Rules for Email Campaign Success
In February 2005, Media Net Link launched its new product, Contact Beacon. Contact Beacon wasn’t really new. In reality, we had already been using it for our own marketing efforts for a couple of years, and we found it so useful we decided to give it a name, package it up, and offer it to our clients and others. Now that it has been in use for a while, we have learned some valuable lessons for companies interested in utilizing a bulk emailing tool for communicating with clients and prospects.
Rule #1 Emails alone will not build your business
Unless you are the luckiest person in the world or you have purchased a list that guarantees 100% participation, chances are you will have very few hits from prospects that will convert from being an email recipient to a new client. Even the most sophisticated email tools in the world can’t subvert the buying process. Email tools such as Contact Beacon offer an automated process for a portion of your ongoing marketing and selling campaigns. The truly successful company recognizes the strengths of Contact Beacon, and its limitations.
One of our clients has learned Contact Beacon can provide an excellent platform for qualifying leads. Taking the time and effort to fully analyze his company’s selling process, our client realized he was gathering leads from many sources but taking too much time and too many resources to qualify these leads. Contact Beacon was employed to qualify the leads, segment them into appropriate lists, and prepare them for ongoing marketing campaigns. Our client still gathers leads using his traditional sources, and he still has his sales force contact qualified leads. Contact Beacon is used to sift through the thousands of leads, qualify them, and pass on the hot and warm leads to the sales team.
This client gathered hundreds of business cards at a recent convention. There were too many unknowns for the talented sales people to waste time cold calling each lead to see if they were qualified. A professional looking email message template was developed, designed for maximum effect on this targeted list of contacts or prospects. Contact Beacon was used to transmit this message to the leads with a request for three possible responses. Depending upon the responses the leads were categorized hot, warm, or cold. The hot and warm leads were passed on to the sales team while the cold leads were put into a separate list to receive a different message. (All opt-outs were put into a separate list). The client saved a lot of time by isolating the leads that were worth sales force time. Eventually this practice became an integral part of the selling process for this company. And the sales team was given their own log-in access to Contact Beacon so they could continuously qualify their leads as new campaigns were executed.
Rule #2 One message does not a campaign make
Like most new things on the web, the promise is often more than the reality. Every one of our clients is excited to send out their first email message. It’s truly a wonder to “watch” someone as they read your email, click on a link and head to your web site for more information. There is a real rush to see the metrics and learn what percentage of your list is reading your mail. The let down comes when the phone doesn’t ring and the shopping carts don’t fill. So often, in the early going our clients experienced these highs and lows, often in the same day.
We designed Contact Beacon to handle marketing campaigns, with emphasis on the word campaign. Automated messaging cuts both ways. It’s easy to create and inexpensive to deliver. It’s also easy to delete! Just like any other campaign you undertake, the sender must pay close attention to the results, learn from his earlier trials, and be prepared to send multiple messages over time to prospects who might not be buying now, but who will do so in the future. Your job is to stay in front of that prospect with meaningful information until the prospect is ready to buy.
One client devised a marketing strategy with one goal in mind. “We want to increase readership of our monthly newsletter.” Lists were gathered and an initial invitation to join was sent out. About 3% joined immediately. The original list was broken out into four more lists: those that joined the newsletter, those that clicked on a link in the message and went to the web site, those that read the email, and those that did not open the message. Different HTML message templates were developed for each audience. Over the next several months each group was contacted again. Each time, some contacts from each list would move up to the next higher list. Over time a steady stream of recipients would join the newsletter. Tracking tools that are part of Contact Beacon showed that new customers came almost equally from each list so no one message worked better than the other. The real secret was a methodical ongoing campaign designed for a singular purpose.
Rule #3 Design the message and the campaign with care
Our world is cluttered with messages, and now so are our mail boxes. It has become one of the best gripes around the water cooler these days. But the fact remains that a well produced and strategically placed message can and will sell your products and services better than almost anything else. An old friend once remarked, “Cold calling doesn’t work, seminars don’t work, direct mail doesn’t work, networking doesn’t work, and even hitting up your family and friends doesn’t work, but if you stick with any of these tried and true methods, eventually you will be successful.”
That is the essence of Contact Beacon and email marketing. If you methodically approach your email campaigns, build your lists so they are realistic and properly segmented, take the time and expense to design your HTML templates, be very focused on branding, pay close attention to what your message is, and most importantly what actions you want your reader to take, then over time you will be successful. Best of all, you will be successful at a price that is significantly less expensive than the alternative ways of gaining new clients and customers.
For more information about using Contact Beacon to define and execute successful
Email marketing campaigns, please contact us.