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Saturday, December 17, 2011

e-mail marketing

Most businesses would agree that email marketing is a very useful, very powerful and ultimately successful form of marketing. Why, then, do a significant number of said businesses not actually have an email marketing campaign?

For many, it is fear of the unknown. They might recognize that they SHOULD be doing it but they aren’t sure HOW to do it. That’s where email marketing companies come in though and if these businesses would just pick up the phone and ask about email marketing, they would soon learn that it is not the mystery they fear it is.

Many companies offer email campaign management services. They will speak to a business, determine their goals and design, implement and report on a complete email marketing campaign without the business in question having to worry about the day to day running of it.

The campaign itself could be anything – a product launch, promotion or offer, seasonal giveaway, competition or a newsletter – the email marketing company will have the knowledge, software and reporting tools to be able to carry it out to their client’s specifications.

This type of email campaign management is especially effective as the marketing company will have a wealth of experience in successful email marketing and be able to guide the client in how they design and present their emails, when and to whom they send their emails and what changes to the campaign, if any, need to be made as it progresses.

Regular reporting on results in the form of clickthroughs, conversions, open rates and bounce rates will ensure that the client is fully up to date on success, issues and performance of the campaign.

Based on these reports both the client and the company carrying out the email campaign management can adjust many things to achieve greater success, including the target audience, the content of the emails, the offer itself and the timing of emails.

Another option open to businesses using email campaign management is split testing, or A/B testing as it is sometimes known. This involves sending two different emails to two different audiences, measuring which one is most successful and then using that one in the future. Constant testing of emails is an important part of email marketing.

Email list management is another service offered that businesses need to be aware of. Having a clean email list containing no dead or incorrect email addresses is important to ensure emails are not marked as spam or blacklisted. This would severely damage success.

Once a business has seen the power of email marketing and how a campaign is carried out they may feel confident enough to run their own campaigns (and reduce the cost of them by doing so!). They will likely still require the software and reporting tools provided by their email marketing company, however.

Most companies will offer a “DIY” service, giving a business access to the email marketing software they require and allowing them to run and manage their own campaigns.

If you think your business should be doing some form of email marketing but have not yet pursued it for whatever reason, then you should consider a managed email marketing campaign to get you started. Once you see how powerful it can be, you’ll never look back.