In a recent post, I mentioned that our research at ForeSee Results shows pretty convincingly that email marketing is still the most effective paid tool that online marketers have at their disposal (more effective than traditional or advertising, social media, search engine marketing, etc.)
So I thought I'd share these 11 best practices for email marketing published in iMedia by eROI's Ryan Buchanan. It's a very tactical approach and includes some sound advice. Check it out.
I'd add this to Ryan's 11th point, "Test it and Tune it..." Beyond A/B testing, you can actually use voice of customer to evaluate the success or failure of an email campaign. This type of evaluation goes beyond just the normal click through and conversion statistics, but helps you get an understanding on the longer term and broader reach impact of an email campaign. More importantly, VOC can identify specific ways to improve email marketing so that you get better results based on what kind of behavior you're hoping to elicit. Want people to buy more as a result of emails? Visit the store? Open an account? Subscribe to a loyalty program? Voice of customer can pinpoint what kinds of changes will make those behaviors more and less likely to happen.
An example: we worked with a e-retailer who had 20 million people subscribed to their email newsletters, with above-average open rates in the range of 20-30%. They coupons in the newsletters drive millions of dollars in in-store sales, but the newsletters also included quite a bit of content that this retailer thought would be relevant to its loyal subscribers.
We segmented the newsletter subscribers into two groups: those that wanted content and those that wanted coupons. Four out of five subscribers said they visit a store because of the coupon while only two of five visited a store because of the content in the newsletters. A lot of companies would stop there and assume that resources should allocated disproportionately to coupons and away from newsletter content.
Instead, this company went further and determined that newsletter subscribers who liked content were far more likely to actually buy something. The data showed them that they needed to make content more prominent in the newsletters while also keeping the coupons. A reduced focus on content in the email marketing could have been a terrible mistake.
So make the most of email marketing. I promise it still works (for now at least!) despite the naysayers who are eager to proclaim its demise because they think everyone is on Facebook instead of on email.
Though e-mail marketing is not that so popular as before, still it's a good way of getting some attention and prospect customers.
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