10 tips for Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most powerful and effective forms of online marketing today.  It’s cheap, easy to do, builds a personal relationship with your customers and allows immediate distribution of information.  Use it as a tool to let your customers know about new products and services, relevant industry information and special offers.  Most importantly, look at your results and use that information to improve future promotional campaigns.

Here is a checklist of 10 tips for e-marketing to help you build successful campaigns:

1. Only mail to opt-in lists, and keep data secure. Make sure you always use lists of recipients who have ‘opted-in’ or subscribed to your mailing list.  You’ll always get a better response from recipients who want to read what you send and they’ll trust you more.  What’s more, the Data Protection Act makes this a legal requirement of all direct selling.  Legally too, you must keep data secure by making sure you and you alone have access to your lists.  Don’t sell or lend your data – it’s a sure way of losing contacts and damaging your reputation.


2. Keep content relevant and interesting. You need to make sure you have great, compelling content that’s right for your audience.  Content must be relevant and interesting.  This takes time, but will ensure you build a better relationship with your contacts, and you can always use results from previous campaigns to help you determine what your readers find interesting (check click-throughs on keywords, open and bounce rates)


3. Build continuity into your template layout. Always link your template layout to your website or other promotional items so that your recipients recognise your emails.  Your clients will be familiar with your website so send emails that are consistent in appearance and extend its appeal.


4. How often should you send emails? This is tricky because you’ve worked hard to obtain your customers’ details, so bombarding them with emails could trigger them to unsubscribe.  However you do need to keep in touch often enough or you’ll see response rates drop.  Use a survey or poll to find out how your customers feel about your emails and make sure you include a question about frequency.


5. Incentivise and motivate your customers. Best practice e-marketing gives recipients a reason to read and interact with your emails.  Offer interesting information of benefit to your readers – don’t hard sell in every communication you send.  Think about including competitions or freebies every so often to keep your customers interested.


6. Make sure your subject line is relevant. Often overlooked, the subject line of an email is vitally important and must interest your recipients enough to open your email, rather than the hundreds of other emails demanding attention in their Inbox.  Test different subject lines for the same email by segmenting your lists, and checking your open rates for each.


7. Use reputable email marketing software. There are many e-marketing software companies, and some offer a free service for small businesses typically sending less than 500 emails per month.  Shop around and make sure the company you choose can help you with our first tip ie keeping data secure and always emailing to opt-in lists only.


8. Attach a plain text version for those who can’t receive HTML emails.  These days, most email clients can accept HTML, but for those who can’t, offer the option of a plain text email to ensure they can read what you have to tell them.


9. Get viral with your campaigns by encouraging your readers to forward your emails to a friend.  This costs nothing, takes two seconds and can more than double your readership.  Most email marketing software offers a “forward to a friend” widget which you can add to your template quickly and easily.


10. Finally, check, test and check again! It sounds simple, but we’ve seen many beautifully designed emails with typos and grammatical errors.  This does nothing for your reputation as a small business!  Check your spelling and make sure your email makes sense.  Finally send a copy to your own Inbox and see how it appears in the Preview pane.  If you have mainly images at the top of your email, you’ll see that these don’t automatically appear.  If you can’t avoid the use of images such as your logo at the top of the email, make it smaller, and use descriptive text which your readers will recognise.

Would you buy from this website?

I recently read an article which insisted that the economic downturn is almost over, and therefore the most important issue for small business owners was to ensure their online shopping carts were ready to process the enormous amount of traffic which will signify the end of the credit crunch.  Oh, if only it were that simple!!  I love the thought that a huge wave of online sales will effectively break overnight at some given point in the future, and all I need worry about is whether my site server can handle the volume of sales!  Unfortunately, my 30 years' experience in small business marketing tells me it just won't happen like that.

Nevertheless, the point about reviewing your online shopping cart is a good one, particularly in light of the fact that the current economic climate is producing more savvy online browsers rather than shoppers, who take much longer and do more research before making a buying decision, if at all.

With this in mind, I've been asked to conduct some research on small business e-commerce sites.  So, would you buy from this website? I look forward to your comments.

Thank you.

Experian are selling my business data!

Today I was amazed to discover that Experian are selling my business data without authorisation, and it seems they've been doing this for years.  The company who coldcalled me today have been using Experian's business lists to build up their customer database and as of Sept 2007 were ranked 12th largest web site design company in the UK - all thanks to Experian's underhand marketing strategy.  Want proof that Experian are using data for commercial reward?  See for yourself

According to the law, there are eight principles put in place by the Data Protection Act 1998 which specify that data must be:

• fairly and lawfully processed


• processed for limited purposes


• adequate, relevant and not excessive


• accurate


• not kept for longer than is necessary


• processed in line with your rights


• secure


• not transferred to countries outside the EU without adequate protection.

It is against the law if a data controller, for example an employer, does not keep to these principles.

Frankly, I don't believe my business data has been processed in line with my rights, nor is it being processed for limited purposes (being commercially marketed over a period of years), nor have I ever been informed by Experian that they would use my data in this way.  I have raised the issue with Experian, and am expecting a response shortly.

Naturally, I'll keep you posted.