May 18, 2015: In the spirit of our recent article, ‘Is Your Company Ready for Public Relations,’ today, we take a look at an incredibly targeted and effective medium: E-Mail Marketing.
E-mail sometimes gets a bad rap due to its association with spammers and bought mailing lists. However, e-mail is actually an amazing opt-in marketing method that can be used to maintain feedback, obtain new business leads, and gain loyalty among a targeted and select group of customers. According to HubSpot, e-mail has an ROI of 4,300%.
Here, we discuss whether or not your business is ready for this type of marketing.
Direct E-mail is especially suitable for businesses that already have a website and have a modest CRM (Customer Relations Manager), such as Salesforce, in place. For a small investment in content creation and a well-made website, businesses can carry out an excellent direct e-mail campaign.
We advise that your business is ready for e-mail if:
- You have a target audience in mind. It really helps if your business uses Buyer Personas in its marketing and product development. Marketing personas ease the development of content development as well as the creation of e-mail lists. E-mail content should be segmented and targeted, according to the Buyer Personas’ needs, interests and behaviors. Your e-mail content should answer your personas’ questions and/or solve their problems.
- Your business creates original weekly content, such as a blog, that engages with your target audience. This is vital – inbound E-mail Marketing lives and dies by useful content. Sending an e-mail that takes your target market to the blog on your website helps build trust and moves prospects down the sales funnel. Any content that is shared must be helpful, useful, and never an annoyance. This decreases the chances of people spamming or blocking you.
- You can allot a budget for content development. Free e-mail services such as Constant Contact and MailChimp allow users to e-mail up to 1,000 members for free. The e-mail service providers provide free and low-cost, attractive templates for HTML5 e-mails, and even beyond 1,000 subscribers, the cost of e-mail is still relatively low. For larger businesses and product lines, there may also be an investment in the development of visual collateral and custom HTML templates. But, the heart and soul of conversions via direct e-mail is content. You will also, at some point, want to offer e-books and other mid-funnel content that will help your prospects down the sales funnel.
- Your business has an attractive and SEO optimized website. A primary advantage of E-Mail Marketing is the opportunity to take people to your company website. Make sure that your website is visually appealing and optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- You use a CRM, such as Salesforce, Sugar or Zoho. This is essential for sales tracking, follow-up calls, and knowing who has received what content. In this current age of marketing, inbound marketing and sales platforms are merging.
- Your business uses Social Media to engage with your target audience and drive them to a landing page. That’s where your prospects can sign up for a free newsletter, and also receive higher level but, again, free and useful content – a great opportunity to capture new leads. Judicious research into Reddit communities, Linkedin groups, Twitter, Google Plus communities and even Tumblr can reveal areas where you can distribute your content, and gather opt-in e-mail addresses.
Are you still wondering if e-mail is right for your business, reach out to me.
Did we answer all of your questions? Is there anything we left out? Give us a call!
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