ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

 

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you >>>  EMAIL MARKETING

 

 

For the next few weeks, this blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.  Email marketing is truly a “killer” marketing tool that will be around for a long time to come.  It’s especially vital for small business owners to understand and utilize email marketing to its fullest extent because it is arguably the top online vehicle to establish an ongling relationship with customers and prospects.  Email marketing offers the small business owner a high impact communications tool at a very low cost and impressive ROI.

The marketing terms to be covered include:

• Above the Fold
• Click Through/Click Through Rate
• Deliverability
• ESP
• House List
• HTML (vs. text)
• List Hygiene
• Opt-In (Permission-Based Email)
• Personalization
• Segmentation
• SPAM
• Subject Line
• Targeting

Above the Fold

A graphic design term often associated with a broadsheet size newspaper, i.e., New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, etc.  Because of the size of a broadsheet newspaper , the paper is either delivered or displayed folded in half horizontally.  Traditionally, the most important news stories of the day will appear above the fold.

Above the fold in the internet world is designated as the content the reader sees immediately upon opening the email — without scrolling down.  The most important content and links should be above the fold to motivate recipients to engage with your message and  respond to your “call to action”, such as  dowload yur free white paper, sign-up for your mailing list and receive a free e-book, subscribe to your free monthly newsletter, click to fill out contact form for a free Email Marketing Analysis, etc.

Click Through/Click Through Rate

When an email recipient clicks on your email that was delivered to their inbox, that’s considered an Open.  If they click on a link within the email message (also known as a hyperlink), the term used is Click Through.

The Click Through Rate (CTR) is an important metric. To determine the Click Through Rate, use the following formula:  the number of unique clicks on a link in your email message divided by the total number of unique Opens.  (Unique Opens are calculated by subtracting bounces, unsubscribes and duplicate clicks by the same individual. )  For example:

XYZ company sent out 1,000 emails; 25 recipients Opened the email.  That’s an Open rate of 2.5%. Of those 25 who opened the email, 5 clicked on the link to download a free white paper.  The CTR is 5 divided by 1,000, or  .5% (one-half of 1 %).  When you work with an Email Service, this metric and several others will be provided to you in a performance report after each campaign.

Clicks and Click Through Rate are two of the most important metrics used to measure the success of your email marketing campaigns.

Deliverability

From a marketer’s point of view, deliverability directly affects the success or failure of an email marketing campaign.  When you email in bulk (hundreds or thousands) it’s inevitable that less than 100% will be delivered.  Maintaining deliverability in the 90th percentile is very important, because those who never receive your email can’t respond to your offer, i.e., click on the link or links in your email.

There are two main reasons why emails don’t reach their destination:  bounces and anti-spam mechanisms.

Bounces

There are two types of bounces: soft bounces and hard bounces.

A soft  bounce refers to an email not delivered due to a  temporary problem on the recipient’s end, such as a full mail box, an auto reply message set by the recipient announcing he or she is on vacation, out-of-town on business, etc. or there are technical difficulties with the server on the receiving end.  These soft bounces should be identified and sent the email again within 12 hours.

A hard bounce refers to an email that’s not delivered because the email address is invalid (not a “live” address).  Be sure to double check these bounces for typos in the email address.  You need the exact email address, otherwise the email will quickly bounce back.

Spam

If you email is identified as spam, it’s either deleted before delivery or sent to the recipient’s junk/spam folder instead of their inbox.

Because anti-spam measures are not fulproof, sometimes legitimate, permission-based emails are labeled incorrectly.  This situation is called a false positive.  Unlike bounces, it’s unlikely you’ll get feedback on your false positives.

Email Service Provider (ESP)

An ESP provides email marketing services, which typically  include helping you to manage your email list, offering hundreds of HTML email templates for you to choose from, deployment of your email campaign(the actual sending of the emails) and performance reports that showimportant metrics such as click through rate,  undeliverables, unsubscribes, etc.

Free-trials are available from some of the largest ESP’s like Constant Contact, iContact and Vertical Response.  Depending on which ESP you work with, monthly rates can be based on the size of your email list or the number of emails you want to deploy monthly.  Once the Free Trial is over, monthly rates can be as low as $15.00 (Constant Contact charges $15.00 per month if your list is no larger than 500 addresses; the number of emails you can deploy is unlimited.)

For the low monthly fee, ESP’s are essentially offering a Do-it-Yourself Service.  If you feel reasonably comfortable with cutting and pasting and downloading, you can do well with these services.  The final question is:  do you have the time?  Because frequency is important in email marketing.  You are building a relationship with your customers and prospects.  If they don’t hear from you at least monthly, they will soon forget you.  Also, these large ESP’s have upwards of 500,000 customers.  Be sure their Customer Service Dept. is responsive to your questions or need for help.

If you need some hand-holding and/or don’t have the time or staff for the Do It Yourself method, you may want to investigate very small ESP’s who do virtually all the work for you.  Check out http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html*

*Full disclosure:  the blogger is a co-founder of the ESP located at the email address above.

 

Next Post:  More Email Marketing Terms