I recently answered a question on LinkedIn titled “Is email marketing an effective marketing tool?”.
While the question was primarily aimed at buying bulk email lists and sending spam emails, I thought this was a good opportunity to shed some light on email marketing (and all direct marketing) and what you need ( and should avoid) to create an effective email marketing campaign that will get you results.
If you want to know what makes a great email marketing campaign, and what drives your customers away faster than you can blink, this article is for you.
Spam emails vs. subscription emails
Now, before we talk more about each one, we need to make a distinction between what constitutes spam and what doesn’t.
Spam, in general, is sending an email to someone who has not requested to receive that information. A reputable email list provider/seller/owner will not sell you any email, they will rent it. What that means is that instead of you getting the email list, they will allow you to send your campaign to specific emails based on certain demographic criteria (age, location, position, etc.), all without having access to the person. emails. If you buy a listing from somewhere, that’s the first sign that it might be spam.
Whether you purchase or rent an email list from a third party, you must ensure that all subscribers to that email list have chosen to receive emails from those providers and are not receiving these emails without your consent, in other words, They “opted” to be on that list.
Is bulk email (or spam) an effective tool for business promotion? Absolutely not. Unless you don’t care about your brand, you don’t mind the negative effect of being associated with spam, and you don’t mind being blocked by your ISP and email clients, then mass marketing is for you, otherwise stay as far away as possible. possible of it. If I was considering doing business with you and getting spam from you, I would definitely not buy from you.
Is email marketing an effective tool for business promotion? Absolutely. There is a very big difference between spam and permissioned (or opt-in) email marketing.
Effective Email Marketing
Permission marketing is a very effective tool for promoting your business and staying connected with your customers. For your email marketing campaign (or any direct marketing campaign) to be effective, there are three key elements to success:
1. The mailing list
The first element of having an effective direct marketing campaign is having the right and relevant audience. If you build your own database of users who said they were interested in receiving offers or information about product X, then having a campaign targeted to this audience will definitely give you better results than sending random emails to people who aren’t interested.
The same goes for rented lists. Defining the right goal is key. Any time you rent a list from a third party, you need to make sure that the recipient of your email is a relevant audience. If whoever is selling (renting) you the list can’t give you enough information about who the sender is going to, chances are you aren’t relevant and you end up in the spam folder.
A better way to do this is to go for reputable websites that have a genuine database of users (who opted into that website for third-party emails) that you can target with high precision. For example, if you’re selling accounting software to accountants, look for portals that keep track of user charge and send your campaign to accountants within your geographic coverage. An accountant will open an email that comes from you (if you have a relationship with him/her) or a third-party website you subscribe to, and will be interested in learning about new software that can make your life easier, but a teacher de geografía will not open your email, and if they do so by mistake, they will delete it immediately, because the offer does not interest them. You understand.
2. The offer
In addition to getting the email to the right people, your “offer” and content are key to ensuring you get favorable results. The email has to be visually appealing, easy to read and understand. A person who opens your email has to immediately know what you are offering. Do is short, simple and to the point. Highlight the key benefits and why they need to buy your product or visit your website, or whatever you want them to do (what problem will it solve, how will it make their life easier, why are you unique… etc.). This information has to be prominent and very easy to spot. The reader will not go through three pages of content to know what the email is about.
3. The call to action
As long as you got the first two points right, you still need to have a call to action. Surprisingly, this is where most campaigns fail. A call to action is a simple instruction that tells the reader what to do after reading this email. If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, tell them to sign up and give them the web address. If you want them to call you for more information about your offer, simply say so, and put your contact information. If you want them to buy a product online, show the address of the website they should visit.
The call to action has to be prominent and usually appears at the end of the message. A well-written email that looks impressive won’t get you any results unless it tells people what you need them to do. “Click Here”, “Visit Our Showroom”, “Buy Now”, “Download White Paper”…etc. There are all three elements of effective email marketing campaigns, the next time you have an email campaign, remember these rules and you won’t end up in the spam folder. If you’d like to add any ideas or have other key elements you’d like to share, please comment and tell us all about it.
