The New Rules of Email Marketing

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Could it be true in the world of cell phone, TV advertisements, blogs, forums, RSS feeds and pod casts that 90% of Internet users and 56% of all Americans still rely on email as their main way of communicating with other individuals. Americans send over 2.4 trillion emails a year. Still, if you use emailing as a marketing tool, you are fighting a battle that may do more harm to your business than good if you are not diligent in following the new rules of email marketing.

In this article, I discuss the ways email marketing has changed, as well as how important it is to engage your customer. You will learn how to actually help your customers benefit from your emails and avoid hammering them over the head to use your products or services.

Point: Over 50% of consumers define SPAM as, "I once gave my permission but I no longer wish to receive emails."

Did you know that the average ROI (Return On Investment) on most email campaign averages about 4%? Open rates have dipped to all time lows, and email recipients are all too ready to push the "report as spam" button. Why is this happening? Why this animosity towards email? Americans are inundated and frustrated with being "talked at" and "sold to". Today's consumer is exceptionally savvy when it comes to marketing. The average US consumer spends 14 hours of week watching TV and then another 14 hours a week surfing the web. For your emails to impact this audience, they have to be engaging and beneficial.

Engagement allows the consumer to take an active role; it's about a two-way dialogue. Engagement allows other customers to interact with other customers, and with you. It allows you to interact with you on their terms not your company's terms. One way we do this is by including discussion links in our emails. This link takes the customer to a forum where they can express their opinions whether it is about the company; the product or whatever is on their mind. This gives the customer an important voice, as well as makes them an integral part of the decision making process. This form of discussion teaches you how your customers want to be approached and how you can fulfill their needs by providing them with valuable resources.

Too many companies focus on building their list. They are consumed with the number of individuals they have on their email list. The reasoning is, the more customers I have on my list, the more people I can sell to. The reasoning seems to make sense, but more numbers does not covert into more sales. ISP Service providers do not like large amounts of emails to be sent out. Companies such as AOL block about 75% of the 2 billion emails it receives daily. Companies need to focus on building a reliable reputation and sending out quality emails. Make sure that you populate your list with individuals that have expressed interest in your products or services – even with this, make sure that they are added to your email list via an opt-in confirmation.

Use a reputable email service such as Constant Contact. Companies such as Constant Contact have many beneficial tools that enable you to monitor your email campaigns. These features include detail reporting on bounces, click-throughs, unsubscribe, links clicked etc. Another very positive opportunity is to watch you web logs for spikes to see when your site consistently has the most traffic. Begin to send out your emails on those days. Using a company like Constant Contact will enable you to automate your email experience and allow you to focus on excellent content.

Another great service that most email services provide is the ability to segment your lists into groups. If you sell multiple products, you do not want to send an email over and over to your entire email list when many of them may have already purchased your product. Segment your email lists into groups and then focus on sending them relevant content. Researches have found that by segmenting groups, there was a 7x increase in open rates and a 14x increase in click through rates. If you are not segmenting your list currently, you may want to start.

An email marketer's nightmare is to make it easy to unsubscribe from their mailing list, but this must be done. Make unsubscribing easy, it is much better than upsetting them and having them report your email as SPAM. Provide you customers with the tools they need to have a positive experience with your company. If they report your email as SPAM, you will most likely have lost the customer for good.

Creativity never hurts, unless your not. Many email companies allow you to send both text and HTML formatted emails. HTML formatting allows you to create some very powerful presentations, simply by including images, audio or video. Researchers have found that well designed emails can increase response rate by up to 75%. The main thing is to get you reader involved in the email and to make your email interactive and unique. Retailers such as Barnes and Nobles and Borders bookstores are perfect examples of advertising done right. Their emails include book reviews, introduction to new books as well as discount coupons. Their emails are informative, engaging, and they have a "call to action". They physically get you to click on a link and print a coupon to take to the store.

By applying some of the new tactics and guidelines above, your emails will not only be read, they will engage the customer in a beneficial way. I wish you great success in your emailing endeavors.

Copyright 2008 FMWebschool Inc. http://www.fmwebschool.com Written by Stephen Knight

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The New Marketer - Part 2 of 4

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Last Month we discussed the power of community and some of the ways that businesses can increase their profits and lower cost at the same time. One of the main topics was the power of online forums. We took our own advice, and we have modified our forums to allow members to assign areas of expertise under their avatar. We have also implemented a value system where individuals posting questions can assign different point values to the questions. When an expert answers questions, the individual can choose what he thinks is the best answer and award the points (or kudos on our site) to the expert with the best answer.

A since of pride is established in the community, and since the answers have a perceived value, experts on the forum will work a little harder to present the best answer. In this situation, everyone wins. Individuals on the forum that begin to be seen as experts may begin to be contacted by others for consulting work and paid expert advice.

This month we continue this discussion by focusing on the power of blogging. A blog is a website where entries are written in chronological order and may contain personal journals or diaries, images, news stories, commentaries, interviews or even product reviews. Blogs have found their way into every area of human interest.
Blogs allow you an immediate doorway to the public at large, and if what you write is engaging and topical, then you will most likely have a dedicated following.

How do you get started with a blog? Check out the following websites, they all offer great resources and can have you up and running in a matter of minutes.
http://www.typepad.com
http://www.wordpress.org
http://www.blogger.com

Once you have set up your blog, you will need to be vigilant and dedicate at least a couple days a week to your blog. If you sell a product or service, it is best to let the community get to know you. Blogs are generally written with a conversational tone to give a more personal experience to the reader. You will need to blog often, and you will need to discuss interesting topics. Even if your company sells tile flooring, you will need to make it interesting.

