It helps to simplify complex marketing initiatives such as email marketing. For many businesses, creating a successful email marketing initiative can seem like a daunting task. If we drill down to the essential components, a simple way of looking at these campaigns is shown below:
Who: Prospect Email List Generation
What: Topic & Content
When: Date, Time & Frequency
Where: Call to Action
Why: Lead Conversion
The key to successful email marketing lies in the ability to engage prospects and clients with relevant information on a consistent and professional basis. The goal is to build a trustworthy online relationship with both prospects and clients. Businesses can leverage email marketing to extend their brand, to provide credibility and to demonstrate thought leadership. Beyond the email marketing basics of “Who, What, Why, Where & When”, digital marketers should:
- Assemble a high quality email marketing list from a reputable source, and follow opt-in best practices and CAN-SPAM regulations. And they should utilize a high quality, cloud based, email marketing engine, which provides a simple and easy opt out (remember to track and promptly process manual requests too.)
- Digital content should be current and relevant – don’t sell – provide educational value.
- Two times a month is a good frequency target. Weekly is usually overkill. For B2B email marketing, mornings are usually the best time to send emails, and earlier in the week is typically better than later in the week.
- Make “Calls To Action” such as “Click here to register” simple and succinct. It’s usually best to have one clear call to action, two at most.
- Always determine the goal of your campaigns. Are you trying to develop a following for a digital newsletter? Do you want to drive prospects to a webinar series? Are you seeking to establish your organization as a thought leader in a specific vertical or horizontal (transportation, hospitality, group benefits, etc.)? And make certain to examine emails for accidental use of rush words, spam words and terms and Bayesian poisoning.
Email marketing is a nuanced initiative. Organizations lacking the staff or skills can reach out the marketing experts at StartUpSelling for a complimentary email marketing review.