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

The content you include in your e-newsletters and  promotional email blasts run a very close second in importance to list management as the key to becoming a successful email marketer.  As a communications tool, the internet has no equal.  Just look at the rapid and pervasive growth of first email, then social media. Add to that the wealth of information available with a mouse click or two.  The depth and breadth of the information available on the internet rivals (and most likely exceeds) the U.S. Library of Congress.

As an email marketer your mantra should be:  Content is King!  You’re probably thinking, OK, but what type of content?

E-Newsletters

If you’re already sending an email newsletter, or thinking about it, here’s where the ubiquitous 80-20 rule comes into play.  Eighty percent of the content in an email newsletter should be about your customers’ and prospects’ needs, desires and interests. 

This can include industry news & trends, helpful and timely information, how-to-tips, interviews with experts, success stories, testimonials, surveys and links to white papers…and more.   The writing style should be readable and thought-provoking.  Succinct and concise content works better than long articles in this format.  Readers are very, very busy and prefer snippets of useful information.  Also, encourage your readers/subscribers to give you feedback on the enewsletter’s format, frequency and content.

Think of an email newsletter as a long term marketing tool; your goal is to build a trusting and credible relationship with your customers and prospective customers.  The other 20% of e-newsletter content can be about your company, but try to keep it more informational than promotional, i.e., new store opening, new product or service offered, link to an article about your company, your company’s recognition, awards and charity/community involvement.

Whether your content is written in-house or by a freelance writer, the writer needs to focus on the benefits/solutions your customers/prospects derive when using your product or service. Why is this important?  Because, every customer, both businesses and consumers, are always asking themselves the following question each and everytime they’re exposed to a potential purchase decision:  What’s In It For Me.

Solo E-mail Blasts

In additon to an email newsletter campaign, a shorter term, more promotional email communication is frequently included in a business email marketing plan.  Often called an email blast, solo email or email postcard, these communications serve as reminders (“tomorrow is the last day to receive your 25% discount” or “online classes are filling up quickly — you only have 10 more days to register online”), sales alerts, invitations to events or seminars, preferred customer promotions, new customer offers, etc.  Again benefits-driven copy is critical here.  Why should your reader care that there are only 10 days to register for the online class?  Benefit: Because taking this course or program will prepare them for a new, in-demand career as a Medical Assistant in less than a year!

When working with small businesses, I recommend a minimum of a monthly enewsletter.  If your content is relevant, interesting and informative, you’ll soon develop a trusting relationship with your target audience.  Be sure to send the enewsletter on a timely basis (if they sign up for a free monthly newsletter be certain you deliver.)  They’ve come to expect the frequency.  They look forward to hearing from you and start believing that you understand their needs. and can solve their problems.

The significance of building an ongoing relationship with your target audience cannot be overstated.  As a business owner, you never know when customers and prospects are ready to buy. In fact, research shows that six to nine (or more) contacts are often required to turn a prospect into a customer. Frequent contact with your target audience will keep your business “top of mind”.  When they’re ready to buy, you’ll have a better chance of getting their business.

Suggested Reading:

Next Post:  Email Format & Layout

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

Since February 2, 2010 this blog has been extolling the virtues of email marketing for small  businesses, especially those with five or fewer employees.  There is simply no more high impact, low cost, online  marketing tool available.  If you’re still not convinced, check out the next few  blogs that will discuss how a monthly  email newsletter from your company can –

• turn your prospects (leads) into customers
• turn current customers into repeat buyers
• reactivate past customers
• drive traffic to your website
• build and maintain loyalty with your customers
• stay “top of mind” with your target audience

Thanks to the internet, as a small business owner you can now “play with the big guys.”  In fact, you hold the advantage because no large company, no matter how high their customer service standards are, can ever compete with the “up close and personal” relationships a small business can establish with its customers.  And, Permission-Based E-mail Marketing has now made it possible for small business owners like you to communicate daily, weekly or monthly with customers and prospects at ridicuously affordable prices.

If you’ve researched  or tested other online marketing methods, you know the costs can add up pretty quickly.  These methods include search engine marketing (Pay-per-Click), e-newsletter sponsorship, renting an opt-in list for an email campaign and purchasing banner ads.

