How to run an email marketing campaign!

[Mirelle]

Email campaigns account for half of the contents of my inbox. It's a mix of Nordstrom’s sales days, Yelp restaurant coupons, Travelocity deals, and iTunes music, plus a dozen newsletters I subscribe to.

I may be the target of a slick promotional campaign, but it doesn't feel that way. That’s the beauty of an email campaign that's skillfully executed. It's also the goal of professional marketers.

If you want your emails to dazzle your customers, read on. The low cost and ease of email marketing makes it an essential tool for business owners. Email marketing helps businesses:

get instant responses from existing customers.
build long-term relationships with loyal customers.
notify customers about a special offer or invitation.

Send emails
Databases integrate with popular mail programs: Outlook, Entourage, Apple Mail. The emails that you chose to send, are stacked in the drafts folder so you can schedule to send them on the right day at the right time for your recipients. Timing of the email is important. Business users arrive on Monday morning to a full inbox. Send your emails Monday afternoon or Tuesday. Also, if you’re marketing to business people at their offices, send it early in the week rather than on a Friday. If you’re sending to homes, recent studies show that Sundays are best!

Process opt-outs
You must provide info on how a recipient can opt-out of receiving your email by adding a line after your physical mailing address at the bottom of the email. The wording is similar to this, You are receiving this email because you or someone used this email address to subscribe to this email. To unsubscribe from this email, please reply with REMOVE in the subject line to discontinue receiving Special Offer emails from us.
Honor your customers’ wishes as quickly as possible after you send a message. Keep in mind that customers who don’t want to receive your emails may change their minds…..

[Nienke]

Hi Mirelle,

Any more tips&tricks for an email marketing campaign? Like to know more, since I don't want to p*ss people off with the emails I'm planning on sending them!

[mother]

I have yet to see an e-mail marketing campaign that does not p*ss me off!

Why?
1. The frequency of those e-mails (seriously, even weekly is pushing it)
2. The content of each e-mail (specials/giveaways/discounts/membership/prizes/limited offer... YAWN)
3. Where the %^$*# did they get my e-mail address?

So I would really also love to know how it should be done properly. If there is an effective way, I might just consider using it myself, but for now I steer clear of it.

[Neville Bailey]

I have been using MailChimp to send out my newsletters and to keep in touch with my client base (about 300 subscribers).

The important thing is to add value, not just push products. Also, it is critical that you only add subscribers with whom you already have a business relationship, so that there is an established level of trust and credibility in place. Otherwise, subscribers must join voluntarily and there must be an opt-out link on each message.

When I first embarked on my email campaign, my opening newsletter asked my client base what they would like to see in my newsletters and how often they would like to receive them.

I have had a lot of very favourable feedback from my clients so far, so hopefully I have got the right mix!

[mother]

Neville, your approach makes a lot of sense: Add value to subscribers who actually want your communications. And wow, I think 300 is a lot! Well done. Yay, motorhome on its way!

But does that qualify as an "e-mail marketing campaign"? Like the type Mirelle referred to here? I got the impression Mirelle was talking about advertising to the public at large, in the hope of gaining new customers. Now those type of campaignes still feel like an invasion of my privacy.

[johnwarner75]

Personally I’m very suspicious with emails. The opt-out needs to be very clear (in fact its good if you can send a please-confirm-you-want-to-be-emailed- Email first)

and never make them sound too sales-ey

[Blurock]

I like the way that Neville runs his campaign. Allowing people to subscribe and adding value in stead of sending it blindly to a mailing list is a cheap and effective way of keeping in touch with clients.

I get mad at the other types of ihopeyouopenthismailsoicansellyousomething e-mail campaigns which is is nothing but mindless cold calling.

[Nienke]

When I first embarked on my email campaign, my opening newsletter asked my client base what they would like to see in my newsletters and how often they would like to receive them.

I have had a lot of very favourable feedback from my clients so far, so hopefully I have got the right mix!

This is a pretty good idea for the Newsletter, and since my first one still needs to go out, I’ll definitely use this!. It’s also a great way to start of a two-way communication with my prospective customers and suppliers.

But like Mother, I was also under the impression this thread was more about advertising. And since I’m totally new in the market out there, I need to find a way to promote myself first before I can send out newsletters to interested parties.

So far I’ve been reading on this forum that call calling is not the way, email marketing is not advised and that plain advertising is a shot in the dark.

I was hoping this forum would help me out with giving me ideas on how to manage certain aspects of my business, but so far it only confuses me and advises me against all ideas I had in to get myself promoted out there.

I do hope somebody has some good tips on how the proper way is to promote a completely new business, even if I don’t have any leads or customer / supplier base yet. I can use a bit of positive enforcement!

[mother]

Nienke, what is your business/product and who is your target market?

[Nienke]

@Mother:
I'm starting an online site where customers can buy vouchers. These vouchers can be spent for booking an accommodation for free for 2 people for 2 nights. The only thing they need to do is have both lunch and dinner at the accommodation. From the accommodations perspective: This means a free room for guaranteed 4 dinners and 4 breakfasts.

