The Question Of When To Do Email Marketing?

Jan. 24, 2012 - PRLog -- The urge to hit the company database and blast out those email marketing messages can be a hard one to resist -  especially if business is quiet! Email frequency is probably one of the most vexed questions that continually gets asked but never really satisfactorily answered.

In the age of multichannel search and social, creating email marketing strategies that can yield positive results are more important than ever so it’s vital to take a long hard look at some of the nuts and bolts intended to hold a campaign together…

The key is determining intention and objective, tied in with the nature of the products or services a business provides. In other words, balancing the demands for short term sales performance  which will not adversely affect longer term  customer database value. Careful assessment of niche segment history also feeds in to how businesses should approach the intgration of social media engagement with their overall online marketing campaigns.

Taking time and patience to segment categories of recipient response based on past history can be sobering as it’s more than likely that most will tend to show as being ‘non-response’ or inactive for say, one to two months, three to six months or a year or more! But it’s vital to gain key insight and know who has responded  and when an email has either been clicked, opened or acted upon.

It’s not uncommon for new company contacts to be simply added to a database without  properly updating all previous contacts. Or worse, purchased databases with omissions of either the email address or a contact telephone/mobile number. However, recipients clicking ‘unsubscribe’ may have occurred, which has been either overlooked or ignored and could be another reason for lack of response.

If this is the case, then it’s best to not contact again for at least 2 -3 times the previous mailing intervals. Try to only reactivate with a genuinely exceptional offer, product, service or news item known to be of direct relevance to the intended recipient at the time of sending!

And indeed, relevancy  lies at the heart of improving email marketing performance. While most complaints centre around frequency, the reality is the lack of real value or benefit to the recipient. Simply repeating or sending similar sales messages ad nauseum  will lead immediately to ignore, delete or unsubscribe. Sending once or possibly twice should be enough.

Recently, the email landscape has been altered by the introduction of email priority schemes, which are aimed to help recipients better manage opt-in email.  Previously, software  filters could be set to simply treat most unknown email as spam, and those that did manage to get through quickly scanned and manually deleted. ISPs can now automatically screen for different levels of email urgency based upon previous user history  to determine when  they should be read.  

Another commony used form of email marketing is the ‘triggered’ or event-driven email, which is sent in response to a specific customer behaviour or interaction as a remarketing tactic.  An email is automatically sent offering an incentive, for example, as an after sales offer in exchange for a customer review or when a known user abandons a shopping cart. Once again, an evaluation must be made on whether the triggered email will be once again viewed as ‘intrusive’.

Short message emails which are skilfully created to be concise and showing value will prompt a response to a ‘call to action’ to click on secondary links if recipients can see they will quickly gain a genuine and relevant result to their advantage.

Email marketing is always about the right message to the right person at the right time in the right way!

Visit http://www.weprovoke.co.uk for more information and advice.

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Visit http://www.weprovoke.co.uk for more information and advice.