The saying goes - “People do not plan to fail…..they fail to plan“. Get 2008 off to a great start with an Email Communications Plan.

Like any other communications plan – we start by using the 4 x ‘w’s and 1 x ‘h’ (what, why, who, when and how) to create the written ‘plan of action’ for communicating with your business network with professionally presented emails.

Who do you want to reach?

Consider the various groups in your business network namely your ‘prospects, clients, suppliers and referrers’ and create an email communications plan for each group. How often do you need to communicate with each group? Create a 12 month mail out plan – in advance. You can always mail out more often on a ad hoc basis. These plans will provide the minimum requirement of communication that will assist you with growing your business.

What are your marketing objectives for each group? What type of Communication do you want to share with each group?

What are your expectations for the communication? What do you want to achieve? What type of communication do you want to share with each group. You may want to ensure you deliver a variety of messages over the months so you are sharing information, running promotions, introducing your team, company, new services or products. As the saying goes “variety is the spice of life” and email messages can get monotonous too.

When do you want to send the email messages?

When do you want the groups in your business network to receive your messages? It is time to create the schedule. What actions (if any) will you take after each message has been delivered?

How will you create and deliver the messages?

You may assign a team member to create all or some of the message content. The email presentation and testing may be assigned to your ESP (email service provider) or you may do it in-house. We suggest you deliver your messages via an ESP so you can get feedback with statistics to provide measurement for your marketing effort.

Other Considerations for your Email Communications Plan
Your communications plan will need to present the associated costs for creating, presenting and delivering your emails. You will need to identify the budget, costs and where the money is coming from for your email marketing. Other resources may also be required for the presentation of your email message including digital images. You may need to consider who will create the images for you.

To get the most productivity from your marketing campaigns we suggest you keep a careful eye on your growth of mailings lists. See ‘How to Grow Your Mailing Lists’ for valuable ideas on developing your market reach.

Here is a brief example of an Email Communications Plan:

Who to Reach? People that refer business to me – namely my ‘Referrers Group’

How often do I want to communicate with them (as a group)? Once a month commencing this month

What information do I want to be sharing? A market update newsletter that contains either a promotion, team member bio or a relevant humour piece to keep the message fresh

What are my expectations – objectives? To be viewed as an Industry Expert. Get my brand visible with my business referrers. Provide value to my referrers with special offers that make them look good.

Who will create the content and presentation of my messages? I will personally create the content, seeking market updates from external sources. My ESP will create the presentation and deliver the messages to my referrers mailing list.

What are the expected Costs? $255 + GST per month

Right now you may all be thinking - “Hey, there’s no ‘why’”.

Why am I communicating with email to share my information and market my business?
Email is time efficient and achieves a high response. Email is also very cost effective for regular communication: “Average costs of 3 to 10 cents per email, versus $2.00 for direct mail and up to $3.00 for tele-marketing. “[source: McKinsey & Company]

Tags: communications, marketing, objectives, plan

We believe your email marketing objective in 2008 should be - to grow your mailing list.

Do you know how many ‘confirmed opt in‘ subscribers are on your mailing list?

Is it less or more subscribers than a month ago, or six months ago? Unless you have key strategies in place to continually grow your mailing lists more than likely your mailing list is shrinking!

While it may not appear to be a huge concern seeing one or two ‘unsubscribes’ per mail out – over time collectively the ‘unsubscribe number becomes harder to replace so we suggest you put strategies in place now to ensure your email marketing database remains a key asset of your business.

Key Techniques for Growing Your Mailing Lists:

1. Website home page ’sign up’ subscribe facility - and thoughout website
2. Signature Link in emails
3. Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages
4. Lineage in all marketing campaigns
5. Run regular subscription promotions

Website Subscribe Facility
A high percentage of website visitors never go beyond your homepage so put the ‘call to action’ on your homepage to capture these visitors on your mailing list. Once they are on your mailing list you can communicate with them (compliantly) on a regular basis with relevant information.

