Congratulations. You have decided to run your first email marketing campaign. This is a great decision. 85% of U.S. retailers believe that Email marketing is one of the best customer acquisition approaches. And this belief isn’t unfounded. 72% of consumers use and prefer email for their business communications. And, email has higher conversation rates than search and social media combined. So let’s get started.
STRATEGY. LIST. MESSAGE. DEPLOY. CONVERT.
STRATEGY
Ready? Set. Brainstorm.
That’s right. Before you go score the perfect customer, you should have a game plan. What are your goals with your email marketing campaign? Do you want to follow up with your current customers or do you want to reach out to new customers?
If you want to reach out to your new customers, what new customers do you want to target? There are several questions to ask yourself. Do you want to reach younger individuals or people that live near a certain location? Would you like your prospects to have certain interests? Do you want the prospects you target to go your website or to your social media page? Be detailed your wants. You can always make adjustments later. If you outline some ideas before your begin your campaign, you’ll have more ownership over the process and feel greater satisfaction.
LIST
Having the right marketing list is the most important aspect of your email marketing campaign. It is heavily suggested that you rely on a professional data list provider to give you the best conversation results. Professional data companies have lots of data on consumers through a combination of different resources. Have you ever filled out a survey in your life? It is a good chance that data companies collected your information, such as your name, email, and phone number. List companies also have data on consumer behavior, preferences, and tendencies.
When a marketer asks for a data list from a company, a marketer is requesting an updated, legally compliant, targeted list of people (and their pertaining data) that would be interested in their product or service. Professional list companies specialize in sifting through tons of data to provide you with the most accurate lists. Unfortunately, it is easy for this data to be outdated or wrong. This is why it is important to rely on professional list companies that have been around for a long time, like List Giant. List Giant has helped over 11,000 businesses download over 674 million records and has been maintaining happy customers relationships for over 15 years. These are the reasons to purchase email lists from trusted providers like List Giant.
There are essentially 3 main types of list to get you started with email marketing. You can send your messages to your customers, your prospects, or a combination of your prospects and customers. There are of course many segmented lists that can be made from these groups- but let’s keep it simple.
LOYALTY LIST
Your loyalty list consists of your existing customers. By targeting active buyers within your loyalty list, you can nurture repeat purchases.
PROSPECT LIST
Your prospect list consists of consumers that have several indicators that they are active buyers that would be specifically interested in your product or service.
MASTER LIST
Your master list consists of a combination of your existing customers and your prospects. These types of lists are great for a large-scale campaign aimed to increase business. A company such as LISTGIANT, will be able to provide you with any of these lists. List companies can also help to advise you as to which type of list would be best to use for the campaign goals that you brainstormed.
MESSAGE
Now that you have figured out to whom you are sending your email, let’s figure out what you want to say. Your message is important. There are a lot of statistics to consider when creating your email message. Did you know that 70% of brand/company marketing emails are opened because consumers are searching for a coupon, discount, deal, or freebie? Don’t let your potential customers down. Consider throwing in a free offer for your email campaign. Generosity in business is generally reciprocated.
There are several types of messages for email campaigns: a regular email, newsletter, marketing offer, announcement, event invitation, or celebratory gift, to name a just few. Consider what type of message would best serve your customers or prospects. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Would you like to send your audience a vacation offer or maybe a birthday freebie? There are a ton of options to consider. A professional list company, like List Giant will conduct research on your audience to design the perfect, targeted message or offer to get you maximum conversion rates.
DEPLOY
Now that you’re created your perfect email, it’s time to send. Did you know that the time and rate of your email deployment could have a huge effect on your overall campaign? There is a ton of data and statistics that email marketing specialists analyze to figure out what time, date, and rate will be best for a particular campaign’s deployment.
If you don’t have a specialist to help you with your email deployment, there are some strategies that tend to work for an average email campaign. Tuesday is generally the best day to send a marketing email. Sunday is generally the worst day to send a marketing email. The best time to send a general marketing email is 6am. But 8pm to midnight is also great. Fortunately, if you are conducting an email campaign through a company, like List Giant, an email marketing specialist will be able to figure out the best deployment process for your message.
CONVERT
As your emails are successfully sent to your selected audience, experts conduct analysis to figure out what factors are working best for your conversations. You may be surprised to find out what messages, email design, and time of deployment causes the biggest spike in your conversion rates. There are several conversion factors to consider: number of bounces, open rate, click-through rates, unsubscribes rates, spam complaints, and shares. Each of these factors will be manipulated to boost your conversation rates in real time, including strategies such as buying email lists for lead generation.
Conversion Quick Tips with Dalton
Our Head of Email Marketing, Dalton Francis, lets us in on his most effective tactic for improving email click-through-rates.
1. Interviewer: We all want those opens and clicks. What is the most effective tactic for improving open and click-through-rates?
Dalton: The most effective tactic for improving click-through-rates is proper list segmentation--specifically referring to removal of inactive subscribers and targeting the right ones. In a world where engagement and reputation determine your deliverability, taking steps to increase engagement will ultimately provide you with more opportunities for click-throughs as more subscribers receive your email and ultimately engage.
2. Interviewer: So what exactly does list segmentation do?
Dalton: Segmentation allows you to reach the right user base and target them in a much more personalized way. For example, let's picture a mother that has a son who needs basketball shoes. Instead of emailing a general Nike shoe advertisement, we email the mother a photo featuring a mom dropping off her son at basketball practice with his shoes in her hands. This simple photo swap allows the mother, a consumer, the opportunity to better visualize yourself with a particular product or service.
3. Interviewer: Have you always implemented list segmentation?
Dalton: Before we dove into list segmentation we were implementing the industry standard of targeting subscribers with mass email blasts. As a result, we were seeing significantly below average click-through rates and above average unsubscribes. These rates weren't cutting it. We want the highest open and click-through rates possible. Currently we capitalize on the data acquired from our subscribers to target them with their interests and use their data to create personalized messages that look closer to one-to-one conversation than mass "shot in the dark" promotional emails. We have seen up to a 1100% increase in open rates and up to 2000% click-through-rate improvement since implementing segmentation and personalization.
4. Interviewer: Any lessons learned from your experiences using list segmentation?
Dalton: The lesson learned is that while your marketing database is an asset you should not look at it in terms of dollars. Every contact in your database is a human being with unique needs and preferences. The faster you can implement list segmentation, the faster you will see those click-through rates skyrocket.
CONGRATULATIONS
You have just completed your first, successful marketing campaign. It’s a great accomplishment. Not only should you have lots of new leads, informed consumers, and customers, you also have a bunch of new data on the preferences of your prospects. This is really amazing if you decide to do a second campaign. You will have more knowledge and ideas for round 2. But for now, let’s celebrate the completion of your very first email marketing campaign.
Conclusion
List Giant hopes that you enjoyed our beginner’s guide to your first email marketing campaign. List Giant is one of the nation’s top direct marketing solutions providers. List Giant provides list marketing services that maximize the value and performance of your marketing campaigns. We give you the perfect marketing list for your business, a strong message, and an attractive email designed to engage your audience. From there, you have the ability to measure the success of your campaign with our real-time tracking reports.
List Giant is currently offering 500 free sales leads to new customers with no risk and no obligated commitment on your end. List Giant data is conveniently stored on a List Portal that allows you to download your lists with demographic and psychographic filtering options. Please give us a call at (800) 547-8080 for List Portal help, or schedule a walk through.