As discussed in previous blogs, the most critical step in launching email marketing campaigns is the first step:  Your House List (your customers and prospects).  Without an updated list of customers and prospects ,who have given you permission to send them information and offers via email, you’re like an automobile without an engine.  You are going nowhere. (Note:  I’m strongly recommending that you start out by emailing  exclusively to your house list; later you may want to conduct a test by renting an opt-in list.)

Small businesses generally have small house lists.  Depending on how long you’ve been in business, you could have anywhere from 25 to 500 records on your house list.  If you haven’t already, enter these customers and prospects into an Excel spreadsheet with as many fields  of information you have, i.e., first name, last name, phone number, business name, products or services purchased and date of purchase, amount of purchase, etc.

Most importantly, do you have the email addresses of your customers and prospects?  If you have their business card and it includes an email address that is considered implicit permission to send them emails.  Just be sure to obey the law and include an Unsubscribe option in ALL  you email communications to your house list.   If you don’t have your customers’ email address, it’s also appropriate to call your customers and let them know you’re launching an email newsletter with valuable information and promotional offers and would they like to subscribe to the free enewsletter.

VERY IMPORTANT: Be prepared to maintain and manage your house list on a regular basis — no less than once a week.  That means you must honor unsubscribes and remove them from your house list as soon as possible.  Also, update customer and prospect profile information on a timely basis, such as physical address, phone number, email address, etc.

Once you have a plan for building and maintaining a clean house list, you’ll need to focus on steps two, three and four of launching your monthly e-newsletter:  Content, Format & Layout and Deployment of your e-newsletter to your house list.

Next post:  E-newsletter Content

Suggested reading:

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

 This blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.   Refer to the blog postings dated April 17th and 23rd to learn about 8 of the 13 terms.  The remaining 5 email marketing terms are delineated in this posting:  Personalization, Segmentation, SPAM, Subject Line and Targeting.

If you want to become a successful email marketer, Personalization, Segmentation and Targeting should always be top of mind when developing each email marketing campaign.

Personalization

Personalization helps you to best leverage the benefits of email marketing — building and maintaining a strong relationship with your customers and prospects, ultimately leading to their taking the action you want them to take.  The more relevant, targeted and personal your email, the better chance you have to meet your campaign goals.

This is the time where an information-rich house list is priceless.  The more profile information you have for each customer and prospect on your list, the more personalized, targeted and relevant your emails will be.

Start by addressing each recipient by their first name or first and last name.  This makes the recipient feel more like a person rather than a piece of data.  Next, if you’re keeping track of purchase and product information, you can personalize the copy in the body of the email even further.  For example, you may have 50 customers who haven’t purchased from you in over six months.  You can tailor your email copy to this group – “we’ve missed you” or “we want you back and we’re willing to make you an offer….”  Any information that makes the recipient feel like you know them and their interests and value an ongoing relationship with them will lead to more successful campaigns.

Don’t send one generic message to everyone on your house list – email recipients are more sophisticated and know a “form” email when they see one.  Additionally, you certainly don’t want to speak to prospects the same way you speak to customers.  Here is where list segmentation becomes very crucial because it drives your copy (and sometimes design) theme.  You may have several copy themes (versions) in one campaign, which is actually a sound marketing strategy because it means your campaign is better targeted.

Segmentation

Segmentation refers to breaking your house list into smaller parts that share one or more important characteristics.  If you’re marketing to consumers (often referred to as Business-to-Consumer Marketing or B2C), market segments could include one or more of the following:

• demographic — age, gender, race, home ownership, employment, household income, married or single, # of children in household, etc.
• geographic —  zip code, country, region
• psychographic — behavior, attitudes and values

If you’re marketing to businesses (often called business-to-business marketing, or B2B), segments of interest might be one or more of the following:  Company size (in employees, annual revenue), industry, SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) code, # of years in business, products and/or services offered).

You can see how important segmentation is to launching an effective email marketing campaign.  For example, your message and/or offer would undoubtedly be different to companies that employ 1,000+ vs. companies that employ less than 10 people.

SPAM

A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE) or  UCE, which refers specifically to unsolicited commercial e-mail.  From the emarketer’s perspective, spam is any email sent to recipients who have not given the sender permission (or opted-in) to send them emails.

