Email marketing is an effective form of active marketing (as opposed to passive marketing) that involves sending an email (or a series of emails) to a group of customers or potential customers. And the best part about it is that you can measure your ROI within days!
Email blasts can be sent to an existing list of customers that you already have, or to a list of customers you may have purchased (although the latter is usually not recommended). If you plan to purchase a list, it’s a good idea to make sure it is marketed to via a third party provider (more on why below). It’s also a good idea to buy the list from a specialist in your particular industry. You may be surprised to find that someone out there offers email lists specific to what your company does.
Some providers offer what is known as geo-targeted email marketing, which allows you to target a group of people in a specific geography. Instead of you emailing them directly, you design the e-mail and the third party company sends it out on your behalf. Many of them can even break the recipients down by additional demographics, such as household income and occupations.
There’s a whole challenge associated with email marketing that deals with email reputation and deliverability. Email deliverability is it’s own topic of which is very nebulous, but in general, it’s a good idea to keep a well maintained email list of contacts, to not email anyone that didn’t ask for you to do so at some point, to not email people you haven’t reached out to in a long time, and to get people’s permission to contact them.
Usually, businesses get themselves into trouble when they purchase email lists. By doing so, you’ll risk people reporting your email as spam, which makes your future emails less likely to be delivered to everyone else. It is due to this challenge, along with convenience, that makes professional, third party email marketing services appealing.
These services give away their entry level software for free because it’s highly likely a business will stick with them as they grow. Usually, the more emails you want to send and the more contacts you want to store, the higher your monthly rate will be. There are also CRMs (customer relationship managers), many of which include email marketing as part of their software suites. Some of these services also include drip campaign support and marketing automation, which allows you to send a series of emails out over time, sometimes contingent upon your contacts taking some other action. Drip campaigns are especially handy for long term customer relationships and long buying cycles, where you’ll need to remind potential customers of your brand for months and years to come.
The report will show you how many people received your email, how many opened your email, how many clicked a link (and which link they clicked if there are multiple), and how many potentially reported spam or unsubscribed. It’s a good idea to compare the numbers in your email marketing service to the numbers in your Google Analytics account. By doing so, you can see how the email visitors interacted with your site, which will help you gauge congruency between your website message and the email blast message. If you went through a third party company to send the emails, they should send you over a copy of the report to review.
The numbers you can expect to see vary widely between industries, but we like to see about a 10% open rate and 1% click rate at a minimum. Like anything else, it’s a good idea to test something, see how it does, learn from it and do better the next email. The reporting data seems pretty plain on the surface, but can shed light on some handy realizations. A high open rate, for example, paired with a low click rate, might mean that your subject line is great but that there isn’t enough compelling reason in the actual emails to click in. A low open rate, on the other hand, usually means that your subject line could use some work.
We write and design your email blasts to get maximum open and click through rates, and can also help select a fitting email marketing software for your company’s needs. In the event you’d like us to handle it altogether, we’re happy to do so. We’d also be happy to provide appropriate reporting on how your emails have done!
LovelyPixels’ team consists of senior talent and collaborative partnerships that are flexible to your individual business goals.
Your customers are either tuning in or tuning out and our only goal is to develop authentic, quality design work that establishes a connection with your audience.
And it all starts with a casual coffee date.
​
Marketing Minded Design & Strategy
LovelyPixels’ senior talent provides email marketing for businesses all over the world, but we concentrate primarily on bolstering businesses in Martinsburg, Hagerstown, Winchester, Shepherdstown, Charles Town, Greencastle, Frederick, Berkeley Springs, Harpers Ferry, Morgantown, and all through the State of West Virginia!