Ensure you have the subscribe facility also on other key web pages throughout your website. Repetition is good! (contact us to discuss your options)

Signature Link in Emails
Ensure you have a hyperlink to your subscription page in your email signature and your signature is attached to your email replies as well as your new messages. An example of a hyperlink subscribe email for our own mailing list is:

Email marketing tips and news

The actual URL link to the subscription page is hidden behind the “email marketing tips and news” so it is more attractive and in theory/practice results in more clicks to view the webpage.

All members of your team can be driving your key message and increasing your mailing lists by adding a link in their email signatures e.g. 5 members of your team sending out 50 messages a day = 250 emails with your mailing list subscription link.

Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages
All mail outs should contain a link to your mailing list subscription page. You may send ‘text only’ or non-template messages occasionally – we suggest you ensure there is a link to your mailing list subscription page so these messages enable new subscriptions.

Lineage in Marketing Campaigns
In your print, tv or radio marketing campaigns put in a few words about your newsletter subscription. E.g . “Visit our website and sign up to our finance tips and latest news”

Run Regular Subscription Promotions
Once or twice a year a promotion to grow your mailing list can drive the numbers upwards. Consider providing a discount or free gift for subscription. I know a business that provides a free e-book to every people subscribing to his newsletter and he now has over 15,000 relevant subscribers.

Five easy steps for you to take immediately to replace the unsubscribed subscribers and grow your mailing list in 2008 and beyond.

The rising costs of sending letters and cards via snail mail has created a fantastic opportunity for e-Cards. Our databases continue to grow and email is the most time and cost effective method of communication. Sending custom designed Cards to individuals and groups strengthens our relationship with suppliers, customers, friends, family.

Mobilize Mail can create a library of cards for you and initiative the ‘set and forget’ mailing so your networks are looked after without you needing to remember when to send their birthday or anniversary card. Our system can also alert you when a card is being delivered so you can follow up with a phone call if you choose to. It’s a system designed to make your life easier, yet more productive.

Contact us to arrange your e-Cards for 2008 – Happy New Year, Happy Birthday, It’s Your Anniversary, Merry Christmas! Cards for every occasion. Your brand, your message, fully personalised, delivered automatically, and tracked for your peace of mind.

During the ’silly season’ you and your business may be “Out of Sight” for some of the time but you need not be “Out of Mind” and we’re referring to the minds of your customers, advocates etc.

Set and Forget – Emailing

Maintaining the regularity of your email communication over the holiday period need not be a struggle even if you are not physically around to create your message at the time you wish your subscribers to receive it.

With the ‘set and forget’ approach you can create the message (or like most of our clients get our team to create your message) and embargo its release for delivery to your mailing list on the day and time of your choosing.

You can image how much this functionality has changed our clients lives insofar as they have the choice of when they wish to create the message and when they want it to be received by their subscribers.

Email messages can be pre-set for release anytime in the future so this is not ‘just for Christmas’……..but a strategy you can apply anytime throughout the year.

I recently met someone who told me that they are getting up at 4am to create and deliver their email messages.  I believe the reason for the early delivery requirement was due to their mailing list containing quite a few northern hemisphere subscribers - so they wanted to ensure their emails would arrival in their recipients Inbox during the business hours.  Umm there is a better way to do this I told that person…..Mobilize Mail!

Set and Forget – no more early starts and no more red eye.

Do you know the meaning of terms like: Above the Fold; and CTOR? We have commenced a Glossary of commonly used terms in Email Marketing.

Access to our Glossary – click here

The interesting facts below confirms our belief that subscribers must be respected and the following is to apply:

1. Ensure the information you send to your subscribers is relevant to them; and they receive what they subscribed to. If that is a monthly newsletter then it is imperative that a monthly newsletter is delivered to that subscriber.
2. Avoid sending all your business communication to all subscribers – if the subscription is for a monthly message (newsletter) sending weekly communication will more than like result in a high unsubscribe rate.