Visit the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC)  webpage that describes in detail the legal issues surrounding spam: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

Subject Line

Along with the From line in your email, the subject line is a critical factor in getting your email opened.  A From line from a recognized sender will substantially improve (but not guarantee) an increased open rate.  Research has shown that the majority of email recipients look at the From line first. After recipients know who’s sending them an email, the Subject Line is the next key to getting your email opened.

The Subject Line in an email is like a headline in a news story or an ad. (In fact, study newspaper headlines for a good lesson in how to write a compelling and interesting Subject Line.) If the headline or Subject Line in the email is relevant, intriguing and engaging to the recipient, chances are very good that the email will be opened.

You should write the Subject Line first; it will help you better focus and target your message in the body copy.  Remember, body text must deliver what you promise in the Subject Line.

Here are a few tips on writing your Subject Line:

• Make it short and descriptive (under 50 characters including spaces)
• Entice the reader to open the email
• Don’t make false promises you don’t intend to deliver on
• Using the word “free” or the recipient’s name triggers spam filters
• Localize the Subject Line, i.e., Attend Boston Event: Become a Smart Email Marketer (total:
• 50 characters with spaces)
• Don’t use all CAPS or mutliple exclamation points
• Asking a question often works well as long as it grabs the reader’s attention
• Numbers and tips work well, i.e., 10 Tips to Becoming a Smart Email Marketer
• Urgency also works, i.e., Just 5 Days Left, Just 24 Hours to Register, etc.

Targeting

How important is targeting?  You can’t even begin to think about your marketing strategy without knowing as much as you can possibly know about the audience most likely to want/need your product or service.

Just for starters, how can you select appropriate media to reach prospective customers with your message without knowing the characteristics of your target audience? Or how can you write effective, persuasive copy that will interest and entice prospects to become customers, if you don’t know the characteristics of your target audience?

Identifying your target audience is not rocket science.  As a business owner or someone interested in starting your own business, you probably have a pretty good idea who the target audience is for your product or service.  Take the time to do a lot of research to learn everything you can about your target audience.  As you know, there’s a wealth of free information on the internet.

Many believe they have multiple target audiences; generally they have one target audience with multiple segments (see Segmentation above).

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

 This blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.   See the blog posting dated April 17th to learn about the following terms:  Above the Fold, Click-Through/Click-Through Rate, Deliverability and Email Service Providers (ESPs).

The email marketing terms covered today are: House List, HTML vs. Text Email, List Hygiene, Opt-in, Personalization.

House List

 Your  house list is your company’s list of customers and prospects that, hopefully, you’ve been building since you started your business.  Whether you’re using Excel or a user-friendly, low cost database like ACT, your house list is arguably your most valuable asset.

A house list is often referred to as a permission-based list because you’ve asked each customer and prospect for permission to communicate with them via email.  If you send emails to addresses that haven’t given you permission, you take a risk of being reported as a Spammer.

Develop an email marketing strategy to maintain an ongoing dialog with your house list that includes relevant, informative content and special offers.  Remember, it costs 5 times as much to acquire a new customer vs. selling to an existing customer.

HTML vs Text Emails

You may not know what HTML stands for, but this type of email is easily recognizable and, undoubtedly, you’ve seen many in your Inbox.  These emails are very professional (and promotional) looking – usually in 4-color with creative graphics like images, photos, logos, and formatting techniques, including underlining, bold, hyperlinks  and fancy fonts.  They look like small magazine ads or promotional postcards you receive in the mail.  Not only do they quickly attract the attention of recipients, code is embedded in HTML emails that provides you with tracking information.

Some disadvantages of HTML are:

• they look like ads, so recipients may delete them quickly
• not everyone can view HTML
• they can be slow to load
• you need a professional designer

A text email is just what it says — text only.  You receive as many as hundreds a day from your friends and family.  As an email marketer, you can think of a text email, if well-written, as a sales letter.  The advantages to sending text emails include every recipient can view it properly, it’s easy to produce and mobile devices can read it easily.  Some of the disadvantages include:

• you can’t hyperlink words – you must include the entire address in the email
• no formatting options, i.e., underlining, centering, bold, color
• can’t track the open rate

 List Hygiene

The importance of keeping your house list “clean” cannot be overstated.  If possible, your house list should be cleaned at least once a week.  This means deleting bounces and unsubcribes from your list.  Also, when someone wants to be added to your mailing list or become a subscriber to your enewsletter, try to add them within 24 hours and be sure to send them a Thank You/Confirmation email in return.