The advantage for the accommodations is that since the customers pays us, it’s free for them. Also, this will only be at their low periods. An accommodation has on average an occupancy rate of about 50%, which means that half of the rooms are always empty.
So with us they can choose between an empty room with its costs involved, or a booked room with a profit against it.
This is actually a concept which is huge everywhere in Europe (UK, Germany, Holland, etc.), which we're now introducing here. To clarify: It is not a last minute booking, as there are many. This is accommodations using their knowledge about their occupancy in advance and use this to their benefit.

But to come back to the issue on hand:
Both my company as the concept is new and I am currently busy recruiting accommodations. I'm not yet open for business, because I want to present the customers a good choice, which at this stage I don’t have yet. Therefore I don’t want to go big yet on marketing campaigns etc.
So I need to contact the accommodations, explain my company and my product to them.

And here is the confusion from my side: Cold calling is not advised, sending ‘annoying’ emails is not advised, so I’m in a bit of a jam. How else to inform them about us?

Well, this is as short as I could get it, hopefully some good advice comes my way!

[Blurock]

Nienke, In your case you will have to do cold calling. This can be approached in different ways. Not a shotgun approach, but a well planned and organised strategy.

You wish to recruit suppliers (B&B hotels etc) and customers (the paying public). How do you intend recruiting them? By phoning or calling them one-by one? The purpose of marketing is to communicate and inform. A press release is free and the most under rated form of advertising. This can be arranged with local newspapers, radio stations (do people still listen to the radio?) or in the form of a seminar for owners of B&B's, hotels etc.

Take one area or town at a time and arrange a breakfast or afternoon cocktails etc. Once you have buy-in from suppliers, you can start marketing to consumers. This can once again be in various forms and may include a website, printed ads, mail shots pamphlets and the like.

A good CRM program may give you valuable feedback and allow you to tweak your offer and improve return business. Peter Drucker wrote "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." If you have to use persuasive techniques or do a lot of personal selling of your product or service, then perhaps your marketing is not very effective. Do the groundwork and get the most effective message across.

Good luck with your venture.

[Mirelle]

In order to have a good marketing campaign, you must first define the image you want to portray. Then, you have to organize lists with contacts! You can use a time management solution, have you ever try Taskwise? You can sign up for a free account today, check out the website!

[mother]

I'm not yet open for business, because I want to present the customers a good choice, which at this stage I don’t have yet.

Nienke, it sounds like a great idea. You have obviously done your research and you are confident this concept will work. Now your challenge is to "sell" this concept to your suppliers and customers!

I would imagine that getting your suppliers(i.e. accommodation) on board will be easier than convincing your customers, since the whole world still bears the scars of the "timeshare"-epidemic of years gone by, and all the "creatively underhanded" marketing campaigns they tricked the public into.

But, as you mentioned, you first need a good selection of suppliers. If I were you I would tackle one town at a time. Get all the suppliers you can from there, then launch that town on your website (don't wait until you have the whole country, because people search for accommodation by destination). And do your homework in terms of each supplier you contact, so you know exactly how many rooms on average they battle to fill during out-of-season periods. So you start with the supplier who needs you the most. Yes, you will have to phone them and convince them to sit through a presentation. And like Blurock mentioned, it will save you a lot of time/money/effort if you could see them all at once to present the concept to them over breakfast/lunch. Perhaps try and arrange such a breakfast/lunch presentation at the supplier who needs you the least, i.e. the one with the least number of vacant rooms during off-peak times - that might create the impression to all the others that the most successful one amongst them is buying into this, so surely they should as well. But be completely honest beforehand about what you are going to show them, don't lure them there under false pretences.

Now regarding the cold calling you're gonna have to do here, perhaps you could try something I did to help one of my Tutors with her marketing. We are in an extremely competitive and sensitive market, and she couldn't get past the secretaries to arrange appointments with school principals. So I wrote a very short personal e-mail (you standardise it, and just change the names) which I addressed to the school principal (used her first name, no surnames and no titles, and used her direct e-mail address), and the e-mail listed 3 MAJOR problems all schools face, along with the 3 solutions we offer (bullet points for a quick read), then ended by asking what time during the day we could phone her to make an appointment to explain these so she could "make an informed decision about our value...". This e-mail had a 90% success rate, in that they phoned us to make the appointments.

As far as reaching your customers are concerned, I would definitely consider facebook ads to promote your website. In my experience it is money well-spent on reaching your actual target market, since there are so many parameters you can set.

[Blurock]

Good advice mother!

[mother]

Aw thanx, Blurock.

One more thing I forgot to add, Nienke... I would recommend you avoid the phrase FREE ACCOMMODATION. Everyone knows that absolutely nothing in life is free, and using that phrase (in my opinion), might make people suspicious, thinking you are hiding something. The truth of the matter is, they will have to pay for 4 meals in order to stay there, so in fact it's not free, it's just a bargain. Perhaps rather use a phrase like "you only pay for your meals", or something like that.

Perhaps some other members would like to share their views on this as well?