Friday 30 August 2013

The Cardinal Sin of Email Marketing

So your campaign has been sent out successfully. You'll have received some out-of-office replies, a general enquiry or two and the odd bounceback. Great... time to put your feet up and wait for the money to start rolling in. Right? Wrong!

This is the cardinal sin of email marketing. You spent all that time creating your list of dream clients and a sweet email campaign, then gazed smugly at a couple of pretty graphs on your reports page, but the next couple of days are crunch time... this is where the real work begins. This is your business, and this is your marketing, you have to work your leads to create new business, there is no other way around this. I am Gillian the Promos Girl at Bikini Lists and this week’s blog is all about how to make email marketing work for you.

Following Up Your Leads Get into your reports. Live them, breathe them. These contacts are your life blood for the next few days and beyond. Starting with your clickers, view details on every contact and use the BikiniNotes feature to store your notes for future reference. e.g. "Nick Turner clicked Nov 12 campaign" Warm up your telephone voice and begin calling your clickers and openers. Have an idea of what to say beforehand but learn to go with the flow of the conversation: “Hi this is X from Y Photography, I recently sent you an email with some images of my latest z projects. I'd love to show you some more of my work and discuss any photography projects/requirements you might have coming up...when might be a good time to do that?” Please, please, please for the love of all that is good and pure do NOT say something like: "Hi, you opened my email and clicked through to my site, so I'm phoning to..." Most people will be blissfully ignorant to the fact that many emails in their inbox will be tracking opens/clicks in some way. They'll think you are Mr George Orwell himself, or that you broke into their office in the night to install hidden cameras...

Get Creative You may also want to send follow-up postcards to your clickers a week or so after your email campaign. Your postcard should be approx 6 x 8 showing several images. Save your openers/clickers as lists from the "recipient activity" page, then use the "Create Avery label File" option on your list output page to print all the address labels for you. Easy peasy! There is also nothing stopping you sending something memorable to your clickers. Try and think of something seasonal or quirky that will make your contact stand out from everyone else. In my previous campaigns I have sent everything from a miniature haggis, to recognise my companies Scottish heritage, to a firework “put a spark into your next campaign” don’t worry it wasn’t a large TNT firework just a little candle sparkler for indoor use. The point was I got creative and when I called the contact they knew who I was immediately and the creative postal campaign gave us something to talk about from the outset.

Make the chain Why let go of subscribers who missed out opening your email? You can focus on increasing your open rate by creating a follow-up campaign for subscribers who didn't open your previous mail. Modify all that you need - Subject/Email Content or both. Don’t restrict yourself to just one follow-up campaign - create as many you wish until you get the response or open rate you are expecting.

Keep the Ball Rolling Legend has it that sending an email campaign roughly every 6 to 8 weeks yields the best results, but feel free to experiment. Got a job or two from your first campaign? Excellent, but please remember that's no reason not to keep up the effort with your marketing. Good luck!

As always, I’m here to support you in this process so if you have any questions about your next campaign you can contact me at  promos@bikinilists.com

If you’ve come across this blog post because you want to improve your email marketing, then why not take out a BikiniLists Freebie account here - Get the free trial...

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