Following the thought of selling tile flooring, how could you write a blog that would be of interest to visitors to your blog? Simple. Let's say that the visitors to your blog are, current customers, new homeowners, homeowners remodeling, or wholesale buyers. One of the greatest items of value you can provide them is interesting "how-to" articles. These articles could be detailed descriptions of the preparation needed before adding the tile, what tools are needed, how to measure and cut tile, etc. The how to articles should contain numerous photographs and maybe even video demonstrating different techniques.

This type of information is extremely valuable to the consumer, and retail businesses that sell tile can even refer customers to your blog. Another great option to give the human touch to your blog is to include customer stories and photos showing them using your product. A nice series of before and after photos will certainly help.

Take time to speak with experts in your field. If you are a manufacture of tiles, then interview different people in your company all the way from the employees that create the tile down to the people that pick the colors and sell the product. Interview them all. They will all have something valuable that can be added to the blog. The important thing to remember is you are providing the community with a valuable resource that speaks volumes about your company. Take the time to interview other specialist in your field.

Ask individuals in your community if you can link to their websites and have them link back to your website. These individuals could be your suppliers or others that are in the same community but are not your competitors.

Use key words and phrases that are commonly used to describe your resources and commonly searched on in search engines. This will help target your blog in search engines when customers are searching on common phrases. Don't cheat and try to cover your blog with content plastered with key words and phrases, use them intelligently and focus on good content instead.

The more white papers, links, and articles you provide the more you will become recognized as a valued expert in the community. The important thing is that you create an open forum for discussion with your guest and handle negative comments with grace and intelligence. Remember your blog is there as a resource, but it is also a direct representation of your company. Focus on building a strong and positive community and growth will happen naturally.

In our next issue we will discuss viral marketing...where everyone catches your product and spreads it to others in the community.

Copyright 2008 FMWebschool Inc. http://www.fmwebschool.com Written by Stephen Knight

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The New Marketer - Part 1 of 4

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Gone are the days of simple marketing where you could depend on a radio spot or a television commercial to sell your product or service. Our filtering system has become amazingly adept at maneuvering through the massive amount of information overload advertisers thrust upon us daily. We have become desensitized through repetition and have changed the ways that we make our purchases.

Today, more and more we are listening to other consumers before we make a purchase. In a recent survey of online shoppers, 76% relied on customer reviews, and over 50% regarded the reviews as critical to their purchase. Customers are telling other customers what products to buy.

Recently I needed to purchase a GPS device for my car. I looked through the print ads that arrived with the Sunday paper, and realized quickly how little information was really provided. Many of the devices had the same features and cost about the same. I decided to go online and read customer reviews about the various GPS products.

Reading dozens of customer reviews helped me quickly make a decision. Simple comments such as, "The plastic attachment that holds the GPS unit to the windshield cracked after only 3 weeks of use." "The map software that comes with the GPS is outdated and it costs $80 to get current maps." "Satellite connection may take as long as 1.5 minutes." Some customers gave extremely detailed description as to how the GPS device performed as they traversed through multiple cities and rural areas. The information that I gained from the customer reviews was invaluable. I was quickly able to make an informed decision, and as a result I feel I received the best product for the best price.

Customer's reviews are only the tip of the iceberg; we have seen them on websites for years in the form of 'testimonials'. There is however a big difference between a testimonial, and an active community of customers discussing a particular product. Building an interactive forum where customers can discuss a product, gives validity to the product. People tend to buy from people that are like them.

So, how do we apply some of the new marketing techniques to sell our products and services? How do we get the attention of consumers that are already fighting advertising sensory overload? The answer is simple; we need to get involved, and to make our advertising an experience that is beneficial to the consumer.

To be successful in business today there is a myriad of responsibilities that we need to address to facilitate the sales of our product or service to the consumer. The basics are, an easily navigated website with good content, an informative blog, a forum, press release service, newsletters, webinars and customers that will evangelize for you.

I realize that this may seem overwhelming at first, but once in place, with the proper planning you will develop a community that will be a powerful voice for your product. Thanks to open source software, 99% of the tools that you need are free. Let's begin our discussion with the use of forums.

Well-designed organized forums can be extremely beneficial towards the success of your business. Forums can be a way for you to not only communicate with new customers or prospects, but they enable you to engage in long-term relationships with your current customers. Forums can be used to collect extremely valuable information; your current customers can even help you invent new products and services. Current customers can also help you company be more productive and profitable. This is called 'crowd sourcing' where the business turns over tasks traditionally performed by the employees to the Internet multitude. Why does this work? Individuals on forums many times create an online persona and part of that persona is to play the role of an expert. People want to be known as gurus, they want to be seen as knowledgeable in their field.

People generally like working with other like-minded people and helping them solve problems. Think about it, every time you pick up the phone, or have to send an email to a potential client or to a current customer, you are spending money. Phone support can cost a business $25 - $35.00 and hour while emails generally cost about $4.00 a piece. The cost is of course the time invested in each of these. This is another reason why you should invest the time to build a strong cohesive community around your business.

Once you create a community of customers discussing and supporting your products, you will need to begin rewarding those members that go out of the way to help others. Special recognition on the forum in the form of a special symbol or you can even award them a point value for each question they answer. You can also make your forum more interactive by giving the ability to rate the experts. Ask visitors to your site to the quality of help that they receive. Forum volunteers that consistently perform well should be rewarded publicly. These elite members of your community can help you grow your business by evangelizing on other forums and spreading the word about your products and services.

Setting up a forum is very simple. Check with your web-hosting provider, most hosting companies include free forum software with their services. Be sure to create an announcement section followed by separate categories of all of your products and services that you offer. In our next series we will discuss blogging as a powerful marketing tool. We will also discuss creating profitable businesses with little overhead but create great financial rewards.

Copyright 2008 FMWebschool Inc. http://www.fmwebschool.com Written by Stephen Knight

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