How smarter email marketing can bring big returns

Mobilize Mail director Marc Krisjanous

Marc Krisjanous, director of Mobilize Mail, writes about making your email marketing a bit smarter:

A frequent question I get asked is "what can I do to increase the
success of my email marketing campaigns?".

The success of any email marketing campaign relies greatly on
defining a clear email marketing strategy before you start emailing
your subscribers.

Our research has shown that on average most people who subscribe to
commercial email communication will subscribe to over 6 different
subscriptions services. That can be a lot of emails a person has to deal
with as well as constant SPAM.

To help with the success of your email marketing campaigns I have
provided some tips below that I have learned over the 6 years I have
worked in the email marketing business:

Get to know your subscribers

The most important tip I can give you is to apply common sense to
your email marketing strategy.

For example before you hit the "send" button ask yourself this
question: "if I was to receive this email from a business would I find the content of benefit to me?". If you answered "hmm..." or "no" then

Imagine what your subscribers would think

Don't send your subscribers pure sales content either. In order to gain a foothold in the minds of people you need to make them feel like
they are getting value from reading your emails.

Respect your subscribers

If your subscribers signed up to your mailing list because you told
them they would receive interesting information about your products,
services or a topic they are interested in, then I suggest you do not
send them content that is different from what they are expecting.

Ask yourself this "would you be happy if you signed up to receive
information on camera's only to receive emails on their business
partners new car yard?" What would you do in response? This will be
the action that most subscribers will take as well.

Set a frequency of emailing your subscribers and stick to it

One of the worst things you can do is promise to send out a monthly
email and then change it to send out fortnightly or weekly. This again
comes down to respecting your subscribers. They signed up in good
faith to what you initially stated so it would not be a great idea to
break that promise. If you want to increase the frequency then create a
new email campaign stream and invite the subscriber to join in your
next regular email campaign.

Help your subscribers spread the word about your emails

Your email service provider should allow you to add in links such as
"Forward to a Friend", "Web Version" and social media tags to your email templates.

This enables your subscribers to send your emails in a controlled and professional way to other people who they think might be interested in your content.

Segment your subscribers to provide more targeted content

In today's world people want targeted content sent to them because
most don't have the time to read through the irrelevant stuff to get to what they want.

I recommend you look at the click statistics of your email campaigns
to see what subscribers are interested in then create new mailing lists
based on the statistics. You can then provide targeted email content.

For example if your business provides legal services to the business
community and you had the following 3 topics within your newsletter:

1) Legal advice for unfair dismissal submissions,

2) How a business can protect themselves from defamation cases,

3) How to reduce your legal costs.

The click statistics should tell you which subscribers are interested in
which topics. You should then be able to create a new mailing list for
each topic and add all the subscribers that clicked the relevant link
into the new mailing lists.

Partner with an email service provider

There are many other smart ways to increase the success of your email
campaigns. The most important consideration is partnering with an
email service provider that not only has the advanced tools but the
knowledge to customise an email marketing strategy that suits your
requirements.

Marc Krisjanous