How email marketing is changing the future of a business? Are you ready?
We’ve all been hearing about the digital transformation of the way we do business, from marketing to the way we do customer service. And while the details vary, what’s common is the fact that online businesses are shifting their focus away from things like building out in the physical world, and toward things like communicating and connecting.
So here’s a question for you: what is the role of email marketing?
Do you take it upon yourself to be the “online leader” who sends messages out to people? Or do you delegate the role to an email marketing solution, like Constant Contact or Constant Contact Pro, to do it for you?
If your business is a one-person show, then you may be able to focus exclusively on getting people to your business website. In this case, you may want to talk with your email marketing solution about options to create a “capture” page or landing page, so you can keep track of your subscribers and track them over time.
If you have an ongoing campaign in place, and subscribers are also sharing your business with other businesses, the role of email marketing will grow. This means you’ll need a robust, scalable solution for managing your email list, delivering messages, and tracking results.
In other words, email marketing is not going away, but what you do with it will change, and will evolve. Don’t fear the dinosaur, embrace it.
How Email Marketing Changes:
If you’ve been doing business online for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly fielded a variety of email marketing questions from readers asking how you can get in on the action. But if you’ve been focusing on traditional marketing methods and your list size, you may be missing the boat. Here are a few ways email marketing will change in 2009:
* If you’ve been using email marketing for transactional messages and you haven’t built a list, you’re missing out. Email marketing is here to stay, but you need to start growing your list. More importantly, you need to grow your list quickly if you want to keep growing your business. In addition to transactional messages, you’ll find a multitude of new options when it comes to creating your email messages. You may want to consider email marketing in the following areas: 1.) Newsletter content (including blog updates); 2.) Special promotions or “flash sales”; 3.) Updates about your business; and 4.) Forum messages, etc.
* Your campaign may include more than one medium. Think of the campaign as a bridge connecting you to your subscribers. If you send messages via email, your campaign is probably an HTML message, and if you send messages via text message, your campaign is probably an SMS message.
* If you’ve been promoting your business by email and you haven’t looked at how you can incorporate your customers’ mobile devices, you’re missing the boat. Think of your messages as the engine driving your marketing campaign. By the time you’re able to take advantage of the millions of mobile devices, you’ll be ahead of the game. Just think of how many mobile devices there are!
Marketing, even through traditional channels such as telephone and email, can be successful when you find ways to connect to the customers and prospects you’ve gathered.
You will see a return on your investment in time and money by making sure you’ve got a thorough list of names and email addresses.
Make it easy for your customers to opt-in, and provide them with relevant, actionable content. If you keep your customers hooked with relevant content, you will begin to see their interaction with your business grow exponentially.
If you haven’t connected your customers with your message engine, they’re likely to keep trying until you finally connect. And when you finally connect, you will see an increase in purchases. That’s the beauty of eMarketing.
Keep your customers on your list, because when you finally launch your campaign, they will be the ones who are most likely to buy.
Now, keep those customers happy and engaged with your business. As they open your emails, you will have the opportunity to get their attention and get your message out. And when you do, you’ll be able to measure the results. It’s like having an external sales person for the duration of your campaign. You can measure the response to your campaign using everything from sales conversions to open rates.
Once you’ve launched your campaign, you’ll be able to see exactly how well the campaign went. Here’s what you’ll see:
* Sales conversions – open rates, click through rates, purchases
As you can see, even with a $100 email campaign, sales conversions went up after launch. Because email campaigns are so cheap, you’ll be able to see exactly what went wrong and figure out how to make your next campaign better. And that’s what all successful businesses do – they figure out ways to improve their campaigns.
You’ll be able to measure your campaign’s success by looking at several different areas. And the metric that is most important to you will be sales conversions. But make sure you keep all the other metrics in your budget. Once you’ve looked at your data, you’ll be able to see the return on your investment for each campaign you launched. And the metrics of success will change depending on the product or service you’re selling.
How do you keep your campaign performing as well as possible?
1. You will have to make sure you’ve set your expectations right. If you have a marketing budget of $10,000, then launch your email campaign and expect to generate $2,000 in sales. If you’ve launched a $100 campaign and made $500 in sales, that’s a pretty good return for launching a $100 campaign. However, if you’ve launched a $500 campaign and made $2,000 in sales, that’s not so good. You’ll be able to measure exactly where you need to improve your marketing strategies and refine your messages and your offers to generate more sales. You can’t base your campaign on sales alone. So it’s important to be realistic about what constitutes a “good” return on your investment.
2. Your campaign needs to be specific, focused, and tailored to a specific audience. Look at your own past campaigns and see what you could have done differently. But also look at your current prospects and see how you could increase your chances of getting them to respond and buy from you.
3. And it’s important to also remember that you’ll be engaging in a highly competitive niche. So be ambitious, but realistic. What does your prospect have to gain by purchasing your offer? How can you improve their lives by giving them the best solution? Is there some offer or product you can give them that will make them buy from you immediately?
Be Specific and Focussed:
I mentioned earlier that you have to be specific, focused, and tailored to a specific niche. That way you won’t waste time with customers who aren’t likely to respond. You’ll be able to send them the campaign very quickly because they’ll be focused on one offer. You can tweak things over time, as you get more feedback and as they are persuaded to purchase. But the idea is to build a customer list of very specific interests and demographics who will respond to your offers.
You’ll need to do the same with your landing page. But before you do that you should use an autoresponder to automate the follow-up email sequence, so that it sits in your inbox. It’s worth purchasing an automated follow-up email sequence software for $19, at least. So I would advise it if you can afford it. Then you have no excuse.
Finally, you need to test the campaign. If you’re still unsure what tests to use, my advice is to use as many as possible. Test different things at different times, over a number of campaigns. You can then compare your results. For example, one campaign might work well, another might be terrible and yet another might be great. You can then use that information to test what might work best in the future. There’s nothing like testing to fail in a rush to get results. You can always change the subject line, make it more personal or address it a different way.
It’s not easy being a salesperson. The salesperson who answers that call every day to buy something. But there are people who do it very well. They make a lot of money doing it. And if you’re a beginner, you should work on building a list. By all means, copy them, but don’t abuse it. Use it well and you’ll be a happy camper.
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