How to Successfully Run Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is one of the many marketing methods that simply get overlooked by many small business owners. I am not sure exactly why, as it is typically not expensive and often has a very good return on your investment. The issue is perhaps that most people simply do not know how to manage their campaign very well. They perhaps tried once and failed at it, so they figured it was a method that simply didn’t work. If this is you, then I would encourage you to give it another shot. If you are someone who is just now getting into email marketing, I hope that you find these tips rewarding and enlightening in your initial efforts of a successful email marketing campaign.

 

Test, Test, and then Test Some More

I wanted to put this tip directly up front. If there is one thing that I want you to get from this article/post it is that you should always revise your campaign. I have never seen anyone with a very successful email marketing campaign that has never tested or changed their formatting. Generally, you will need to. You will find that some products will be more successful than others, that colors matter, and that your subject line may impact how many people read your emails. I would encourage you that even if you fail on your first email, change things and see if it improves the results, eventually, you can continue to alter little things and see how even those impact your readers. In the end, it is all about converting those readers to sales, and testing what works will ensure that you get the max return on your investment of time and money.

 

Expect to invest time and effort into your campaigns

This is one of the biggest problems with the vast majority of failing email marketing campaigns. They feel that simply adding a place for people to subscribe on their website is enough. The best and most successful internet marketers online right now always entice you to sign up in some way. They put a lot of effort into ensuring that you not only do it just because you are a fan of theirs, but because you are legitimately interested in what they might offer in their emails.

 

One of the worst email marketing campaigns I have seen was by a forum that simply pasted about 10 of the latest created threads on the forum. There was nothing insightful being given, nothing new, I could easily go to the website and see what was being put in the newsletter without ever needing it sent to email address. To be honest, there just was not any investment of time and effort being placed there. I can see why people would immediately want to unsubscribe or trash the emails as soon as they reached their inbox. Be prepared when you have an email marketing campaign to put some time into it, or you will not have people that want to read what you are saying.

 

Stick to being professional

The problem many people have with subscribing or giving their email to anyone is that it will not be handled with care. Always be professional with the emails you send out and how you handle peoples email addresses. I have seen whole companies get their name out there as being unprofessional and a nuisance. This is not the reputation you are looking to get when you own a business. Instead, you should limit the amount of emails you receive, as well as always offer an unsubscribe button. There are numerous companies that I have subscribed to their newsletters because I know that they are big enough companies that they will follow the requirement of letting me unsubscribe at any given time. Nor will they ever feel so desperate for money that they will sell my email address. If you do not stick to these ethical rules of business, your email marketing campaign may not be the only thing at risk, but your entire business could be.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Made Easy with Software

Email marketing can really turn your business around if you are struggling. It is a relatively simple way to bring back traffic that has left your website as well as will help you find repeat customers. Even companies who are already successful can really see their sales go up quickly in a matter of a short period of time when email marketing is done properly. The proper way is to use some form of software to help you out and make it easier to accomplish a good email marketing campaign. You may be asking yourself, why do I need software? Below are some reasons why.

 

#1: Software helps you keep your mailing list up to date

Any good software on the market should have the ability to help you keep your list up to date. The problem with many people is that they will purposely register to your list with an email that they don’t use. The problem is that within a few months that email may even be obsolete and without software you will constantly be getting responses saying that your email was not accepted. This is terribly annoying and becomes a huge problem if you have a mailing list that is fairly large. The software should weed these out for you so that you will not keep emailing them month after month and receiving the same responses back as well.

 

#2: Software will help people subscribe and unsubscribe easily

First off, subscribing should be easy and whether you have software or not, I suppose adding people to a list wouldn’t be difficult manually. However, removing people is where email marketing manually fails quickly. You should want to keep your business is a positive light and always looking professional. While you want to encourage people to stay on your mailing list, you don’t want to force them to be on it. This is actually against the law once they bring it to your attention to be removed, and it is in your best interest to only make it easy for them to be taken off the list, but to have it done automatically and immediately once the request is made.

