The rise of a multitude of social networking platforms over recent years have provided more ways than ever to get your message out to fans and potential customers. Amongst all the Twittering, Myspacing, Soundclouding, Facebooking, Beboing and everything else, the medium of email can often be overlooked. While these various social networking platforms are all important, email still represents the highest return on investment of any marketing initiative, as well as offering the following advantages:
- Everybody uses it – and it often forms the launch point for most people’s online activities
- It is familiar – no new skills are required
- It is direct – and can be stored and accessed at the user’s own preference
In this article we look at some tips on how to get the most out of email marketing. Thanks to AIM and A2IM for pointing me in the direction of their email marketing White Paper.
1. Manage your existing email list
If you have previously collected email addresses but have not contacted the people for some time then purge the list, which generally involves asking people to re-opt-in. It is often useful to include some type of incentivising offer when doing this, such as free and/or exclusive content.
2. Use a professional Email Service Provider
A professional email service provider will help to manage your mailing lists, create forms to collect new subscribers and track statistics such as open rates and click-throughs. They will also provide templates to help you design attractive emails. Examples of companies providing such services include Sign-up.to, Champion Sound and Fanbridge.
3. Statistics
The statistics collected from the actions taken by email recipients are useful in determining which elements of your email campaigns are most successful and which are less successful. This allows you to refine future campaigns. You can also use the statistics to test campaigns before sending out the most well received of the tests to the full email list, or to set targets to aim for.
4. Recruiting subscribers
There are a number of things to consider when recruiting subscribers to your email list in order to keep the lists healthy:
- Double opt-in – when someone joins via an online form, always make sure they get added to your list only after they click a link sent to them as triggered by the sign-up process. All Email Service Providers offer this kind of mechanism.
- Subscriber details – do you want to make people give up a lot of details up front, so as to get a better profile (but potentially risk putting some people off), or collect only a valid email address? There is no right or wrong in this regard – but you should make a decision and stick to it.
- How do you plan to recruit subscribers ‘offline’ (eg at gigs)? If possible, deploy technology rather than take hand-written lists.
- What incentives are you offering to sign up, and how clear are you about the offer? It is generally a good idea to offer something in return for sign-up.
- It is also worth making sure that new people who join the list are not left for long periods of time before you make any further contact with them.
5. Spam
Email service providers will often provide a facility to inform you of the spam rating of your message. Getting a good balance of images with text, and also avoiding certain words can all help to avoid spam filters. Here are a few simple tips to help you avoid crossing into the realms of spam:
- Have a one-click unsubscribe option at the footer of every email you send
- Include your company’s details in every email
- Never purchase or ‘borrow’ someone else’s lists
- Don’t use terms like “free”, “special offer”, “discounts” and the like within your subject line or email body
- When recruiting people to your lists, be clear to them what they are signing up for – don’t merge email lists unless you have received explicit permission from the recipients to do so.
- Be aware of the number of emails you are sending – too many, and people will simply flag your emails as spam, whether or not they actively subscribed to your list or not. Too few, and you lose the potency of your email marketing project.
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