. Our inboxes start to look much like the contents of our physical mail boxes. Teens shut out the noise. IT departments build firewalls. But there is still hope for businesses that play by the rules, do their homework, and develop the right content strategy.
Email’s Untapped Potential
Despite being around for decades, email technology is still evolving and most businesses have not tapped into it’s potential. For starters, there’s just no cheaper and more efficient way to deliver information directly to a boat load of customers, all at once. Plus, with the ongoing enhancements being made to bulk email tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact, customizing content and tracking open rates, clickthroughs and conversions can give you almost immediate ROI numbers.
If you’d like to explore the email marketing route, let’s talk. Below are the topics that we’re going to want to cover during that conversation:
- How might email marketing compliment your current sales and marketing efforts?
- What would you like this email campaign to accomplish?
- Do you have a database of customers or prospects with email addresses? How big is it? How clean is it?
- What’s the optimal content strategy and email design/layout?
- What types of conversions or success metrics will you track? Do you have an analytics program installed on your website so we can track email conversions?
- What’s your desired launch frequency?
- Are you planning to be self-sufficient after the campaign has been constructed? Or would you like ongoing support?
- Do you have a specific bulk email platform that you’d like to use? Or would you like us to suggest one?