Try to avoid someone sending you a second email to request addition, deletion or an updated email address; answer questions and comments as soon as possible.  A quick response shows professionalism, respect and involvement with your audience.

Opt-In (Permission-Based)

 To be a legitimate and ethical email marketer, you must gain permission to send your emails.  Email marketing is often referred to as permission-based or opt-in email marketing.  The potential recipient must give you permission to send them emails.   And, you must also assure them that you won’t sell or share their email address with third-party marketers and that they can unsubscribe to your mailing list at any time.

Additionally, as part of your email marketing strategy, you will need to decide how long you will keep an unresponsive email address on your list before deleting it; the same is true for bounces. Remember, your ultimate goal is to have a quality list not a quantity list.

There are two types of Opt-In Emails: “single” opt-in and “double” opt-in.

A “single” opt-in list is usually created by inviting members to join via a web form or by sending an email message to a “subscriber” email address.  Once readers send the form or the email message, they are subscribed to your list.

A “double” opt-in list, also called a “confirmed” opt-in list, requires the subscriber to reply to a confirmation message to activate the subscription.

The advantage of the “single” opt-in method is that your list will grow faster. However, there are some pitfalls, like the fact that people may subscribe friends or family, who may not want to receive your messages and who could, in the worse case scenario, accuse you of spam.

The advantage of the “double” opt-in method is that you will have a higher quality list (since only interested readers will take the time to go through your confirmation process.

 Important Tip:  If you have a website, include a link for site visitors to join your mailing list or to subscribe to your email campaigns or monthly email newsletter.  Place the link “above the fold” on each web page.  This method is the most cost-effective  (FREE!)  list-building technique in the internet world.

Next Post:  More Email Marketing Terms

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

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

 This post concludes the six-part series on Creating an Email Marketing Plan.  Previous  posts on this topic appeared on March 2, 12, 19, 26 and April 2.

At this stage you should have selected an Email Service Provider (ESP).  All reputable ESP’s include Performance Reports  and Customer Support when you become a customer — at no additional cost.  Performance Reports and Customer Support are standard in the email marketing industry.

Not only is email marketing incredibly cost-effective, your results are virtually immediate.  Within 48 hours of hitting the SEND button (with about 75% of the results coming in the first 24 hours!), you’ll have sufficient data to give you a snapshot of how your customers and prospects responded (or didn’t respond) to your email campaign.  You’ll learn what worked and what didn’t work.  This gives you the invaluable opportunity to improve your results each time you launch an email marketing campaign.

Here are just a few terms you should be familiar with in order to better understand your Performance Reports and, also, to be prepared to ask pertinent questions of your ESP’s Customer Support Reps:

1)  Open Rate

This is an overall, but less than perfect measurement, of how many on your email list viewed your email. Why less than perfect?  

• Many email clients, i.e., Microsoft Outlook, AOL, Gmail automatically turn off images from displaying in an email.  When the images in your email don’t load, the email doesn’t register as an open.
• Some individuals choose to receive text-only emails.  With the image as the trigger, or tracking device,  text-only emails do not register as an open.
• Just because your email is opened, that doesn’t guarantee that it’s been read by the recipients.  The better measure is Clicks (discussed below).

There is some good news, however.  Your open rate is most likely an underestimate.

2)  Clicks

How many who opened your email, clicked on a link that asked them to take some action, such as joining your mailing list, subscribing to your enewsletter, registering for your seminar, downloading an article or whitepaper, filling out a contact form.  The clicks are a  good indication of which content and/or offer engaged the recipients who opened your email. 

3) Click Through Rate (CTR)

Since percentages are deeply embedded in our lives as a benchmark of success, the CTR is an important stat and determined by the following formula:  the #clicks divided by the # unique emails opened.

What’s a good percentage?  There’s no easy answer to this question.  Click Through Rates  vary by industry, content, the quality of your email lists, etc.