 

#3: Software will help you send bulk emails

After your mailing list grows beyond about 25 emails, you find it to be a very daunting to task to send out newsletters and perform email marketing manually. If you are truly doing a good campaign, it should not be too hard to get 25 people on a mailing list. You run into the risk of having your email provider (including internet providers) shutting down your service because they view you as potentially spamming people. These email marketing software companies have agreements setup where they are allowed to perform these tasks without getting into trouble. Therefore, it takes the liability off of you to a certain degree.

 

#4: Software will help you monitor the performance of your email marketing campaigns

As with any type of marketing, email marketing is a game where you will want to constantly evolve your campaign. You will try new things out, and you want to ensure that you have an easy way to monitor what is and is not working. Without software to do this, it is going to be nearly impossible to really see what type of conversions you are getting from your campaigns. Good software will be able to help you view some of the smallest of things which can make the biggest differences in your success.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

How to Pick an Autoresponder

An autoresponder can really help you convert your traffic into sales. In fact, you may be shocked to know that the vast majority of your traffic is going to fit into one of two categories without an autoresponder. You will have traffic that comes to your website and may purchase something from your website. Others though, will come to your website, leave quickly, and never return. They may forget your URL and may have difficulty finding it again if they wish to make a return visit. An autoresponder though will help you take the traffic that leaves, encourage them to come back, and then make a second choice of whether they would like to buy from you or not.

Tip #1: Be Realistic With Yourself

I completely understand that you want your business to be legitimate. You don’t want to limit yourself to something that will keep you below your competition. And you shouldn’t do this. However, one of the biggest mistakes people make is always getting more overhead on themselves than what they can afford. What ends up happening is that your business will open its doors, there will be a very slow initial start-up period while you are working on getting your name out in the open. The unfortunate part is that it is eating up your savings because you are paying extra for things you don’t need, like huge autoresponder packages. To be quite frank, start with something small. You do not need a package that has unlimited on almost everything. A smaller package that meets your demands at the beginning with an option to upgrade later on is the key.

 

Tip #2: Stick to your initial plans

If your initial plan was to have fairly lengthy messages, find an autoresponder service that will allow you to send those and not limit you to the size of them. You should be able to find a service that will meet your demands. If you are confused, speak directly to a customer service representative to see if they can customize a plan that would meet your needs. They will be willing to work with you to gain your business!

 

Tip #3: Never agree to a year-long contract

Nowadays everyone from web hosting to autoresponders want you to sign your name to a year long contract. The problem is that autoresponders can sometimes be shaky. Owners can change, and it is not always going to be ideal to commit yourself to such a long agreement. You want the flexibility, that if you need to change autoresponder services that you can. If they ask you, or even if it seems like a good deal, I would encourage you to pay the little bit extra and stick to monthly agreements.

 

Tip #4: Are there going to be ads?

The problem with ads being on your messages is that you have absolutely zero control on what is placed there. I have seen autoresponders place terrible ads on some professional quality messages. This certainly is something that people might frown upon. This is not to mention that it draws their attention away from your own message. You would likely find that your conversion rating is less if you have ads on your messages. If you do have ads, always ensure that the autoresponder company has a strict policy about what type of ads are going to be placed there.

 

Tip #5: Stick with reputable companies

As mentioned above, there are hundreds of autoresponder services on the market right now. Some of them are run by people who are really unfamiliar with the market or managing their business. It is not uncommon to see unfortunate people who find a good deal online pay money for something, and then turn around and see the company go out of business because it was a start-up company that failed. You probably will never see a refund and worse, you have wasted your time setting up an autoresponder for your website and will again have to start from scratch on configuring everything. It simply is not worth going with brand new companies that have not been tested if you are serious about your company being successful.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Triggers

When most people send out an email, whether it is to a huge list or to a single person, each recipient almost always looks at it as an initial means of creating a conversation. Since this is the case, in email marketing you have to expect to get a huge amount of emails back if you have several responsive subscribers and a good amount of emails on your list. The problem is that there may be just too many to respond to manually. Generally, I hate automated emails. However, there is one thing worse than an automated email. That is, no response at all. If anyone sends you an email inquiring about your newsletter or products in it, you should always respond. This is where trigger emails come into play. Trigger emails are not done simply by emails but also through other variables, including people who maybe add a product to their shopping cart but never actually finish the checkout process.

