The following notes are highlight’s from Boston Marketing Learning Group’s “The Power of Email Marketing Presented by Constant Contact” from 4/9/09 with speaker Zach Barron. Comments welcome!

DMA survey: Email marketing got best ROI $57  Second-best ROI was SEO @ $29

Have to have strategy = goals, measurement, tweaking

These products allow tools to adjust strategy

Easier than print: Ask for email address, look like a larger organization

Same response direct mail costs 20x more than email marketing

Email only works when it’s done right. People only open email from people they know and trust

Offer options for types of communication and how often want to receive
What’s going to be inside
How often will see it

Limitations to email services (yahoo, gmail, etc)

• Limit # of emails sent at 1 time
• No formatting control
• List break up more susceptible to filters
• No cohesive branding
• no tracking and results reporting

Email svs providers

• Provide easy to use templates
• Reinforce brand ID
• Email addressed to recipient only
• Manage lists – adding new subscribers etc

Make a connection → nurture connections to form a relationship → invest in relationship

Write down how you come into contact with customers, write down a list of ways to get ppls’ email

CC (Constant Contact) will help build in email signup into website

How many entry points on your website → have signup on multiple locations
Have 3 services, Google brings searchers to 1 of 3 diff landing pages

Ask for permission to add to email campaign when exchanging biz cards

Average, it takes 7 touches for a sale to happen

It’s 6-7 times more expensive to replace a current customer
Repeat customers spend 67% more
After 10 purchases, a customer has already referred up to 7 people

Creating a winning strategy

Set objectives

• motivate purchases
• enhance awareness
• interact w customers
• boost event attendance
• drive website traffic
• nonprofit donations

Then determine

• what info to collect
• communication type
• frequency
• measure success

Types of permission

• Explicit: ask, opted-in, signup (this is best)
• Implicit: ppl know you, just not expecting to be added to an email (not best pract)
  • Implicit: remind ppl at the top why they’re getting the email, include unsubscribe @ TOP
    

Tips

• Don’t buy/rent lists or crawl directories, gets you blacklisted
• Better to send monthly or biweekly than quarterly
• Tell ppl how often they’ll get emails from the beginning
• Gather your contacts’ interests
  • Talk to them about what they want to talk about
  • Let people select what they want to hear about
  • Collect names to personalize emails (better actions)
  • Be careful if form is too complicated = high abandonment
  • Try to run surveys to see what people are interested in
    

Nick Stamoulis, SEO firm
39,000 member list
6-9 month sales cycle
newsletters, info, educate customers
better to work with educated customer
2 weekly newsletters, link back to daily blog
network of Internet marketing blogs
150 new ppl/day are opting in

Goal is promote self as expert, not too much about promotions

How to get signups

• Offer free 20 minute phone consultation
• Encourage customers to spread the word
• Internal contest to get employees to ask for emails
• Collect emails everywhere
• Businesses and organization to cross-promote with

Ways to segment

• Industry, category, usage
• Region, sales rep
• Interest levels

Newsletters: sharing your expertise, monthly quarterly

Promotions: biweekly/monthly, focus on promo/limited content, 2-6 coupons

Announcements/invitations: event-driven, promo or educational w targeted msg
Surveys, new products, special events

How often to send

• Create master sched
• Include freq on sign-up
• Coordinate timing: You can train ppl to expect email at certain day/time
• Newsletters: monthly/quarterly
• Announcements/event invites: as needed

When to send

• When is your audience most likely to read it?
• Day/time week: Monday is bad day, best times Tue/Wed 10a-3p
• Test/test/test: can look to see what time ppl opened

Most important part: Subject lines and from lines

From line
Use a name the recipient will recognize
Include co name or brand (which one or both)
Clearer better
Shorter the better
Be consistent: you’re training people

DoubleClick: 60% say from-line determines whether will delete

Subject line
Keep short & simple
3 seconds or less
5-8 words, 30-40 characters, def no more than 50 b/c cuts off
Use a specific benefit
Capitalize and punctuate carefully

Needs to provide incentive to open

Don’ts

• Be careful not to use words that get filtered
• Free, guarantee, spam, credit card
• All CAPS letters, whether or not part of your brand
• Excessive punctuation, includes … ellipsis
• “click here”
• symbols, including $
• not using a from address
• misleading subject lines

Exercise for subject lines, do after campaign done

• Will from line resonate well with audience
• If not revise it, so it will resonate
• Come up with 2 alternative subject lines

Creating compelling content

• Design: HTML or text or both best read by all email clients
• Don’t be too image-heavy in the top 40% of email servers strip them out
• Can you digest content sans images?

Provide relevant, valuable info

• Clear and concise
• Appropriate graphics
• Include call to action: are they tied to links, make it obvious what they need to take action
• Create sense of urgency

It’s about how you’re helpful, not about you

Trade useful info for attention

Tip: Michael Katz Blue Penguin newsletter: tips for better email newsletters

Content exercise

• Top 5 ? customers ask
• Interesting arts you’ve read
• Most interesting customers you helped in past 6 months
• What made them interesting
• What problems will your customers encounter the next year
• What will you do to solve these problems

Before you send

• Be prepared to handle requests and questions
• Use appropriate graphics and use of white space
• Proof read everything carefully
• Check to make sure links work
• Preview and test by sending to yourself

Evaluate campaign results

What gets tracked

• Number sent
• Bounced messages & why
• Delivery rate
• Opens
• Clicks for every link
• Forwards
• Unsubscribes
• Spam complaints

19% email gets blocked, but with Constant Contact it’s only 3%

Why does email bounce. Clean list of bad addresses

• email no longer valid: ave consumer changes email every 9 months
• server malfunction
• mailbox full
• email blocked
• 
  

What influences open rate?

• From/subject line
• Delivery day/time 10% drop is worth investigating, 2% over last 10 mailings
• List overuse, age, quality

Steady open rate = success

What were they interested in? Follow up with offer for that

Whatever action is called for will happen within 48 hours