After reading this article written by Dan Matthews in The Marketer we felt it would be useful to share it with you, enjoy!

E-mail Marketing has come a long way from the elephant gun spam of the dotcom boom. Today, it offers laser precision and, in the right hands, can deliver results other mediums can only dream of.

“E-mail marketing is absolutely massive,” claims Steve Lomax, European managing director of Experian’s Cheetah Mail. “It has accelerated because it offers a cost-effective, targeted approach which is very appealing in a downturn.” In fact, it’s the reason why e-mail is currently the darling of the marketing world. Statistically it has the best result-to-cost ratio and at the point of delivery requires a lot less physical effort than, for example, it’s “dead tree” equivalent.

Now the bad news. You get people to “opt-in” to receive your messages but, once they do, they can easily unsubscribe. Spam is a huge no-no. Not only is it illegal, it’s also illogical from a brand-building perspective. The good news is that if you have a list of loyal fans and some lively, involving and relevant content to show them, e-mail will help achieve your marketing ambitions.

Don’t go!

Delivery systems for e-mail campaigns are developing all the time and in the past few years have come on leaps and bounds. Today, if you’re sending a single newsletter with standard content to your audience, the chances are you’re not doing it right. A good way to slice and dice your content is to give your subscribers access to an online “preference centre” where they select the content they’re interested in receiving, be it competitions or announcements.

Will Schnabel, vice-president of e-mail marketing firm Silverpop, says it will cut down on “unsubsribes” and deliver useful customer information. A centre offering subscriber options boosts engagement and helps retain subscribers, reducing list churn. It will also help you learn why people leave.

“Once you have developed a preference page, to optimise it for best results you should promote it, link to it in every message you send, include descriptive language and confirm all changes via a confirmation e-mail or page.”

The latest technology allows you to segment customers based on the way they access and use your website. The biggest online retailers send thousands of different newsletters based on customer preferences. These e-mail systems also allow you to send automated messages to customers when they carry out an action on your site. For example, a customer who makes a purchase is e-mailed a confirmation message which includes a cross-selling opportunity: “You may also enjoy…”

With the right analytics package you can take it further. If a registered user browses your website and puts a product in their virtual shopping trolley, but fails to complete the transaction, you can remind them to do so at a specific time after the event.

Lomax believes  that the success of basic e-mail marketing means that many organisations don’t capitalise on new developments. “There needs to be more education in this area. I give several presentations a month and quite often I ask whether people are doing these things. Very few are,” he claims.

Pinpoint Delivery

“It’s very easy to make money from e-mail marketing so people take easy steps like increasing frequency, which works in most cases. But there’s a whole host of additional tools that help pinpoint your market at the right time, without customers feeling uncomfortable or spied on,” says Lomax.

One such tool lets you link up e-mail campaigns with social media – include a call to share your e-mailed messages with customers’ friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, and your message could go viral. This kind of message is peer-to-peer and it could reach large numbers of potential customers. Attracting interest from outside your subscribers is one area in which e-mail marketing falls down, but linking it up with social media removes the problem.

Then there’s the product lifecycle approach. Estee Lauder predicts the life expectancy of a pot of face cream and e-mails customers when the sell-by date comes up. The same works for insurance policy lapses, mobile phone upgrades – the sky’s the limit. When price comparison site uSwitch.com upgraded its e-mail offering in this way it saw a 29 per cent increase in profitability and a 20 per cent growth in its database. “Some of it was simple, like increasing the frequency of e-mails. But we also set up e-mails to contact customers who abandoned the site before buying and to remind them when contracts and policies were about to lapse, giving them a chance to renew or change through us,” says Simon Hills, direct marketing manager at uSwitch.

The delivery systems that underpin e-mail marketing are becoming more sophisticated, allowing brands to target customers more efficiently. But remember: more is not always better. Your customers may get the feeling that Big Brother is watching them. Avoid this at all costs.

Source: The Marketer

Article written by Dan Matthews