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Email have become an all-too-important component of marketing
on the Internet. It is cheap. It is fast. And emails are
everywhere. According to eMarketer, an e-commerce research
company, 94 percent of all Internet users have emails. In 1999,
marketers spent $97 million on email marketing, and are expected
to reach $4.8 billion by 2004 (Forrester Research).
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Email marketing has proven to be effective. Business 2.0
recently reported that permission-based marketing messages enjoy
a response rate of 11.5 percent, compared to a mere 0.55 percent
for banner click throughs. It is thus no wonder that email
marketing has tremendously grown in the past year as the online
marketing tool of choice for both the big dot-coms and the small
online entrepreneurs
To ensure a successful email marketing campaign, here are
seven elements you need to consider.
1. Avoid spamming at all costs.
Send emails only to people who requested for it. Never send out
newsletters or product offers to people who did not opt-in to
your list, no matter how attractive your offer may be or
"targeted" the recipients may be. Forget the claim
unscrupulous Internet marketers make on "targeted
marketing" - that emails sent to a targeted audience is not
spam. The rule is simple and clear: if the person did not agree
to receive your emails, then it is spam.
2. Unleash the power of
personalization. Response rates to email
campaigns are said to increase with the personalization of
emails. People are prone to respond more favorably to emails
that start with their names, or personalized salutations such as
"Dear Susan." However, personalize your emails
only if you have information on the first names of your
subscribers or opt-in list. If you have incomplete data, never
attempt to personalize your emails and have your emails start
with "Dear Unknown." There is nothing more irritating
to an email recipient than being labeled as an
"unknown." Doing so guarantees the quick
deletion of your email message, no matter how enticing your
offer may be.
3. Clarify your Privacy Policy.
Trust is essential in creating stronger customer relationship on
the Internet. When a visitor subscribes to your newsletter and
gives his or her contact information and other pertinent
details, the person assumes that his or her information will be
used only in-house, never shared, sold or rented. Bolster the
trust of the person by clearly articulating your policy. In the
event that you share, sell or rent your email subscriber lists
to third parties, state this clearly on the registration forms
so the person can decide what kind of information he or she may
be willing to provide.
4. Respond promptly to email
inquiries. The hallmark of good customer service on
the Internet is the quick response time to email inquiries. Make
sure that you respond to emails from your subscribers quickly to
assure the person that you are taking care of his or her
concerns.
5. Acknowledge the subscription of a
user. It is important to send out an acknowledgement
email to new subscribers. Some subscribers tend to forget what
they subscribed to, and a few may even complain of spam upon
receipt of your first newsletter or product offer. Double
verification ensures that your subscriber really does want to
receive your email messages. There are also a number of people
who simply play on your subscription forms, and deliberately
enter incorrect or non-existent email addresses.
Sending out an email to new subscribers will accomplish two
objectives:
- to verify the correctness of the email provided, and
- to clarify to the subscriber what he or she has subscribed
to.
To help you maintain an efficient operation, you can automate
the acknowledgement process by setting up an auto responder to
your subscription email. An auto responder feature allows you to
create a customized message that will automatically be generated
and sent to your list member to let him or her know that you
have received a message. You can start out your acknowledgement
email as "Thank you for subscribing to our weekly
newsletter." It would also be helpful if you could indicate
instructions on how to unsubscribe from your list should the
person change his or her mind.
6. Maintain a complete record of all
subscriptions. Keep a record of all requests for
subscription to your newsletter or product offerings, even years
afterward. Having a record of their requests for subscription
will protect you in case the person forgets about his or her
subscription and complains. If the person sends you (or worse,
your web host and ISP) an email complaining, "I never
agreed to receive your emails," you can show the original
registration. It would also be helpful if you could include the
IP address and remote host information of all registrants,
should the person complain that his or her email was misused. We
had a subscriber who complained that he did not subscribe to our
newsletter, but after showing him (and our ISPs) the original
registration with the IP address and remote host, the person
realized it was his wife who registered his email address.
7. Allow users to unsubscribe from
your list. Recognize that people's needs and
circumstances change. Your email newsletters, once useful to the
subscriber, may no longer interest him or her. Or, maybe the
person is receiving too many regular emails that he or she feels
compelled to reduce the number of emails received. In every
email newsletter you send out, be sure to include clear
instructions on how to unsubscribe from your list. If the person
wants to be taken off from your list, make it easy for him or
her. Upon receipt of the request to unsubscribe, acknowledge the
email and respond that you have removed the person's email from
your list. Avoid giving the person the runaround. If not, you
could wind up with a disgruntled person who could easily damage
your reputation.
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