Monday, July 7, 2008

Email Campaign Management: The Brand Awareness Channel

Advertising means models, smart punchlines, flashy campaigns, big budget and direct ad channels. Right. But now things have changed. The whole meaning of advertising has changed post Internet era. All major companies, new companies and even small companies are turning towards online ad medium. Many of them are using Emails as advertising.

And they are opting for Email campaign management. These companies send promotional messages in the form of different templets to a number of prospects and clients. These messages are in the form of small emails. Most surprising fact is that this kind of advertising is working and generating revenue.

An Email marketing company works to tap Internet users of the world. It helps in Email campaign management. Your promotional messages are sent to active Internet users who check their Emails on daily basis. Companies, their products and services are get noticed. This is how brand awareness happen. Be it a wealth firm, auto-industry, healthcare industry, accounting firm, software firm, pharmaceutical company, technology vendor, consumer product firm, publisher or any other business, an Email can work as an excellent promotional tool.

In fact, due to its effectiveness only, a majority of companies all over the world are using Email as their main channel of communication and they are choosing opt-in Email marketing campaign.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Target your Email Marketing Campaign Behaviourally

When you think of Returns on Investment, email marketing is the most rewarding marketing service online. It demands almost zero investment, and can get you targeted traffic with the help of email addresses. The 'supposed' effectiveness of this type of marketing has often tempted businesses to venture into it. However, one should be cautious and well-aware of the pros and cons associated with this process.

First and foremost, you need to figure out if your product lines are attracting enough for all types of customers. They should appeal to the needs of customers you wish to cater to. And, when you think of customers, delve beyond demographics. A number of online buyers are influenced by non-financial factors like family decision and user reviews, etc. before actually buying a product. You can also undertake research on the purchase history and customer needs to frame your campaign in a better way.

Behavioural targeting is the new genre of email marketing services. Meant to reach out to customers with personalised or customised information, it is slowly becoming a highly sought-after service. Listed below are a few important points that should be taken into consideration when you strategise your campaign:

  • The welcome message should be eye-catching and effective. The idea is to forge a strong bond with potential buyers. You have to get them enticed through your first message itself, so much so that they actually look forward to more information from you.
  • After you have been able to convert a buyer, make sure that you follow up with him throughout the whole buying process. Customer support is paramount if you want to make a good impression in the online marketplace. Make use of newsletters, blogs or RSS feeds to keep users updated about your products or services.
  • Once a sale is done, it is imperative that you do not forget the buyer. By delving into some post-purchase communications in email marketing, you can make the customer feel special, also ensuring that he would want to come back to you for more purchases.
As a marketer, when you target a campaign behaviourally, you should give a personalised touch to every bit of communication that takes place between you and your prospective customers.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Email Marketing Stats – Misleading 'Facts'

In the world of Internet marketing, statistics play a very important role. Businessmen depend on them to chart their future course of action. While marketing through emails, you do not know the kind of person the recipient is, although you do have a fair idea of his preferences. The reports you get back after sending mailers tell you a lot about the impact your emails have made, or in short, depict the success of your campaign.

However, many a times, statistical data can trap you into harbouring misconceptions about your email program. These data usually report on how many emails were delivered and received by your target audience. The word 'delivered' usually signifies the arrival of a message in the recipient's inbox.

However, it can be quite misleading at times because it does not does not take into account the emails that are deleted by anti-spam mechanisms provided by email service providers. Also, it does not consider the mails that are dumped in the 'junk' folder by subscribers. To decipher the real delivery rate, you can make use of delivery monitoring services available online.

Marketers often go around town talking about low unsubscribe rates of their mailers. However, little do they realise that maximum users conveniently check the 'This is Spam' option for your emails, and automatically send them to their 'bulk/junk mail' folder. This means, even if they continue to be your subscribed recipients, they are actually not even looking at your mails! Therefore, do not be under the misconception that they love what you send to them and that is why do not wish to unsubscribe.

When you have identified inactive subscribers from your email marketing list, it is best to send them separate mailers to try and win them back. There might have been certain elements missing from your original campaign – generate appeal with an altogether new one.

When you decide to make reports on your campaign, ask yourself very relevant and appropriate questions. This is the only way in which you can actually reach a correct conclusion and measure the effects of your marketing strategies. Do not believe stats illogically and do not let them mislead you.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Email Marketing: An Easy way to earn Money

I have been a regular follower of the email marketing technique. I have used it several times in the past to increase traffic flow to my web pages. And believe it guys, I have evaluated the difference. Every time I used email marketing techniques to promote my web pages, I recorded a thousand plus influx to my website, which obviously meant a boost in my sales fluctuating between 500-700 every time.

What you need to do is to create a list of email ids of your clients. This I agree is a time consuming process, but once you have made a list of important email ids, rest assure that they shall be fruitful to you in the long run.

Email marketing has been given a bad name due to the unethical practices of many hackers who use wrong ways of accessing somebody else’s email id and send mails to his friend list. This is a kind of spamming technique that has added a bad name to email marketing as a whole.

Many community websites and commercial websites use
email marketing intensively to reach out to their clients. It is a very strong medium of direct marketing which despite of its challenges and problems has remained to be a powerful online marketing tool.