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e-Marketing 3

Why bother with social media? Specialize in email marketing, business to business, using mailing lists.

email campaigns are:

Cost effective, immediate, flexible, interactive, measurable and environmentally friendly.

Targetted emails are welcome whereas Spam is a nuisance so it’s important to research your mailing list, discover what the recipients are interested in, either hobbies or products, and narrow down the list so the campaign is more likely to hit interested people – and not be deleted before reading. Some companies opt to supplement email campaigns with occasional high quality postal mailings, ie brochures- their promotional material sending a tangible message of quality and style.

This is a sophisticated method. The measurable element includes basic statistics such as how many emails were sent and at what time, then quantifies how many of those were delivered, bounced back, opened, read, how many were ‘clicked through’ to the company website or unsubscribed. Conversion is hard to quantify (so don’t promote this to possible e-Marketing clients) but reports can show how many browsers then went on to buy from the website, and how much they spent, calculating an average spend, or how many looked and left.

Known percentage rates inform whether each campaign is successful so the approach can be varied, ie trying a different time of day, writing a more attention-grabbing, irresistible header, making buying easy when the website is accessed. Analysis of each campaign is essential. Less than 10% failure is fine, 15-30% view rate is good, above 30% view rate is very good.

Foisting your products onto people is not only irritating - speculative emails are illegal unless they are business-to-business. The consumer will choose to look for your type of product and the web is a shop window. If your website persuades browsers to sign up for emails or newsletters then you’re fine to contact them until they unsubscribe. It’s important to put the recipient in control.

Note – avoid sending out a campaign after Christmas and big spending (utility bills in Jan too) or at the end of the month, but try soon after pay day.
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