The easiest way to think of trigger emails is basically a system used to allow your email to run by it self, or at least in part. What you do is choose specific conditions in which you would send some type of response. When these conditions are met it will send an email automatically. Those who you converse whether through trigger emails or manually are much more inclined to purchase from you if they think that you care about them than those who are simply ignored. It will make the conversions from your email marketing campaign much more frequent.

One of the most popular techniques, as mentioned above, is to email those who have opted in on a list of some kind and were getting ready to purchase, but never actually completed the process. There could be a wide variety of reasons that they decided not to purchase the item. However, if you take the first step forward and try to help them with their problem then you may find that they will end up buying it. In addition, you might even add that you have a coupon of 10% off on that item along with your trigger email to help them buy from you rather than somewhere else. If knocking a little bit off the price is what it takes, it may be worth it to you!

In most company’s cases, they almost always have one or two items that they consider to be their biggest sellers. The other products generally just make sense to be on the website with it. For example, if you sell spark plugs, you are probably going to sell spark plug wires too. The problem though is that you should not have complimentary products that are just sitting in stock. So a common trigger email is to send an email to someone who just purchased spark plugs from you that will contain a discounted price on spark plug wires or another complimentary product. You could include coupons as well for future purchases.

Trigger emails are great and can do wonders in getting return business. If they are used properly you will even see the conversion rating of your email marketing campaigns increasing. This will encourage those that have opted in on the list to receive emails from you to also buy from you. All the while, you should avoid being listed as spam by limiting the amount of emails you can send to someone.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Split Testing

If you have read very many good email marketing articles, you probably have read countless times to continue to analyze the performance of your emails that you are sending out. There are so many variations when it comes to what works and what is not working. At the same time, any email marketer with their salt will tell you never to spam your list. The problem now is, if you are sending out only a limited number of emails each year then how are you really supposed to analyze the performance?

This is where split testing comes into play. Split testing is the process in which you test two or more things in the emails you send to your opted in list. So for example, you want to test the format of your newsletter. You might gather three different formats of the same newsletter. Send the first format to the first 1/3rd of your list. The second, to the second 1/3rd. Of course, the third formatted newsletter would go to the last 1/3rd of your list. The benefit here is that you will be able to see which newsletter performed the best.

Not only could you test format, but you could also test out subject lines. You could see which subject line had the best response. So the idea in mind here is be able to determine which subject would work the best so that you can use that format and subject line in the future as well. Maximizing the profit and return of investment of time spent on each email sent.

This may sound difficult and time consuming, and it is. I am not going to tell you that making three different copies of a newsletter or email is easy. It is not. The thing is though is that you can either spend a year just testing what works, or maybe speed up the process by testing out multiple things in a single month. Hopefully it will quickly get you to the place you want to be. Within a few months, you should have maximized the profits you would generate from your email marketing campaign.

A quick tip as well is to split who you are testing randomly by who has been on the list the longest. Naturally, most people who are on your list recently are frequently more interested in what you have to say. It is not that those older opted in people are not interested, it is just they may be used to receiving emails from you. When this is the case, they will be more inclined to delete them unless they are regular readers. This may be something else you need to individually test out, but this has just been my experience. Therefore, when split testing, I would encourage you to take a sample and not just send one format to the emails on your list the longest and then another to the newest ones. Spread it around and if your email marketing software has it available, you could just do it randomly.

Also, never hesitate to continue to test things out. For example, if you have split tested a subject, you found that one subject worked over another. Try to analyze why that one was the most popular. Perhaps you had your product as the first word on the subject line, what about putting a discount like “50% off” in the subject line with it? Would that help, or does it hurt you? Do not just settle on a subject line after you have split tested it one time. You can continuously be improving on it each month, making much more progress on improving your email marketing campaigns.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Software Selection – The Open Rate

Choosing the right email marketing software is not the easiest process. I am not going to sit here and tell you exactly which one to choose because there are many that have features that bloat them by my standards, but you may find them useful. So, I am simply going to give you one of the features that I think any email marketing software should have as a standard feature.