More than half of consumer email users use at least two email addresses, apparently to protect themselves from spam and cybercrime, according to an October 2007 survey by email reputation service Habeas and market research firm Ipsos that found what it called a high “email insecurity factor” among regular email users.

Among the findings:

73%: Survey participants who use email daily
62%: Concerned about becoming victims of fraud or cybercrime
60%: Say spam is becoming worse
83%: Say their email client’s user interface has a spam button
23%: Say their email service has fraud detection
64%: Say permission/personal email regularly get routed to the spam folder or blocked

“Despite the popularity, ubiquity, cost-effectiveness and targeted nature of email, online relationships and the interactions that enable them are very fragile,” said Habeas CEO Des Cahill. “If individuals, marketers, businesses and Web 2.0 communities cannot place their trust in email, the Internet’s premier ‘killer app’ will not reach its full potential as these groups could refrain from using it for higher value interactions.”

Source

The main way to get people to open your email are recognition, reputation and subject line.

One thing to keep in mind is how do you get your emails opened as it is easy to hit the “Delete” key.

Below are common characteristics all great subject lines share:

1. It needs to have something that is relevant to the subscribers
2. It needs to be something that is important to the subscriber
3. It needs to have an expiration or urgency factor so the subscriber is motivated
4. It needs to be something the subscriber can act upon

Create subject lines that incorporate these characteristics and you’re bound to boost your open rates.

As we move to less and less personal forms of communication (from handwriting to emails) we gain more exposure but face the danger of becoming disconnected from our clients.

Characters and words to avoid putting into your subject line:

1. Avoid use of + and ?
2. Avoid using exclamation points (!)
3. Avoid using your email address again in the Subject line
4. Avoid using the same word twice in a Subject line
5. Avoid using similar words together (eg “offer” and “sale”)

It is important to send the email to the person responsible so it is about something they know, so instil a sense of urgency and have something in the email that they can act upon immediately.

Remember that it is past behaviour and receiving relevant and useful emails that drives future success so think carefully about what you send.

Tags: marketing, subject line

See link below - this is a fantastic flow chart for understanding the Anti SPAM Act.

Click here

Thank you to Rick Shera who is a Partner of Lowndes Jordan for allowing me to link to his awesome creation!

Tags: anti spam act, lowndes jordan, rick shera

Here are our top tips for newsletter success:

1. Keep It Relevant: Ensure your newsletters contain ‘news’ or content that is highly relevant to your subscribers. We recommend mailing list segmentation to achieve targeted marketing. Your newsletter communication can contain your special deals, new products services – as long as the information is relevant to your subscribers.
2. Short and Frequent: Email newsletters can be just a few paragraphs yet highly effective - we suggest you keep your newsletters short and frequent to win your subscribers respect, interest and trust.
3. Share and Receive: Share your expertise and receive a healthy open rate from your subscribers. Providing a regular helpful tip in your newsletters can be the factor or ‘tipping point’ that results in your newsletters being opened and read. If your newsletters are known to provide relevant, helpful information they are more likely to be viewed by your subscribers every time.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen listed email newsletters as “probably the single-highest ROI action you can take to improve your Internet presence.”

“Junk war rages on despite spam act”

“NZ Anti-Spam Law Seen as Ineffective”

and on and on….

One thing that still bugs me to this day is most people (who should know better) in  the email marketing/ISP sector believing that the NZ Anti-SPAM Act will somehow magically reduce the amount of SPAM Kiwi’s will receive.

Come on!!

As I have said time and time again – there are 200 core spammers that are responsible for 80% of the worlds spam – 99.9% of them do not live in NZ and most wouldn’t even know we existed nor care in the slightest about the Act.

How do people think that the Act will stop the SPAM that is generated overseas??

The Act was provided to give the NZ government some power if by chance a spammer decided to setup shop in NZ – that’s it!!