Email marketing is a relatively cheap yet effective way of contacting your existing clients and your prospects.
The emails can be about pretty much anything; a news item, an offer, an update on a technical breakthrough in your field of business area etc etc.
Below are many of the things that make for successful email marketing campaigns
Email Marketing Packages
The list below are some packages we are aware of and some of which we have used:
| Mailchimp | Available for free for up to 500 emails | then from £7.39/month |
| Constant Contact | Not available for free | from £15 / month |
| Active Campaign | Not available for free | from £11.10/month |
| Mailer Lite | Available for free up to 1,000 emails | then from £11.10/month |
| Sendinblue | Available for free | then from £18.50/month |
| GetResponse | Available for free | then from £11.10/month |
| Omnisend | Available for free | then from £11.84/month |
| Moosend | Available for free | then from £7.40/month |
| Mailjet | Available for free | then from £11.10/month |
Note – The companies tend to be US based so the costs are converted from dollars and are therefore approximate.
The costs increase as you increase the number of emails you store with them. The number of monthly emails that you can send is usually a multiple of the amount stored. Eg 3,000 stored, you can send 15,000 per month.
Avoiding Spam Filters and Not Ending Up In The Junk Folder
Spam software is a scoring system which looks at a number of factors relating to your email and if your score hits a certain value it will be deemed to be spam and dropped in to the recipients junk folder or at worst rejected altogether.
Some of factors are:
Country of origin
I’m sure you’ve all received email from Nigeria from Igwe Begwe wanting to invest his $10m with you, therefore emails originating in Nigeria along with the likes of North Korea and China are likely to be flagged as spam.
IP address of sending email server
Certain servers will be blacklisted having previously found to be a source of spam campaigns. Conversely the server for the above companies are more likely to be whitelisted to say they usually send out “good” emails.
Subject line
If the subject line mentions things like Viagra, Ugg Boots or Rolex Watches this will add to the spam score. Words like “cheap” and “free” can also work against you here.
Email Content
The spam software will analyse the text of the email and will again score the content in the same was as the subject line.
Email marketing packages send out one email at a time, not just one email with a large list of people all blind copied-in. This means the email has far more chance of avoiding being picked up by spam filters and hence will landed with the intended recipient.
Authenticating Your Domain
Whichever package you choose you will be sending from their email server and not the normal server for your email.
When you send the email you will want it to arrive as though it were sent from one of your email addresses eg sales@mydomain.co.uk
If the emails were sent directly from a mailing companies server but shown as your email it is likely that spam filters will be triggered. You therefore need to set up verification for your domain with the sending software.
An example of the way this is done with Mailchimp and how CNAME records are added to your server can be found here
https://mailchimp.com/help/set-up-email-domain-authentication/
Creating Initial Data Segments
A data segment is a collection of emails grouped together for a specific reason. When you upload your contacts data you can tag it with a source reference eg
Clients
Prospects
Data collected at a specific event or exhibition
You can then send targeted email to people based on their “status” in your email package.
It would be a waste of an email to send a client details of a service they already have with you. Also you wouldn’t want to ask a prospect how much they enjoyed the exhibition they did not attend.
You can of course send to “all” if the email content is something general or new.
Campaign Management
Using the email marketing software you can then manage your email marketing campaign with the reports that are provided:
- Who opened the email
- How many times did they open it
- Did they click on links through to your website, if so which links
- Which emails bounced
- Who unsubscribed
This will allow you to follow up the emails should you wish to do so with a call to the people who opened it more than once for instance.
Segmenting Campaign Data
You can then start to create more segments based on the actions taken by contacts when they received an email
Opened the email
Clicked on a specific link
You could send out a very general email to all your contacts with links to 3 of your services. Let’s say you are an IFA and you deal in Mortgages, Pensions and Loans. You can create a segment of contacts who clicked on the links to your mortgages page on your website. You can then send just those contacts an email with more information about your latest mortgages offer.
When To Send Out Emails
If you are sending email to other businesses it’s generally agreed that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days to send and the time should be roughly in the middle of the day
This may not be the best policy though if your contacts are private individuals and you are say, a holiday cottage owner. The best time then may well be in the evening or during the day at the weekend.
Pick a date and time that you think suits your audience and you can analyse your reports to fine tune these parameters.
Summary
All the points discussed are key to getting good results from your email marketing campaigns and I haven’t even mentioned what a good email should look like.
The design of your email, its content, the calls to action i.e. phone numbers, clicks to your website are also crucial but that’s for another day.
If you want to know more about our email marketing service then please call us now on 01773 882704 or click on the link below to visit our website page on Email Marketing
Get sending!
