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By Ryan Allis
The goal of all marketing
is to attract interest in, build desire for, and generate
sales of your products or services. Email marketing
is a perfect medium to pick up where other marketing
leaves off. Email marketing is still one of the most
cost effective ways to contact prospects and customers.
It’s far cheaper than traditional bulk postage
mail and in many cases can have a much larger impact
on immediate sales and long-term relationship strength
than traditional advertising.
When done correctly, email
marketing can be an extremely powerful and effective
marketing technique. It’s a medium that allows
a buyer and seller to freely communicate with one another
and build a relationship based on value and trust. When
done incorrectly, however, email marketing can be destructive,
erode brand equity, and turn your happy clients into
litigious flamers. It is for this reason that one must
make sure they send only permission-based email communications
to their subscribers.
Before we proceed any further,
let’s define exactly what permission-based email
marketing is. It is important to note that there are
two types of email marketing. One can either send unsolicited
email promotions or send out emails only to persons
who have requested to receive them. Unsolicited email
is, of course, called spam. Sending spam will ruin any
legitimate organization’s reputation and brand
value faster than mold grows on bread that is left outside
in the middle of summer. Rule number one of becoming
an intelligent email marketer is to not send unsolicited
email.
Permission-based email marketing,
on the other hand, is used effectively everyday by hundreds
of thousands of organizations to build the value of
their brands, increase sales, and strengthen the relationships
they have with their clients and subscribers. The key
difference, of course, is that these senders are only
sending messages to persons who have requested to receive
them.
Let’s
take a second to understand the key difference between
spam and permission-based emails.
The
Axiom of Value
For the last
100 years, companies have relied on traditional advertising
in the form of catchy jingles, TV commercials, billboards,
print ads in newspapers and magazines, direct mail,
hot air balloons, and waving mascots. The technique
is to interrupt a radio listener, TV viewer, or magazine
reader with an attention grabbing ad that compels the
consumer to buy the company’s product or at least
have the product closer to the forefront of his or her
mind next time the individual is making a buying decision.
In most instances,
advertising is acceptable to the consumer. Most people
don’t mind seeing ads while watching television,
listening to the radio, or reading magazines—or
at least they understand that these ads are necessary
in order to receive the content they are seeing, reading,
or hearing. While technologies like TiVo, DVR, and satellite
radio are challenging advertisers to come up with new
methods of advertising, other technologies such as Internet
television require users to watch a 30-second advertisement
prior to the start of a show. The point is, as long
as value is provided, consumers will be willing to be
exposed to a few advertisements.
This same axiom
holds true online. As long as your web site provides
content that people value, visitors will continue returning
to the site even if there are a few banner ads or Google
AdWords boxes within the page layout. While some web
sites, such as WSJ.com, have successfully switched to
a subscription-based model, many more web sites rely
on banner, box, skyscraper, and contextual advertisements
to earn the bulk of their income.
The same axiom, that as long as value is provided, consumers
will be willing to be exposed to a few advertisements,
also holds true with email. As long as one provides
value—whether by providing content on a topic
a recipient is interested in or a discount off a product
related to one purchased previously—people will
allow you to continue to contact them. Each and every
email you send of course contains your logo, information
on your products and services, and links to your web
sites. These items are the advertising and should be
surrounded on all sides by the items which make the
communication actually add value to the lives of your
readers.
Spam however,
by its very nature, breaks the axiom. Unsolicited bulk
email very rarely has any value. Spam is usually irrelevant,
always impersonal, and rarely helpful. Everyone with
an email inbox knows how aggravating it is to sort through
forty new emails to only find two that are from persons
you know. While spam may make money for persons in Eastern
Europe promoting fake drugs, I feel strongly that sending
spam will always have a net negative impact on any legitimate
organization.
For this reason,
we strongly recommend only sending permission-based
email, also known as opt-in email. Permission-based
email marketing can be an extremely effective way to
increase visitor-to-sale conversion rates, build strong
relationships with your customers, and turn your one-time
buyers into lifetime product evangelizers who recommend
your organization to everyone they know. Permission-based
email marketing allows companies to develop and sustain
relationships with their prospects and consumers by
creating value. Permission marketing is about “turning
strangers into friends and friends into customers”
as Seth Godin likes to say.
The nature
of permission marketing—building a relationship
with a prospect or expanding the relationship with an
existing customer over time—allows you to concentrate
on the prospects and customers who are really interested
in what you have to sell and are more than willing to
become repeat customers.
The
Five-Step Process of Permission Email Marketing
There is a
simple five-step process in putting a successful permission-based
email marketing campaign in place. This process is reviewed
below.
1. Start using
a permission-based email marketing software that allows
you to easily create newsletters, automatically manage
subscribes, unsubscribes, bounces, and view reporting
statistics like opens and clickthroughs.
2. Decide on
the type and frequency of email communication you will
be sending. We recommend sending at least a monthly
newsletter. You can certainly send multiple newsletters
if you sell different types of products. You can also
send promotional messages offering a discount or coupon
for a product or service.
3. Add a sign-up
form to your web site so you can start collecting subscribers
and import any existing lists of subscribers that have
already requested your communications. It is generally
also safe to import the names of anyone who has done
business with you in the past year, provided you will
be sending content relevant to what they purchased.
4. Create a
good email template by using a template provided within
the email software, having your in-house team create
one, or using the custom design services of the email
software company.
5. Develop
quality relevant content for your newsletter or message
and send it out to your list. Continue sending your
newsletters, announcements, or promotions with consistent
frequency. As your list grows, you will notice increased
traffic (and if applicable, increased sales) on the
day of and the days following an email send.
By providing
quality relevant content you will succeed in keeping
your brand mindshare at the front of the mind of your
customers and cement strong relationships with your
subscribers.
Real Profit
Solutions Inc. provides Direct
Email Marketing and HTML Newsletter Services for
businesses looking to promote a product or keep in contact
with their customers. Read more about our email
marketing service.
About the
author:
Ryan
Allis is an internationally recognized expert
on email marketing. Ryan is the CEO of Broadwick Corp,
providers of the email marketing software IntelliContact
Pro. For additional information on email
marketing software, visit http://www.email-marketing-software-resource.com
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Marketing Articles: Why Use Permission-Based Email Marketing?
