“Push” your email Marketing
Your situation may be different, but here’s what works for me. Master the basics of a database program that and tie into the backend of your company’s data server. In my case, this is SQL server.
Once I establish a connection to data tables, I’m golden. OK, now its time to create the content. I use an html editor to write the content and make a “call” to images located on our web server (web site), this way I don’t have to insert the actual images into the email. Usually the campaign ties into what’s out there anyway. Remember, you are “pushing” your offerings from the website onto their desktop via email.
I’ve hacked a bit of code to create a search form that is built right into the email. Customers can type a search term directly into the email and be taken to the product detail page << see picture below>>. Don’t forget to include your analytics tracking code into your content so that you can prove monetization of the campaign. At the very least you will be able to see whether or not the customer converted. (e.g. site login, information request, contact us page, online orders). If you are running an e-commerce site you will undoubtedly be able to prove ROI by tracking orders.
Note: product search at top left of email. Customer enters product model number "pushing" them directly to product detail page where customer can buy your product ! Read on ...
Make friends with the folks in IT (very important universal rule) and make sure they have, the email address set as a required field in your CRM or whatever system your Sales team uses to enter quotes. This will ensure that all customers’ email addresses are can be queried for marketing communications. I’ve increased a customer email database from several hundred to over 40,000 in a short amount of time. The trick is to champion your cause by educating your organization that more touches with the customer mean more orders and another paycheck for everyone. C’mon, everyone has an email address, even if it’s the general sales@yourcompany.com mailbox.
Pictured Above: product search at top left of email. Customer enters product model number taking them directly to product detail page where customer can buy your product ! Read on …
Anybody can send out thousands of emails. But what are you getting for your time and energy. Any sales? I tag all links with Google Analytics code snippets that post back from my website to Analytics. Whatever my set goals are, a sale, filling out a form, or just a home page visit, measure results.
When executing your campaign, don’t forget to copy your Sales team on the distribution so they are in sync with the campaign. Ideally, they will be conducting an outbound calling campaign timed within a day or two of the email. Meanwhile on the phone, they can be capturing more email addresses, asking who else at the customer’s organization would like product updates (via email). To ensure the capture of email addresses, I force the population of the email field in the CRM by making it a “required” field. Get with IT on this as well as Sales to convey the message of building customer loyalty through more “touches”. Email makes it easy and inexpensive.
Be sure that the email software you use complies with the FTC Cann-Spam Act. It was enacted in 2003, so most email software has features enabling your customers to opt out. To be sure I was in compliance and to avoid spamming, in most cases my campaigns targeted Existing Business Relationships (EBR’s). When I queried our CRM system, I simply extracted only those customer records that were attached to a quote prepared by Sales. The quotes constitutes an EBR which satisfies the FTC rules, qualifying the contact as having solicited your business as long as the email is product related. You’ll often hear it summed up as “Permission-Based” e-mail marketing.
Along the lines of controlling your information, consider how hard you’ve worked to acquire those customer email addresses. I highly recommend running your own email campaigns… doing it in-house to safeguard your data.
Two email products I like are Campaign Enterprise and Constant Contact.
Lastly, schedule small variations of the same message into your software’s calendar (it better have a scheduler). Change the colors, and slightly modify the text and see your response rates soar! Remember, tell them once, they’ll soon forget; tell them twice they might remember; tell them three times, they won’t forget for a long time.
I’d like to hear about your success stories. Drop me a line: netmarketing@comcast.net.