4)  Conversions

This is the key statistic.  Of the individuals who took some action , i.e., clicked on your contact form, how many actually completed the form and submitted it.  Of the individuals who clicked on the download for a white paper, how many actually downloaded the white paper….and so on.  To close the loop, of the recipients who took action, keep track of them because you’ll want to know if they ultimately purchased your product or service?

5)  Bounces

 In your performance report, you’ll see the number of bounces subtracted from the open rate.  These bounced emails never reached their destination.  There are two types of 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.

6) Unsubscribes

Unsubscribes are  recipients who request removal of their email address from your list.  Be sure to honor their request as soon as possible.  In the return email confirming their request to unsubscribe, ask them to tell you why they unsubscribed.  This information will be very valuable to your future email marketing efforts.

Next Post:  Friday, April 16th.

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

E-Marketing 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

 Creating an Email Marketing Calendar indicates you’ve made the commitment to utilize this powerful, cost-effective marketing technique to achieve one or more of your marketing goals, including lead generation, website traffic generation, registrations, subscribers, direct sales, referrals, etc.

Use whatever format you like —  a desk-size calendar, a white board, an Excel spreadsheet, your Smartphone…or all of them.  The more visible the calendar is in your daily life, the more likely you’ll meet your deadlines.

Perhaps you’ve asked your clients and prospects  to subscribe to your free, monthly Enewsletter that includes timely industry news, relevant articles, informative white papers and valuable offers –Be Sure to Deliver!!! Failure to deliver on your commitments can negatively impact your credibility.  You’ve got your competitors to deal with — the last thing you need is to get  a reputation for unreliability.

Now that you’ve developed your Email Marketing Plan that includes your Objectives, Strategies and Tactics, you’re ready to transfer that information to a Calendar.  Commit to a schedule for the next 12-month period.   The editorial details for the first two months should be pretty firm; the next 10 months may include a combination of strong ideas and potential ideas. Select 12 dates — paying attention to holidays and weekends. (Most studies show that the best Send days are Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.)

Using the Send (deployment) date of your Enewsletter, start to enter due dates for the required components to ensure that you meet each deployment date.  These components are:

• Final approval of Enewsletter format & copy  – due by
• ENewsletter content, including subject line copy - final approval due by
• ENewsletter design - final approval due by
• Final email List – due to deployment vendor

Once you’ve worked on a couple of email campaigns, you’ll have a better feel for how long each of the above steps takes.  From this blogger’s past experience, after sending out a monthly Enewsletter, you have no more than a few days to rest before you start working on next month’s Enewsletter.

If you’re a novice at email marketing, just be sure to get some expert help.  There are very affordable email service companies out there, such as  www.constantcontact and http://www.helpamericaspeople.com.*

It’s money well worth spending because your return on your investment from email marketing is often very rewarding!

*Full disclosure:  this blogger is a co-founder of the email marketing service business located at http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html.

Next Post:  Tracking Your Email Marketing Campaigns.

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

E-Marketing 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

What are Tactics?  Think of tactics as your daily To Do list or daily Production Schedule.  Tactics are the day-to-day activities associated with executing a Strategy.  To be an effective tactician you need to be detail-oriented and a multi-tasker because there are several “moving parts” to implementing an email marketing campaign — whether you’re sending a simple, promotional email postcard or a monthly email newsletter.

Fictional Scenario:  Let’s say you’re a self-employed Financial Consultant.  One of your primary strategies for finding new clients is to offer a two-hour breakfast  seminar — on a quarterly basis.  You charge a small fee — $75.00 — to cover your expenses of renting a meeting room at a local hotel and providing a continental breakfast to attendees.  (Free seminars have a high no-show rate.)

We’ll also assume you already have a good list of clients and prospects in an Excel spreadsheet; your list is segmented into clients and prospects and includes contact information, i.e., name, business name, mailing address and email address. Important:  You also have permission from each of your contacts to send them e-mails!!

For each seminar, you’ve decided to send a total of six emails to your clients and prospects to get them to sign-up for your seminar.  You’ll be sending an email postcard on the following schedule: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 week prior to your  seminar.  If you have a total of 500 clients and prospects on your list, you’ll be sending out a total of 3,000 emails during the six-week period.

