Whether your company provides B2B software services or you own a store that sells cranberry sauce, there’s little doubt that you want to end your year on a high note by making lots of money in Q4. How can you get the most out of your email marketing to help make that happen?
Make a Plan ASAP
Emails are so easy to create that it can be tempting to just send them out whenever the mood strikes or to fall into a rut of mailing out the exact same type of messaging every two weeks. Though you can certainly see email success without a plan, you’ll be more successful (as with most things in life) if you have one.
Ask yourself:
What are the goals of my email marketing program this quarter? To increase traffic to the company website? To sell particular items / services?
Are there a wide range of goals? If so, how should each goal be represented within the email marketing program?
Who are the people on my mailing list? Is your list mostly customers? Mostly prospects? Do you even know for sure?
If you do know, are you sending different emails to each group or lumping them together? Different kinds of messages are likely to be more effective depending on whether you’re dealing with customers or prospects. And it’s very easy to create lists of just Leads or just Contacts using VerticalResponse.
How many emails do I need to send? One a week? One every two weeks? Determine how much mail you’ll need to send out to achieve your goals. Then create a calender to plan when you’ll send each email out.
Segment and Test
You can follow all the best practices in the world, but you can’t be absolutely sure you’re getting the most from your email marketing unless you test different approaches with your own audience. It’s a good idea to test:
Also, the more targeted your message and list, the better your email is likely to perform. Learn more about how segment, target and test in my previous blog post on this topic.
Implement a Few Best Practices
There are lots of tweaks you can make to improve your email marketing program. Here are a few that can lead to immediate improvements:
Make sure the opt-in form on your website is easy to find. It should be linked from, or appear on, every single page of your site.
Your form should also describe the benefit of sign-up. Don’t just ask people to “Sign-up for More Info.” Tell them what they’re going to get in return for signing up (Sign-up for Our Weekly Specials / Learn About Upcoming Products in Our Newsletter). You’ll always get a better response when you can describe the value of your messages than if you just ask people to give you their address.
Write subject lines that are action oriented and describe the benefits of reading your email. Some examples:
• Sign-up Before Nov. 30th Get 20% Off
• No S&H for Purchases Under $25
• Book Now - 10 Holiday Party Dates Left
• Version 3.0 is Finally Here!
Generic subject lines like “October Newsletter” don’t tell the reader what differentiates the message from the last one you sent out.
Start personalizing your emails. Most companies personalize their emails by referring to each recipient by their own first name. But you can do so much more than that - any info you include in your list can be used to personalize your email message.
Do all your Leads and Contacts have Account Reps or Sales Reps? Use the record owner info to sign each email as coming from the owner of the specific record. All you need to do is include info like Owner Name and Owner Email Address when creating your mailing list (you can do this from the Map Your Fields page of the list creation process) and then you can enter fields like {OwnerName} and {OwnerEmail} in your message to sign the email with the record owner’s name and email address.
Any standard or custom field on the Lead or Contact record can be used for personalization. Any standard Owner or Account level field can by used as well.
Any questions or comments? Let us know!
Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager
Make a Plan ASAP
Emails are so easy to create that it can be tempting to just send them out whenever the mood strikes or to fall into a rut of mailing out the exact same type of messaging every two weeks. Though you can certainly see email success without a plan, you’ll be more successful (as with most things in life) if you have one.
Ask yourself:
What are the goals of my email marketing program this quarter? To increase traffic to the company website? To sell particular items / services?
Are there a wide range of goals? If so, how should each goal be represented within the email marketing program?
Who are the people on my mailing list? Is your list mostly customers? Mostly prospects? Do you even know for sure?
If you do know, are you sending different emails to each group or lumping them together? Different kinds of messages are likely to be more effective depending on whether you’re dealing with customers or prospects. And it’s very easy to create lists of just Leads or just Contacts using VerticalResponse.
How many emails do I need to send? One a week? One every two weeks? Determine how much mail you’ll need to send out to achieve your goals. Then create a calender to plan when you’ll send each email out.
Segment and Test
You can follow all the best practices in the world, but you can’t be absolutely sure you’re getting the most from your email marketing unless you test different approaches with your own audience. It’s a good idea to test:
- Subject Lines - Try out different subject lines with smaller subsets of your audience and use the subject that gets the most opens with the larger control group.
- Content - Not sure the design of your emails is getting as many people to take action as possible? Try some different designs and test them with a smaller group of recipients. If the new designs perform better, start using them with everyone.
- Timing - Do you always send your newsletter out on Thursday at 11:00am? Maybe it’s every other Wednesday at 1:03am?
Also, the more targeted your message and list, the better your email is likely to perform. Learn more about how segment, target and test in my previous blog post on this topic.
Implement a Few Best Practices
There are lots of tweaks you can make to improve your email marketing program. Here are a few that can lead to immediate improvements:
Make sure the opt-in form on your website is easy to find. It should be linked from, or appear on, every single page of your site.
Your form should also describe the benefit of sign-up. Don’t just ask people to “Sign-up for More Info.” Tell them what they’re going to get in return for signing up (Sign-up for Our Weekly Specials / Learn About Upcoming Products in Our Newsletter). You’ll always get a better response when you can describe the value of your messages than if you just ask people to give you their address.
Write subject lines that are action oriented and describe the benefits of reading your email. Some examples:
• Sign-up Before Nov. 30th Get 20% Off
• No S&H for Purchases Under $25
• Book Now - 10 Holiday Party Dates Left
• Version 3.0 is Finally Here!
Generic subject lines like “October Newsletter” don’t tell the reader what differentiates the message from the last one you sent out.
Start personalizing your emails. Most companies personalize their emails by referring to each recipient by their own first name. But you can do so much more than that - any info you include in your list can be used to personalize your email message.
Do all your Leads and Contacts have Account Reps or Sales Reps? Use the record owner info to sign each email as coming from the owner of the specific record. All you need to do is include info like Owner Name and Owner Email Address when creating your mailing list (you can do this from the Map Your Fields page of the list creation process) and then you can enter fields like {OwnerName} and {OwnerEmail} in your message to sign the email with the record owner’s name and email address.
Any standard or custom field on the Lead or Contact record can be used for personalization. Any standard Owner or Account level field can by used as well.
Any questions or comments? Let us know!
Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager
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