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EMail marketing - How to be seen and not Spammed!

Written by: Greg Pipe

Article Overview: Email marketing is often looked at as a cheap way to get to thousands of potential customers. But if you don't do it the right way you can end up not getting read, or worse, getting thought of as a spammer. Here we look at some simple ideas on how not to fall into that trap.

EMail marketing - How to be seen and not Spammed!

In order to run and maintain a successful website in today’s highly competitive Internet world, it is essential to have an effective online marketing strategy. When used properly, one of the best tools to maximise your digital marketing comes in the form of email advertisements, especially due to its relative low cost. “As the clouds gather, marketing budgets will absolutely migrate to email from other channels” explains Chris Combemale, chairman of the Email Council of the DMA (Direct Marketing Association).

However, with the proliferation of spam emails that are being sent all across the world in the 21st century, you really need to take that extra step to grab your audience’s attention, keep their interest, and ultimately convert them into a sale. This means that the days of sending one generalised mass email message to every address in your company’s database, are quickly coming to an end.

Get creative.
Today, you’re really going to have to get creative in order to catch your audience’s attention as soon as they see the subject line – if it bears any resemblance to a spam email, it’s likely to be discarded right away. You also need to keep in mind, that some email servers have spam filters in place, which look for certain keywords or key phrases that are common to spam, words such as ‘free’, ‘save money’, ‘cash bonus’ etc. These emails tend to be deleted by the filters without ever reaching your intended audience.

Once the reader has opened your email, it is important to not only have a user-friendly design but to provide the reader with pertinent, valuable information as well. Though using images and graphics are nice, avoid using too many as they tend to increase the size of your email message greatly. Instead you should get straight to the point, and provide any relevant links, offers, coupons, or discount codes at the end of your message.

Target individuals.
And to make sure you are getting the most from your online marketing, you’ll need to send emails that are specific to your customer’s needs – and these may vary greatly from customer to customer. By keeping track of personal information in your company’s database, you can set-up online campaigns; sending out one email to one target audience, while sending a completely different email to another group of customers. This way you can provide tailor-made recommendations and information in your newsletters, while still appealing to as broad of an audience as possible. This sort of analysis is crucial as it shows you understand and empathise with your audience.

Not all doom and gloom.
But before we start thinking that emails might just be more trouble than they are worth, there are three pieces of recent research it’s worth considering:
1) A US survey by Pew has found that fewer American email users are bothered by spam than before.
2) In a recent survey by the DMA, 39% of respondents said they achieved best results by combining email with mail and or telemarketing
3) Another study found that open rates rose from 20% for standard emails, to 46% for personalised content emails and click-throughs from 8% to 29%.

Email has always had the attraction of being measurable and cheap, but the one size fits all approach is gone. To ensure a high return on investment companies must identify the characteristics that make the medium work.

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Article Tags: email marketing, email strategy, marketing, spammer



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