The tactics to implement this strategy include:

1) List Management – be certain the list is “clean” – no duplicates, no incomplete email addresses.  And, don’t forget to segment your list by clients and prospects.

2)  Copy – your message to your clients will be different from your message to prospects (you have a personal relationship with your clients).  Be sure your copy has one or more benefits that each attendee will receive by attending your seminar.  

3) Email Design – there are virtually thousands of free HTML, 4-color email templates available on the internet that you can use.  No need to have any programming knowledge.

4) Deployment – this is the actual sending of the email.  Just like you write and send personal and business emails everyday, you can send 10, 100, 1000 and more in bulk.  How do you go about sending out hundreds or thousands of emails?  Watch the video at  http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jspo for a good overview of the tasks involved in implementing an email campaign.  (Click on the button on the left side of the page — labeled Email Marketing – See How It Works.)  You may want to sign up for the 60-day Free Trial to determine if you have the time and computer skills to work with a company like Constant Contact.  They make the process user-friendly and they offer customer support– but the details will take up your time because it’s essentially a Do It Yourself service. 

Also, consider their pricing model.  They advertise as low as $15 per month, but you can only send out 500 emails a month!!

Another alternative is to work with a small email marketing services company that will handle all the details for a monthly fee – with no restrictions on monthly deployment volume.  All you need to do is be available for approvals of the strategy and schedule, copy and design.  Check out a full-service email marketing services option available by visiting http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html.*

Deployment is not the final step in an email marketing campaign.  You won’t come full circle without Tracking and Analysis.  This is the invaluable benefit of email marketing.  Within 48 hours, you’ll know what worked and what didn’t work.  You’ll be a much smarter marketer the next time out.  Email tracking and analysis will be covered in our April 9 blog.

*Full disclosure:  this blogger is a co-founder of the email marketing service located at http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html.

Next post:  Creating an Email Marketing Calendar

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

E-Marketing 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

If you’ve found this posting without reading our previous postings, please visit http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/.  In order to develop effective strategies to meet your business goals and objectives, you MUST spend considerable time on the following tasks, which are addressed in our previous blogs: 

1) Identify qualitative and quantitative goals for your business – at a minimum for the next 12 months

2) Analyze the current situation - what is the status of your industry –  growing, declining, flat?  what are the economic, regulatory and technological trends?

3) Identify your major competitors and learn everything you can about them – check their websites, join their mailing list (under a fictitious name); what are their strengths and weaknesses?

4) Identify your target customer(s) and divide them into segments possessing similar characteristics (buzzword alert: segment your audience), such as demographics like gender, household income, zip code and psychographics such as purchasing patterns, purchasing behavior, etc. 

You should put in a minimum of 40 hours

gathering this vital information.

I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t have time for this.  I’m running my business!!  BE FORWARNED:  This research exercise is CRITICAL to the ongoing viability of your business.  Why not hire a college student majoring in marketing.  Pay them a fair hourly wage.  This “real-world” project will be a valuable addition to their resume! Give him or her direction and review their work frequently to keep them focused.  Just don’t rationalize that you’ve been in business for __ years without writing a marketing plan.  Given the discouraging rate of failure among U.S. small businesses, you need to write a marketing plan to ensure you won’t be a statistic in the U.S. government’s small business failures data!!

OK, I’ve either convinced you or you’re just about ready to click on the “X” in the top right corner (or top left if you’re using a MAC).

If you’re still with me, once you’ve completed the information-gathering stage, based on the knowledge and insight you’ve gained plus your already wealth of knowledge about the business you’re in, it’s now time to develop your strategies.  And, since this blog is focused on email marketing, you’ll need to consider the frequency, format and content when developing your email strategies:

1) Since permission-based email is the most cost-effective marketing strategy for your small business: to build awareness, to begin and nurture a relationship between your business and your customers (current and past) and prospects, to generate leads and to make sales — Use it, but Don’t Overuse it!!

If you have relevant and interesting content, plus offers of interest to your audience, you can send your permission-based email list a weekly email (at minimum you’ll have two messaging versions — one to customers and one to prospects).  A good frequency is twice a month, but again the content must be of value to your email recipients.  Even once a month is better than nothing. 