This single feature is the open rate. This may sound somewhat silly, but it is actually very good analysis to have. What is the first thing you do when you open up your email? Generally, you read the titles. However, the second thing you do is open up those that you want to read. If you have emails that you do not want to read, those immediately get tossed into the delete folder or deleted permanently. From an email marketing perspective, this is a great way to see what is working and what is not working. The email marketing software should give you a rundown of what percentage of emails you are getting opened.

So exactly how do I use the open rate to benefit me?

First off, you should not just have a single number. If the email marketing software only has this, then I would contemplate looking at another. Instead, you should be able to see the open rate on each email you send as well.

The benefit to being able to see the open rate on each email is that you will find what subject lines are working. For example, if you own a car parts store you might send out a newsletter one month on rotors that you have for sale. This may have an open rate of 50%. The following month you might send one out on alternators and have an open rate of 75%. Clearly, there are at least 25% more people interested in your alternators than your rotors. You might send follow-up emails each time you have alternators for sale.

Also, the formatting of your subject line may make a huge difference. Often a mistake I see is that people will put very generic subject lines on their emails. For example, “Awesome Car Products” could be a generic subject some people would use on their newsletter if they owned a car products website. Generally, I do not have much success at this, but you might test it out yourself. The following month though, they might have “Alternators and Other Parts - 50% off”. Generally you will always find the more specific subject line to do better, but again, email marketing is all about testing so I would encourage you to try outrageous things and you may find it will work for you.

You can even get further into the analysis though. I will continue on from the example analysis found above. Now that you know that alternators are of interest and you need specific subject lines for the best results, perhaps it is time to begin very specific analysis. Instead of using “Alternators and Other Parts – 50% off”, you could use the subject “50% off On All Alternators and Other Parts”. How do the two subjects compare? Do you think that having the first word they read as “Alternator” maybe made a difference? Did the discount on the front of the subject have a bigger impact on the reader? All of these come into play in the open rate. It is something you should not ignore.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Software Selection – Tracking Visitors

There needs to be more to email marketing software than just sending a lot of emails out. You really should be able to analyze the performance of your emails. If you are unable to do this with whatever email marketing software you are currently looking at, I would encourage you to go elsewhere. Generally, there are several options out there, but you do not want to find one with too many features that you do not need, nor do you want to use one that does not have the features needed to figure out how your emails or newsletters are performing.

One of the features that email marketing software should have is the ability to track visitors. There is more to email marketing than simply sending out a random email each month. This will show it. Here is how it works. If you send out 10,000 emails with your newsletter, but 1,000 ends up clicking on a link inside of it, then you know that 10% of your subscribers could be considered “responsive subscribers”. This number would actually be considered to be pretty good. Anything below about 5% is considered poor.

So how do I get this number up? This is where the analysis comes in handy. Are you enticing your readers to click on a link? For example, I have seen some emails that will give the price of products you are advertising in the newsletter directly in it. Generally though, this will severely hurt your responsive subscribers rating. If they have all of the details in the newsletter, this is not necessarily a bad idea if you are getting a higher conversion rating. However, those who may be shopping around may not be enticed to click on the link to actually purchase that item unless they know they will be buying it from you. My personal opinion is that you should try both methods. The overall goal is have your readers buy from you, but if you are getting them to your site then this is a good step in the right direction.

You can also start evaluating the formatting of the newsletter itself. You must find a good balance of giving enough information, but not too much. Most ecommerce stores have hundreds of products for sale. Not each product needs to go on a newsletter. You do not want to just make a huge list that they have to filter through to find a product that they are interested in. Instead, the subject should be relative mostly to what the newsletter is about. If you own a car parts ecommerce store and you already know that your readers are primarily opening emails with the subject related to “Alternators”, maybe it would be a good idea to have your alternators as the primary purpose inside the newsletters. This is not to say that you should not have a link to some of your spark plugs, spark plug wires, and rotors though. These should just be secondary things. The alternators need to be big and extremely visible in most cases. However, the placement of it, whether you align it to the left or the right can even make a difference. All of this can be tested if you are able to track visitors that are clicking links inside of your newsletter.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.