Mobilize Mail Opinion

It is important that you put some effort into creating a clear and effective email marketing strategy as it can make the difference between a rapidly growing mailing list (that helps increase your sales and build stronger relationship with your subscribers) or result in the potential of losing your subscribers and getting your messages blocked before they reach your subscribers inbox.

When you send an email from your business to your subscribers you are in fact presenting your business officially to each subscriber. How the subscriber views your email will decide how the subscriber also views your business. An email that contains sloppy formatting, poor or irrelevant content could set a negative perception in the subscribers mind about your business.

Subscribers now expect a well designed email message with informative content that adds value to them. Competition is fierce these days especially with globalization. The subscriber knows they are in control of the relationship. So it is vital to your business to only send well formatted and informative emails.

In this series we will cover the basics of good ethical email marketing.

Step 1: The Reason

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

“What do I want to achieve from emailing my clients and prospects?”

This may sound very Zen but in order to build a solid house one must first have a solid plan.

We asked some of our clients this very question and here are some of their replies:

“I want to be able to alert my customers to new products and services as soon as they come online.”

“I want to provide fantastic educational content to my subscribers so they have a great feeling about my business and end up wanting to buy my products!”

“We see email as providing a quick and efficient way of staying in touch with our seminar attendees after the event. By creating a mailing list of attendees we will not lose touch with them but in fact continue our relationship with them through email. This will enable our company to alert people to new events without having to do too much cold calling!”

“I want to be able to create autoresponders that automatically email them each month so I stay in touch with my subscribers without much effort.”

If you define a reason or two as to why you are emailing your clients and prospects then the rest of the work in creating your email marketing strategy becomes far easier and more enjoyable.

Another point to remember is subscribers are very smart and it won’t take them long to ignore your emails and your business if they learn you have a motive similar to:

“I want to bombard my subscribers with endless emails about how fantastic and vital my business is to their lives. I also want to sell my list to my mates so they can send information about their businesses as well!”

The next step in our series will focus on the frequency of sending emails to your subscribers.

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]