IMPORTANT: Maintain the Frequency; there’s nothing worse on the internet than a website or blog left idle. Or even worse, getting your customers and prospects to sign up for your free enewsletter, then not meeting your promise to deliver valuable content and offers every month.  This could actually damage your reputation, so honor your commitments.  Contract the writing to a freelancer.  Pay them per newsletter and you can be certain they’ll meet the deadline each and every month.

Ultimately, you’ll know the desired email frequency by carefully monitoring email performance data, i.e., clicks, click throughs, leads, sales, unsubscribes, etc.

2)  Determine the Type (s) of emails to send

Short Form, often called an E-blast or Email postcard

In many cases, all the content in these emails appear “above the fold,” i.e., recipients do not have to cursor down to read the entire email.  This type of email usually includes some editorial, however, this format is generally promotional.  Potential offers: print out the attached coupon, attend a special event or conference, enter a contest, take a course.  This type of email can achieve several objetives:  drive traffic to your website, generate qualified leads, build a relationship with readers by keeping your business name “top of mind.” 

Another good use of the short form is to send a survey to your customers and prospects on a quarterly basis.  You’ll gain invaluable insight into how these audiences perceive your product or service, your customer service, preferred content and frequency.  Offer an incentive for them to fill out the survey and email it back to you, i.e., special price discount, free e-book on a relevant topic, eligibility to enter a contest or drawing, etc. 

Less is more in the short form.  Keep the copy at a minimum and be sure to include a Call to Action.  Every customer needs to be told what action to take after reading an email, i.e., fill out the contact form, purchase your product online, visit your store and receive a 20% discount, etc.

Long Form -Enewsletter

CONTENT — informational and relevant — is King in this format.  Remember, in this format you want to maintain the readers’ interest and address their needs and concerns.  What information can you provide in your enewsletter to solve the readers’ problems.  In this bloggers opinion, the minimum ratio of informational content to promotional content in an enewsletter should be 75-25.

Enewsletters should be sent at least on a monthly basis.  Providing valuable information to your readers will build credibility and trust in your business.  If you build a relationship through an ongoing dialogue, when the customer or prospect is in need of your product or service, the likelihood they will do business with you is high.

 Next post:  Developing Email Marketing Tactics 

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

E-Marketing 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

Writing an Email Marketing Plan:  Situation Analysis

Once you’ve set your email marketing objectives for the next year (click here to read March 2 post) http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/, you’ll need to take a step back in order to conduct vital and invaluable research. Only when you’ve done due diligence in three significant areas can you develop relevant, effective and actionable email marketing strategies that will achieve your objectives — both qualitative and quantitiative.

Analyzing the Current Situation

1.  What is the state of your industry?  Is it growing, declining or are sales flat?  Are companies in your industry using email marketing techniques?

2.  Learn as much as you can about what your 3 or 4 major competitors are doing to generate awareness and sell their products and services using online marketing techniques (web site, enewsletters, etc).  If they have a website, review it carefully and frequently.  Get on their mailing lists for promotional emails and/or an email newsletters.  Use a unique email address to ensure your anonymity.

3.  Who are your target customers?  Whether your target audience is consumers or businesses, or both, your success depends on how well you know your customers’ needs (problems).  Then you can convince them that your business has the solution. 

But, knowing your customers’ needs is only half the journey.  You need to build and maintain an ongoing relationship (dialogue) with them. Your company’s visibility with your customer base, as well as your prospects, is paramount.  They need to hear from you at least twice a month to keep your business name at a high level of awareness. And there’s no more cost-effective method for staying in touch than ongoing email marketing campaigns.

Where do you start?  First, a lot of information is in your head.  Put it down on paper using the 7- step outline from this blog. Click here to view March 2 post:  http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP  Then complete the outline using primary and secondary research.

Talking to your customers and prospects is called primary research.  Send them a short survey via email and give them a gift for completing the survey (discount on their next purchase, white paper, etc.) Find out what they like and dislike about your product or service and how you can make improvements.  Knowing your customers’ needs and opinions is the single most vital marketing information you’ll ever have. 

Secondary research consists of learning from other published sources.  We’re all fortunate to have a major library’s wealth of information and resources at the click of a mouse.  Begin by typing ”Email Marketing for Small Businesses” at www.google.com.

Next post: Developing Email Marketing Strategies