Email Marketing Strategy

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An emarketing strategy is something that every company needs to move forward in this technology and social media driven market. Budgets are tight in this economy and every company is trying to leverage online marketing techniques for the lowest cost. Even though budgets are tight, businesses are finally realizing that they need to loosen the purse strings on their marketing and learning to embrace what can be gained from email marketing in 2012.

via Small Biz: The world’s economic future in 2012 seems bleak, and could become even bleaker.

The debt crisis in Europe still has not been fully resolved. Greece is getting it’s financial affairs in order, but there are other problems within the European Union.

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With the marketing  mix becoming  much  more varied - as online technologies mature - and previously separate marketing channels become far more integrated, it easy is to get caught up in the latest trends and lose sight of the things that make business to business marketing successful.

2011 saw social media rise to new heights and it was inevitable that it would soon be adopted as a core business tool. Social media marketing in many ways reinvigorated firms' online marketing efforts and allowed them to refocus their aims on producing far-reaching campaigns that spanned a plethora of different platforms. It was this 'all inclusive' attitude towards social interaction that set the pace of marketing in 2011, which is why we saw firms returning to tried and tested methods - like B2B email marketing - but using them in fresh, integrated and innovative ways.

While there were a number of new tools also pushing their way into the mainstream - such as online video and the rapidly growing platform of mobile marketing - it is clear that underpinning all this innovation were familiar techniques and methodologies. While content was to remain king for 2011 web-based marketing strategies, data was the cornerstone of B2B marketing - in particularly, segregated, up-to-date, highly-organised business lists.

It is this underpinning of sound business data and insight that meant so-called 'traditional' marketing platforms - like email - remained extremely popular. This looks set to continue in 2012 with email marketing is set to undergo something of a resurgence and staying high on the agenda for digital marketing specialists.

Interestingly, one of the key reasons that email will have such as successful 2012 is because of the rise of new methods of communication which were previously seen as rivals - namely social media and mobile. Far from undermining email as a rock solid business to business marketing tool, social media and the rise of smartphones and tablets have, in many ways, made it far more useful to the marketing professional.

For starters, access to email has become both instant and continuous. People can check there emails 24/7 using any number of new technologies - you can even gain access to it through your TV and mp3 player. This 'always on' view of email has cemented its reputation as the all-pervasive communication tool of choice. Its benefits over and above social media marketing are clear. It is targeted - if you have the right business data to underpin it - it can be easily personalised and it is easy to measure the success of it. What's more, with the clever use of new technologies, it can be far more responsive than it has been in the past.

So what will the key goals be for the email marketing professional in 2012?

First up, businesses need to get the targeting of their marketing messages right. Email marketing is ubiquitous and millions of messages will simply go unread or be blocked by spam filters - particularly as a result of poor email design. This means the data used for your mailshots needs to be high quality. It is no use going into 2012, spamming potential clients and customers from lists that have out-of-date information on them. Businesses will need to start using their B2B marketing data lists more intelligently if they are to boost email penetration rates.

Secondly  there is the design. Many messages are deleted because they don't display properly or cause inboxes to malfunction. Email design will continue to be a hugely important factor when it comes to business to business marketing. With the rise of mobile technologies you must also consider smaller screen resolutions if you intend to run  mobile email marketing campaigns.

Read more here...

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My friend Joel Book is a very smart guy. As the (handsome) face of ExactTarget, he often has some great research, products, and ideas to share. In a recent article on the ExactTarget blog, he shared the need for marketers to be able to view all of their cross-channel integrations in one, real-time manner and dropped some great marketing 2.0 nuggets in there as well.

Joel’s Article: Effective Customer Engagement Means Real-Time, Cross Channel Service
Marketers have long relied on multiple channels to drive engagement, but today marketing requires a new approach – one built on a single view of the customer that values real-time interaction over static channel-focused campaigns. The antiquated one-to-many monologue of mass marketing has given way to the one-to-one digital dialogue of engagement marketing that is fueled by customer data and enabled by interactive marketing technology.

In “The Age of the Individual,” the most successful marketers are using a carefully integrated mix of Email, Mobile, Social media to attract, engage and retain customers. This “triangle offense” strategy is enabling brands like Scotts Miracle-Gro, Belk, and Papa John’s to accelerate their ability to engage customers in real-time and dramatically improve marketing and sales performance.

From “Campaign Management” to “Interaction Management”

The days of the “single-channel” customer are gone and they’re not coming back. Today’s customer interacts with a brand through multiple online and offline channels. Every conversation, every interaction a customer has with a brand – whether it occurs face-to-face, through Email, on the phone, on the website, on Twitter, on Facebook, or SMS – shapes the customer’s opinion and influences how he or she talks about the brand.

When these channels operate independently – instead of cohesively as one – messages often conflict, offers are not consistent, and the customer’s perception is that the brand is dysfunctional and totally unprepared to anticipate and respond to his or her needs. Not exactly a positive brand experience.

On the flipside however, when a brand creates a single database of knowledge about that customer and uses it to deliver consistent messages and timely offers across multiple channels, the customer’s brand experience is quite different.

This is the fundamental difference between “Campaign Management” and “Interaction Management.”

Customer Data is an Asset. Manage it Accordingly.

A company’s customer base should be managed like an investment portfolio, and like a good investment advisor, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service all share responsibility for maximizing the performance of that portfolio. And that requires a single source of reliable customer data that fuels the operations of each department.

That’s why it’s so important to manage information about each and every customer interaction in a shared business system that all customer-facing employees can access and use to communicate with and serve the customer. This way, the customer is treated correctly and consistently because Marketing, Sales and Customer Service are all aware of his or her needs and interests, previous purchases, and value.

Not only does this single view of the customer make it easier for employees to make smarter marketing decisions and interact with customers more effectively, it also creates a better experience for the consumer. Integrating cross-channel data in a single database creates an invaluable corporate asset, and accelerates the ability to interact more effectively with individual customers in real-time.

Serving has become the New Selling

To truly serve customers better, companies must learn to market to a “segment of one” because today’s customer wants more control over the content that is being delivered through Email, Mobile, Social Media and Website channels.

No longer is it appropriate or acceptable to guess what information or offers the customer wants – in fact it is destructive to the customer relationship. The recent Subscribers, Fans & Followers research conducted by ExactTarget revealed that 90% of consumers unsubscribe, unfan, or unfollow when the communication received from brands is too frequent or the content is irrelevant.

In the “Age of the Individual” consumers expect to be served, not sold. When companies make the commitment to understanding individual customer needs and interests, and using that insight to deliver content that is timely, relevant and useful, they not only sell more, they create a community of “brand advocates” who become some of the company’s most effective marketers.

Read More of Joel’s Insight on the ExactTarget Blog

image: ExactTarget blog

Every year you take part in plenty of annual events to ensure your health and well-being: you go for your yearly check-up, you participate in yearly performance reviews at work, and maybe you even recharge your life with some New Year’s Resolutions in January.

If you think about it, a lot of your annual routines are about assessment and renewal – so when was the last time you stopped to assess your email marketing initiatives? Maybe it’s time to mark the start of summer as your annual “Email Marketing Check-Up”… a lot can change in just one year, after all.

Some things to consider when assessing your current email marketing plans:

1. Does your email marketing platform offer you exactly what you are looking for? Not just batch and blast capabilities but dynamic content, triggered emails, advanced marketing automation capabilities.

2. What is your current CPM rate, and could it be better? This alone can save you thousands of dollars annually.

3. Does your best of breed email marketing platform integrate with your CRM software or are you still operating in silos?

4. Does your email marketing system tie into social; or is this just another missing link?

The only problem with considering these questions and others is that the answers aren’t always that straightforward – and sometimes you need an email expert in the first place just to decode the jargon that you’re looking at.

Well guess what, we are email experts and we would love to help you! Go ahead and call us: run your current email marketing program by us, and we’ll offer unbiased insight into what you could be doing better, or where you could possibly improve sales, automated interactions, or strategy. We know that not everyone needs dramatic changes to their programs, or that maybe now might not be the best time for a change – but we’ll certainly share our years of industry expertise and knowledge on specific steps your company can take to improve your e-marketing initiatives and eventually your bottom-line. Just reply here, and let’s plan a time to talk.

We’re not going to lie: since the market nearly flat-lined in 2008, we’ve seen a tremendous dip in the budgets of every client and prospect that we speak to across the board. For the small to medium sized businesses that survived the economic meltdown and have had to “get smart” with their limited marketing dollars – nothing is sexier than the prospect of new clients… and we couldn’t agree more.

The bottom line is: everyone wants new leads, so everyone needs new lists.

But businesses don’t want just ANY LIST– they want updated lists of cold prospects; pin-point specific opt-in lists; and potential customers who genuinely want what they are looking to sell.

Any business can go buy a few thousand names from Jigsaw and hit the “send” button in an email marketing platform – but the trouble lies in the quality of these lists (and the legality of them as well). We’ve almost always found that purchased lists leave businesses sorely disappointed and looking to point fingers, so we suggest that you look “bigger picture” than just a few thousand names and ask yourself:

• Do you plan to also engage these customers on relevant social networks? How will you find them?
  
• Do you have a strategy for when half your list is lousy (email appends) and the other half is irritated that they weren’t properly opted-in in the first place?
  
• Have you thought about your offline records much? Or your “dead” email addresses? Don’t you think these people are still out there?
  
• Are you willing to risk missing a possible new client just because their information changed?
  
• Have you thought long-term about your brand identity, email deliverability, and your “good name” as a business? What do these messy “batch and blast” processes mean for your bottom line?

Once you’ve thought these things over, keep an eye out for Part 2 of this series, which’ll give you some great ideas on where to find prospects and how to engage them!


Here at ListEngage we think about this stuff all the time – and have a full-service team that specializes in email appends, data-mining, and matching the absolute best (opt-in) prospects with the absolute best permission-based marketers (aka – you!). Part 2 of this series will be posted shortly, so keep an eye out… but in the meantime email, Facebook or Tweet us if you have any questions.